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Fear is your body’s way of keeping you safe. It’s a survival mechanism induced by a perceived threat. Fear can make us scream out in panic, run for the hills or freeze like an ice sculpture. Fear can be crippling.

Back when cavemen roamed the earth, they were afraid of the dark. And who can blame them? The threat of a dark, ominous cave probably meant a saber-toothed tiger was lurking in the shadows with drool hanging from its mouth at the thought of gobbling you up for lunch. The fear that the cavemen felt was to keep them alive because their lives were literally in danger.

But times have changed. There’re no more saber-toothed tigers waiting to bite your head off on your way to the grocery store. Instead, our fears are concerned with a threat to our emotional, psychological or mental survival.

The first thing you need to understand is that we ALL have fears

There is not a single person immune to fear on this planet because fear is a survival instinct and necessary for our survival as a species.

What I want to challenge you to overcome are the unhealthy fears that hold you back from achieving what you want out of your life. The type of fear that is not keeping you safe and alive, but the fear that is paralyzing you from living a life you deserve – whether you feel worthy of it or not.

{Listen to the podcast episode on this topic by clicking on the player at the top of the post. Alternatively you can watch the video below, or read on…}

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Let’s touch on the four main fears that hold you back, not allowing you to move your lash business forward, and learn how to trick your mind not to be afraid.

1. The Fear of Failure

We all hate to fail, but sometimes, this fear runs rampant and causes us to sabotage our chances of success. It’s like the monster hiding under our beds that stops us from sprinting across the room to flick the light switch on. So, what do we do instead? We hide under the covers and do absolutely nothing. That monster can live under your bed forever as far as you’re concerned because facing him would be so much worse than running for that light.

But what if we took a leap of faith? What if we stopped hiding under our covers, ran across the room, turned the light on and realized that the big scary monster hiding under the bed looked more like Sully from Monsters Inc than anything even remotely frightening. But you were too afraid of the unknown to know any better. You let your fear control you because you were too scared of the “what if?”

This is what I like to call the “What If” syndrome. It’s where anxiety sufferers LOVE to hang out. It’s where you catastrophize the smallest scenario into becoming a massive threat to your well-being. It’s the fear of failing or the fear of not meeting the expectations that you’ve engraved in your mind.

As a lashpreneur, your “what if’s” probably look a little something like this…

• What if I open my own business and I can’t afford to pay the rent?
• What if I get the client’s in, but they don’t like my work?
• What if I borrow all of this money to open up my business and I have to shut it down?
• What if I invest in this training or program and I don’t get results, and I’ve wasted money?

You talk yourself in circles because every ‘what if’ eventually leads to another ‘what if’ and before you know it, you’re at a standstill. You can’t go forward, or move your lash business forward, because the fear of failing is too high. Thankfully, there’s an easy solution.

Change your “What If” to “So What?”

So what if you open your business and can’t afford to pay the rent? Figure out what you need to do to crush this fear. Maybe you can work part-time at lashing until you make enough to support the rent. Or, perhaps you need to move your business somewhere with cheaper rent?

So what if you get clients in and they don’t like your work? First of all, you’ve got clients, so you’re doing something right. Secondly, you’re getting feedback on areas you need to improve on OR maybe you need to draw in a different type of clientele altogether.

So what if you borrow a lot of money to open up your business and have to shut it down? Start small and don’t borrow more than you can afford to pay back in a reasonable time-frame. Don’t take on more than you can handle if you have no plan to be able to pay it back.

So what if you invest in a training program and don’t get the results you wanted. Before signing up for a training course, you need to feel like you’ll get your money’s worth. Find out what guarantees, refunds, or social proof you have to trust that you’ll get a return on your investment. Any educator worth their salt will have an option of support to ensure you’re set up for success. If they don’t, take your money and time elsewhere!

Here’s a news flash for you…failure is a part of being a business owner. Heck, failure is a part of life and so what?

Does that mean you should never start?

Does that mean you ARE a failure?

Or...

Does it mean you are in a learning phase of mastering a new skillset and anybody with the expectation that you’ll be perfect at it can walk into that dark cave with the saber-toothed tiger…just kidding (of course), but you know what I mean!

It’s time we all stopped fearing failure and started to recognize it as a lesson to be learned.

You’ve got to understand and accept that failure is just a part of life. It gives you room to grow and evolve.

2. Fear of Rejection

We knew this one was coming, didn’t we?

The fear of rejection stems from being part of a herd. Again, if we were to travel back to the cavemen days, it would be much safer to be part of a pack. There’s safety in numbers. If you stumble into a cave with a saber-toothed tiger, you’re pretty much screwed (sorry). But with a group, you’re protected, and there’s a better chance of survival.

We’re social animals, and although we’re not hiding from predators anymore, we still crave human interaction and acceptance. We have the instinct to be part of a community, but it’s less about our physical need for survival and more about our mental, emotional and psychological needs to survive.

For most of us, our herd is defined by our group of friends or our family, and the thought of being rejected by our herd can be mind-numbing. However, our herd is often the reason why we hold ourselves back.

If you’re hungry for success, but your herd is happy grazing where they are and never entertain the idea of achieving more, it might cause you to continue grazing too. Why? Because it takes guts to be the odd one out. It takes a lot to step outside of the herd and make your own path. Often, your new path will take you in a direction away from your herd.

Let’s put it this way. Say you want to earn six figures a year. You tell your group of friends or your family members about this great ambition, expecting them to be happy for you and support you. Instead, however, you’re met with fits of laughter. They make fun of you. They question that you’ve changed, and they might even think you’re greedy or accuse you of thinking you’re better than them because you found a formula for success.

If any of this sounds familiar, I’ve got one easy solution for you.

Find a new herd.

That’s a tough one, I know. You can’t exactly swap your family members for new and more supportive ones (but how awesome would that be?). But what you CAN do is change how they interfere with your life and your decisions.

You need to surround yourself with people with similar aspirations to you. Owning a lash artistry business is a roller-coaster, and a support system can really help to get you through the hard times and encourage you to keep going.

If you want to move past the fear of rejection, you’ve got to change your herd or change the impact your herd has on you in your decision-making process.

3. Fear of Success

It’s hard to believe, but many of us are afraid of success. We don’t know what’s waiting on the other side (there could be bigger saber-toothed tigers over there for all we know)and what if we’re not equipped to handle the next level of success?

I always say that no goal is too big or too small. Once you’ve reached one goal, it’s time to shift your focus onto the next one. You’ve got to challenge yourself and dream BIG because nobody else is going to do it for you.

If you have a fear of success, it might be stemming from the thought that having a lot of money is a bad thing. Maybe you think being wealthy somehow makes you “greedy.” These fears are likely someone else’s fears that were pushed onto you in childhood, but I’m here to tell you that this isn’t the case at all.

More income = more impact.

The more income you have, the more significant the impact you can have. Maybe now that you have more income, you can afford a mortgage or get yourself out of debt. Perhaps you can open a better salon and hire on a team? Now you have the power to help make more women in your community look and feel beautiful.

The more secure you are in your finances, the happier and more secure you’ll feel as a result. Think about it this way, the more you have in your reserve tank, the more you have to be able to invest in others.

4. Fear of Judgement

All three of these fears (failure, rejection, and success) stem from one core fear…a fear of being judged.

I fear it. You fear it. We all fear it. I don’t care if you’re one of those people that say “I don’t care what anybody thinks” because that’s not true. You care what someone thinks.

This fear of judgment dates back to that herd mentality we talked about, and yes, I’m aware we’ve talked a lot about cavemen in this post but hear me out. The fear of being judged runs our decision making and holds us back from being true to who we are.

For most of us, the fear of judgment is alive in the form of “perfectionism.” This is especially true for lash artists because our work is so detailed that it’s normal to want to get it perfect. The problem is that perfect doesn’t exist. So, if you think about it, we’re continually trying to achieve something that’s impossible.

We tell ourselves it’s not finished. It’s not good enough. It’s not perfect. Using perfectionism as an excuse makes us feel comfortable because it stops us from being judged. After all, if it never gets done, there’s nothing for anyone to judge.

My solution for you is to focus on who you can help, not on what risk you’re taking

If you fear to fail in your business, put yourself in the mindset that your success is inevitable. Take failure off the table or change what failure means to you. Think about how your business can help women in your community feel more confident about themselves because of your lashes. Think about how you can help train someone else to improve their artistry because of the experience you’ve gained from running your business.

If you fear rejection from friends or family, keep them at a distance. Remember, you don’t have to surround yourself with negative people who are going to hold you back from pursuing your real potential. This is your life, not theirs. Think about how you can impact other people’s lives and maybe even the lash industry itself because you stopped being afraid of other people’s opinions and you stopped letting people’s fears hold you back.

If you fear success, trust that you’ll learn how to figure it out. Believe that you are worthy of success and you deserve it. What if your success gave someone hope that their life will work out? What if you could help another lash artist or a charity you love because your success not only meant that you and your family are taken care of, but there was enough left over to support someone in need?

Your fear of failing, rejection, success, and judgment is not keeping you alive. It is keeping you stuck. Face your fears, your hesitation, your nervousness, your anxiety around whatever that next big step in your life is, shrug your shoulders and say, “SO WHAT”? Then you can start to  move your lash business forward.

Enjoying Lessons of a Lashpreneur?…

If you’ve been enjoying Lessons of a Lashpreneur, I’d love for you to help me spread the word and share it with a friend. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app (check out our podcast page here) and let me know what insights and “Lashpreneur Lightbulbs” you’ve had from the show – I promise I read every single one!

Let’s make sure that every lash artist in our community has access to the information they so desperately need to be empowered to transform their business and life!

Want to find out more about marketing your lash business and building a clientele? I teach in-depth marketing strategies within my group coaching program, The Lashpreneur Society. Registration opens up for new members a few times a year, so you’ll want to sign up for our waitlist at thelashpreneur.com/society to be the first in line to know when doors open again!

Have a Good One!

Tara Walsh

The Lashpreneur