The Magic is You

Michelle Rohr [00:00:01]:
Hey. Hey. Michelle here, and I wanted to see if I could create a really quick podcast with a really quick message because I don't have a lot of time to go into detail, but I wanted to wanted to connect with you anyway. And the thing that has been on my mind has been a thought around how we all have this way of falling into helping other people or solving other people's problems or in the online entrepreneurship world, the message is figure out your audience's pain points and become the solution to their pain points. We all slip into that really really easily in a way that is not actually positive when you truly look at the big picture. And I think the reason we slip into it is because we were trained as children to think about, you know, to mold ourselves around other people's needs, most often. We did not learn, maybe some people did, but most people don't learn how to truly honor their own needs, their own emotions, solve their own problems, really get to know themselves on a deep level. We don't really have that window and it does take a window.

Michelle Rohr [00:01:34]:
I feel like moving to Porto and having lived here for 2 years, I have taken that entire time to just do this work on myself and that's on top of having been doing this work of really learning how to pay more attention to my own needs and address areas of neglect and go deep on what my solutions are to my pain points. And that has taken a ton of work, and I've been able to go deeper than ever having lived in Porto for 2 years and being separate separated from a lot of the roles I had to play and the things I thought I had to do and the all separating myself from a lot of false identities or just things that did not serve me and being able to go deeper as a result on this inner work of what do I truly need? Where do I feel neglect and suffering and pain? And how am I paying attention to those things and addressing those things in every area of life? Like, where do I feel neglect in my health? Where do I feel neglect in my finances? Where do I feel neglect in my business? And there's always some some area that is subconscious, has subconsciously been put on the back burner while we are maybe, like, going full throttle in one area of life. There's another area of life that's on the back burner and we kind of overcompensate and console ourselves by thinking, well, I'm doing so good over here. I don't need to worry about that other thing. Well, my business is so successful. I don't really need to worry about what the what I'm, like, this is this was me. I'm making so much money in my business. I don't really need to worry about what's happening to the money.

Michelle Rohr [00:03:43]:
So I was, like, level 10 in business, but, like, level 5 in personal finance. And so, like, that was an I an area that I had to really address, like, why am I not performing at the level I know I'm capable of in the personal finance area of my life? And it took really diving in for an entire month to just immerse myself in personal finance literacy, which also required that I address a lot of financial trauma, which was the reason why that was being put on the back burner. It's never because of whatever story we like to tell ourselves about, well, this happened and that happened and that when I tried this, da da da da. And believe me, I can tell a story about all the ways that my personal finance attempts have been sabotaged. But if I look really, really deeply, I can see how I've given my power away, and I can see how that is is rooted in financial traumas. And I had to give myself the time to slow down, look at it, cry, feel all the emotions, educate myself, heal, address it, take action, and completely turn it around. And we can all do that in some area, whether it's personal finance or your health or your relationships or your social, life, like, there are areas that are probably being neglected. And we like to tell ourselves stories about how it doesn't matter, I'm just really focused over here on this other thing or I just wanna help people.

Michelle Rohr [00:05:34]:
I don't care about anything else. And we have all these nice sounding ways of excusing ourselves for why we are neglecting ourselves. And online business can make that really easy because we can say, look, I'm helping so many people. I'm doing this amazing thing. I'm writing a book. I'm creating a creating a business. I'm doing this program. I'm hosting a retreat.

Michelle Rohr [00:06:02]:
We have all of these positive things that we can do to help other people. Meanwhile, our inner child is like, excuse me, what about us? When is it our turn? And if we don't take the time to really address the ways in which we know we have been acting powerless or giving our power away, then we aren't truly helping people as much as we think. Because even in that helpfulness, there is this there is this thing, this little gremlin that we are projecting onto the people that we're helping. So I I could see that as long as I am putting myself last, if I'm not paying attention to that and cleaning that up, cleaning that energy of putting myself last, like, clearing that out, then I will subconsciously, subliminally project that onto the people I'm trying to help. I will find ways without even realizing it, of saying things a certain way or doing things a certain way that subconsciously feed out the message of we need to all put ourselves last. Because if that's what I'm embodying, then that is what I'm projecting. So if I don't take the time to heal whatever dysfunction dysfunctional belief or lie is living in my body, then I'm only gonna kind of spread out that lie to other people even while I am doing a lot of positive work and helping other people. So we we have to really look at that because we will use the mission statement of how much we help people to put those patterns and dysfunctions and lies into a bigger and bigger blind spot.

Michelle Rohr [00:07:59]:
And it's not benign. It's not it's not, harmless. It is finding a way to still eke out and harm you and harm the very people that you're trying to help. And I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad or make myself feel bad. I'm just saying this because we need to start calling this stuff out. We need to start shedding a light on the dark side of this, the dark reality, the dark side of this online business, I help so and so do blah blah blah thing. Like it is true that at the end of the day, business needs to be about selling things to people who want what you have to offer, either because it solves their problem or brings them joy, but we need to get to a place where the things that we sell is a byproduct of the solutions to our problems versus the things that we sell is the product of us ignoring our problems, focusing on the audience's problems, and then trying to solve that. I believe everything changes when we focus on our own problems.

Michelle Rohr [00:09:21]:
We go deep into what are my pain points, how have I neglected myself, how have I allowed childhood trauma to recreate itself in my adult life, how have I, where are the dark spots, the blind spots, the skeletons in the closet that I'm avoiding? Like, how am I looking at all of that and addressing all of that and dealing with all of that? And in the act of doing that, you will create solutions. Whether it's I was really screwed up in personal finance and then I found a way to turn it all around and then I turned that system that I used for myself into a product that I could sell to other people, or my health was really going sideways and I figured out how to get it back on track. And then I turned that into a system based on my methods and I turned that into something that I could sell. Like that is a beautiful place to build a business from. And now the things that you sell are the byproduct of something that has already improved your life versus your life is this combination of things that you love and then things that you don't love and then you're hoping that your business is gonna make money so you can get rid of the things that you don't love about your life. And it's just this state of powerlessness and you're hoping that if you can solve other people's problems, they'll give you money and then you can take that money and throw it at your problems. And that's just a powerless place to be versus how empowered would you feel that you, without needing your business to rescue you, you solved your own problems, you changed your own life, And now the business is just a byproduct of the things that you learned and did to change your own life. I think it's a really powerful exercise to sit down, make a list of all the things that you don't like about your life, whether it's where you live or how you feel a certain way, like, just make a list of all the things that bother you, the things that you think that, oh, if I just made more money in my business, then all these problems would go away.

Michelle Rohr [00:11:31]:
Because that's the lie that we're all believing. Make that list and now you have to really, really use your brain and really, really be willing to look at the dark spots and ask yourself, if I was not using my business as this default Superman Prince Charming, if I was not thinking that somehow this business is gonna come to my rescue and I have to come to my rescue. There's no money from the business coming from my coming to my rescue. How would I deal with these issues? Because the truth is, the root of your issues is not a money problem. Money is not going to solve any of your problems. And I know that it's so easy to be like, no, no, no. If I had more money, I could quit this job. If I had more money, I could move to somewhere else.

Michelle Rohr [00:12:32]:
But it's you have to go deeper. Like, what is it about your job that you hate so much? How can you change something about it without using money as a band aid. Maybe it's learning boundaries, showing up differently, raising your raising your standards. Like, there are so many things we can do to show up differently in our circumstances instead of just wanting to change the circumstances, but we haven't changed ourselves and so we just keep recreating the circumstance because everything is going to be mirroring the identity that you currently have. And yes, there are things outside of us that have nothing to do with how we show up, but a lot of what we experience has a lot to do with how we're showing up, and how we choose to treat ourselves and how we allow other people to treat us and what standards we have and what we, what we're tolerating, what we're accepting, what we believe about ourselves, and that's not to shame anything or anyone. It is to realize, wait a minute, I actually do have a lot of power here. Because if we're just thinking in terms of victim mode where it's like, oh my gosh, it's always someone else doing this thing to me, then there's nothing you can do because it if it's always not your problem, then you can't create the solution. You're just a victim.

Michelle Rohr [00:14:07]:
Versus thinking, how am I kind of allowing this? Maybe even co creating this situation, and what can I do to change that? Now all of a sudden you have, you've you've gotten your power back instead of giving it away. And that's the part people don't wanna look at because that requires doing some hard stuff. Setting boundaries is freaking hard. Raising your standards is freaking hard. Healing from the trauma response of people pleasing is freaking hard. It is so much easier to just say, I'll just build a business and make some money and then I can have a better life. But that never happens because the business is not going to save you. The business is going to reflect your ability to save yourself.

Michelle Rohr [00:15:07]:
And so I think that that journey starts with us letting go of this narrative, this script, this mission of figuring out your audience and solving their problems and coming to the rescue and just letting go of that because there is way more than enough work doing that for yourself on yourself and that is where we can start to take our power back.