The One Mindset Shift that Will Change EVERYTHING

By Jenna Kutcher

(The Guest Blogging Series: While Natalie is recovering from surgery, her friends have offered to bring you incredible content. Learn more about the author of this post at the end and be sure to leave some love.)

 

I remember when I was first starting out as a wedding photographer, I wanted every single engaged bride in Wisconsin to choose me to photograph their big day. Every time I saw someone on Facebook post a sparkly ring, I secretly hoped they knew I existed and that I would be the one that would show up with a camera on their wedding day. I also remember feeling those pangs of jealousy when I realized they chose someone else and hearing that tiny voice in the back of my mind telling me that I wasn’t good enough for them.

 

As an entrepreneur, it’s far too easy to be a people pleaser. Heck, we’re passionate about what we’re creating, we’re excited that it could actually be a job, and we’re putting it out into the world with high hopes that it will be received with open arms. It’s scary – because we care. But what I’ve learned is that sometimes we care to the point that we start to believe the lie of scarcity.

 

So what does scarcity trick us into believing?

 

We begin to feel like there isn’t enough work out there for us, we believe that we have to hustle for every last client and that anyone offering anything even remotely similar to us is a threat to us. We start to pull back and lock up our vault of secrets because surely, if we shared them, everyone would pass us up and we’d be left with nothing.

 

A scarcity mindset can suck your passion dry and can turn what could be your community into what you believe is your competition. It can leave you with a pit in your stomach every time someone else celebrates and leave you wondering, “What hasn’t been done before? How can I ever stand out in this sea?”

 

What believing in abundance can do for your life… I’ll be the first to admit: I bought into the scarcity belief for a few years. I coveted my secrets, set myself on an island so that I never had to talk to my “competition” and believed that it was me against the world… but then, one day, I was exhausted by it. I felt empty, I felt alone, I felt like no one understood how hard all of this was. It happened one night over a margarita with another photographer where we started to talk about how hard it all is and we started spilling our secrets. She was telling me that she had to update her resume because she couldn’t make a living as a photographer any more and I knew that I had done something different to find success and it wasn’t helping the world to not share it.

 

It hit me that I couldn’t be everything to everyone and that instead of trying to be vanilla and appeal to every single engaged woman in Wisconsin, I, instead, needed to have my brand speak so clearly to the 20 brides that I needed to meet my financial goals. I wanted those people to land on my site and know without a doubt that I was the girl for them (and I also was ready for the others to click off and go to someone else!)

 

It’s easy to think: well, someone’s already done that… or, there’s nothing that makes me that different, I’m boring and basic… it’s even easier to think that there ISN’T enough for everyone to be successful but I want to tell you this: when you start to believe in abundance, when you set your mind on the fact that there is enough work to go around and that your “competition” can truly become your community, your mind is freed up to be creative again. Maybe someone has already done it before, but no one has done something in the way that only you can.

 

Some of my biggest “competitors” are my best friends. Together, we sharpen one another, we challenge each other to create for our audiences, we encourage each other to stay in our lanes, and together, we all are doing just fine, in fact, we are serving more people and making a bigger impact in the world!

 

Something radical happens when you start to believe that there IS enough to go around and when you can put your head down and do your best work. Your competitors? They are out there hustling too… what would it look like if you could share that abundance mentality with them: instead of working against each other, you could work together to serve people better and show up in a bigger way in the world?

This one mindset shift changed everything for me. And something tells me it could change it all for you, too.

 

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Keepin’ it real since 1988.

I’m a small-town Wisconsin photographer, podcaster, and educator with big dreams. Obsessed with: mac and cheese, puppies, and yoga pants. Most days, you’ll find me in yoga pants, working on the couch with a smile on my face and rescue pups in my lap — or making googly eyes at my hunky husband Drew from across the room. I’m a wedding blogger, a watercolor artist, and an educator — plus, I’ve always got my bags packed for my next wheels-up adventure. I’m a storyteller, dog-rescuer, mac-and-cheese connoisseur, and championship napper.

“WE ONLY HAVE ONE LIFE. I BELIEVE IN MAKING IT COUNT, KEEPING IT REAL AND SHOWING OFF MY TERRIBLE DANCE MOVES.”

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