Being Bold Despite Fear - The brain’s natural response to danger & how entrepreneurs can overcome it with Natalie Franke
embracing fear actually propels you forward
Every entrepreneur goes through seasons of doubt in their business journey. Natalie Franke wants you to know that it is normal to have fear and doubt and encourages you to push through towards your dreams.
Because Natalie loves to study how the brain works, she's walking us through some strategies to help overcome the fear in our lives. This episode gets a little deep but we think you'll love it anyway.
Find and connect with Natalie: Rising Tide Society | RTS Instagram | Natalie's Instagram
Show Notes
Natalie’s & Cinnamon’s backstory
Natalie was a full-time wedding photographer for 8 years. She got started by shooting her friends in high school and started her business during her senior year. Natalie experienced early on the loneliness and comparison that comes from being an entrepreneur. In 2015, she began talking about this idea and Rising Tide Society (RTS) was born. There are now over 400 groups that meet worldwide to help break the mold for the dog-eat-dog world of entrepreneurship.
Cinnamon first encountered the RTS when she was moving from California to New Jersey. She was anticipating the loneliness of moving her creative career to a new state, but found her community in that first RTS group in NJ.
Visualizing success and failures
Most people encourage you to visualize what success looks like for you. Which Natalie believes is a great thing to do, but she decided to ask herself “if most businesses fail, what do I want to fail at” and that’s what she went after. This was something she never trained for but because it was pulling on her heart, she took the risk. We know risking taking is scary, but it can give you amazing perspective on your life and purpose.
Let’s talk about fear
Most people like to talk about fear as in the false …. Natalie likes to think about fear in terms of “what is its revolutionary purpose for humanity and why do we become afraid?” There are reasons for fear and most of them are born out of protection for our well-being. Because for most of us, the fear of being chased by tigers is not a regular occurance, fear begins to manifest itself in our lives in new ways. Doing something different and stepping outside the norm can create fear in our lives as entrepreneurs. It can be hard to explain to those outside our entrepreneurial circles, but the thing is, we’re all human and they are going through different fears too.
Becoming Fearless
Several years ago she chose the word fearless as her word of the year and began her attempt to live without fear. What she learned along the way was fear is normal and it will always be there. Natalie’s secret to becoming fearless is actually tapping into the neurological part of her brain that ignites courage. Courage is making conscious decisions to move forward despite what scares you. Instead of being fearless, she wants you to be courageous. Cinnamon can relate to this as well; the more you take these courageous steps, the easier they become.
We know the fear of rejection is real, especially when you are ready to raise your prices. Our current culture has created avenues that boost us up with likes and comments which the leads us towards uncertainty on how to handle rejection. Natalie believes, “there is so much power in acknowledging that someone’s rejection of you is not related to your worth.” Getting told no often can propel you forward if you let it. No one likes nos, but they can teach you more than yeses ever will.
Social Media’s role
Social media is a great platform for growing your business, but it does remove the face-to-face value of being with people in person. Anyone can sit behind a computer and saying whatever they want about our lives and businesses without regard to our feelings because they can’t see us. Misunderstandings can be avoided with more face-to-face conversations which will also help cut down on comparing ourselves to each other’s online persona. Natalie desires for more people to connect in-person and on a deeper level.
Another thing to consider with social media is the amount of information you’re opening yourself up to. Other people may not actually be more successful than they were prior to Instagram, we are just more aware of what everyone else is doing because of social media. The wins of others, and our failures are not more frequent than ever before. Social media just allows us to see others success more frequently.
All of this, the lack of human interaction and the increase of awareness, can lead entrepreneurs to become overwhelmed and insecure. Everything that goes into social media is designed to make us stay on the platforms longer. Just like our hard drives, sometimes we just need to shut down and reset ourselves and our minds. The world won’t end if you step away from social media for a day or two.
Three pieces of advice to attack fear
Identify the root of the fear & combat it with truth.
Actually write down the things that scare you and then write down the truth about yourself.
Find someone who can speak that truth into your life.
More about Natalie
Natalie Franke Hayes is a photographer, educator, speaker, and Founder of the Rising Tide Society. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Visual Studies and a concentration in Visual Neuroscience and the Psychology of Seeing. Natalie lives in San Francisco, California with her high school sweetheart and serves as the Head of Community for HoneyBook.
Find and connect with Natalie: Rising Tide Society | RTS Instagram | Natalie's Instagram
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