The cost of misalignment: Experiencing a death and rebirth in business.

Something has been feeling off in my business.

What started as a soft nudge turned into a full-blown scream I could no longer ignore.

In this episode, I am sharing what it really looks like to navigate misalignment in business, what I am personally moving through behind the scenes, and why your business has to evolve as you do, or it will start to hurt.

Here’s what you’ll hear inside:

• The signs of misalignment I ignored.
• What death and rebirth seasons in business actually feel like.
• The real cost of pushing through when your soul is saying no.
• Three powerful ways I’m navigating this season of uncertainty.
• And a personal invitation to help shape the future of this podcast.

This is a vulnerable one. No filters. No fluff.

Just the truth about growing an aligned business that lights your soul on fire.

Transcript

0:05

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I'm an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love. If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator and business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. Hello. Hello, lovely humans. Welcome back to my show. And today I'm coming in a little bit softer, a little bit more reflective and. I'm pretty much coming more human. Because I want to talk about something that I am feeling in my bones right now. Something raw and real, and it's not wrapped up in little bow. And it's not about money and how you can make more money and all those things that I normally create content around and help you with. I'm having an interesting experience in my business, which I've gone through before years ago, around 2020, I would say. I had this shift, and it was the beginning of a niche shift. So I shifted my business to an entire new niche, and I have been feeling a deep, I would call it a niggle. It started off as a niggle that was very quiet and a subtle feeling of something not right. Not a hundred percent aligned. And, this is the stuff that people maybe don't share on Instagram, especially business coaches or people in general running businesses. There's what you show and then there's what you show, right? But this is the reality of running a business. I'm bringing you the truth of the experience. And I'm really felt called to share this journey that I'm going through because it's confusing and it's messy and it's uncomfortable. It's requires so much surrender, so much trust. Let me be honest. The last maybe year and a half, I would say, things have felt heavy. What used to feel light, started to feel heavy. And what I used to do with absolute ease and joy and lightness, I would say, has started to just feel like a lot of resistance. Like a lack of energy where there used to be energy. So what this looks like is, honestly, I have felt an uninspired to create content. Instagram has felt like a chore, and even my podcast, this beautiful space that I love so much, which I birthed into the world two years ago with extreme amounts of energy and have felt so much energy around it for a long time. It has been my most favourite thing in my business in terms of content creation and connecting and giving value and stuff. But it has started to feel like something I have to do instead of something I get to do. And I've had this silent whisper that something is off. And you know that feeling right? Something has happened to you in your life and you've gone through an identity shift, for example, and you've now evolved as a human being, but something hasn't evolved with you. So say it's a relationship you have had this amazing awakening. You are evolved. Your life has changed on an identity level. You've changed, but your relationship maybe looks the same and it doesn't fit anymore. And that happens a lot in relationships where the relationship no longer fits into that new version of who you are. And that often is when you have to break up and things end. And so it can happen in your personal life. It can happen in a job. So you can have this experience where you shift. You have some sort of awakening. Maybe you go traveling and you have this awakening or something happens in your life and you shift on an identity level. And your job starts to become incredibly misaligned and it doesn't shift with you and you're trying to fit yourself into a box that used to fit but no longer fits anymore. And that's what I can describe it as. Is like what used to feel like it fits for me in my business, does not feel like it fits for me anymore. And I've been feeling this for a while. This isn't like a sudden thing. This is coming for at least, I would say a year and a half, which is a long time for a little whisper to happen, right? To have that like silent nudge that I've been really paying attention to, but I haven't really done much about it. And then I moved to Portugal about six weeks ago, and for some reason the energy of this place. And I knew this would happen. I knew when I moved here I would shift energetically. There would be a new iteration, a new version of me coming. And it has been like that. And so I've just felt that whisper that was quiet has become so much louder. So that intuitive nudge that something is not right. That misalignment has started to scream for me, and it's been very difficult because I don't yet have the clarity of what's next. But all I can say is there has been a screaming of misalignment and it always starts quiet, right? It always starts like a whisper, but the longer you ignore it, the louder it becomes. And what used to feel good no longer does, what used to work doesn't work as it used to. And I've really just experienced that this is a form of death, right? There will be so many times in your life where you experience deaths and that is when the one thing that used to work no longer works. A death of a relationship, a death of a job, a death of an identity. Women who become mothers, they experience a death of who they used to be, it's extremely challenging. Then they have to shift in who they are becoming. But there's this liminal space. And that liminal space is the messy in between. It's the space between who you are or who you were and who you are becoming. And it's very uncertain. It's a very uncomfortable space to be because of the uncertainty, because we love to have certainty. We love to know who we are, especially in business. We love to know who it is we help. What we do, all of these things, we like to have clarity and we like to know our next steps. And I have had a lot of clarity in my business. I have understood my business very much so it's made a lot of sense to me. I felt very aligned, but in the last year or so, I would say that that has not felt the same. I have felt like I'm being pulled somewhere, but I am not a hundred percent clear of what that looks like exactly. And yeah, I think it's just worth sharing it with you because this is what I talk about. I talk about being a human being and growing a business that is sustainable, that lights you up, that makes you happy, that gives you the life you want to live. Not a business that just makes money and pays your bills and replaces a job and creates more suffering for you. Because if it's going to create so much suffering for you, you might as well just stay in your job, honestly. It's way easier to stay in a job and have that kind of suffering than stay in a business and have that kind of suffering. Be cause a business requires so much grit and so much of you that if it is not aligned with where you want to be and what you want to do, and you're going against your soul, basically. It'll feel like that. It'll be like a soul misalignment. It'll be almost impossible to continue. And so that is what's happening and that's what I want to share with you because when you're choosing your niche or when you're figuring out what it is you want to do in your business, it is so important to make sure it is aligned to a deep soul mission. Or a purpose that you have that is deep within you, that is not just, oh, I just want to make money, because that will last for a very short time, and you want to find the thing that's going to move you and push you through these difficult times. Because if you don't have that, you will not survive. And the thing is, it keeps evolving. So you will find alignment and then after a couple of years, you will evolve as a human and your business will need to evolve with you. And that's why I'm always like, don't panic about the niche you choose or the things you create, because ultimately in a four or five years time. Or maybe even sooner, you're going to experience a death and it's going to require you to let go of things in your business, and you're going to have to make space for the new things and the new version of you. That is what is going to be required of you if you want to have a business long term. And I've now had a business for seven years now. And I've already experienced one full on Death and rebirth, which is in 2020. And now. 2025, I'm experiencing a similar thing. So I want to share three ways that I am personally navigating this discomfort because this is what is meaningful to me and this is what I believe is required as a business owner. And having this wisdom to know that this is what will happen and this is how you can move through it. And this is a natural part of being a business owner. If you don't know this, it can create even more suffering. You'll make yourself feel really bad about all of this stuff. But if you know that this is a natural part of your evolution and also your soul's evolution, because I believe business is a very spiritual thing. I really, really see them go hand in hand together. Your soul came here to this earth to walk a journey and to evolve and learn certain lessons. And you've chosen the path of entrepreneurship and being a business owner and doing all these things. That is part of your soul contract, right? And you having to evolve is part of that contract as well. So for me, it's an extremely spiritual thing and that's why I really felt called to share. So the three ways that I'm personally navigating my discomfort right now, because I'm telling you it is not a nice place to be, the liminal space. But the first thing I would say is giving myself permission to let go of what no longer feels aligned, even if it once did, and even if it works. Even if my people want it from me. If it doesn't feel aligned anymore. Then I am going to let it go. Now I'm not a hundred percent sure of what that is yet because in my first death and rebirth in 2020, I had this very clear divine guidance that I could not solve that course anymore, the ESL course, and I needed to shift into online business and helping educators in business. And I had a very clear vision. It was a download and then I just moved with it. I had clarity. I didn't really have much of this discomfort. But now I'm not a hundred percent sure yet. There isn't that clear clarity that I had previously. So it is more confusing. So I'm just sitting with the idea of letting something die. And I'm looking at what I have in my business and what feels aligned and what no longer feels aligned. And I'm giving myself permission to let go of the things that do not work for me. And this could look like an offer, for example. So it could be an offering that I no longer sell. It could be the way I market. It could be, for example Instagram, because I have been feeling misalignment with Instagram. And so if I choose to let go of that, what can I do instead? I'm asking all of those questions. But I am just letting myself have that permission for letting them go. And figuring out a new way that makes me excited. That's important. Give yourself permission. Don't shame yourself. Do like a review of what you're doing in your business and your offers and where your energy's going and feel your energy. Is this sucking me dry or is this feeling light? Do I feel excited? Do I enjoy this process? Because if you don't enjoy it, it's very, very difficult to continue. Especially when it comes to repetitive task. For example content creation. If you hate, hate, hate, hate, hate Instagram, then it's going to be very difficult for you to consistently create content on Instagram. So then it's like, cool, what else can you do that's going to be for more fun for you? Maybe it's Substack, for example. I've been exploring maybe creating a newsletter and content on Substack. And so you explore, you experiment. So the second thing is I am getting quiet. So instead of rushing and making fear-based decisions, I am slowing down and giving myself space to listen, to really hear what is coming through for me. To pay attention to what lights me up and what drains me, and to where my energy and my excitement is going. And so if you have an attunement to your intuition, and you can feel intuitively what feels right and what feels wrong. That's important. You need to have that in business. For me, that is everything. That's how I run my business. That's how I run a business that is aligned. So I'm doing that, but I have to slow down. I have to quieten myself. I have to do things that bring me joy. So I'm going in doing ecstatic dance. I'm doing breath work. I'm going for hikes. I'm immersing myself in nature. I'm doing things that bring me joy, but also slow me down and connect me to myself and my inner wisdom. Because once I have that connection, I know the download will come, the clarity will come, and I will know what next step to take. Right now, I'm just not putting pressure on myself about it. I'm just slowing down and paying attention. I would say pay close attention. I've been receiving a lot of messages just from different areas that are pointing in this particular direction. And so pay attention to those messages that keep coming through. The repeat things you keep seeing. Because that is pointing you in the direction, right? So just. Quieten yourself. Give your space to listen to yourself and your inner wisdom, and then pay attention. And then the third thing is trusting the unknown and surrendering. Now this is the hardest one because I am generally an anxious person, and I like to plan things meticulously. I'm not the kind of person who's goes on spontaneous things. I plan my holidays. I don't like to do lots of things and fill my days up, but I like to have a plan. I like clarity. I like feeling like I know what I'm doing. And I have had that for a long time in my business, but right now I don't have that. I am in a liminal space where things are uncertain. So I have to lean into trust and I have to surrender to the space that I'm in, knowing that the next version of my work and my business, the version that is coming will receive will reveal itself when I am ready to receive it. So I am trusting and surrendering. You will need to do this in business and whatever you trust and surrender to, whether you believe in God, or you believe in the universe, or you believe in whoever it is. That has your back. And that's why it becomes a spiritual thing, because you have to trust that there's something outside of you that is looking after you, that you are going to be okay. And that it is going to work out for you and that it will unfold as it should for you. And that's what I have. So I have this belief that the universe has my back. It has always had my back. And the more I can listen to my intuition and follow my energy, the more it has my back. And so I'm trusting in this space that when I'm ready to know what my next step is, I will go do that thing. And so yes, this is a shift that I feel is coming in my business and my content and maybe this podcast. I don't have it all figured out right now, and I'm not pretending to have it figured out. But what I do know is that I'm always going to take you along for the ride, because this is what is meaningful to me, and this is what I feel we need, is to really see how it is to run a business from the behind the scenes. Like the messy middle, the discomfort, the uncertainty, the surrender, the trust. There is so much of that that is required in business. Especially if you're trying to build a business that is aligned to you and your soul and what you want to do with your life and your purpose. And so, wherever you are right now. So maybe you're in a bit of a transition. Maybe you're in this weird liminal space. Maybe you are going through this ending that you can't really pinpoint what is ending, but you feel something is ending and you're moving into a next iteration of you as a person or your business or your relationship, or even if you have a career, maybe it's the end of a career. Now you want to change complete direction into a new career. Let this be permission to you to honour the death, and to get still to trust in yourself ultimately. And also that you are being looked after, and whatever space you're in right now, just give yourself permission to slow down and listen to yourself and your inner wisdom and trust that whatever's meant for you is going to reveal itself to you. And it's going to come through with clarity, and you're going to know what your next step is. And if you do not know what your next step is now, it's okay. That's where I'm at. I don't a hundred percent know what my next step is right now, but it's okay to be here. I'm going to sit in the discomfort. I'm going to trust that it is unfolding for me. I am going to figure it out. I always figure it out, and that is what I want to gift you today. All right. So that's my message that I needed to pull through. And I did want to ask, in terms of this podcast and in terms of what you love hearing from me. Do you enjoy hearing more of this behind the scenes, soul led, energetic driven kind of content? Or do you prefer just like the straight strategy and business tips and things like that. I would love to hear what you really enjoy listening to as a listener of my podcast. Because I do plan on evolving my stuff in the future, but for me to evolve, in the best way possible. Obviously, I need to listen to what feels right to me and my heart and my soul, and the message I want to share. But also what you want, what you want to absorb, how what's going to serve you, what's going to activate you, what's going to make you feel great or inspired, or even just value so you can go and take action in your life in whatever way that looks like. I want to create content that's what you want to receive ultimately. So please let me know. You can email me after listening to this. You can send me a message on Instagram. Just share with me what you want to hear from my podcast, what kind of content you want to hear. Is it more this honest behind the scenes kind of stuff with some strategy, or do you just want like straight strategy? How tos and all that stuff. So please message me. And as always, thank you for being here. Thank you for walking this path with me. It means the world, and I will take you on for the ride. As I'm figuring it out, I will share it with you. I'm not going to blindside you. If I am shifting niches or whatever it may look like. I will take you on for the ride and. It's an exciting journey. What a crazy thing it is to be alive on this earth and to run a business as a human being on this earth. All right, hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, and I will chat to you next week. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you had some big aha moments from this episode or anything that really, really spoke to you, then please share it with me via email at michelle@digiteach.biz, or on Instagram @_digiteach_. It makes my day when I hear back from you regarding these podcast episodes. I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.