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Visibility: Want It, Fear It?

written by Maggie Sale Ostara, PhD

Part of you longs for more visibility and recognition, and part of you would really rather stay under wraps?

Yup, that’s the tricky part, isn’t it? Because you might feel like you have one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas. That’s exhausting!

I have to come out and say, virtually everyone I know has or has had some version of this. So if you are feeling it, you are not alone. This is not just a disease of the unsuccessful–it’s something that lies inside most of us and influences us to various degrees. And if you think it’s not you, you may want to take another look.

I had a participant in one of my programs tell me that she realized that she had been hiding from her potential clients and customers, so much so that she could not have done it any more effectively than if she had sat down and planned it. No wonder she had been having such a hard time building her business! And she had no idea she had been doing this until I started teaching about it and she started to really take a look.

Visibility is critical to creating a business of any size. And if yours is a service-base business, then YOUR visibility is really important.

Yet visibility may be fraught with anxiety for you, if you were ridiculed, punished, or excluded as a kid for making “too much” noise, for asking for “too much” attention, or for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time” when some adult around you got angry and took his or her emotion out on you.

Added to that, are the imprints you may be carrying from earlier lifetimes when visibility and out-spokenness really was dangerous. In times past if your opinions differed from those of the powers that be, you might have found yourself in stocks in the town square, thrown in jail or out of the village, persecuted, tortured or worse. Not a very pretty history, is it?

I mention this not to scare you–really!! But to help liberate you.

Because here’s the thing: imprints from those past lives can be lurking deep inside your unconscious, controlling the way that you are doing your business–or not doing your business–today! You might know you feel uncomfortable about promoting yourself, and find yourself avoiding all of the things you know you “should be” doing to get the word out about your business.

AND it really is possible to move beyond that as well. You are not doomed to be victim of your past. You are a powerful creator who can change and make new choices–once you become aware of what’s going on inside.

And when you make a decision to change it.

I know this really well myself because I have had to do a lot of clearing as I have stepped out in a bigger and bigger way in my business. It’s important that you know that nothing is wrong. It’s really a matter of your inner awareness and your commitment to what you want to create, being tenacious to discover whatever needs discovering, and clearing whatever is in your way.

Here are some tips I’ve learned along the way:

  • Breathe. Fear is excitement without breath.
    One of my spiritual teachers, DaBen, master of energy, says that fear and excitement are exactly the same energy interpreted differently. So breathe, notice the story you are living inside of, and see if you can change that story so that you can use that energy rather than be paralyzed by it.
  • Bring yourself into present time. Take a look around where you are at the moment, and see if any danger really is present. Breathe and remind yourself of the time you are living in now–one of great possibility and opportunity. Be determined to focus on this, rather than allowing yourself to get pulled into fearful thoughts.
  • Create energetic protections around yourself. Use your skills as an intuitive to create beautiful veils or flowers of protection around your energy field and chakras (energy centers). If you don’t know how to do this–simply imagine that you are surrounded by a cocoon of LIGHT to buoys and protects you. Ask your Inner Being or Soul Self to help you do this. This part of you is well versed in doing this, so you don’t need to be. But you do need to ASK for help–it won’t just come of its own accord.
  • Commit to and take actions that bring you visibility. It’s not that you want to push through the fear. You want to feel it if it’s there, notice if there’s a message for you, respond to the message, and keep going. Do not allow the old conditioning to control your decisions. Remember that your Soul or Inner Being never speaks to you in fear. Fear is not its language. Your Spirit aspect delights in life and expression, and will support you to become more visible as you ask for help. Be willing to do what at first feels uncomfortable when you know that’s what you need to do to create the results that you want. You’ll find that the discomfort fades, or that you get used to it–being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Then it becomes a habit, and you find new ways to be with it.
  • Celebrate yourself and your success when you do step forward! You need to imprint the positive feelings associated with the experience of change. That will help you let go of and release subconscious beliefs and programming that are based in fear and no longer serve you. It’s so easy to just focus on what’s not working, or feeling that “it’s not enough” or “not good enough.” Practice focusing on what you have accomplished and feeling positive about that. There is always a reason to celebrate!

Maggie Sale Ostara, PhD left her prestigious job as the Director of Women’s a Gender Studies at Columbia University when she realized she’s not built to work for anyone else. Since then, Dr. Ostara has become a Certified Human Design Specialist (Level 4), a Certified Clarity Breathwork Practitioner, a highly sought after teacher-mentor, who teaches high-achieving women how to develop their personal sovereignty, to activate their super powers, and to unleash themselves from society’s prescription of success.

She’s the creator of the Soul Signature Self Awareness Project, the Wheel of Power of the Visionary Entrepreneur, and over 20 educational programs focused building soul-inspired businesses that positively impact the world and taking command of your life through personal sovereignty. She’s hosted 5 multi-speaker online conferences, and spoken on over 15 such conferences reaching audiences of over 200,000 participants.

With two decades of experience supporting 20,000+ students and hundreds of clients through her online programs and conferences, Dr. Ostara teaches how to avoid overwhelm and burnout, how to make reliable decisions, how to create a bigger impact with less effort, and how to transform inner liabilities into powerful assets and allies.