Hello beautiful people!
Let’s manage our growth!
The work we’re doing becomes more private over time. It’s super important, but suddenly it can’t take place in the public forums we’re used to working out in. Heck, there are people enrolled in this very program who are not commenting — NOT because they don’t love commenting and building community and “yes, and…”-ing one another — because at their tier, it would be distracting for everyone else to see them here doing this work and it’s potentially brand-eroding for them to be perceived as “needing” this work. Think about the professional athlete who stops going to the public gym and instead works with a personal trainer at their home gym. The workouts never stop, but they do evolve.
I’ll never forget the first time we got a ninja to the Emmys. My inbox was filled with all the ways we made this happen for her and with her. In each week’s in-person class, we were crying with joy over the “pinch ourselves” moments we were all having at this win! So much praise and love and gratitude for the work we had done together over the years. “OMG, we have arrived!” was the feeling we all had.
She got that magical “mic moment” on the red carpet at the Emmys and at the moment the answer absolutely without a doubt should have included the words, “I did everything Bonnie Gillespie taught me…” the answer instead was about magically being at the right place at the right time, having an agent who made a daring pitch, and of course all the marvelous co-stars with whom she shared the screen for that Emmy-nominated project.
It was a punch in the gut.
But it was exactly what we had been working toward: getting her to the tier where she’s living the Hollywood dream. And part of that dream is “I made this happen all by myself and I did it in three years’ time, not a decade,” not, “I did a lot of calculating and researching and brand work; I strategically focused my energy and harnessed the power of my relationships without being manipulative; I trusted that tuning out actor busy work was the right choice and I meticulously did the mindset work of enoughness while staying plugged in with Bon for how best to make these big moves that absolutely transformed my career… over the course of a decade.”
All this to say, I have many clients who are very quiet and whose presence won’t be made public (maybe ever) and I respect that. They know my role in their work. I know they know. 😉 We’re good.
They don’t HAVE TO work out in public like they may have enjoyed doing at earlier tiers. That doesn’t mean they’re no longer putting in the work and it certainly doesn’t mean they don’t respect like hell the value of the work. It just means they’re brand-managing throughout growth… which is exactly what we teach.
Part of your work as you steer your way through growth management is acknowledging the purpose things had in your life at earlier tiers, lovingly releasing them, and leaning into next-tier YOU behaviors. At some point, you don’t need a Facebook group in which to post your 30-day self-tape challenge work. It would be distracting for you to show up there, in fact. At some point, you’re the comic who packs arenas who has to decide if it’s cool to show up in an underground club on open-mic night. Sure, it can happen once in a blue moon and blow everyone away, but it’s not happening regularly. If it is, TMZ starts wondering “what’s going wrong in that comic’s life” about you.
More important than any of the privatization of your process as you navigate up the tiers is that growth management involves staying the course when bookings come less frequently (because at a certain tier, they DO — ouch) and trusting that you made the right decision with saying no to those co-star gigs.
Running back to the comfort of your old tier is a combination of resistance, fear of change, and lack of trust that you are, in fact, enough. Growth management is often about finding a wee bit of instant gratification to bring you inspiration to help you get through the long game. But you have to find that gratification without crashing back to the old tier. Tough, but do-able. With lots of prepaving for it! Lots of enoughness fortifying. That, of course, is what we’re doing together here.
It’s also what we do far more deeply in our next-tier mastermind (which you now officially qualify to apply to join).
Here’s the link to that amazing Bobby McFerrin experiment so you can continue to be blissed out by it for the rest of your life.
When you think about the people you see as role models (whether pace cars or leaders at the highest tier), it’s time to think of yourself as their peer. It’s time to journal about the time you’re spending together energetically. It’s “no scrubs” day for your friendships. Any enoughness work that needs to happen now should get extra time and attention. It’s becoming more important than ever. It’s fortifying the structure so your growth can be sustained. No peaks of success followed by crashes back to the “safe” tier. That’s bush-league. It’s not what you came here for.
Today’s work: Breathe. Look around your life for places you can start to clear the clutter that you know won’t be able to come with you to the next tier. Lay out some groundrules for those people around you who will get to go all the way up with you so they’re aware of what you’re expecting and what kind of support you’ll need. Take what you’ve learned in the work you’ve done thus far in this course and begin visualizing it as a part of your everyday life. Really feel it. Spend an entire “session” with yourself basking in the feelings of being at that next tier, even though some of it is terrifying right now. (“Session” is defined as whatever you can spare right now. Ten minutes, a half-hour, an hour, all day!)
This is important work and it’ll make all the difference. Start by getting okay with the fact that tier-jumps, gear-changes, upgrades, all of these always come with a bit of a *thud*. Think about riding a bike and shifting gears. You were soaring and then changed to a higher gear. CLUNK! Augh! Now it’s hard again… it was so easy a minute ago. Ah… but now you’re making more progress for that effort and eventually it gets easy too. Just in time for another gear change.
This is what growth feels like. It’s not comfy. Well… not at first. Once you’re *practiced* at growth, you get greedy for it and that is when you really soar. But you’ve gotta get out of your own way for this to happen. Give yourself a lot of patience and love through this. And take a break on some of the practical work while you really “go there” emotionally with today’s work.
You’re inspiring me, gorgeous! Keep doing that! Keep doing it so much that you start to inspire yourself.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
