Thriving as a highly sensitive entrepreneur.

A lifetime can be spent trying to understand ourselves, and as if it was sent to test us, the process of creating a business as a compassionate, sensitive, and creative solopreneur can hold up a giant inescapable mirror to our gritty reality. There’s just no getting around it. If we want to get to where we are headed, we have to get out of our own way, and to do that we have got to look - really look into that mirror.

There can be great resistance around that because there’s a common misconception that doing the inner work is hard and therefore too hard to be healthy, and that belief in itself contributes to holding back the beautiful potential to flow freely into life’s calling.

The truth is that for sensitive people, the paths to self-knowledge, self-love, and self-development are many, and some can create more internal upheaval than others. It isn’t necessary to go deep into darkness in order to step into the light … there are gentle ways to go.

Doing this work provides an opportunity to bring curiosity to how we exist in the world, and allows us to see what we’re really made of, what we actually care about, how we came to be this complex human, why we’re here, and who we might become. It will also shine a light on quietly lingering questions in the background … “Am I cut out to succeed at this, and can I find a way to do it that actually feels more like freedom and less like constant impending doom?!”

When I finally discovered that I’m a highly sensitive person (HSP), it explained myself to myself so much! Suddenly I saw so many of my struggles as incorrectly processed and internalised beliefs. It also enabled me to see the strengths and gifts that I have as a direct result of my power of sensitivity.

It can be so deeply comforting and liberating … but at the same time, it raises so many questions - starting with how to get out of your own way, move beyond the obstacles that come along with the benefits of being HSP, and thrive.

It seems that to genuinely thrive as an HSP entrepreneur, it’s not enough to find a strategy. The calling is to find our own. Yes, as nature would have it, HSPs seem destined to find their own aligned path … do the creative searching and the inner work to carve out a way to be and do business and show up and create meaning and make a difference that fits their unique purpose and talents, and energy. It’s a journey … but because it feels like a calling, what choice is there but to honour who you are and design a way to do business that is a perfect personal fit?

Thankfully that is possible. And it’s a wonderful life to embrace - made possible by doing the inner work.

This business IS personal, right?!

This is not just about developing a personal brand. And it’s not just about embracing and embodying your inner truth. It’s a combination. They’re inextricably linked! That’s why all those courses and programs and lead magnets about what to do to earn 5 figures per month after 90 days don’t work for us. They are systematised and don’t feel aligned, and don’t take into consideration our intensely burning need to do what feels right for us, to not be told what to do, and also to continue to search for a way to feel personally energised to succeed and thrive in the process.

Not everyone will get that because the other 80% have no idea what it is like inside the mind and body of a highly sensitive person, so it’s not that you are not enough or missing something or not cut out for this life or weird (well, ok, maybe you are weird, and that’s a good thing!). It’s that you need a way to find your own beautifully aligned path and message and way of being.

YAY!!! I’m excited that you want that because that means the world gets the benefit of your awesomeness - of the work that you can do like nobody else, because of who you are.

Consider that for a moment. What a difference you can make because of the sensitivities you have - empathy, intuition, dot-connecting, reading people’s emotions, understanding things quickly, acute observation skills, and creativity pouring out of you, not to mention all the ways you use your actual senses to experience and process the world.

You can find out more about being HSP by checking out the work of Elaine Aron. She coined the term and has developed a self-test to help you ascertain if being HSP is what is making you YOU. While she doesn’t have specific resources to being an entrepreneur with HSP, I’m here to help fill that gap, so if you feel called to discover more about yourself and how to step into your life’s work, whether or not you specifically identify with the term HSP, if this struggle and desire speaks to you, I invite you to subscribe on the blog home page to receive future insights and stories from me.