Rachel McDermott | She Owns It

by Rachel McDermott | Featured Contributor

Photo By Todd Huffman via http://imagefinder.co/

It was painful to watch.

One of the chefs on Chopped, Chef Insecure (not his real name), was totally down on himself.

He heard his Dad in his ear, “You’ll never make it. You’re not good enough.”

He second and triple-guessed himself. His nerves and fears of failure were clearly messing with his head. For him, winning chopped would prove he was good enough to be a chef. I cringed when he said he hoped winning would make his staff respect him more.

His never-good-enough attitude was a turn off

I didn’t want to root for him because it seemed like he was going to lose. His emotional problems were bumming me out and I just felt bad for the guy. I wanted to ask him, “What makes you think that? Who told you that?” I wanted to tell him to snap out of it, to change his perspective.

Never enough is never satisfied

Never good enough. Never enough money. Never enough time. Never enough doodads. Never, never, never… It just goes on and on. What it leads to is continual disappointment, dissatisfaction, and a depressed outlook on life. If you’re trapped in the land of Never Enough you are not at rest. You are not calm, collected. It will be hard for you to embody truly confident feelings. And where insecurity increases, rejection increases.

This puts you at a disadvantage in 3 ways

1. You second-guess yourself and your work suffers

Your talent and ability can be there but if you allow emotional problems to get in the way you can find yourself making critical errors or mistakes in judgment due to your insecurity. (To his credit, Chef Insecure was able to recognize his second-guessing had taken him off-course. He went back to his original instinct (to make a soup) and made it past the appetizer round.)

2. You struggle to make decisions or take action

Deliberating for days… constant tweaking, fussing and fiddling. If you approach life with a negative bias it affects everything. Things that could be completed in a much faster fashion can end up taking months and years because in your mind, “We’re not there yet.” The longer things drag out; waiting for you to make a decision or take action, the more your confidence over what to do erodes.

3. Others lose confidence in you

If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else? I know that sounds harsh but seriously, your customers, your clients, don’t know you. They don’t know you so why should they care. If you aren’t confident in what you do or what you’re offering to sell, why should anyone work with you or buy from you?

So what can you do if you struggle with Never Good Enough?

Step 1: As always, you have to acknowledge your problem.

As soon as you know you have a problem, you can start working on making things better.

Step 2: Get a support system.

Reach out to others. Be brave enough to be vulnerable and talk about what’s going on.

It was painful to watch how Chef was talking about himself. It’s awkward too because you never know how people will react to that. I was glad when one of the judges spoke frankly to him after he passed the appetizer round. “Don’t second-guess yourself. Treat yourself better.” That affirmation meant a lot to Chef Insecure and gave him a boost of confidence going into the entree round.

Step 3: Process your emotional pain.

If you’re holding crap in you need to figure out a way to get it out. Unwind, unleash. Find safe people to be a support through your journey. Break codependent patterns and cycles. Get someone to hold you accountable. Grieve. Let it go.

Step 4: Actively work on changing your perspective and outlook on life.

The past is done. Take the nuggets you need to get wisdom, hold on to the good and move forward. Look around you, learn from others. Enlarge your world view and get knowledge.

Step 5: Practice the hell outta your craft.

Talent is great to have but hard work makes all the difference. Put in the sweat, time and tears. Hammer it out. Lots of trial, error and practice will give you the experience you need for a deeper perspective. Your confidence will increase with each success. (Wouldn’t you know it? Chef Insecure actually won Chopped and went home with the $10,000 prize)

You may want perfect country, but you don’t actually live there

Have high standards, but realize you’re not perfect and never will be. Give yourself grace when things don’t go pinterest-picture perfect. Life is hard and messy and emotional. But fatalism isn’t doing you any favors.

Live in Never Enough? Dare to leave town.

Positive Town. Thankful Village. Enough City. Choose to live somewhere that will give you the positive energy you need to achieve your goals.

Because the striving, Never Enough mindset is not about money. Money is a tool. It doesn’t satisfy emotional emptiness. It only amplifies what’s already there. So figure out your shit. Otherwise you could find yourself in the trap, rat-race of consumption. The same problems you’ve always had are still with you, but at a larger scale. You could have wealth, but misery is still your companion.

The emotional struggle to walk in success and confidence is a path we all have to find for ourselves. Chef Insecure won, but his emotional baggage remains unsolved.

Insecurity may increases rejection, but it doesn’t have be that way. When we own our emotional struggles and see the problem for what it is, we give ourselves the chance we need to break free.

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Rachel McDermott is co-author of Hook:Why Websites Fail to Make Money and co-founder of HooktoWin.com. Hook hit #1 on Amazon and was a bestseller in 4 categories. It’s been sold in 12 countries around the world. Her Free 5 day mini course shows entrepreneurs how to fix website failure and attract customers automatically.

Rachel and her husband have spent the last decade helping clients sell more products and win more customers. They’ve experienced the day to day grind of building a business and understand the challenges that come with it.

When she’s not writing you can probably find her reading, in the kitchen cooking up something yummy or playing outside with her 2 boys. She also loves to go shopping and thinks buying groceries is relaxing (when she gets to do that alone, of course).

Rachel McDermott

by Rachel McDermott | Featured Contributor

I have always loved cooking. I remember spending hours pouring over a Boys & Girls cookbook. I still have it, actually.

My first cookbook is full of nostalgia

And Oh-so-90’s

My Mom taught me how to make oatmeal when I was 9 ½, I learned to do it just like she did—without measuring anything. I learned the concept of eyeballing it, and cooking without instructions came along naturally.

You could say I’ve had a life-long love of cooking.

I’ve gotten used to hearing people tell me, “You should open a restaurant, Rachel!” I can’t even count how many times people have suggested I open a restaurant because they’re in the middle of a foodgasm over something I’ve made. But I always shrug the idea off. I would hate it.

I would hate it in 6 months or less. I know I would.

You shouldn’t start a business just because you love to do something. It’s too easy to start hating what you’re doing, and then what you love no longer brings the same joy.

Why would this happen?

Someone or something taints the experience for you. Or, you’re forced to do the things you don’t enjoy more than the things you do. I would have to do the same thing over and over for lots of people. Now, instead of choosing to share my love for cooking when and where I please, I feel forced to do it whether I’m inspired or not.

A good cook does not a restaurant owner make. There is a lot of work and logistics to running a successful food service business. Running a restaurant isn’t my dream. I love to cook, but I don’t want to start something I know I’ll end up hating. What about you?

How can you tell if you’re starting to hate what you’re doing?

Are you avoiding the work that needs to be done? Do you find yourself saying “I can’t” rather than the reality of “I won’t”?

If you’re passing the work onto somebody else because you don’t want to do it but you know you should, you’re in danger of a shame spiral. You’ll know you’re spiraling when you find yourself not doing what you know you should, feeling shame as you continue to put it off. Feeling horrible, you try to hide or avoid your feelings by binge watching Downton Abbey.

What do you do if you’re starting to loathe what you love?

First, sit down and think about things. What do you really want? Think of what an ideal scenario looks like. What are your options? What are some ways you can move towards that?

What can you outsource? Let other people do the busywork or tasks you hate doing. If I owned a restaurant, I wouldn’t be the chef, because for me the joy of cooking is found at home. I’d only own a restaurant if everything was managed and operated for me.

If you find yourself hating your business, if what you love isn’t so lovely anymore, consider changing. Change your business or pivot in a new direction. Focus on what you really want. Give the things you love more of your time and the things you hate, less time.

How do I do what I love without hating it?

Step One: Establish your boundaries

What are you willing and unwilling to do? It’s not about what you think you should do, or what you think you have to do, or what others tell you to do. It’s about you, if you could have it your way –what would you do?

Step Two: Find ways to accomplish the things you don’t want to do so you can focus on the things you DO want to do

This could be –shutting down the parts you don’t want to do (or finding someone else to do it for you through staffing or outsourcing), or finding a way to automate things so it requires less of your attention.

I love what I do, there’s no way I’d ever hate it!

For the things you love to do, don’t let anyone get it your way. But the things you don’t want to do, slash and burn. Don’t let anyone push you into a corner.

So I hate it, does this mean I have to close my business?

If there’s a part of your business you love, you don’t have to quit. You can make it work. Re-route your business to increase what you love, decreasing the things you can’t stand to do. If there is absolutely nothing you enjoy about your business—stop. Don’t waste time on unfulfilling work.

If you’re starting a business to do something you love, go in with your eyes wide open, expect challenges. You’ll need good systems and boundaries to make sure you won’t start to hate your business. Just like for me, if I owned a restaurant, my boundary would be—I don’t have to do anything with daily operations.

Simply loving something doesn’t mean you should make it a business. But your business won’t work if you don’t love what you’re doing.

Is there something you love to do that you’d never make a business out of? Is your business sucking some of the passion out of what you love? How have you handled that?

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