We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Morgan Balavage. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Morgan below.
Hi Morgan, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
I developed my confidence and self-esteem through a trifecta of practices:
1. Therapy! Two decades of therapists taught me what self-esteem is (positive vs negative inner thoughts) and gave me tools to convert low self-esteem, which manifests for me as a very loud self-critic and catastrophizer, to high self-esteem, which is a sense of gratitude for the present moment.
2. Yoga! Yoga gave me the practice of connecting my breath to my body and helped me learn practices to calm my mind. It also gave me a sense of purpose, as I’ve been a yoga teacher for over 12 years!
3. Purpose! It is very easy for me to combat my inner critic when I have a strong sense of purpose. For me, that looks like doing whatever I need to do to support my community through creating abundance and peace in their life.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I just celebrated 7 years as a business coach, and I love the current evolution of my brand. I’ve developed group and private coaching containers that create a safe space for women to be witnessed and coached through the vulnerable phases of growing a business in alignment with your values. We create active and passive income streams together, work through the mindset issues of having big dreams, and celebrate crushing our goals.
One of my favorite new developments is watching how the members of my group, Abundance Mastery, support each other. For example, two of them just met up in LA for a content creation friend date, taking B-roll footage and headshots for each other in front of LA art and nature. They had a great time and got months worth of footage!
My current group coaching container is a by-invitation-only program with weekly meetings and a community chat to support each other throughout the workweek. I invite anyone who resonates with my message to schedule a discovery call with me – you can DM me on Insta for more info @splendid.yoga
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities that were most impactful in my journey were:
1. Ask for help. There is someone ahead of you on the path who can help you make an easier passage. Ask for help from your community to grow your business.
2. Budget for help. You will have to hire someone (like a business coach *ahem*) to grow your business. Hire before you’re ready, and consider it an investment: make it a goal to find a return on your income. My coaching programs are designed to create income streams that pay you month over month with no extra work; that’s why my work is so valuable!
3. Remember your why. I quit my business almost every day in frustration of one thing or another (“Instagram’s down again!” “Why didn’t that client sign with me?!” “How did my email inbox get so full?!?”). Remember your why to maintain tenacity, because growing a business is not an easy road, but it is so, so worth it!
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
When I’m feeling overwhelmed (and this is a daily occurrence), I remember the koan: If you don’t have 5 minutes to meditate, you need an hour.
I take space for myself. I sit silently and breathe. I journal out all my thoughts. I call a trusted friend or send a voice memo. I practice qi gong and yoga. I give myself a break.
Then I reprioritize and I ask myself: what am I most excited to work on right now?
And I do that.
I also love to make an impossible to-do list. I write down absolutely everything I wish I could get done, as well as how long I think it will take me to get each thing done, and it helps me remember that I have to be reasonable and cannot possible fit 20 hours of work into a 3 hour time period.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.splendid.yoga
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/splendid.yoga
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morgan.balavage/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganbalavage/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/MorganBalavage
- Other: https://insighttimer.com/splendid.yoga
Image Credits
Ingrid Bostrom & Matthew Anderson
