Ep.5 | Meeting my safety guardian (and yes, I cried!)
How understanding the part of me that protects against risk is helping me transform self-doubt into self-belief
I’m running The Sales Belief Experiment at the moment with 6 wonderful solopreneurs.
We’re testing out whether it’s possible to increase enquiries and bookings in our businesses by changing our belief systems - all through the process of experiments 🧪
And so this, together with the accountability of sharing with you all in this Substack, has given me extra drive to commit to this process of expanding my self-belief and using the tools on myself.
This week I went to meet my Safety Guardian. And yes, it made me pretty emotional!
Let me explain ⬇️
Part of the process of understanding our self-doubt is to accept that there is a protective part of us that tries to keep us safe from risk.
What sort of risk?
Well largely they fall into 10 categories: failure, success, low, embarrassment, disappointment, conflict, confusion/overwhelm, loss, judgement or boredom.
For the purposes of The Sales Belief Experiment I’ve called this part the Safety Guardian. Within the science experimentation theme I’ve gone with, I’ve imagined they look a bit like this ⬇️
This is a part that is always on the look-out, trying to keep you safe, perhaps small, and avoid one or more of those risks.
Because what has happened is you experienced them earlier in your life, maybe childhood, maybe in a previous relationship or job, and you don’t want to experience them again.
This part manifests itself in resistance tactics. Procrastination, perfectionism, passive behaviour like scrolling and watching rather than doing.
Naturally when we spot those resistance tactics we get frustrated and annoyed with ourselves. We consume advice on how to bust through procrastination and hack our perfectionism, we install apps to stop us doom-scrolling all day and get angry when we fall back into these same patterns.
Self-Belief Coaching teaches us a different approach.
Instead of being annoyed with this part of ourselves and all the ways we ‘self-sabotage’ we build a relationship with the protective part of ourselves.
We show this protector, this Safety Guardian, compassion and thank it for trying to keep us safe from risk. And then we work with it to acknowledge and see potential pitfalls, whilst still moving forward and experimenting with what might happen if we tune in to a different, more courageous side of ourselves instead.
How do we ‘meet’ this part of us?
A guided visualisation exercise. It’s one I’ve recorded for my clients and for the group participants on The Sales Belief Experiment.
It’s 15-20mins, you get to sit opposite and then take the role of the Safety Guardian and start a dialogue with them about their role in your life and how to work in partnership going forward.
It’s game-changing stuff and really alters the way you approach tasks that instil fear or risk in your business (and life).
The visualisation is just the start of course, the idea is to keep building on this connection with the Safety Guardian beyond an initial meeting. But it’s the start of a complete shift in how you speak to yourself.
So here’s what happened when I went to ‘meet’ mine:
