Giving up my “badge of honor”
What I love (and hate because it’s uncomfortable confronting your blindspots) about working with someone who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t let me get away with my crap, who is fully committed to who I claim I want to be, is that it unwaveringly calls out what I need to look at and give up in order to be who I want to be.
I attended a Facebook challenge with Chris Kenney, a “high ticket sales coach,” and during a Zoom Q&A segment, I got to ask one of my burning questions. Here’s a breakdown of the meat of a portion of the interaction and the very direct coaching Chris offered:
Chris (and Kate) Kenney cutting through the BS to set me straight.
Me thinking I’ve got a unique problem…
I began my question with an elaborate backstory (LOL) of how I’d been burned by coaches in the past and that I was struggling to figure out how to move from a done-for-you implementation business (building websites, designing branding, writing copy, setting up nurture email sequences, building lead magnets, etc. etc. etc.) to a consulting business model and charging a much higher fee for my “advice” as opposed to being paid for a tangible asset my clients can use in their business. How I’d struggled trying to figure it out. Note I hadn’t invested in his program at this point and I was 100% confronted by and experiencing a TON of resistance to investing in his program and investing in myself.
Here’s the conversation that followed my question:
Chris: “You’ve got to step in and you’ve got to do it and you have to stop talking about it and you’ve got to stop owning it as your thing that you haven’t stepped into. It’s almost like there’s a little piece of you takes pride and has attachment to that stuck story.”
Me: “Oh, hell yeah, especially when there’s so much evidence supporting it. That’s how I survived on my own for 15 years after my husband passed away. It’s super anchored on multiple levels.”
Chris: “You’re still in the proving that you can survive on very little and you’re taking pride in that. And you’re going to have to let that go to allow yourself to move into a place where you don’t have to survive on very little. A lot of your identity is built on, right now, your ability to survive on very little. So your ego is holding onto that because that’s part of your sense of self.”
Me: “That and the survivability of it. The fact that this is how I’ve been keeping myself safe and protected. That’s what stops me from doing it. And when I go and invest in a coach, I end up having that same issue. I fall back and then I make the coach wrong. That’s why I need to find the right coach to smack me around and get me doing the right things.” (laughter)
Chris: “Here’s the thing. You already know if I’m the right coach. You already know. I promise you already know. Your body knows. Your gut already knows. The only thing that will take you off whether it’s a yes or it’s a no is going to be your head. As to whether or not I’m the right coach, I would actually look at your gut and intuition and trust that.
“The thing you need to let go of is the pride that you take on being able to survive with very little. It’s almost like your badge of honor, ‘Look at how good I am at surviving on very little.’ So you’ve gotta be willing to walk away from that.
“The thing you need to let go of is the pride that you take on being able to survive with very little. It’s almost like your badge of honor, ‘Look at how good I am at surviving on very little.’ So you’ve gotta be willing to walk away from that.”
“I trust that you’re brilliant. I trust that you’re confident. The other thing is, stop saying that you know all this shit, because the reason I’m saying that is, because to know and not to do is not to know. I think you might know a lot more than a lot of other people do in terms of intellect, but it hasn’t transitioned into being.
“So you’re still in that stage of, ‘Alright, I’ve got all the content, now I need somebody to whip me into shape and get me to actually be that.’ So I’m not saying that you’re not smart, I’m not saying that you’re not intellectual, I think it’s just a basis of how I define knowing. Knowing is a person who has the concept and knows it at such a deep level that they’re not willing to default away from it. Because it’s that true. Do you see the difference?”
Me: “Yes. It’s the embodiment of beingness. There’s safe and familiar and building a story around it and just living life through that story. It skews the perspective on everything.”
Chris: “And when you come in—the thing that determines a person’s success in a program is who they’re being in the program. Who are you going to be in the program? You have to remember that. If you come in and you fully commit, and say, ‘I’m going to learn high ticket sales, I’m going to quote high ticket fees, I’m going to learn it, I’m going to implement the stuff in Sales Mastery Academy, I’m going to show up to the calls, I’m going to show up fully, I’m not going to blame, I’m going to not complain, I’m going to own my fucking result.’ The people that come in with that mentality, they blow it up, they kill it.
“They’re not waiting for me to change their life. They’re not waiting for me to be their magic bullet. They come in, they’re willing to show up, they’re willing to commit, and they move fully in. That’s the way of being that will move you forward.”
Talk about an in-your-face reality check. I can’t see this type of stuff about myself for myself. And that’s what Chris was talking about when he referred to my pride and honor tied to my story about surviving on very little.
Wow. Head. Blown.
And that’s all it took for me to realize how and who I was being in my life, and that it was worth my future me to invest in the work, the commitment and the knowing that I’m NOT that story.
And yes, I invested in and will participate in his program. Fully.
Here’s my question to you:
What is the badge of honor keeping you from your future you and who you want to be? What story are you living that’s filled with excuses and complaints about being stuck? I’ve shared mine, what are yours? You may not be present to them. I certainly wasn’t, but when Chris plainly put it, I totally got it. I didn’t like it, but I got it.
We have to fight for who we want to be. We can’t let the fear win. We can’t let the story we’ve created about who we are and why we’re limited win. We have to get into a place and a head space that supports our journey. We have to surround ourselves with people who believe in us, even if we have to borrow their belief until we get there ourselves and embody it. This is what I aim to do. How about you?🍀
