Pain Relief: 3 Visualizations
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Episode Summary:
In this episode, I share three powerful visualizations that have helped me navigate some of life’s hard moments, including a recent skin cancer surgery (I am good now!). These visuals - the boat cavern, the circle of support, and the safe space jungle are tools that I hope will serve you in moments when you might feel emotional or physical pain. Because we can't always avoid hard things but we can feel supported and resilient for whatever comes our way.
We’ll also dive into the emotional highs and lows of entrepreneurship. This episode is a reminder that it’s NORMAL to have challenging life chapters, and even if you have a happy and profitable business, you’ll face hard things along the way… not because you're doing anything wrong, but because that's life.
Whether you’re playing it small or going all in, hard days are inevitable- so you might as well be growing and expanding, because challenges are easier when you have a ton of resources.
Topics:
If I believe entrepreneurs are born or made
The #1 skill I think MAKES successful entrepreneurs
My thoughts on imagination, innovation and escape in business
How to use visuals to make it through a hard moment in business or life
Episode Resources:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Stitcher
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Anna (00:06):
Welcome to the Heart-Centered Entrepreneur podcast. I want you to be rich. Yes, I want abundant financial success for your business, but I don't just care about your business making money. I care about you too. I want you to be rich and happiness in the impact you make in your relationships and in how you give back. I'm Anna. I built my six figure business as a side hustle while I was pregnant with my daughter in 2016. Now I've helped dozens of women do the same. I'm here to help you build a profitable, heart-centered fully book business with the latest tips on sales and visibility with proven mindset hacks and sneak peeks behind the scenes with what's working right now in the online space and in my business ready to make more money with heart. Let's go.
Anna (00:49):
Hi friend. I wanna do something a little bit different today and that is a shorter episode on a skill that is important for entrepreneurship unfortunately, but also for life. And that is how to endure pain, how to endure hardship, endure challenge. I heard Brooke Castillo talk early on in my entrepreneurship journey about life being 50% positive emotion and 50% negative emotion. And that really blew my mind because I'm an Enneagram seven and I like to believe and I really live in a world of like I can like almost spin everything negative into a positive and not in like a forced way, but my brain really is empowered in that way, which for the most part is a beautiful gift and is served me, but in other ways has kept me in situations longer than I needed to. 'cause I always could see the potential, you know?
Anna (01:40):
Anyway, I digress. That quote that she did, the 50% good and the 50% bad really stuck with me because it helped me, I think, accept more of the hardships that come in life. And I think sometimes when hard things happen to us in life externally, like a health challenge that we can't control or something happens to someone we love, right? Like we make it mean that there's something wrong with us, that we're unlucky or blah blah blah, right? Or maybe something happens internally instead of like, no, this is part of the human experience. And I think about this too as a mother, as I'm raising my kids, like really trying to be present for their hard moments, for their hard emotions. Knowing that it's normal to experience sadness and anger and, and all the things we experience as a human, it's part of our experience, right?
Anna (02:24):
And this helps me in entrepreneurship too, because when I'm about to do something brave or scary, like launch a program or go for a bigger goal or try to make more money, I realized like, yeah, that's gonna be hard to do to step outside of my comfort zone to go on Facebook live to blah blah blah. But do you know what also is hard just living as a human. And if I'm not chasing my big goal, I still am gonna have 50 50 hardship and bad, you know? And good. So I might as well progress <laugh> and might as well. You know, they say like you choose your hard, right? You're either feeling challenged as you're growing and scaling, or you're feeling challenged because you're kind of staying stuck and you are playing it small and you are dealing with the turmoil of that. So anyway, what I wanted to share with you is something kind of outside of my business, a skill of how I really, some practical visualizations I do when I'm in extreme pain. <laugh>,
Anna (03:19):
And this sounds weird, but I really feel like my ability to endure challenge serves me in my business too. Because I think the most successful entrepreneurs aren't necessarily the ones that are the luckiest or the smartest or the prettiest, but they're the ones that are resilient. Like entrepreneurship. I feel like levels, the playing field in the sense that like it really is people that I think it is more of a nurture than nature. Like people say like, are people born to be this or are they, you know, do, are they trained in that way? And I really feel like entrepreneurship is one of those things that you're not born to be an entrepreneur that anyone can train themselves to be. Because I think the most essential skill in entrepreneurship is that resilience is that tenacity for failure, right? In traditional day jobs, you can just kind of puddle along and do just fine.
Anna (04:12):
In entrepreneurship, it's filled with failure. Like you, there's no way that you're gonna have a hundred percent close rate on sales calls. You're gonna be hearing nos, right? And the more ambitious you are and the more you're growing, the more money you're making, the more putting yourself out there, the more you're actually gonna face rejection in micro failure, right? And I think growing up we may have seen micro rejections or micro failures as a bad thing, but in entrepreneurship it's actually a good thing, right? It's like, okay, that launch didn't go great. What lessons did I learn? How do I get back out there and shift? I've seen so many of my clients have huge launches after a quote, unsuccessful launch because the unsuccessful launch showed them I need to change my niche, I need to change my approach, I need to show up on a different social media platform, right?
Anna (04:57):
It's all data, it's all learning. And then I told you guys, my kids and I, the last few months I've been taking a community drama class, a theater class, and it's just, ah, I was crying 'cause you guys know I did drama growing up and it's something I kind of put on hold for a while in my life, of course. But just seeing my kids love drama and love improv and get lost in theater has been just the biggest gift to my mama heart. But anyway, our drama teacher tells us over and over in improv, like, there's no such thing as failure. It's all a lesson. Like she wants us to like think faster, try harder, play messy or act bigger. And the mistakes are celebrated in improv, right? We make this sound when we play improv games. If someone makes a mistake, everyone goes to the center of the room and says, uh, uga, right?
Anna (05:42):
It's almost like a to make light of, it's okay, we can try again. Let's keep going. And I just think like so much of entrepreneurship is that, is that resilience. And what I don't think business coaches out there are teaching though is how to deal with the pain, how to deal with the hardship, what to do when you're feeling stuck, how to keep going. <laugh>, a few weeks ago I was experiencing like kind of a challenging week, mostly my life, but a little in my business. And I just remember taking a shower. A shower is like one of my like go-to coping tools, right? So I'm taking a hot shower. I think, you know, like as a mom it's like quiet in there, right? <laugh> plus I just love water. And I was just telling myself in the shower, don't burn it down. Don't burn it down.
Anna (06:23):
This is temporary because as entrepreneurs sometimes we can wanna like burn our business down or just like, you know, completely make these drastic changes, which we know when we're in an emotionally bad place. This is not the place to make changes from. We wanna make changes in our business when we're feeling calm, prepared, aligned, future thinking, not like reactive. And I'm just gonna cut this thing, right? So anyway, okay, so these are two visualizations that I actually developed. One when I was preparing for my childbirths and this other one that I, I don't know where it came from, I don't know if it came from a therapist, but I did this one a lot during my recent skin cancer surgery because it's a surgery where they don't put you under because it's a long surgery because they're doing, taking some out and then going to the lab, taking some out, going to the lab.
Anna (07:12):
So it's like multiple hours. So they don't wanna keep you under for that long, I think or something. I'm not quite sure why. But anyway, you're awake and you're like, not to be graphic, but like you're smelling the burning skin and you're like feeling things tugging and pooling, right? Obviously it's not painful 'cause you're numbed. During my childbirth it was, I did do an unmedicated childbirth, which by the way, I have nothing against C-sections. I think they're beautiful. I have nothing against pain medication, but for me personally, I wanted to try to do an unmedicated childbirth. It felt aligned for me. And so I really prepare myself with visualizations. So I wanna share both of them with you because these are visualizations. I come back to time and time again for pain, for challenge, for hardship, to make it through an intense hard moment. And I hope they help inspire you to either create your own or you can even use these, you can copy paste these exact ones.
Anna (08:04):
Actually I wanna share a third one with you too that I used when I was processing basically in trauma therapy or when you do hard processing, they encourage you to create like a safe space in your head. And so I also have a third safe space I can share with you. Okay, so first one, this was my first one. So do get preparing for childbirth was one of the first times that I really did mindset work without realizing what it was. I remember I had this, um, little book from the seventies that had these like childbirth affirmations. This is before I really knew what affirmations were. Um, I was just starting my business, but I really wasn't like into affirmations yet. Um, and so I remember, you know, don't hate me for this, but I tear pages outta books. <laugh>, I know this is so horrible, but I love to use my books.
Anna (08:54):
And so for me, I had these affirmations in this book and I tore it out and I highlighted it and I pinned it on my wall and I made copies and I was really into these childbirth affirmations and getting my mind to believe that my body was prepared and equipped for this thing I was gonna go through, right? So a visualization that I prepared, I probably got this from a book or something, but was this idea of this sailboat floating on the water. I must have got this from a book or something and going through a cavern or almost like a cave, but you know, like the caves that's more just like an arch in San Diego we have like La Jolla shores, it's like this cove. I've been able to like go snorkeling with my friends there. It's so beautiful, beautiful orange fish kelp.
Anna (09:39):
It's stunning. But I kind of visualize this area, this cove, this rock arch. And I visualized a boat going under the arch during my most, like during my contractions, right? I would imagine it kind of ebbing and flowing and the boat going through the cavern, through the most intense part of the contraction, knowing that the pain would get worse, worse, worse, and then get better, better, better. And so for me it was just this beautiful visual. My uncle who passed away was an amazing epic sailor. And so Phil connected to him in that way. And for me, water has always been healing. And so for me, I go back to this visual all the time when I'm in a moment of physical pain or mental turmoil that feels like, like we all know that hard moments they pass, right? But when you're in the middle of a hard moment, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain, it doesn't feel like it's gonna pass.
Anna (10:33):
It feels like it's gonna do you in, right? It feels very intense. And I just wanna validate that all of us have moments like that, right? At least I do. So for me it's this beautiful visualization almost like the, you know, like how the tide come. I just find like the moon cycles, the ocean cycles like to be so comforting to know that everything happens in a cycle. That things come, that things go right. Anyway, I said this was gonna be a short episode, but I don't know. So anyway, let's practice this visualization for a second. So close your eyes, take some deep breaths. Maybe you wanna imagine the ocean, the vastness of the ocean. For me, the ocean is so calming because you have to surrender to it. The ocean is so powerful. If you've ever been out on a boat in the middle of the ocean, if you've ever been swimming in the middle of the ocean, you know you are powerless to the ocean.
Anna (11:29):
The ocean is this beautiful uncontrollable force. And there's something so grounding and so comforting in that to know that there's this big beautiful presence that is this, this body of water and you have to surrender to it and it's in charge and there's nothing you can do. And it's following these natural lunar tide cycles. And it's just, it's pretty impressive, right? So anyway, maybe you're visualizing La Jolla cove. Maybe you're imagining these beautiful soft waves. They're not rolling waves in the sense that they're not like peaking, right? Maybe they're just, they're lightly coming in and out. Maybe you hear the ocean, maybe you hear seagulls, maybe you hear the sea lions, those wild sea lions always on the rocks. Maybe you smell the ocean air. For me, I love to go to the beach with my kids because I can dig my hands into the sand and feel the warm sand on the top, the dry sand, the gritty sand, the soft sand. And as I go deeper in it's wet sand, it's cool sand, it's calm sand, it's hard sand, it's grounding sand.
Anna (12:39):
And you're looking out to the ocean and you're, you're seeing a, for me it was like a little sailboat, a small sailboat and it's sailing getting closer and closer and closer to the cavern and you're just breathing and letting the boat go. And sometimes the boat takes a little move backwards and a move forward, but it's still moving forward through that, opening through that other side and eventually it carries through the other side of that little cavern or arch. And you can take a deep breath because that moment of intensity is over. That moment of intensity is passed and you were carried through it. The reason I love this one so much is it's this reminder that it passes, right? That like, even if it's getting more intense, it's gonna go through, it's gonna get better, it's gonna come out the other side. And for me, that's been such a, uh, a calming visualization.
Anna (13:35):
Okay, next visualization. I use this one a ton during my most recent surgery, but I also have used this one in therapy in lots of different scenarios. And it's this, this is a different one. Um, visualizing all the people around me that I feel most loved and supported by in a moment of intensity, right? So I'm like on this little operating table, I'm like smelling the weirdest smells. That's my like flesh burning and like hearing the doctors talk about like debate over whether they should close the suture this way or that way. Like it's just not very comforting, right? Then they hand me a mirror and they're like, do you wanna sit? I'm like, no, I don't want, just do what you need to do. You know? So for me, oh, and then I also used this while I was waiting for the procedure. So there was about like 30 minutes where I'm just like sitting in the cold chair, like waiting for the procedure to happen, right?
Anna (14:21):
And so for me, it's women in my life that um, are there for me and for me that brings me an immense amount of peace and comfort and calm, just visualizing their presence there with me. I'm a very spiritual person. I so, um, like I'm crying right now thinking about this happy tears <laugh> because I'm so grateful to have people in my life that are such a support and that makes me literally psychologically feel calm in my body. So as I'm laying there, I'm visualizing one of my college mentors, she actually passed away from cancer while I was in college, but she was one of my early mentors. So I visualize her Rebecca, um, I visualize my current coach Lacey, who is just such a support to me and has been there for me obviously in my business, but through some of the most hard times in my life in the last eight years, you know, and I visualize my friends and I visual, like I visualize all the people and I really think about them consciously one by one.
Anna (15:23):
And I place them in that room with me just sitting there with me with kind and loving energy. I don't know if you've ever been with anyone in grief, but I feel like sometimes there's not something to be said, but it's just being there for that person that makes a difference. And I think about this when I hold space for my clients that are going through extremely challenging situations in their business or life, often I just sit there and I'm not even saying a thing. It's so interesting 'cause I remember when I was like training in therapy, they remember them saying like, it's actually okay to cry with your clients. And I was like, what? No, it's not. But I realized, I mean obviously we don't want our client to have to care for us when we're in a professional situation, but is powerful in a silent tear and having empathy and being present with that person in that moment, whether it's a friend or whatever, and saying like, I feel you.
Anna (16:14):
I get you. I'm here with you. Even if you're still the one holding space for that person being present with them. And so for me, calling those people into the room and asking for their presence is so calming. And I just remember like sitting there on the surgery table smiling and happy. I was trying not to cry, happy tears because I didn't wanna mess up what they were doing on my head, right? But for me it just, it's such a blessing to have people in your life that to either currently have or to have had in past seasons, people in your life that you feel a deep connection with. And I wanna say to you, if you don't have that in your life, deep support or connection or friendship, number one, I hire a lot of my deep support, right? So another person I visualize was my therapist.
Anna (16:59):
Obviously I paid her, I paid my coach, right? I wanna say like it's okay to pay your deep supports. Like if I'm a coach of yours, I hope I'm one of your deep supports, right? If I'm not, that's okay too. And a lot of clients make goals around making better friends. Like as an adult, you may have to work on making friendships that might be a project of yours, that might be a goal you work towards, right? I think because of different ways we grow up or different experiences, we may have harder time making bonds with males or females. And if you have a harder time making bonds with females, it's okay to do the work to heal that part of you and learn to make connections with females and have better female friendships than you thought possible, right? So permission to say like if you're like, like who would I visualize?
Anna (17:44):
Like it, it's okay for you to heal that part of you so that you do have people to visualize and people in your normal life that are great and supportive to you, right? So that's another huge one for me is, and I actually also, I don't know, I can't remember if I told you guys this, but I've been struggling for the last two years with pretty bad hair loss, obviously working with my doctor and stuff to figure that out. But like in the process, like when I lose a lot of hair in the shower, and I mean a lot, a lot of times it'll evoke of course like a very intense emotional response from me. And so I also use visualization when I'm in the shower if I'm experiencing extreme hair loss. And again, like I imagine those women with me for me in it, with me, right?
Anna (18:28):
Um, okay, final one is, this is called the safe space exercise. This is really popular, but it's basically you crafting a safe space that's more of a, I guess I kind of did this with the beach because I encourage you guys to think about the sand and the blah blah blah, but I also have like a safe space, which is almost like a forest. And so it's having a place that you can practice going to and really making it detail for some reason, when I imagine myself in this like beautiful lush fairy forest, my daughter and I dressed up for fairies for Halloween one year. So maybe that's where it started. I don't know. But I even imagine this rug, like this soft rug that I'm sitting on. I imagine the green, I imagine it being a little bit moist. I imagine it being like, like filled with sounds a beautiful chirping, birds, and I just had this really detailed forest in my head that's like another safe space for me.
Anna (19:22):
And the idea is to practice some of these and have these images and feelings that you've practiced so that in the intense or hard moment it's easy to call into mind, right? And so I really encourage you to use one of these three examples I shared and try it, try to visualize it, try to call up details, try to get yourself really familiar with it, right? So that you can escape to it. Like I think our world, like demonizes escape, like don't watch Netflix, don't scroll on social media, right? And like in some ways I'm like do what you want with your life, right? But I also think like our brain naturally likes to escape. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I think it's like regrounding us refining truth. Like you know, being stuck in fear and overwhelm. That's not truth. That can be just of a lie as other things are, right?
Anna (20:08):
Because the truth is your brain in a moment of emotional intensity is telling you this is it. Everything's over the world is crashing. No. Like maybe there's something you need to face, maybe there's something you need to fix. Maybe there's a bill you need to pay, but you're fine, you're safe. And so I really feel like fantasizing or visualizing or escaping, and I mean kids, you have the skills so easily they have their imagination at beck and call like my kids in a second they will create a fort and it will be a whole nother world and all of their animals will have bow ties. And I love that about that. Like immediately they're in this alter universe. And I just think as adults we have lost that. We have villainized that. And I think it's why we do so much other escaping in our life that can really harm us instead of escaping, which I think helps us recenter our brain.
Anna (20:58):
Okay, so my homework for you is to pick one of these visualizations, either the rock cavern, either the supportive people or the safe space. Maybe it's a jungle like mine, maybe it's something else. You can also make it be a place you've already been like, you guys know I went to Ireland this year and I have this beautiful, you know, place in Ireland when we went over some of the roads and we got to, I'd never seen this in my life before, even in a picture, but there was this one beach in Ireland where it was a beach, but there was also rocky cliffs on the side and there were also beautiful hills of sheep. And my brain exploded because I didn't realize, like for me, we just have like beaches in San Diego. There's not also cliffs at the same time. I guess maybe a little but not like this.
Anna (21:46):
And then also like these rolling perfect green grassy hills of sheep. Like my brain exploded and I just had to like stare at it because I'd never seen something like that in my life. And it was profound. I'll never forget that visual and that feeling. And so maybe for you it's somewhere that you went on vacation and you felt a certain way, maybe it's a room in your house. I remember my therapist asking me last year, like, okay, let's create a new safe space for you. And I visualized myself in my living room and she was like, uh, okay, well that's a little bizarre. Usually it's like somewhere outside of your house, but like, hey, if it's your house, like that's good. And I'm like, wow. Like that was really epic for me because I've spent several years not feeling the best safest in my home.
Anna (22:31):
And so now that I do, I was able to buy this house for my kids. And now that I have this space that's mine, like that was kind of a cool moment of like, wow, my safe space is my house. Like so maybe there's a rumor, a place in your house or your garden that is your safe space, right? It can be in your reality. Your job is to email me back and own your safe space. Bonus points for getting detailed and telling me about it. Like maybe you even write to me about it, telling me the details. And that's your way to start visualizing it out and building out that beautiful little fantasy. Because I feel like fantasy is our brain way to not just healing, but also to manifesting, right? Dreaming a new dream. Like anything big that's happened in the world, whether it's the light bulb, the telephone, the internet, at one point it didn't exist, right?
Anna (23:21):
It is imagination, it is innovation, it is dreaming, it is having a reality new that actually gets us into progress. And so if this is new for you and you're like, oh my god, Anna, this whole episode, right? Like I encourage you to try this, try that muscle of your imagination of innovation, like you deserve to train your brain in this way for your business. But also because I think it's such a powerful healing tool and for me it it helps me take, do brave things, get the surgery I need to take the risk I need to in business because I think so much we're like, oh, I need to like do all these things to avoid pain, to avoid risk. Instead of like, yeah, I'm gonna try, but like if I meet pain in my life, if I meet risk in my life, I can figure it out. I can deal with it. I can cope with the pain, I can handle it. I'm a resilient badass woman. Like I can do this, right? You are resilient, you are strong. You can handle this. I know you have it in you. Have a beautiful day.
Anna (24:21):
Thanks for hanging out today. Please hit that subscribe button so you can make sure to stay updated anytime a new episode drops. And I would love for you to join me in my free Facebook community. It's called The Heart-Centered Entrepreneur. We discuss the podcast episodes. I regularly go live and do free trainings, and you may even meet your newest biz bestie so you can join at https://heartcenteredcommunity.com/ is absolutely free and I cannot wait to see you in there.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.