The Emotional Baggage that Blocks Your Success in Business

Not one event

The fact that you're reading this tells me you are worried about emotional baggage. You are worried that it is blocking your success in business. You're probably right. How can I be so sure? Well, your feelings tell me. The problem is your baggage is not coming from one easy to see event in your life.

a personal example

Let me give you a quick example from my own life. I have my own business. It's a brick-and-mortar business. I have an English conversation school. It’s based in Japan.

Because it’s in Japan, students pay in cash. What’s more, they put the cash in an envelope. This tuition envelope is widespread and commonly used.

It's also a problem for me with my emotional baggage.

The problem that I have is I want to show that I trust people. It took me a few years to identify this problem.

I finally realised this when I thought about how they pay me. The students give me money in an envelope.

I didn't want to open it and check the money. For me, opening it and checking money shows distrust.

I like my students. I trust my students.

I don't want to show how much I distrust them.

Checking the Money

So, I should have checked the money. I didn’t because I wanted to show my students that I trusted them.

There was a lot of conflict here.

But: how did it get this way.? Well I could not find any single memory that made me feel checking money shows distrust.

But I remembered that putting money in envelopes is suspicious. This came up in movies.

Usually money in envelopes was a bribe. You could hand somebody an envelope, and onlookers would not see that it was money.

And in the movies, if they checked inside the envelope, it showed distrust.

Point of Conflict

Money is often the source of conflict. People fight over money. So for me money was a source of conflict. It can hurt relations between people.

That shows the second emotional baggage I have.

I want people to like me.

It's never extreme, but it changes my behaviour.

Some people like me because I'm pleasant to them. Some people dislike me because it makes me look needy and weak.

I don’t like this emotional baggage but it’s hard to get rid of it.

That’s because there's no single thing that started it. In fact, it was caused by a situation that continued for years.

the situation

When I entered elementary school, I entered one year early. My mom wanted me to get ahead of all the other children.

Ironically she put me behind all the others for my entire academic career.

All the other children were physically bigger than me.

They were physically more talented than me.

The children were also more emotionally mature than I was. When I wanted to play the kid’s games they wanted to move onto the next stage of life. They didn't want a “baby“ around them.

This made me want to be liked.

Because there is no single event where I got this emotional baggage is very difficult to get rid of.

I have gone through thousands and thousands of memories where I wanted people to like me.

Time Consuming

This takes a lot of time.

And it’s exhausting. But there is no way around it. Also, it's not complex. It’s just hard work.

But cleaning out this emotional baggage gives you huge rewards over time. You could say it's kind of like compound interest on money in the bank.

If you keep putting money in nothing changes in the short term, but in the long term you get rich. You get life-changing changes.

Micro events

So if you want to get rid of emotional baggage and have more success in business, you need to check out all those micro events.

They powerfully change your attitudes towards things. If you get rid of this baggage it also powerfully changes your life.

What kinds of things should you look for? Well, money is a big one. Start there and check out your emotional baggage with money.

If you have hang-ups with money, and you get rid of that emotional baggage, then you will become more trustworthy. You will feel less stress about money. You will feel more comfortable having money. And you will make fewer money mistakes because you'll be calm and clear headed.

the dirty work

So it's best to get into the dirty work of finding all those micro events and cleaning them up. To start reaping the compound interest of your business work.