$0 Billing Months and Dry Spells
Photo by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash
"I'm in a dry spell."
"I had a $0 billing month!"
"They said no because they misunderstood my offer."
Just tell me what to do so I don't have this problem.
I'm supporting coaches inside The CFJ Coaching Success School this month—and I love the coaches so much. They are bringing all of themselves to this journey of business growth and it's super fun to be with them.
One thing I've learned about coaches over the years is that there tends to be developmental stages. Milestones of making money, milestones of $0 billing months, milestones of being fired, firing a client, and so forth. These moments happen. And at some point when you enter the profession, you will meet them.
Often when you do, the first response is: Tell me what to do.
This is so human. I don't like how I'm feeling, so please help me not feel this way.
I was first in line on the "tell me what to do" train.
I so desperately wanted out of the debt I had created when I first started my business that I followed every instruction to the "T". And for a long time, that approach appeared to work. My income grew. So did my confidence. And my mind made up the story that the reason those things happened was because of the strategies—the actions I was taking.
But if you've been on this list for a while, you also know there came a time when the strategies stopped working. And the whole construct I believed about what brought me success—and what it meant to be successful—crumbled.
It was in this time period that a deeper learning revealed itself to me.
I saw so clearly how I had relied upon my mind to save me. How I had innocently followed its narratives—more clients, more credibility, more certainty—believing that if I just attained enough, I would finally feel secure, free, and at peace.
What I didn't see previously was the way my mind had been pulling me away from feeling what was present. The shame. The judgment. The fear. I didn't know how to truly meet those. In fact, my system wasn't ready back then.
It is now.
And what I've found since building the capacity to turn towards my experience is that:
I react much less and take things far less personally.
I see the story forming more clearly and it doesn't hook me as often or as long.
I experience more consistently the peace that's always available—underneath the stories of the mind. That place feels more true now than the angst of the mind.
I don't need as much outside guidance because a settled system sees more clearly and knows exactly how to care for us—and even how to respond to others.
The mind keeps us in a game of improvement. It creates a self—assembled from conditioning and early experience—and then spends the rest of our lives telling us what that self needs in order to be okay. And we innocently follow it. Improvement feels like progress. But no amount of improvement can deliver the peace we're really longing for.
Because improvement is about adding. And what I've come to understand—not just as a concept but as something lived—is that true freedom doesn't arrive by adding more. It's through shedding what we aren't. The conditioning, the limiting beliefs, the survival strategies quietly running the show. What's left when those fall away isn't emptiness. It's something far more alive. It's the felt sense of peace that is our true nature.
I mentally grasped this for a long time. The last two years have been a master's degree in living it. And that is where everything changes.
So, gently, I've been inviting the CFJ students to turn toward their discomfort—before offering strategies and ways I might respond. To feel what's present before deciding what to do.
This is intentional.
As coaches, our job is to help others awaken to who they are. To live beyond the limiting stories of the mind. And the best way to do that is to experience it for ourselves. The freer we become, the easier it is to serve others. We just see more as a natural byproduct.
If this is resonating with you—I want to invite you to come explore it with me.
I'm hosting a free evening on Thursday, March 26th called:
Silence Speaks: An Evening of Direct Experience, Profound Insight, and Coming Home
I recently returned from my first silent retreat—five days that I can only describe as the most profound experience of my life. I'm bringing what I discovered straight to this gathering. It's part personal sharing, part teaching, part guided practice, and part Q&A. Completely free.
➝ Register Here.
Thursday, March 26, 2026
4:00 – 5:30 PM PST
Zoom Recording shared within 48 hours to all who register
This session is for those devoted to true freedom. You'll know if it's for you.
With loving,
Amber
PS: Below is the coaching I offered one of the CFJ students after they vulnerably shared about their first $0 billing month. I'm including it here because it highlights, in real time, what I'm speaking to in this article about turning toward discomfort before taking action on the goal line.
Here's what I shared:
I love that you experienced relief after sharing this post. That's information about what happens when you let all of you be seen—in a space that feels safe to do so.
And, it sounds like that relief didn't last very long. That your mind is now finding something new to chew on. A new problem to judge and solve.
This is what our minds do. Not because they want to torture us, but because they are trying to take care of us the only way they know how. They innocently try to keep us from feeling an experience that doesn't feel safe.
All that's happening is your nervous system perceived a threat—and your mind responded to those sensations with a reason for your upset ($0 billings) and how that's a problem you need to fix.
I shared an article that goes into this idea more deeply called, Why We Turn Away. You can read it here.
We have all been trained to believe our thinking, to follow it, and turn away from the actual experience that is showing up and wants to be met.
Right now, your most important job is to recognize that your system is dysregulated. You can know this by how you feel—unsettled, anxious, judging yourself. When you are in this state, you do not want to trust your thinking. The thoughts being produced right now are contracted. They're being created from a scared system.
Instead, you want to be kind to yourself. Listen for your wisdom. How can you take care of yourself in this moment of suffering? The same way you take care of someone you love when they are feeling sick. It's no different. It's your system responding to a perceived threat.
If it feels available and you want to go a little deeper, you can turn toward what's happening inside. Close your eyes. Focus on your breath. Invite your body to relax. And then ask: What is here that isn't thought? What do I feel in my body?
Thought will likely kick up—and you can redirect your awareness back to what's happening within.
The goal isn't to get rid of the sensations. It's to allow them. To soften around them. This helps us drop into presence. And presence is the place that offers insights, healing, and settling.
This is how we begin to rewire our internal safety setting. We demonstrate—as we're able, because this is a lifelong process—that those feelings are ok. That we can handle them. That the mind doesn't need to save us from that experience.
The great news in all of this? Our systems return to regulation naturally. We don't have to force it. And these thoughts and feelings won't last. You will feel relief. You will have more billings. All in due time.
How do you want to weather this storm?
Because that's all it is.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
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