Teri Holland (00:05.814)
What if the reason your business isn't growing the way you want it to isn't your strategy? What if it's not your offer? It's not your marketing, your pricing or your team? What if it's something much more fundamental than any of that? Today, we're gonna talk about something that most business coaches will never bring up because most of them don't know how to work with it, your nervous system.
And I promise you by the end of this episode, you are going to look at every stuck point in your business through a completely different lens. So let's dive in.
Teri Holland (00:43.894)
Okay, let me paint you a picture. You have a great idea. You know what you need to do. You've written the plan. You've mapped out your strategy. You told yourself, this is the week, and then nothing. You freeze. You procrastinate. You scroll. You recognize...
You reorganize your desk for the third time instead of making that call that you need to make. Any of that sound familiar? So here's what most people tell themselves in that moment. They'll say, I'm lazy. I don't have enough discipline. I just need more motivation. But here's what's actually happening. Your nervous system has decided that what you're about to do is a threat, not a real threat, not,
a lion chasing you down in the savanna, but a perceived threat. The threat of being seen or being judged. The threat of failing publicly or succeeding and not knowing who you're going to be on the other side of that. And your brilliant, beautifully designed nervous system is doing exactly what it was meant to do, protecting you.
The problem is, is that it's protecting you from the very things that would grow your business and help you get what you want. Now, I'm not going to do a deep dive into neuroscience here. I want this to be very practical for you, but there are a few things worth understanding. Your nervous system has two primary modes. There's the regulated state, sometimes called rest and digest, where you feel calm, clear.
creative and connected. You can think long-term. You can make good decisions. You can take risks with confidence. And then there's the activated state. Fight, flight, or freeze where your brain is essentially in survival mode. Short-term thinking. Reactive decisions, avoidance, perfectionism, overworking, underworking. And here's the part that nobody talks about in business coaching.
Teri Holland (03:01.154)
that most entrepreneurs are running their entire business from an activated state. They're making pricing decisions from fear. They're creating content from anxiety. They're setting boundaries or not setting them based on a nervous system that never feels fully safe. And no amount of strategy or planning or doing is going to fix that.
You can have the best sales funnel in the world, but if your nervous system is in threat response, you will sabotage it every single time.
So think of your nervous system like the foundation of a house. You can redecorate it all you want. New furniture, fresh paint, upgraded fixtures. But if the foundation is cracked, if there's instability underneath everything, well, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is on the inside, the structure isn't sound. So your business is the house. Your nervous system is the foundation.
And the work that I do with NLP, hypnotherapy, Time Line therapy, it works at the foundation level. It's not the decorating, it's not the surface. We go underneath into the unconscious patterns that are quietly running the show. And we start to heal the cracks because when your foundation is solid, everything gets easier. Not perfect, easier.
You take the risk, you make the call, you raise your prices, you say no to the wrong clients. You show up consistently, not because you're forcing yourself to do it, but because you are no longer fighting yourself.
Teri Holland (04:44.92)
So what does a dysregulated nervous system actually look like in business? Well, let me give you a few examples and see if any of these land with you. You keep saying you're going to raise your prices and you don't. You write the number down. Maybe you feel the logic of it and then something stops you.
It's not a pricing problem, it's a safety problem. Or you know you need to get more visible. You need to put out more content, more videos, you need to be showing up more. And yet every time you hit record something, something in you just resists. It's not a confidence problem, it's a nervous system that doesn't feel safe being seen.
or you take on a client who you knew was not the right fit because saying no felt more dangerous than saying yes. It's not a boundaries problem. That's a survival response. So do you see the pattern? See every one of these, every one of these scenarios is your nervous system. Just trying to keep you safe using old programming that made sense at some point in your life.
but it no longer serves the business that you are working to build. So what do you actually do with this?
Teri Holland (06:12.984)
first awareness. Just naming it changes things. The next time you feel that resistance, that freeze, that pull to procrastinate,
Instead of judging yourself, get curious. Ask, what is my nervous system trying to protect me from right now?
And that one question can interrupt the pattern long enough to make a different choice. Second, regulation practices. So before you sit down to do the hard things in your business, the sales calls, creating the content, making important decisions, give your nervous system something to anchor into. Slow your breath, move your body, put your feet on the floor.
These are the things that are literally going to shift your psychological state so that your prefrontal cortex comes back online. And third, and this is where I see the deepest, most lasting change, do the deep work. Because awareness and breathing, it's only gonna get you so far. It's like a quick fix in the moment. But if there are old beliefs, old emotional patterns, old stories,
stored in your unconscious, well, those need more than a breathing exercise or your feet on the floor. They need to be reprogrammed at the root. That's the work. And it is the most important investment you will ever make in your business because it changes the person who's running it. And you are not running a business, you are running a nervous system. And you will only run your business to the level that your nervous system is capable of handling it.
Teri Holland (08:09.538)
Your nervous system is not your enemy. It is a remarkably sophisticated system that has been keeping you alive your entire life. But it was designed for a very different world than the one that you are building in business right now. And part of your work as an entrepreneur, maybe even the most important part, is teaching it that it's safe to grow.
It is safe to be seen. It is safe to succeed, safe to become the person who you're becoming. And that's what nobody talks about. And that's exactly why we're here.
So if this episode resonated with you, share it with a fellow entrepreneur who was stuck, not in their strategy, but in themselves. That's who this was made for. I'm Terri Holland. This is Success in Mind, and I will see you on the next one.
