Attachment and connection are two totally different things. Yet, if you’re unaware of the differences, it’s easy to confuse one for the other. So, how do you know if you’re emotionally connected or emotionally attached to your business?
An emotional connection is a bond between your business and you. It’s a mutual understanding of being empathic of the business’s feelings (yes business has feelings as it is a “living” entity which is making money!), which allow your business and you to create a deep appreciation, deep understand and a deep level with yourself and the business.
Attachment, on the other hand, feels a little more like infatuation, controlling the business process. For example, the intense feeling you must have the business work hard, earn you more money, and force it to grow in a certain manner. Someone who is attached to his or her business may even use the business to fill a need or a void.
Emotional connection and attachment may be easily confused in business because people may see their business as only exclusive to them.Business owners with an emotional connection to their business are able to eventually experience attachment to their business, however; business owners, which develop an emotional attachment to their business, first, struggle to find an emotional connection, if at all. Basically, if you’re attached to a business because it fulfils a need, you may be more focused on reaching an end goal rather than building a deep and meaningful emotional connection with your business.
If you want a successful business, which goes the distance, you need “emotional connection”, rather than “emotional attachment”.
Here are some business tips for you I have come up with:
• The difference between emotional connection and attachment is a lot like love versus lust— it’s easy to confuse the two because they may feel like one in the same. When you’re attached to your business, you feel a need to see or hear from your business every day. When you don’t get clients coming in, or work coming in, you are likely to feel rejection, pain frustration or upset. Being emotionally connected is different. You think of your business lovingly with passion and warmth. While you may like seeing your business every day and you think of the business all the time, it’s never a NEED, however, a want.
• When you are emotional attached to your business rather than emotional connected, you might spend a lot of time IN the business because it’s what you know. It’s comfortable and you may even enjoy it. Yet, your time IN the business won’t be spent meaningfully. Think about why you are spending the time ON your business to become more connected.
• There is nothing wrong with watching what your competitors are doing, in fact, it is healthy. Yet, when
you are emotionally attached rather than connected to your business you may be aiming to fulfil whatever it is which missing from your business elsewhere.
• When you know who you are, you can be yourself around your business and there is no need to please every client in ways which are not in alignment with the business, In a healthy business, you and your business both thrive on your own, yet feel great together also.
• When you are emotionally connected to your business, there’s no need to “negotiate” your prices, value or worth. Those should already be met. When you don’t want to risk “rocking the boat” for fear it might cause you to lose a client, this is called ‘peacekeeper chaos,’ rather than connection. Basically, when you’re emotionally attached to your business, you’re going to convince yourself to settle for less than you deserve.
• Vulnerability is key in building emotional connection in business. Vulnerability involves showing up, all of you, the real you, 100% authentic and letting yourself be seen by another. Yet, if you are unable to feel safe and comfortable enough to do in your business for whatever reason, you are emotionally attached to your business.
• People tend to start a business with a particular idea of what it could be. If it isn’t becoming what they envisioned, a person who is attached tries to force the exact vision to happen, rather than being more open to seeing where the business takes them. In some cases, people stay in their business way past its expiration date because they’re attached instead of being in a business, which is truly emotionally fulfilling.
It’s important to be real with yourself about what you want in a business. If your business isn’t fulfilling your needs, it’s OK to move on and find/ or do a business, which does.
However, if you want a deeper emotional connection with your business, it is possible. It comes down to opening up, being 100% authentic, being vulnerable, and giving your business a safe space to do the same. If your business and you both do this, you may build a deep connection, which, in turns, grows a successful, healthy and profitable business in the long term.
Nancy Steidl
