How Emilie Mastered Self-Sabotage

Emilie’s Story*

Emilie, an outgoing and motivated Health Coach, described her business as just ‘hanging around’ rather than thriving because, financially, it wasn’t reflecting how much work she was putting into it.

When we first met, Emilie suspected that she had a mental block around earning money because she didn’t feel confident about finding clients who’d be willing or able to pay her prices.

She’d also set a goal of earning $5,000 per month, but recognised that the money couldn’t flow in as she hadn’t put the systems in place to support this.

How this barrier showed up in Emilie’s life

Emilie shared that, even though she was continually ‘busy’ working on her business, the activities she engaged in weren’t getting her results — that is, she didn’t have any paying clients yet. One of her issues was that, while she was comfortable setting up Discovery Calls, she couldn’t bring herself to make an offer or talk about her prices at the end of the conversation.

During a Discovery Call, her internal dialogue consisted of two opposing voices that sounded something like this:

Yes voice: “Go on, tell her about your offer now.”

No voice: “No I can’t. She’ll probably say that she can’t afford it.”

Yes voice: “You don’t know that for sure, just try.… after this sentence, here’s your chance…”

No voice: “No, I just can’t….”

The two opposing voices argued back and forth and by the end of the Discovery Call the “No you can’t” voice would always win.

Facilitating a dialogue with the Emilie’s unconscious

With Emilie’s permission, I spoke with the part of her that said “No” to asking for the sale. Tapping into this voice, I asked Emilie a series of questions and through this process we uncovered a part of her that had been hidden away for many years.

This voice said that Emilie often engages in ‘busy’ behaviour which makes her feel safe and somewhat productive, but when it comes to charging clients for her services, she avoids this because it feels risky and ‘unsafe.’

It described Emilie as ungrounded and “floaty and flighty” and was frustrated at being “locked out” of the room during a sales conversation because this is when it could help Emilie.

This voice identified itself as a strategist and organiser, and went on to say that it could help Emilie to look at the bigger picture of her business, to focus, set financial goals and engage paying clients.

Emelie’s Big Take-Away And Action Plan

What began as speaking to a voice that Emilie thought was holding her back, actually turned out to be a powerful team player and helper — one of the lessons of this work, is to leave your expectations at the door because you can’t accurately predict what you’ll unlock or come away with.

Emilie identified strongly as a creative, an intuitive and visionary, and following this experience she realised that she had been neglecting the practical and strategic activities involved in moving her business forward and connecting her with paying clients.

Prior to this discovery, Emilie didn’t have access to this part of herself. With her newfound awareness though, we could now create a personalised action plan and harness this energy in setting goals and supporting Emilie’s vision coming to life.

*Emilie’s name and other identifying details have been changed to protect her privacy