Refocusing my Rage with the Online Business Industry

This transcript has been automatically created and minimally edited/formatted. As such, there may be some errors in the text.
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[Episode preview]
I know that I am not alone in feeling caught in this bind of kind of raging against the machine of seeing these things outside of us in the online business world that we do not like. This experience can be an opportunity for our own internal expansion. If we allow it to be, I can’t literally just eradicate all of the things from the Ln business industry that pissed me off. I don’t even know that I would wish that I could. So if that’s true, that I can’t get rid of those things. What’s also true is that I get to choose what I want to do with those things.
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[Podcast Intro]
Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.
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[Episode begins]
the longer I have been in business, the more frustrated and consistently frustrated. I have found myself because of the way that so many different things are done in this online business industry. And I know I’m not alone in that. But part of what I get really frustrated about is people using their kind of rage at how things are done to create perceived clout for themselves. And so then you can see how I get caught up in a little bit of a bind here because internally I am raging against the machine. But if I take that external to me, I become part of the exact machine that I am raging against. So this episode in some ways is a little bit of a cathartic experience for me because I can talk about this whole concept of getting so frustrated at things in the online business world without actually talking about the things I’m getting frustrated about in the business world. But beyond that, beyond that kind of cathartic release, the real reason I am sharing this conversation is because I know that I am not alone in feeling caught in this bind. And I also believe that this experience of kind of raging against the machine of seeing these things outside of us in the online business world that we do not like. This experience can be an opportunity for our own internal expansion. If we allow it to be. Now, please please please hear me when I say this. I am absolutely not invalidating the fact that people do really fucking shitty things in this online business world that hurt a lot of people, including sometimes you, including sometimes me. What I am doing though is reframing my own rage at it and choosing to use my rage for good. Both of these things get to be true. It’s not either I’m pissed off because people are doing shitty things or I see it as an opportunity for personal growth and an invitation to do something different. It’s a both and, and you know how I love walking in that liminal space between two truths. All right. So let’s talk about how we can take the rage, the anger, the frustration that we feel toward things that are happening in the online business world and reframe them. Or at least I’m gonna share with you how I do it and you can take relief whatever the heck you want to. When I don’t like something I’m seeing, I can use that thing that I am seeing as an invitation to do things differently myself. One of the first places that I learned this lesson was in a membership that I was a part of earlier on in business. In that membership. I often found myself feeling so conflicted in the experience that I was having because while I loved parts of the membership, there were other parts of it that felt completely misaligned and some of them even felt harmful when I eventually made the decision to leave that membership and subsequently spend a couple of years disentangling and distancing myself from it. What solidified that decision to leave was the realization that even with the good parts, there were very real bad parts and the bad parts were things that I would never want to do in my own business. And in that realization, what that allowed me to do was start to look at, OK, I get to use this bad example or at least partially bad example as inspiration to do something differently in my own business. I get to literally look at this and say a whale never want to do that and think about what is the opposite and then build my business in that way instead. And it really, I’m gonna be honest, has taken me a few years to fully work out what that means and also to work out how I could actually ensure that I was doing things differently and not getting caught in the same kind of webs that I think it’s sometimes easy to get caught up in inside of the online business where and truth be told even after like really kind of integrating what it would mean to do things differently. I’m still to this day working on implementing things that do make my business wildly different than how this other program was built. But a lot of my healing from the pain that truthfully that program caused me came through deciding specifically what I didn’t like or what rubbed me the wrong way. And then using that to inform my further decisions about my business, I can’t control what happened in that group. But what I can control is what I do with the fact that that happened in that group. The second way that I really refocus and reframe this rage that sometimes comes up at things in the online business world is I ask myself, what is the rage or the anger or the frustration because it happens at different levels. What is that speaking to specifically inside of myself? It is so easy to see things that we see in this online business world that feels so wrong that just, you know, make us get all happy and angry and all the different things. And sometimes I just want to come to this point where we literally like stand on the rooftop or on our soap box, like stop doing that, just me. I don’t think so. And let me tell you the amount of times lately, like literally in the last few weeks, even that I have written a post about this or that thing that is just so wrong with the industry and then had to talk myself down from publishing are innumerable. What really helps me here when I get to that place where I’m like, oh, I just wanna like angry keyboard type or whatever it is. What helps me is to pause and to refocus my attention and to look at, OK. Yes, this thing that I’m seeing is making me really angry and getting really frustrated. But then I get curious, why, what is this anger, this frustration? What is this really about this desire to just shout about this from the rooftops? What is this really about? Oftentimes the reason why the thing is causing this big kind of like angst inside of me is because it’s hitting up against a core value of mine or it’s speaking to a fear that I have or it’s distracting me from something that I have been avoiding. I’m gonna say that again. A lot of times, the reason why I find myself getting so angsty about things that I see happening in business world are because they hit up against a core value of mine. They are speaking directly to a fear that I have or they’re distracting me from something that I have been avoiding a few years ago. Someone did something inside of my Facebook group that felt icky to say the least we’ll just leave it. I but I couldn’t really place my finger on why, what this person did felt icky because it wasn’t really that they had done something wrong as I explored further within myself. Like why am I feeling this just oof about this? I realized that I was so bothered by it because what this person was doing went directly against my core values as a human being. And so it was literally what they were doing is something I would never even think to do. And in that moment when I had that realization of, oh it’s hitting up against a core value. It was so healing for me to realize, yes, this person actually like technically did nothing wrong right in their minds. They’re probably totally in the clear. And I get to also recognize that this is hitting up against a core value. And I get to make a decision about how to handle this from within my own core values, just like they made a decision about how to act from, I’m guessing their core values as well. There’s also been many moments over the years where I see someone doing something, either something that feels inherently wrong to me or they’re calling something out that feels inherently wrong to me. And then I go into this sort of kind of ragey panic, even if I agree, like if someone is calling something out, they say this thing is so bad. Whenever, even if I agree with that, I sometimes would still find myself going into a ragey panic. And in many of those moments when I got curious with myself about why I was going into a ragey pic, it was because I was afraid that I might be doing something similar to this thing that felt inherently wrong to me or I was also afraid that even if I knew I wasn’t doing that thing that people might think that I was doing something similar to this thing that felt inherently wrong to me. And one of the most powerful shifts that I have made to help kind of heal this within myself is allowing myself to be ruthless in the decisions that I make in my business. To ensure that I am only doing things that I can confidently stand behind, such as only bringing right that clients in my work or not relying on overpromising in messaging in order to make sales or whatever it is by allowing myself to be ruthless in this decision making process of. No, I’m only going to do things that I can confidently stand behind. Now, when I see someone raging against the machine, it very rarely and it triggers that part of me that’s like, am I doing that too? Because I know that even if someone thought I was, I would have receipts after receipts after receipts to say I am not or the other great part of this is that I know that if let’s say someone was to call me out or call me in and say Carly, you’re doing this thing that you say whatever is wrong and you’re doing it. If someone wants to do that, I also know that I am doing my absolute best to do everything in a way that I can confidently stand behind. And so I’m not sitting in a place of, oh my gosh, I’m gonna be found out as like I’m doing these horrible, bad wrong things. I’m sitting in a place of confidence roundedness. And so if someone comes to me and says that I’m doing something maybe wrong or something that needs to be shifted or changed, I’m in a much better place to be able to hear them when they say that and then really look at myself and say, is that true? And if it is make a decision to shift or change because of it, but that all is starting from this really again, ruthless decision making. If I am only doing things that I know that I can confidently stand behind. Now, please hear me when I say that there are some nuances to that. There are absolutely no answer to that. I do not want you to come to a place where you’re like, well, I can’t confidently stand behind any offer ever. So I guess I just like, can’t be in business. There is a difference between having like fear and posture syndrome, things that maybe are more grounded in past experiences rather than present realities. But that’s a topic of a different conversation. So we’re gonna come back in a lot of times also when I get curious about why something in particular in the online business world is like pissing me off. I realized that the very act of me getting pissed off is a very convenient distraction from something else that I want or need to be doing. One of mine. And I, I know this about myself, but one of my biggest resistance patterns is disconnection, which often for me shows up in the form of procrastination. And so when I see something online that makes me feel angry or frustrated or whatever it is, and I let myself just really stew in that anger or frustration and angry type that post about all the things that are wrong that I inevitably almost always don’t end up posting. What I am often actually doing in that moment is procrastinating. And so literally the getting angry, the getting frustrated. They’re like, hm, I hate that really is just helping me procrastinate on doing other things that I actually want or need to be doing. There is a very strong correlation for me. This may not be true for you, but it’s true for me. There’s a very strong correlation of the times where I find myself getting really frustrated that are also the same time when I was meant to be doing something that felt a little stretchy or edgy for me. And again, please hear me, this is not me saying I’ll never let yourself feel the feelings or the feelings aren’t valid or whatever it is. That is not at all. What I’m saying. What I am saying is allow yourself to notice when those feelings keep coming up at very convenient times and then stopping you from taking an aligned step forward. I still address the feelings when I get into that place of frustration. I still, I’m like, ok. Hello? Yes, I see the frustration. I can honor and recognize the frustration, the anger, whatever is coming up. And I can also look at, ok, this is conveniently coming up right at this moment when I was about to do this thing that felt stretchy for me both get to be true. This next kind of piece here that I want to bring in to refocus and or reframe. This rage against the online business machine honestly can be a little bit uncomfortable to think about, but I would be remiss to skip over addressing it. And that is the inherent savior mentality that is part of our rage in the online business world again. Yes, rage, anger, frustration at things being wrong is real and valid. And I invite you to notice when your thoughts go into that person is hurting people with a twinge of. I need to save those people. I need to prevent them from working with this person. I need to prevent them from getting sucked in by this marketing message. I am so guilty of this regularly. I could even say all the time. I don’t think that’s true though, but it is, it is consistent where I find myself going into this little bit of savior mentality of, I’m like, oh, I can’t believe that other business is doing that. I need to go and make sure that I save the people from working with that person. They work with me instead because we, you know, we go, we go through all the things here. So because I know that it’s sometimes my pattern to go into a little bit of this savior mentality. When I see things in the online business world that really pissed me off. I just really watch it in myself. And it’s another both and this anger, this frustration, this rage at what someone else is doing in the online business world is a very valid motivating force for me to then make my work even more visible and bring it to even more people. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me looking at what someone else is doing and saying I like deeply in my being disagree with that. And so therefore I’m gonna make sure that I am super visible and that my work is seen by way more people. There’s nothing wrong with that and, and, and, and we’re walking in this liminal space here. I also get to check in on my savior mentality because when I bring this feeling of I just need to save these people from investing with that business or that type of business. When I bring that feeling into anything that I’m doing to be more visible to market my work to get my work in front of more people that inherently disempowers, the business owners who are making decisions about where to invest their money, their time, their energy. I am literally by going into that kind of sere mentality. I am saying you business owner don’t know what you’re doing, but I know better. So work with me. Do you feel how gross that is? And yet oftentimes that’s an undercurrent under the rage, the frustration, the anger that we feel at some of these things in the online business world. Another sort of uncomfortable one here, I know we’re going there. Even though when I look at something from the outside, I feel very validated in saying that what that person or that business is doing is all wrong. I will never have the full context of what that person is actually doing because all I’m seeing is from the outside just to make this one a little bit less uncomfy. I’ll bring this back to myself as an example for a few years in business. I literally built all of my messaging around tangible money results. We talked about why I no longer use tangible money results in my messaging and my marketing back in episode 102. So you know why I no longer that if you haven’t listened to that, I invite you to go back and take a listen to episode 102. But as a quick little overview, basing my entire messaging on tangible money results, at least in my business often attracts wrong FTT clients again. Go back to 102. Listen to what I mean by that over there. But if the me of today could time travel and go back and watch the me of before base all of my messaging on tangible money results, the me of today would probably get really frustrated with that past version of myself because I would think that what she was doing is in some ways quite irresponsible from the outside. I am seeing what that old version of me is doing and saying, oh no, that’s wrong, shouldn’t do that. But the truth is even though past me was saying one thing on the outside, I know what I was doing on the inside. And even though the way that I used to market, my work is very different to how I market my work today, the way I do my work today is still grounded in the same exact things that they were grounded in back then, foundations and self trust. And yes, absolutely. How I do my work today has evolved. But really what was happening is that in the past there was a mismatch between what I was saying and what I was doing. But I was doing the thing that still to this day I would say was the right thing. I simply would just wasn’t talking about it in a way that the me of today would say is the right way to talk about it. So, absolutely. Sometimes what you see someone saying or doing on the outside is exactly the same as you think that they’re doing. Of course, sometimes people are actually selling snake oil, but also sometimes it’s not actually snake oil. Sometimes they may be saying things in a certain way. But if you were to get into their work, you might think it’s different. Or sometimes you are seeing that someone is selling snake oil and they are indeed selling snake oil. But if you were to be in their shoes and have the whole picture, there’s a decent chance you might think differently about selling snake oil, which is not to validate selling snake oil. But I’m just saying there’s always a bigger context happening. And so even if you got into their shoes and you were like, we absolutely should not be selling snake oil. You might at least at the core of it understand why they are thinking the way that they are thinking about selling snake oil. Am I condoning selling snake oil? No. Can you please hear me when I say that? And we get to recognize there’s always a much bigger context that we do not see. This last thing that I would love to share here, I guess really has more of a takeaway than a ray frame or a ref focus on this rage is that as I’ve spent really a year or so now, intentionally noticing this rage, this frustration, this anger that is coming up for me at all of these things. Now in business world, as I spent more time noticing that and getting curious about it, one big takeaway for me is that I get to be really intentional with my name and with who my name is associated with. And I get to be the only person who makes that call. Now, here’s the thing. There are some truly amazing humans in the world and then there are also some humans that I guess with more context we could find compassion for. But then from the outside looking at, I’m like, hm, yeah. No, but really most people exist in the middle of the spectrum. Most people are not like, wow, you’re a saint or? Wow, you’re horrible. And so what that does is it leaves a lot of gray area. It leaves a lot of room for you to say, oh, that person is amazing. And for me to say, yeah, I wouldn’t want to put my name with what they’re doing and neither one of us would be wrong. And so just as I’ve thought about, you know, we’ve been really focusing on growing our audience over the last year ish under a year. At this point, the audience growth has been a really big focus for us, which has come with a lot of collaborations and all sorts of things like that. As I have continued looking at who I collaborate with or maybe even who I leave. Testimonials for all of those things. I have had to start being a little bit more picky than I even thought I would need to be. Because I realized that where I put my name, people who like my name, they will follow and trust where I put my name. Not always, of course, like, please make your decisions still without, you know, me influencing them, you know, please have your own thought process around decision. But there’s still an element of if someone trusts me and I put my name on someone else’s thing, then the people who trust me are gonna be a little bit more likely to trust that other person. And so that opens me up to having to be really intentional with where do I want to put my name? And there are some things that I look back on from the last five years in business. And I’m like, wow, I definitely should not have put my name on that. There are also other things that in the moment it made so much sense to put my name on it. And then now I look back and I’m like, huh I definitely like, didn’t think to ask about that or I definitely didn’t look into that or whatever it is. And so I guess the kind of takeaway here for me that I’m trying to share, hopefully it’s coming across clearly. Is that how you see someone or a business or something outside of you is always gonna be a little bit different than how other people see it. And it’s totally ok to make a decision, even if other people are saying something completely opposite to you. And there are moments where this has gotten a little bit tricky feeling sometimes for me is when other people that I really admire and respect are saying great things about someone or something that I don’t get great vibes or feelings about. But again, for me, it’s always coming back to, I get to trust myself to make that decision. This came up with this one particular experience where I was invited to do a collaboration. And I was like, well, all these other people that I like really adore talk so highly about this potential collaboration partner. And I was thinking like, wow, and this collaboration like could really help me in XYZ ways like it’s gonna be so, so, so good. And so it made a lot of logical sense for me to do this collaboration. But I still just was like, I don’t feel great about this. And I texted one of my business friends who had been in a similar circle and had actually also been asked to collaborate in this capacity. And I knew that this business friend had turned down the collaboration. So I reached out to them, I texted them and I was like, hey, you know, I was invited to do this. I would just love to know why you decided not to do it. And I love how my business friend responded. Oh my gosh. She was so wise because I was hoping that she would just tell me like here is the exact reasons and she basically was like, you know, I think this is a great opportunity for you to trust your gut. And if your gut is telling you, you don’t want to do it, then don’t do it no matter what other people are saying. And I was so frustrated, of course, but I was also like, uh you’re right fine. And so I said no to the collaboration. And even though it made logical sense, even though some of the other people outside of me, like were, you know, so gung ho about this collaboration, I said no, because I realized I want to be able to really fully stand behind what I do again, that ruthless decision making. And I can totally validate that people outside of me would have thought this would be an amazing collaboration and they totally respect the potential collaboration partner. And all of that, I can still also respect the potential collaboration partner, but I don’t feel good about putting my name there. And so I’m not going to now a note in all of this is that I know at the beginning of this episode, I kind of was like, I hate when people rage against the machine I know that’s what I said. And there is a very good chance I’m not a fortune teller, but I’ll be, I’ll be honest, there’s a very good chance that there will come a time where I publicly rage against the machine. I’m only human. Sometimes, you know, I can try to hold myself back, but there may be a moment that comes out. Am I going to do it at the right time? I don’t know, hopefully, but the only person who is going to have the full context of why I made the decision to rage against the machine publicly is me. And so therefore, I am the only one who gets to like actually make that decision and I get to make that decision, not based on what other people are going to think if people are gonna think. Oh no, Carly is just raging against the machine to get clout or whatever it is. I get to make that decision from whatever context I have at that moment, which kind of brings me to my final point. I have no behind the scenes context for the people who rage against the machine and choose to do so publicly. And so even though it riles me up when I see people doing that and I just think like, oh my gosh, they’re just whatever, you know, turn people down to get cut, whatever it is, my opinion, there is literally just an opinion and it might be the right opinion. It might be the right truth even for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right truth for those people who are making the decision to rage against the machine in the people who do consistently and publicly rage against the machine. I get to stretch my trust in letting adults make adult decisions and trust that if that person is making that choice, that there is a whole context behind that choice that I know nothing about. Now. I know like I said at the beginning, we’re kind of like walking in a liminal space here between two truths. And so my invitation to you is to notice if there’s some discomfort coming up around the gray area because yes, it is a very normal human thing to want there to be black and white, right and wrong. Yes and no, but there’s not always. And so just notice if there is some discomfort coming up and I invite you, of course to get curious about why. And also my second invitation here is to look at the next time you find yourself getting really frustrated or angry or even ragey or maybe even the panic ragey like I was talking about for myself the next time you find yourself in that space because of something that you see someone else in the online business industry doing or talking about or whatever it is. I invite you on Den to get curious about why. What’s that? Really about and again, totally not wrong to get ragey. I get ragey often and we really can use that as an invitation to refocus to reframe, to dig deeper, to do something differently, to get clear on who we are, what our values are. There’s so much opportunity within that rage, within that anger, within that frustration and we get to choose these things are happening outside of us. I can’t make it go away. I can’t literally just eradicate all of the things from the online business industry that pissed me off. I can’t, I don’t even know that I would wish that I could. So if that’s true that I can’t get rid of those things, what’s also true is that I get to choose what I want to do with those things. All right. Thanks for listening. I hope that this has given you some gray areas to think about and also hopefully in some way, been a little bit of a catharsis for you as well because goodness knows, sometimes we need it in this wild wild west of online entrepreneurship.
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[Podcast Outro]
Thanks for listening to the Sustainable Success podcast. You’re home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I truly believe that these are the conversations we need to be having more of in our online business community. If you know too, would you leave me a review and/or share this episode with the friends?
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