I want to share a tough lesson I navigated. The kind that quietly shapes more of our lives than we realize.

Most of us don’t make it through childhood without picking up a few unconscious beliefs and emotional survival strategies, what many call “shadows.” These don’t just stay tucked in the past. They follow us into our decisions, our relationships, and even our businesses.

You can nail your offer, have a marketing funnel so smooth it practically glides, and surround yourself with brilliant minds, and still find success distant. The reason? Often, it’s the shadow work we’re not doing. The internal stuff that quietly dictates our days without our conscious knowledge.

For years, I genuinely thought I was laser-focused on building my business. The reality? I was mostly maneuvering around the unaddressed fallout from a pretty significant job loss. It shook my sense of self, and as you can imagine, that stirred up a whole lot of emotional stuff. It ultimately proved to become a gateway to turn inward and really examine my core beliefs about my worth, my values, and where I belonged. That, in turn, led me down a fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) path of uncovering unconscious programming – the beliefs and patterns I didn’t realize I had.

To be honest, this is not easy work and sometimes you have to talk yourself into it. That’s how we convince ourselves that avoidance and numbing can feel like legitimate survival skills sometimes. Remember those early pandemic days? Boxed wine became a counter staple and a pantry overfilled with unhealthy choices were norms. No judgment here, we all found our ways to get through. Scrolling, binging, or overworking can create a temporary buffer from the uncomfortable parts of ourselves, meaning the fear, the self-doubt, the persistent feeling of needing to earn what should be inherently ours.

But eventually, that avoidance catches up. It shows up in the burnout that leaves you drained, the unpredictable income that keeps you on edge, the launches that fizzle out, and the relationships that may feel strained. And if you don’t pause to look at the underlying patterns, it’s easy to start believing that maybe entrepreneurial success just isn’t in the cards for you.

That’s simply not true.

The real turning point for me wasn’t a new marketing plan or business development strategy. It was understanding how those unacknowledged “shadows” were actually pointing me towards the ingrained thought patterns that were driving my behaviors and ultimately shaping my reality. Here’s a fact. We spend around 95% of our time in thought. That’s a huge amount of internal chatter influencing everything we do. So I will ask you a bottom line question. Do you truly believe, way deep down, that you can be successful as a business owner?

When I started to gain clarity on my subconscious programming, when I learned to appreciate the gifts inherent within the shadows (The Gene Keys by Richard Rudd was a real eye-opener for this), and when I consciously let go of a mindset that kept me locked into all the reasons I couldn’t and turned to why they could, things really began to shift.

So, is a solid business idea and understanding your market important? Absolutely. Your business thrives when you’re solving a real problem. But here’s the thing that often gets overlooked. Your business also thrives when you do the inner work.

Now, you might be thinking, “Seriously, Rebecca? You’re telling me my early childhood might be impacting my sales figures?” And my direct answer is, yes. It plays a bigger role than most people realize. The programming we absorb between our last trimester in utero and around the age of seven, a time when our brains are primarily in theta waves, the realm of imagination and play, forms the foundational layer of our beliefs and behaviors. And let’s be honest, most of us don’t have crystal clear memories from that period so how do we know what programming we downloaded and installed? 

It shows up in our shadows and our successes. 

This is the often unspoken work in the entrepreneurial world, yet a cornerstone of success as it supports everything. Personal healing is absolutely crucial to ensure you can live your best life. It’s also directly tied to your business success, the impact you have on your clients, the health of your relationships, the strength of your community, and the very vision you’re building and gifting the world.

This is why Blue Heron is partnering with Mindshift Center to offer a complimentary webinar focused on navigating the shifts in identity that come when your work role changes. By registering, you’ll also receive complimentary access to a resource designed to guide you through this important internal landscape. Stay tuned for more details as we’re excited to share this with you.

You don’t have to navigate these internal complexities alone, and you certainly don’t have to struggle as long as I did. If any of this resonates, perhaps it’s an invitation to look a little deeper.

It simply requires the courage to look and the willingness to transform.

Let’s go.

— Rebecca, Blue Heron Coaching 

#SoarAboveAchieveBeyond