The F-Word
Anyone who is close to me knows I have a bit of a potty mouth. I seem to have an affinity for F-words hands-down. What has kept me motivated even when things got scary and uncomfortable was staying focused on the F-bombs that I was working towards. I dreamed about financial security, freedom, and more f*cking fun! A favorite of mine that still makes me salivate when it rolls off my tongue was flexibility! Oh how I craved thee!
I wanted to make my own schedule. I wanted to have a say…the final say…about when I would work, when I would take time off, while having a thriving business and helping the clients that I love! I wanted the flexibility that the premium fee therapists and 6 and 7-Figure coaches talked about!
When I finally quit my other jobs and was solely in private practice, I thought that I would feel this magical feeling from the power of flexibility since I was my own boss and my only boss for the first time in…well my whole life.
But that didn’t happen. I recognized some of the resentment that I thought I was leaving behind had followed me into my “dream” practice. Had everyone been lying to me about the freedom and flexibility that I had worked so hard for? Why was I still feeling stretched thin, a tinge resentful, and tired?
Because I was being too flexible.
I had left those jobs, but I still had the over flexibility of a pretzel. I had been a “Yes” person for SO long that I still found myself being overly “accommodating” to inquiries and clients in my practice. For so long, I couldn’t say “no” and now that I could, I didn’t know how.
I thought it would be easy peasy to say “no” once I was free from all of my dead-inside jobs. Yet, I would still find myself saying “Just one more sliding fee client won’t hurt" as they bargained with me even though I knew I couldn’t afford to have another low fee client.
Or I would take another client on Tuesdays even though I knew my bandwidth couldn’t manage because this client could only meet on Tuesdays. I was fearful of when the next inquiry would come so I felt I couldn’t afford to “lose” them. Unintentionally, I chose to sacrifice my mental and emotional energy instead. That was an expense that wasn’t worth it.
I still had scarcity mindset and it was dictating the choices that I made in my practice even when those decisions did not align with my future goals! Why be in private practice if I was going to continue struggling?
For so long, I had adhered to someone else’s policies and rules. I would regularly stretch and bend over backwards staying later than I’d agreed, taken on another client even though I was feeling burnout.
In my solo practice, I knew what I wanted my dream schedule, clients, and life to look like but I couldn’t enforce the boundaries that I had “set”. My boundaries were more of a suggestion.
It wasn’t just in my business that I had a hard time saying “no” and drawing boundaries. I discovered it was in my personal life as well. I would overcommit wanting to not appear as “difficult” and I would move something in my calendar rather than ask a friend if they could meet a different day. All my life, I had been habitually “flexible”. But being “flexible” was f*cking up the flexibility that I dreamed of experiencing.
It actually wasn’t as much of a mind-f*ck as I was making it out to be. I discovered that I had misdefined flexibility. According to the dictionary, Flexibility is:
The ability to bend without breaking (so without contributing to or having a meltdown)
The ability to be easily modified (it shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice or expense)
The willingness to change or compromise (without resentment)
What I thought was flexibility was actually just me not setting, holding, and owning my boundaries. It was me prioritizing others’ preferences over my own self-care and sanity. Maybe you can relate? Many of my clients and the therapists that I coach struggle with the same thing and I love helping them to live out the flexible life that they dream of. If you are in private practice and you’re not feeling the flex’ life just yet, give me a shout and let’s figure out what is getting in the way.