In this episode, Lauren Fire shares how to turn your negativity into positivity.

Lauren is the founder of InspiringMama.com, a happiness hub for moms. She is an attorney and Inspiring Mama is her search for solutions to the emotional and physical challenges of motherhood.

How did you go from being an attorney in that world to inspiring moms all over the world?

I actually left law practice in 2011 after 7 years of practice. My first business was actually called Mind Over Bar and that was a business that helped bar exam students deal with test anxiety because I am a self-help junkie and have been studying Personal Growth and self-help and all of that since I was about 18. So, when I decided to leave law practice, I really wanted to do something in a Personal Growth space so I founded that business first and I still run that program but I decided when I got pregnant that my calling is actually much deeper because when I got pregnant, all of the emotional issues that I thought I had dealt with when through my personal growth surge, I though okay, I’m self-aware, I’m doing great and then I had a baby and everything went wonky and I realized that there are just aren’t enough solutions out there tailored to the struggles that we faced as moms.

So, I decided to bring my research skills that I got as an attorney together with my love of personal growth and create something that really brought personal growth into the mom space in a way that was useable and easy to understand and really friendly to busy moms. So, that’s what I’m trying to create with Inspiring Mama which is my search for answers but I’m bringing moms along with me on this research, giant research project all on the podcast and on my website.

What was the biggest surprise about becoming an entrepreneur?

I think that my biggest surprise, I had always wanted to be my own boss and I practice law for so many years that I had so many people sort of breathing down my neck and have to do this at this timeline and I was so excited to run my own schedule. Then when I got to be an entrepreneur,  I realized that I’m actually a meaner boss than anyone I’ve worked for. So, all of my negative self-talk and pushing myself and perfectionism, it didn’t go away when I became my own boss. So, I thought that was going to change and so, it’s actually been a real struggle for me to find ways to run my business so that I can balance my life and the business because I thought it will be so easy now that I run my own schedule to balance everything. And it’s actually still hard, if not harder, because I am my own boss and I do push myself really hard. So, that was kind of surprising to me.

So, you ended up being the meanest boss you ever had and had to kind of work with that?

I’m still working with that. I wouldn’t say I have an answer to do that at all. That’s sort of my daily struggle and I need to back off a little bit and it’s been about values for me and saying, “What’s more important right now? Being happy and calm or doing this up to right this second?

All I have to say is you know what, it’s being happy and calm and I need to calm down and not get upset about technology or about whatever it’s not happening in the timeline that the mean mean, my head things that should be happening by and say, I need to calm down, I need a break and go look at the trees or whatever it is, so that I can find that mental clarity and balance and happiness within this process.

Within the two businesses that you have had, what has been one time that you had a huge amount of fear going to another level  with your business or doing something that was totally out of your comfort zone? And how did you deal with that fear?

I think starting the podcast was a big deal for me because with Mind Over Bar, I was in a very tiny niche and I still am because I still run that business but it’s a kind of much smaller niche. I’m talking to people one on one and then I started recording podcasts and it was all fun and games until I put it out there and started getting thousands of downloads and I would, “Oh my God, people are listening to me!” In that year just got really big and so when I went to record new podcasts after I had already launched and after I had seen the download numbers start ticking up, I got all of these fears and I got really triggered and really all my perfectionist feelings that try to protect me and need to be perfect and I got really intense about needing to edit everything and edit out every element. I got so really spun up with that because I started picturing all these people listening to me and it’s public speaking, it sort of in your own head because you don’t see the people. So, still I feel like that’s just scary.

Having an online business is a form of public speaking. You may not be verbally speaking but your mission is out there, your message is out there, so visible.

Yes. And I say how I’ve gotten over that I think is I started really thinking about the people that were listening to me and just picturing myself having a conversation with them like I was talking to a girlfriend. So, I stopped trying to be something I wasn’t. I stopped trying to use the MPR voice and just be myself and I thought I’m not going to edit as much. I podcasted when I had a cold one time, I’m like, “Look, I have a cold and I’m sorry.” I just started being myself more and deciding that if they don’t like me, they’re not going to listen. I’m going to stop trying to be who I’m not. I’m going to stop trying to be perfect and just start being me. I’ve gotten some really good feedback about that and feedback that, “You know what, when I really bonded with you the most is when you were talking about how you accidentally leave your laundry in the washer overnight and forgot about it or when you’re actually real.” When I got that feedback I thought, okay I can relax, I can be myself and I can just decide that if the people don’t like it, they’re not going to listen.    

They’re going to hear me through it and I am who I am and I’m not perfect, I’m not organized and there’s a lot of things I’m not. I’ve been really making that clear and saying when I don’t have it all figured out. I’m not this guru up here talking down to you. I’m just like you. I’m struggling emotionally and all the things that you struggle with, I struggle with. I’m just out there researching it and publicizing my quest.

What are your top three tips, two or three tips for keeping your mindset on track to reach your entrepreneurial dreams?

1. I love replacing the negative with positive.

I think we really try to, especially if you struggle with negative self-talk like I do is a lot of people try to get rid of that negative self-talk and that fear. I’m only going to be successful when I get rid of the fear, when I get rid of that self-criticism. I think everyone criticizes themselves. I think every entrepreneur’s afraid, I think the answer really is not getting rid of the fear or getting rid of the self-talk, it’s replacing it with positive.

And so when I started really motivating myself with something positive and I’ll say things to myself and my head like, you’re doing a good job Lauren. And I’ll say that over and over again on my head, you’re doing a good job Lauren, you’re doing a good job Lauren. When I start to feel overwhelmed, when I start to feel frustrated and that really helps because trying to stop criticizing myself, you get in to that I’m criticizing myself for criticizing myself. It’s like a cycle. So, that I guess number one is try to find some positive things to say to yourself in your head. You’re doing a good job, I can do this. You got to eat an elephant one bite at a time, whatever it is that when you hit the rock, you say that to yourself that’s huge, it’s been huge for me.

Related Link:

3 Ways to Shift your self-talk from negative to positive

2. A really good support system.

People you can call when you get down because it’s going to happen. You’re going to get down and there’s going to be days  where you say to yourself what the heck am I doing and why am I doing this. And you got to have people that you can call. I have entrepreneur friends and they’ll call me when they’re going through it and I call them. I have a friend a couple of days ago actually I went through them, what am I doing and why am I doing this. Because when you get burned out and you’re going to get burned out, you got to be able to step back and call someone who’s going to be supportive and is going to understand and I think it’s helpful to have other entrepreneur friends because your mom’s not going to understand the difficulties of your opt-in or your list or whatever. So, I think it’s useful to have a couple of entrepreneur friends that you can actually call on the phone, not text, not Facebook,  not e-mail but like I’m panicking right now, please can I talk to you and that’s been like just completely helpful for me to have those people.

3. Hire people to help you and that’s in the form of strategists or coaches. 

You’ve got to be a student number one and if you’re entrepreneur, you can’t ever, ever, ever think you’ve got it all figured out. No matter how successful you get or you don’t get, you’re always learning ,you’re always out there. I’m always listening to different podcast, following a zillion different people and I also have hired strategists even for an hour or two and even if they’re expensive, I can save myself so much time and money by renting someone else’s brain for an hour to say here’s my business plan, here’s what I’m thinking, what do you think? People that know your industry, that know what you’re doing and that can say, don’t do this, do that, that’s a waste of time, this is the wrong direction, here’s an idea for you. That’s just been so useful for me because I didn’t do that when I first launched Mind Over Bar. I like wean into this sort of blinders in this hole trying to do it all myself and there’s so much time and money I wasted that I could have saved if I had picked my head  up and hire a strategist or hired someone to help me figure it out

A great piece of advice for entrepreneurs to help them find more happiness.

For me, happiness is something, this is the main ten of what I teach, has been what has transformed my life because I’ve been studying the stuff for so many years and on this struggle to “fix myself” so that I could get “happy”. And what I learned after a number of years of research was that happiness is not a goal. There’s not going to be point where you get successful and happiness shows up at your door. And a lot of people think, “Okay, once I get successful and once I make money or whatever this goal, this care, you put on in front of you, once I make money, once I get a big list, once I sell X number of products, then I’ll be happy. Then I’ll relax.” But it’s not going to happen that way. You’re just going to find another goal.

So, happiness happens in the moment right now. Happiness is something you do. It’s something you practice and it has nothing to do with the success in your life. And so as an entrepreneur, it’s really easy to get caught in this striving for happiness thing and this is not something I made up. This is something that researchers have proven over the last even five years. There’s been a ton of research into happiness and a lot of people have written a lot of books about it and they all say the exact same thing which is that happiness and success are not tied together.