Podcast Episode 347 - Could Fixing One Relationship Transform Your Business?

In this episode of the Flourish Academy Podcast, Heather dives deep into how the relationships in your life—especially the one you have with yourself and your business—affect your success. Drawing from a powerful mentoring experience, Heather shares key insights into why your most important relationship can either fuel or hinder your progress.

From improving communication with your spouse to practicing self-compassion and transforming your business mindset, this episode is packed with actionable advice for unlocking breakthroughs in both business and life. Plus, stay tuned for a marriage tip at the end that could change your life!

Show Notes:

• Why the most important relationship in your life impacts your business.
• How unresolved personal relationship issues can drain your cognitive resources.
• The impact of self-talk on your business and life.
• Tips for cultivating a healthy relationship with your business.
• How to reframe your thoughts to create better results in your business.

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Connect:

Heather Lahtinen: Website, Facebook, Instagram

TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to the Flourish Academy podcast and today we are talking about your

relationship with your business. My name is Heather Lahtinen and I'm a photographer,

educator, and entrepreneur. And I founded the Flourish Academy as a resource for

photographers of all levels. We want to help you pursue your passion on your own

terms because we believe there is room for everyone. In this podcast, we focus on

creating throughs with your mindset to discover the things that are really holding

you back in business and life. Today, I am sharing a clip from a recent strategy

call inside of our Elevate program. If you are a photographer and you'd like to

grow your business, I really want to encourage you to join us. That's why I

sometimes share these clips because I want to give you an idea of some of the

topics that we cover. The only link you need is in the show notes so that you can

get all of the details when you are ready to join us, but I can guarantee a

breakthrough or a transformation when you jump in. Anyway,

I felt like this topic was important enough to bring to the podcast and I know

that you will find it valuable and PS. Yes, there is a quick marriage tip at the

end that will most likely change your life. And the reason I know that and can say

it with such confidence is because I've already received feedback from some of our

elevators.

I want to talk about relationships and I want to talk about it in a few different

ways. This may seem odd, please just stay with me. I picked up on something

something very, very early in my mentoring career. And that is that you are only as

successful as your most important relationship. So I want you to think about the

relationship that is most important to you. This could be your spouse, your partner,

one of your parents, a sibling, maybe your closest friend. This is the relationship.

I want you to think of this relationship that is just really, really important to

you. And when it's out of balance, you will work to get it back in balance,

because if there are only any problems or unresolved issues, your brain just wants

to fix it, just wants to make it right. So it's going to be distracted until

things are set right in that relationship. This takes up a tremendous amount of

cognitive space, and you might not even be realizing it. So this came to light

about 15 years ago. I had a photographer friend, client,

also a friend, like more than just a friend, friend, friend. And I was helping her

with her business and, and Everything just felt like,

like with her business. Was this feeling like we were like walking through mud?

Everything just felt really heavy and like it was like a challenge. And then one

day I said to her, I asked her if I could be honest, yes, of course. And I said,

you really have to work on your marriage

because There is something going on that your brain can't get past and things

clearly aren't right and then your emotions are really high around your marriage,

understandably so. So your intelligence is low, you're not thinking clearly, and how

can you face the challenges of growing your business or marketing finding clients.

When

intelligence you're like IQ is just like in the toilet really to be frank you're

just not thinking clearly so you have to work on getting your marriage straight

which she did and things improved significantly and then I just noticed throughout

the years that if somebody would come to me working on their business but something

was wrong in their important relationship it was just always harder so I just want

you to think about that relationship. And if everything's great, fantastic. But if

it's not, it could be holding you back in your business.

I've also heard that the most important relationship you have is the one that you

have with yourself.

So how do you view yourself?

How Often do you tell the person your most important relationship that you love

them,

whether that's the outside person or you, that you are proud of what they've

accomplished, that you have their back, that you believe in them. How much compassion

do you extend to this person? Are you compassionate or do you judge them? Do you

care for this person or do you beat them up? I'm talking about the relationship

with you.

How do you talk to yourself about yourself?

I just wonder how much more you could accomplish in your business or how much space

would open up for you if you treated this person better, this person meaning you. I

mean, unless you enjoy living in turmoil with yourself, then by all means continue

to beat yourself up and tell yourself how you don't know what you're doing or

you're stupid or you're slow, you can't figure this out or whatever.

A relationship, any relationship, whether that's with another person or with yourself,

any relationship is really just your thoughts about that person. So if you think

about someone that you care about, what are your thoughts that lead you to the

feeling of love or endearment. You have thoughts about that person. And then think

of someone you dislike. What are the thoughts that you are thinking about that

person that leads to feelings of irritation or frustration?

So you have thoughts about another person. That's, that's your relationship period.

You have thoughts about yourself. That's your relationship with yourself. And then did

you also know that you have a relationship with your business.

If you are always thinking that this is so hard or that nothing is working,

how do you think that impacts your business? Is it possible that you are hurting

the feelings of your business by the way you think about it? Like if you think,

we know that thoughts lead to results so if you think I'm not good enough to

charge this or I'm not maybe I'm not worth it then of course that leads to

underpricing makes things difficult or if you think no one wants what I'm offering

then you avoid opportunities if you think that it's too hard to figure everything

out you will stop your own progress before it even starts

Rather than thinking things like I'm learning and improving every day, there's someone

out there that is already willing and able to pay me. I can simplify my business.

I can figure this out. It's not just about you and your relationship with you. It's

about you and your relationship with your business. I want you to think about this.

How are you thinking about your business? How are you talking to your business? How

are you talking to self.

If you cleaned this up, everything would shift for you. If you were just nicer to

yourself and you spoke kindly to your business, I just wonder what would happen.

Like building a strong healthy relationship with the most important person in your

life and also you and also your this.

And if you're like, oh, Heather, no, I just want that one page marketing plan and

I will go out and execute, well, then okay, I can give you that, but it's just

not going to work if everything's amassed in your relationships in all of those

relationships.

Some of you will say, well, I, if I had more money, I would feel better,

you know, in the business. If I could get more clients, I would be happier.

But I don't make my business or outside circumstances responsible for my feelings.

I am responsible for my feelings, and I know that those emotions are created by my

thoughts. So the feeling of security and confidence are available to you now. You

don't have to wait until you get more clients and then you'll feel confident.

Or when I'm making more money, I'll feel secure.

Those feelings are available to you now based on your thoughts. So what would you

need to think to feel those things? You could just think those things now and I

promise you would feel better. I do not wait for outside circumstances to dictate

how I'm going to feel or how I'm going to think and what I'm going to do to move

forward. I just don't. Outside circumstances are not the answer. It's an internal

game, game, and then those external circumstances will ultimately reflect,

your results will reflect how you're thinking about that.

If you have ever said, I will feel better when I have more clients, I just want

you to explore that. Is it possible to feel better now and just think something

differently? The answer to that question is yes, of course it is.

And then lastly, before we just get into any open coaching, I want to share a

personal example. And when I was thinking about this, I was hesitating. I was like,

I don't know, this is kind of personal and I don't know. But I decided to go for

it. My intuition told me this could be helpful. So the most important relationship I

have is with my husband. And I don't love Craig because Craig.

I love Craig because I have thoughts about him. And those thoughts lead to the

feeling of love. Okay, my thoughts about him. It is really easy to have negative

thoughts about a spouse, a partner, a friend, whoever. It's easy to do because we

are concerned about ourselves or something happens. I don't know. It's just easy.

Negative thoughts are easy for us. Negative thoughts about ourselves about others.

That's just easy. It's much more difficult to cultivate positive thoughts. That's

where the work comes in. So I have decided a couple of things which I believe have

contributed to the success of this marriage. We've been together 30 years. One is I

do not make Craig responsible for my feelings. Craig is not responsible like you

would not hear me say to him you make me so mad or you upset me. You just

wouldn't hear me say that. He is not responsible for my feelings. I am. That's a

huge one. Whenever there is conflict or disagreement, I have learned how to shift

like bad feelings or unpleasant thoughts to good loving thoughts in about 30 seconds.

What I have done is I have a list of things that okay my list of things that I

love about Craig is truly endless because he is like everything but I've come up

with a smaller list that I have memorized in my brain so that whenever I have

yucky feelings or bad thoughts I immediately go to these good thoughts I can see

them in my brain and within 30 seconds I can change how I'm feeling about him

might take a couple minutes to integrate, but I can do it really, really quickly.

Now, let me just say that there are times when you're mad about something. I'm mad

about something and it makes sense to be mad about it. You just want to stay mad

and you stay with your negative thoughts and it's okay, like not a problem. But if

I decide that I don't like those negative thoughts or what they're producing in

terms of my feelings towards him, then I can switch them in 30 seconds just by

just by grabbing these thoughts. So perfect example of this is last night he was

getting on my nerves for sure. So he's been sick and I don't know if he has a

flu or he's taken some new medication that might be messing with him. I don't know.

Sick of it. He was saying some words.

Okay. but I was like starting to get like frustrated and annoyed and I asked myself

if I wanted to stay in that feeling that's always an option no judgment or did I

want to feel better and I wanted to feel better so I have this thought about Craig

that he is just a decent man sleep my that's like my one thought about Craig that

is like this is a decent man. He would do anything for me.

He has the heart of a servant. He would do anything to protect his family.

He has this thing where multiple times a week he'll say to me in the morning,

"What can I do to make your day easier? What can I do to make your weekend

better?" This is a decent, solid man. So,

whatever he's saying or we're having a little disagreement, conflict, whatever,

in my mind, he's a decent man. He is a good man. He loves his family.

He would do anything for him. I just have these thoughts and in 30 seconds, I can

cultivate so much love for him that whatever is going on is just like

Not a thing.

Can you imagine what that does for how we live?

What if you could do this towards yourself or Towards your business or towards the

most important person in your life. What if you came up with? Okay, I want to

encourage you actually to do this, to come up with a list of things,

reasons you love your business, yourself or the most important person that you have

and read them over and over and have a few of those that you can just like call

upon in any given moment during any given circumstance and decide to think them

And then how quickly you'll turn things around, you'll process things,

you'll work through them, and then you'll move on, which is why I'm able to move

on quickly and get things done. Please do not mishear me. This is not 100 % of the

time. I am a human. I can get really upset. I can be upset with him for a couple

of days and feel very stubborn and prideful and like I have every right to be

upset and I'm just gonna stay here and be upset and sit in my own crap and I do

it and okay and then I deal with those consequences of that decision

but whenever he does something or acts some way that I am not crazy about I just

I'm like this is a decent man this is a good solid man I'm lucky to have him.

And then boom, I feel love and everything, everything instantly is de -escalated

because he can sense it.

There's no like defense mechanism, fighting back, arguing, you need to understand me,

there's just none of that. That's everything on the relationship front.

I just wanted to make sure you understood that you have a relationship with your

business and you also have a really important relationship with yourself and to be

very, very careful how you talk or think about yourself because it impacts your

actions, the actions that you take. Like for instance, if you keep telling yourself

that I don't know if I can do this or do I really believe in me or the pricing

or anything, then you hesitate, you procrastinate, you don't get the results that

you're looking for. But when you repeatedly tell yourself, "I love you, I believe in

you, I know you can do this," you're smart, you're capable, you're competent, you

feel better, and then you take more inspired action and then you get the results.