From Overwhelmed to Empowered

9 / 14 / 17

Are you sometimes overwhelmed with negative thinking – perhaps being downright rude to yourself? Criticizing yourself for not doing enough?

I guess we’ve all been there; having bad days and moments of self-doubt. Days in which you fall short of your own expectations, and instead of treating it as a learning opportunity, you beat yourself up about it.

The frustration that comes from trying to turn your creative passion into a profitable business can quickly turn into a long rant of self-critique.

The pain of being the starving artist, the struggling creative, overworked with little or no money is REAL.

Fighting to figure out how to do it. Constantly looking for the missing piece to get clients, build an audience and harvest a great income. It´s scary, it´s frustrating, and it´s the situation for so many creatives out there.

I get you! I´ve been an entrepreneur for 28 years. I launched my first clothing line at the age of 15. Started my own dance studio at age 18. I´ve been a full-time artist, a personal trainer, an interior designer and created three 6-figure businesses, including a coaching business, a photography business and numerous of online training programs.

Bringing my creative ideas out into the world is my passion – I love to see my vision grow into empires.

And if there´s ONE THING I´ve learned from my many years as a creative entrepreneur, as well as from coaching thousands of clients, it´s this:

There´s absolutely NOTHING wrong with YOU!

If you struggle with growing your business, it does not mean that you are incompetent or incapable. Not at all! It simply means that you are an entrepreneur without a compass. It´s that simple.

Going from struggling artist/creator to a running a profitable business isn´t so much about hard work, brilliant plans, talent or luck as it is about confidence, thoughts, and emotions.

With the right mindset in place, there ain´t nothing you can´t do!

I want you to remember:

YOU can start over, each day. The best time for new beginnings is NOW. It´s okay to have setbacks… it´s okay to draw a line in the sand and start over. Just make sure you are moving the line forward – in a positive direction.

Move in the directions of your dreams and goals. Take baby steps, but take steps that stop you from being stuck.

We all want to reach the top of the mountain and feel that we have achieved something amazing. We want to feel alive, happy and excited. We want to be financially independent and work with what we love.

Whatever you are working towards, and however far you still have to go, let me tell you that; YOU CAN DO IT!

Keep chasing your dream. Don´t give up! It doesn’t matter if you are moving fast or slow, only that you keep moving AND that you STOP criticizing yourself!

Because the truth is; every time you criticise yourself you take a step back – away from your desired destination called your dream life.

When you Play BIG in life fear will be a constant shadow following your every footstep.

Fear will show up asking if you’re sure – if you’re really, really sure you want to take this big risk? And you start to feel shaky.

You start to fear entering unknown territory. You think of all the things that could go wrong.

But, If you spend your life playing it safe, sticking to what you know and what’s comfortable (even if those things cause you unhappiness), you’re missing out on the incredible possibilities of what could be.

Sometimes the biggest risk is taking no risk at all. And oftentimes in taking the biggest risks, you find yourself living your dream life.

Here´s the thing…

The quality of your life and the success of your business is directly affected by how you FEEL about yourself, and how you THINK of yourself?

That´s why I want YOU to make a firm decision TODAY to boost and improve your self-esteem! Give yourself some credit for ALL that you DO and ALL that you ARE.

Doing so will empower you to do more, love more, give more, become more and live more.

All success in life comes from a place of self-confidence. A deep trust in yourself, that you are worthy of it all and that you deserve the best in life.

Abandon the idea that you are not good enough. Stop trying to ‘fix’ yourself; you’re not broken. No one is! You might have some bad habits, you might be a bit out of sync with yourself from time to time- just like the rest of us. But you are not broken, and there´s nothing wrong with you.

You are a perfect, beautiful, unique human being with perfect imperfections. Instead of telling yourself little lies about who you are and what you can and cannot do, focus on your potential, your passion and spread your message with the world.

With my brand NEW exclusive coaching program Optimize Your Creative Life, I help you grow your creative passion into a THRIVING empire.

I´ll show you step-by-step how to leverage your creative skills by following a clear path using your own voice, directed by your heart and soul. Including programming your mind with powerful new beliefs and patterns for success.

During this entire 8-months program I´ll take you behind the scenes of my business and show you exactly how I got from overwhelmed to empowered and from zero to building three 6-figure businesses.

I´m going to tell you like it is, no BS, no fluff, and no sugar coating. Just real world business psychology, and soulful strategies I KNOW works. I´ve got real life experience and 17 years of mindset training to back me up + I live and breathe this lifestyle every day, and I LOVE it. It’s simply amazing!

Optimize Your Creative Life begins Sept. 29 and registration is now OPEN. I can´t wait to connect with you and and support you in building your heart-driven business. We are going to have 8 fabulous, inspiring, productive months together, yay!

Click here to learn more about the program and secure your seat >>

With love and excitement,

Uncover Your Brand Personality

2 / 8 / 172 / 9 / 17

I´ve learned along the way that to be happy + successful in life and business, you must be yourself and let your true personality shine.

No excuses! You are supposed to be you.

I´ve coached so many creative people and solo-entrepreneurs – especially women, who are afraid to be themselves and stand out, because they want to avoid:

Stepping on someones toes
Come of as a show-off
Getting harsh critique
Being judged
Looking like a silly, stupid or ignorant person

The one sentence I hear the most when I coach someone, is this:

“If only I had more confidence I would …(insert any task, dream or goal)”

“If only I trusted myself more I would……(insert any task, dream or goal)”

Here´s the deal;

The number one mistake you can make is to limit your true self because you are afraid others can´t handle the real you.

People want to see the REAL you, the unique person, the unique artist/photographer – they do not wanna see a bad copy of someone else. They want connect with you.

Instead of hiding the real you, make YOU your signature trademark. If you do that, you don´t have to compete with anyone because there´s only one you and you will automatically attract the people, clients, friends and followers that are right for you.

Free Resources for Creatives. Join Christina´s FREE membership club Creative Women Entrepreneurs and get access to workbooks, mini-trainings, worksheets and checklists – carefully designed to help you THRIVE in BIZ + LIFE. Join TODAY – it´s 100% FREE!

If you want people to believe in you and in what you have to offer, you have to believe in YOU.

It doesn´t mean that you can´t have fears, insecurities or be nervous, or feel awkward at times – this is normal, this is just being human. But never let your insecurities take your pride and happiness away from you.

The truth is that the sentence: “If only I had more confidence I would .. is just a sentence playing in your head. It does not have to be your truth, or reality. But when you keep repeating it in your mind, you will start to believe you lack confidence and you will automatically limit yourself.

Today I want you to make a mindful + conscious decision to step into the world – every morning – as proud and brave as you can.

Your response to you and to any situation either moves you forward or holds you back. Choose to love yourself, be brave and move forward.

How To Transform Your Unique Personality Into Your Business Trademark

So how do you transform your unique personality into your business trademark?

It´s simple. All your qualities, special skills and passions are keys to making a brand of yourself. That´s your secret power sources!

Your personal brand rests on authenticity: the ability to tap into your genuine, humble, and individual human qualities from which your identity, personality, and character arise.

Examples of My Personal Trademark

Let me give you a few examples, to show you it can be anything and everything – the important thing is, that you choose something, that is SO you and make it a conscious + consistent part of your business and branding strategy.

If you look at me and my business, some of my unique trademarks are:

My background in psychology, that I use to empower creative people – especially female photographers.
My training + writing style; Helpful, kind, uplifting and encouraging training for women.
My personal lifestyle, including road-trips, my dog and my life in the Nordic country side.
My photography style; bright, fresh, happy and romantic.

Ask yourself the following questions:

(Take a quiet moment with yourself and a notebook, write down as much as you can. There´s no wrong answers – listen to your heart and soul while you answer the questions the best you can).

What makes me me?
Who am I meant to be?
What value I provide (what problem do I solve)?
As a role-model, what message do I want to send to the world?
What´s essential to me – what´s my can´t live without values?
What do I PRIORITIZE in my creative work, and in my daily life?
How do I typically dress? What´s my clothe style?
What do I love to eat and drink?
What do I love to wear?
What´s my favorite colors and are they present in my brand/style?
What´s my most loved passions?
What do people always ask me to help them with, because they think I´m good at it?
What´s your most obvious personality traits? What are you known for?
What´s your background story? How did you become who you are? Why do you do what you do?

For photographers:

What´s my shooting style? (camera, angles, compositions, styling, choice of object and so on…)
What´s my editing style? (bright, dark, moody, colorful, black/white and so on…)
Where do I want to be with my photography three years from now?

Create a list of all these answers and aspects. Don’t limit the list. This is a brainstorming exercise.

Narrow down the list to what´s mostly YOU. Ask family, kids, friends and network to help you – sometimes we can be a bit blind to what we are, so it´s good to have input from those who knows us well.

Your trademark should be 100% YOU!

Decide how to integrate who you are into your business, service, blog, photography style and brand. It does not have to be complicated, it can be small things like the colors on your blog, your hairstyle, the way you write, or bigger things like your overall message, your creative style or the way you interact with clients.

I´m excited to hear what you come up with – I would love to know, so feel free to share.

Much love,

5 Tips To Move Your Creative Business Forward When Self-Doubt Creeps In

2 / 8 / 173 / 2 / 17

Do you sometimes doubt yourself so much, that you limit yourself in your career and end up not following your dreams?

Self-doubt is normal – it´s a common state of mind. Everyone doubts themselves; hourly, daily, weekly. Our brain is trained to questioning + analyze everything we do.

What makes some people high-performance individuals with loads of success is their ability to TAKE ACTION – despite their insecurities and self-doubt.

5 Tips To Move Your Creative Business Forward When Self-Doubt Creeps In:

1. Self-doubt is just a small part of you – it´s not ALL of you

First of all it´s important to shift your mindset. Fighting self-doubt leaves you frustrated, sad and tired. When you fight self-doubting thoughts in a negative self-critique kind of way, the self-doubt tends to spiral into more insecurities.

Start to think of your self-doubting voice as a radio channel in your head. You can hear it, but its your choice if you choose to react to it.

Accept that the self-doubting voice is living within you and treat it with kindness. Say something like “dear voice, I hear you and I know you only have good intentions. You worry about me because you care. You fear that I will make mistakes, be rejected or not be ready. But trust me; I got this! I know I can do this”.

Remind yourself that your self-doubt is just a tiny part of who you are – it´s not ALL of you. You are much more than that, and you deserve to act on your dreams and goals.

2. Listen to your gut feeling and set your own rules

There are no rules in life so why limit yourself to what everybody else is doing?

One huge trap to fall into is the idea that you need to follow specific strategies and steps recommended by experts, gurus and highly successful people. Of course, it´s great to seek inspiration and motivation – but know that it´s okay to do things your way.

If an expert recommends that you post five times a day to Facebook, but you feel like doing one post a week – then it´s okay; do it your way. If someone say, you must respond to ALL blog comments every day, but you rather spend time with your kids. Do it. Listen to your gut feelings and respect yourself enough to do things on your own terms.

I´ve spend many hours following other people’s guidelines and business-building tips only to figure out that when I run my business my way; I get results. That´s when I grow. That´s when I feel good and increase my income.

3. Do not procrastinate what’s important

Do you procrastinate? We all do it from time to time, right. But the amount of how much or how little you procrastinate will be directly linked to your success/progress or lack of it.

The more you procrastinate, the more your self-doubt will control you. Procrastination breeds self-doubt like nothing else.

In fact, if I could give you just one huuuuuuugely valuable advice in business and in life it would be to stop procrastinating and start doing.

Luckily procrastination is not part of your personality – it´s not who you are! It´s nothing more than a bad habit and changing that habit will boost your confidence and improve your life tremendously.

Start each day with a promise to yourself; “Today I love and respect myself enough to take action on what´s most important in my life and in my business”.

4. Say NO and limit your to-do list

To stay clear of self-doubt, negativity, and pressure; you got to say NO some more. I want you to say NO to everything that makes you feel awful, used, stressed out or abused.

To get success in life and business, you need to focus on what´s most important to you. To make room for what matters, you need to clear the way and remove all “clutter”.

Don´t waste your time following other people’s agenda – follow your own path. Do what makes you feel alive, happy and full of energy.

5. Plan your way out of self-doubt

The number one key to success is planning. Without a plan – you plan to fail!

No matter if you are the CEO of a multimillion dollar company or you are a small solo-entrepreneur just getting started, you must spend time on serious planning.

I do this twice a year. I take one full week where I plan my entire year – you know; all the big events, projects and goals. I plug everything into my calendar and make sure I have time enough to follow through with each critical task + goal.

Every 3-6 month I evaluate my plan. Am I sticking to my plan? Is my plan successful? Or is it over-ambitious or too lazy? And the most important question; is the plan getting me to where I want to be? If not; re-adjust.

If you did my Jumpstart program back in December/January, you properly made some big plans for this year. How are you doing with those plans? Are you sticking to your plans?

Take a day this week to re-evaluate your year-plan – or make one. Make sure your plan is right for you and if not – change your strategy along the way!

You deserve the best plan and the best time of your life!

Breath self-doubt out – inhale trust in you.

Much Love,