Lisa Marie Rankin:

Welcome, beautiful ones. Hello. I hope everyone is having a beautiful start to 2025. I always find that there is so much excitement and enthusiasm at the beginning of a year, really at the beginning of anything. It's like a fresh slate of paper and just a chance to begin again. So I hope you're feeling enthusiastic towards it. And today, I wanna talk about something that I've been hearing a lot from the women in my community. It's the sense of feeling stuck where you might have some ideas for your life, whether it is to start a business, maybe start or end a relationship, move, but you feel stuck.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I hear from so many women, I know what I want to do, but I don't do it. I feel paralyzed or I lack the motivation. So today, I want to talk about why you feel stuck and how to move forward. And I think this is an appropriate discussion for the beginning of 2025. So as with most topics, I think it's probably best to dive in with a story. So I wanted to share my example of being stuck or facing my fears and what I did to move forward. And, thankfully, I did. Now back in 2013, I had an idea for a business I wanted to create, and I was really excited about it.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I have lots of notes. It's actually fun to go back and look at them. I wanted a wellness business that focused on spirituality, yoga, holistic health, meditation, and I had all of these ideas of how I would present it online. But then there was a part of me that was like, you can't do that. You don't have the experience. And besides, you already have a job. So at the time, I was working in the corporate world, and it was a really good job from a financial perspective. I had 2 young children.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I was the breadwinner of my family. And also at that time, my marriage wasn't doing too great. So I had all of this voice, like, of course, you couldn't pursue that. Like, not only are you not qualified to do anything like that, you simply can't because your life situation would not allow it. So I don't know if anyone has ever had thoughts like that, but that is what was going through my mind. So I punted. Now if I look at that practically, probably wouldn't have been the best time for me to leave my job since I was the breadwinner at the time and I was just getting started. But there were things that I could have done to start taking action in my free time.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Granted, not a lot of free time when your children are young as many of you know that, but there were things I could have started to do as far as maybe building a following online or just getting my ideas out there. But instead, I didn't. But the thing is, it wasn't just the time that held me back. I may I may have said it was the time, but it was fear. It was fear that held me back. Who was I to create a business like that? I had never been to India. I was in the corporate world my entire life. And even though I practiced yoga for years and had been on meditation retreats and studied multiple spiritual traditions, that didn't mean I could start a business.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Right? So pushed my ideas aside. But, nevertheless, I couldn't help but fail that I was supposed to be doing something different. I would go into my corporate job and it seemed like most of the day I would be staring at that upper right corner of my computer watching the time tick by. So there was just this visceral feeling that I couldn't shake, that I was I was missing something. In 2017, I got certified to become a yoga teacher. I started leading meditation lunch hours at my department in my job. But in 2019, the feeling started to get even stronger. I remember thinking that I should start posting on Instagram information about the yoga classes that I was teaching, and I really didn't post on Instagram.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I only had probably about 50 followers. But I clearly remember wanting to post a spiritual quote and I believe it was by Rumi or something and I think I was almost like sweating. I was so nervous like what are people going to think or say? They're gonna think that I'm crazy or who is she to be posting these spiritual quotes. It makes me laugh innocuous as a quote from Rumi was starting to get me all worked up. But the interesting thing is I mean, well, one, I only had about 50 followers and they were all about friends or friends from high school. But what really held me back was thinking about the people that were mean to me, like the mean girls in high school. Like, what would they say? Now this is 30 years later, and I am still letting the mean girls from high school influence how I show up in the world. I got over it.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

I posted anyways. Probably got 3 likes from my best friend, and nothing happened. The world didn't implode. I didn't implode. My children stayed safe. So that was some positive feedback, at least. Then I started a blog on Medium. And, again, this made me really, really nervous to start sharing my ideas.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Now I shouldn't have been because if anybody knows, once you start posting on social media or a blog, you get very few views and likes. So all of this fear that you are going to be critiqued for your writing or for your thoughts is actually completely unfounded because nobody actually sees it. But I kept posting. And each time I hit publish, I could feel my confidence start to grow because I could see. I could do scary things and actually nothing bad happens. And then after I kept posting, my essays on goddesses started to get some traction and that also started to improve my confidence as well too. So I continued to post. And I think it was those goddess essays that really started to give me more enthusiasm, more excitement, think, is there something more here? And around that time, I decided to leave my job.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Now I wasn't thinking of leaving the corporate world forever. I was thinking, alright, I'm gonna take a 6 month break. It was gonna be around the summertime. I could spend more time with my kids. And then when I was ready to get back into the corporate world, I would find a job closer to me because it had taken me about an hour each way to get to my current employment. But during that time where I thought I was just gonna take a break, I kept writing. And something interesting happened. I received an email from Harper Collins.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

An editor had stumbled across my blog and was like, would you like to write a book? And, of course, that was a resounding, yes, I would love to write a book. Also, something that I've always wanted to do, but, again, who am who am I to write a book? What do I have to share that's different from anybody else? But I started to write it. And in 2020, I enrolled in an Ayurveda program. Many of you might be familiar with it, Shakti School. And I sold my first online program in February 2021. My book was published in April 2021. And now I actually do have a business that is very similar to what I had outlined in 2013, so 12 years later. But the important thing to know is almost every step was riddled with fear.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And to some extent, it still is. Even recording this podcast, there's some fear. Am I gonna be able to articulate my point effectively? Is it going to suck? Are people going to want to listen? So it's not that the fear goes away, but we don't take it quite as seriously. We're able to push through. As I was doing all of this, there was that voice in my head, like, this is silly. You don't know enough. People will think you're crazy. This is just a waste of time.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Has anyone heard those voices before? I always think it's interesting when we're talking about these voices in our head, and let's call this voice the inner critic. Sometimes we think it's just us. But every time I do a work shop, and I will be offering an inner critic workshop in just a few days that I hope you'll join me for, when we gather as women and share what our inner critic is saying, they're generally saying the same thing. Isn't that amazing? So we all have this part of us. Now the important part is that we start to recognize it so we don't fuse with it. Now I am so thankful that I did not listen to my inner critic who wanted me to stay at my corporate job and be grateful that I had good employment because I am so grateful and so inspired with my business today and the fact that I get to work with so many amazing inspiring women. Now another time I experienced a lot of fear and was really ready to cut bait, abort the mission, was in my romantic relationship. I have been with my partner for just over 7 years.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And the first two years of our relationship, I was very anxious. I was really riddled with fear because I thought that it was about to implode at any moment. I didn't think that he was that interested in me. I had an inner child at this point screaming, get out. You're going to get hurt. I think part of that reason there was so much fear was because in my previous relationships, I was always the organized one. I was always trying to fix or trying to organize, and I didn't need to do that in this relationship. He was already a confident and capable man.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And for me, that was so new. And what value would I have to offer if I didn't need to fix someone or if I didn't need to organize someone's life for them? But instead of leaving, even though there was a big part of me that wanted to that said, Lisa, he's just not that into you. You need to abort. This is too stressful. I kept going. I worked on my inner child. I regulated my nervous system, and I started to build my confidence. And I am so glad that I did because this has been the most fulfilling partnership that I've had to date.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So instead of fusing with that voice that was telling me that something was wrong, something was off, I was able to get still and find that clear, calm, confident, capable voice that said, you got this. Keep going. The only way out is through. We all have that part of us that I like to call it the self, and it's the self with a capital s that is very confident in your abilities and wants you to expand, wants you to tap into your unlimited potential. Now, of course, sometimes we will push the past fair, whether it's in creating a business or in a relationship, and we don't get exactly what we want. While that can suck, here's the thing. You didn't lose anything because you didn't have it to begin with. But what you did gain was wisdom, was experience, and confidence because confidence doesn't come necessarily from everything working out.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Confidence often comes from things not working out and we realize we're still here, we're still standing, And we have more information, more knowledge, and more resilience. We get to see what we are truly made of. I truly believe that what we desire and the women that we are meant to become lay just on the other side of our fears. And that's why I am so passionate about helping women overcome fear, overcome hesitation so that they can truly create the life of their dreams. So let me ask you, have you ever had a big idea or a big desire, whether it's start a business, move to a new place, start a relationship, or leave a relationship, but there was a voice inside that kept saying, who do you think you are? Or what if you fail? We all do. And that voice, it's kind of interesting because it might even take different approaches. It could be like, you're too old to do this. You're too young to do it.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

You don't have enough experience. You have too much experience. But the important thing is to recognize while these may feel true, it can even feel like your intuition. It could seem like a very valid question. This is not you. And we start to recognize whenever there are these, like, proclamations or these binary questions that it's not your highest self talking, it's your inner critic. And the inner critic isn't bad. It's just a protective mechanism.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

You can think of your inner critic would be really happy if you were just to sit on the couch all day eating bonbons and watching daytime television. Your self, your highest self, wants to see what you're made of, wants you to live a full life, wants you to tap into your unlimited potential. So the very first step to moving forward, to moving past hesitation is to recognize this voice, not as you but just a part of you. Because when you can start to see it for what it is a mechanism that as humans we all have, it is not unique to you. I have one as well as I have shared with you, but we don't fuse with it or mistake it for our intuition. It's just a part of us that's probably younger and scared. Now we can't just overwrite this part and say, that's not true. I'm a competent boss babe, or I am the most lovable woman in the world.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Any man would be just delighted to be with me. Well, unless you really believe it. But we can't, like, just talk ourselves out of it. But what we can do is start to recognize it. We can start to get curious and dialogue with this part because this part has insights of where we may need to go to get what it is that we actually want. We start to bring this part to light. We make it more tangible so that we are not inadvertently controlled by it. For many of you in my community, we can also think of this part as kind of coming up from our unconscious when we are triggered.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

When we are out of our comfort zone, we we start to get nervous. We start to have this part come up saying, get back into your comfort zone. Now we need to illuminate this part because as Carl Jung has said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. These things never work out for me. I can't seem to stick with anything. I always date the same type of men. That is when we let our unconscious rule the show. Now, of course, this is easier said than done to bring these parts to light, to kind of separate them so we don't fuse with them, but I am here to help.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

If this talk resonated with you and if you were thinking of the things that you want to do here in 20 25, you might have some goals, ideas for the year ahead, and you're ready to stop letting fear hold you back. I am hosting a free workshop in just a few days. The link to register is is in the show notes where I'm gonna guide you through practical exercise and tools to help you recognize this part of you, quiet these thoughts, and reconnect with your inner confidence so you can take the next step forward to what it is that you truly want. I hope you're gonna join me for the workshop but in the meantime, just start to notice this inner voice. Whenever you hear somebody telling you you can't do it in your mind or all of the reasons why you shouldn't, write that down. You don't need to do anything with it yet. Let's just start to observe. What is it that you are actually telling yourself? We're gonna get curious about this and see what's actually behind it.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So take some time to really start noticing the thoughts that you are telling yourself. Write them down because observation, awareness is the very first step to quieting these thoughts so you can move forward with more clarity and confidence. Now remember, what you desire the most, the woman you are meant to become, your unlimited potential, is on the other side of fear. So it is so important, so critical that you don't let fear stop you. You actually think of it as a little bit of as as a beacon. It shows you where you need to go. So I hope you will join me for this upcoming workshop, and I hope you are having an amazing start to a new year. And I can't wait to see you very soon.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Be well, my sister.