We recently connected with Erin Stump and have shared our conversation below.
Erin, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Being an entrepreneur is not an easy job. We receive so many no’s from people, spaces, our content etc. When I first started this journey,every time I received a no, it would take me out. It was hard to separate the response to my work and myself.
My work is so personal and matters to me so deeply that I used to find it challenging to separate myself from what I do. I feel like there is an immense amount of trial by fire when you decide to bet on yourself. I am constantly having to learn new technology, new trends for social media, new platforms for my programs all while still doing the behind-the-scenes work for my business and doing what I love, working with my clients.
Resilience is something I have had to curate. It is a daily practice of my decision to continue even when I receive a rejection. I have created daily rituals to help remind myself that a no is simply making room for a yes. I have also started working with somatic practices in my personal life, and now I have tools to help regulate my nervous system and help me build a resilient nervous system that isn’t constantly putting me in flight/fight/freeze/fawn mode.
These tools have helped me change my reactions and emotions so deeply. I am now on a journey of incorporating them into the work I do with my clients.
I had to build a foundation of resilience from the space and mindset I was in, doing so has allowed me to continue creating a better foundation of resiliency in my personal and professional life. My resilience comes from continuing to choose myself, my work, and ensuring I have the tools necessary to support me when I start to feel like it won’t work. It is a continual conscious choice to keep going and trust that it will work.
I would say that resilience isn’t something that comes from one place. For me, it is something I have to continue to curate and build.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I originally began this journey because I wanted to learn how to love myself. I had spent so many years of my life trying to hate myself into a different person and it never worked.
As my own healing journey expanded, I started following some life coaches on social media and eventually felt called to share my expereince with other women. Leading me to start my business. As I have continued learning, it spiraled into this rabbit hole of different forms of energy work, meditation, body work. Recognizing my own life transforming into something I have always dreamed of having has reinforced my purpose in my work.
Fast forward five years, I now understand that I am a shadow worker. For anyone that doesn’t know what that means, essentially I create a space for my clients to examine and heal their internal worlds so that their external world can become what they envision. Think of me as one of those people who takes you on a tour through dark caverns and caves so that you can explore, shift, release, heal and transmute whatever you discover there, but in the spiritual sense.
I am currently in the progress of completing a certification in breathwork and working on my Master EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) certification. I thrilled to be able to incorporate this additional knoweldge and skills into my work with my clients.
I just launched an annual membership called The Somatics Community. It is a collection of somatic practices (meditations, Yoga Nidra meditations, EFT Tapping and more) that the members can tap into any time they feel they can use additional regulation and to help them build that resiliency in their own nervous systems. Having a resilience nervous system allows us to show up in our own lives with a better sense of safety and security. It is also great to have access to these different practices to help you relax after a difficult day or when you are feeling extra stressed. Bonus, members in the community also get to join a Group Live Session monthly and get access to my Spiritual Alchemy Collection course.
I am also in the process of creating my new somatic coaching offers which will be a combination of regular coaching and somatic practices to help my clients make the mind-body-spirit connection during their sessions. I believe this is a key piece missing from coaching. Coaching is mostly mindset work and it often misses making that necessary connection within the body to truly integrate these shifts in our internal landscape.
Over the course of the past 2 years I have converted my group coaching containers to digital courses and created multiple new courses. It is important for me to offer my clients a diverse inventory to be able to work with me.
Some of those options include:
Virtual Reiki
1:1 Somatic Life Coaching
The Somatics Community
Digital Course Selection
1:1 Yoga Nidra Virtual Sessions
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I would have to say my top skill/area of knowledge is communication. I have always been successful connecting with people, listening to them, and being a safe person for someone to share with. Working as a coach means we have to be able to listen to people and actually hear what they are saying. It is much more about holding space for clients to speak and process without a constant feedback from me.
Second, is my ability to learn quickly. As I said earlier, there is always new technology, social media trends and content updates, website changes, and a million other hats to wear so being able to jump into a new platform and teach myself how it works is a life saver. This has also helped me to get to a place where I am okay with just not being good at something and outsourcing when needed. Giving up some of that control felt really awkward in the beginning, now it feels very empowering.
Finally, boundaries! I was really terrible at this in the beginning of my journey as an entrepreneur. I felt like I constantly had to share things I wasn’t really comfortable with or say yes to every opportunity, even if it didn’t feel like a yes for me. Knowing my boundaries, and feeling confident to maintain them, has helped me recognize when I am over extending myself. This has also allowed me to let myself take a day off and actually enjoy it.
My advice for anyone early in their journey is to figure out your boundaries now. This will help you in all areas of your business and life. As for being able to teach yourself new tech or social media trends, just try it. I know how intimidating and scary it feels to learn something new but you will probably find out that you pick it up faster than you realize. You will also get to know what does and does not work for you.
If you know it is something you are going to need to show up for your clients or build some ease in your business, go for it. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories from fear and most of them are just that, stories. Don’t be afraid to learn something new.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
The end of 2021 was pretty difficult for me as I lost my in-person space to provide Reiki and it devastated me for a lot of 2022. I took about 4 months off from offering Reiki as I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to work as a practitioner anymore. Once I decided I wanted to continue I had to create an entirely new option for my session. I also spent this time shifting through 2 different platforms for my digital courses. The majority of the last year has been spent restructuring my business to be fully digital/virtual. It really feels like I am starting all over in 2023.
It has been a journey to rebuild my social media following and newsletter. Creating new avenues for clients to discover my work and what I have to offer has been interesting. I am looking forward to new in-person opportunities to share my knowledge and work.
To overcome this, I am trying to connect in my community where I live but also to build out my digital footprint. I am getting ready to launch my YouTube, starting a free community on my website and am creating more impactful content for social media. I have also been working to shift my mindset about social media as it was a pretty heavy space to exist in the last few years.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.peaceloveandbubbly.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peaceloveandbubbly/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@peaceloveandbubbly
Image Credits
Leo Gray
