The Blog
The emotions, actions and thought processes of my creative work.
This is where I share what I’m doing and why, how I’m thrashing out problems and what I’m trying to achieve.
How Reflecting and Realigning Has Shifted My Content Buckets
There are a few things that clients tell me they’re planning to do that always make me cock my head to the side and ask whether that is the most effective use of their time right now. These things are my alarm bells of procrastination. They’re the things that scream of someone fearful of putting their business out there, and therefore busying themselves with Very Important behind the scenes work that no one will ever see and that won’t make any difference. Updating their website is one of these t
When Is The Right Time To Give Up On Something?
I have been asked this question a few times; it pops up in podcast Q&As occasionally. It always twists my heart in my chest. It feels so sad, like watching the last fraying strings of hope give way within someone, watching them fold up their dreams and lock them away and go back to what they were doing before with crestfallen shoulders.
End Of Year Thoughts 2020
For the last three years I have published an End Of Year Review here. They have always been some of my favourite things to read and my favourite things to write – a chance to share everything that happened behind the scenes that made up the whole year. This year, however, is a little different. This year there are too many untied loose ends, too many still misplaced hopes and too much not processed that it just isn’t the right time to share my usual warts and all review. I did think, though, that I would share some end of year thoughts for 2020 that are arising as I reflect on the changes that I have been making – and I actually think this has worked out better than usual.
One-To-One to One-To-Many (And Back Again?)
At the beginning of this year, one of my main goals was to be “appointment-free” by the end of it. I no longer wanted to do one-to-one work and so my plan for 2020 was to phase it out to the point where my calendar was gloriously empty and all my time was my own. This is something I was very open about and shared the detail of in my newsletter and here on the blog and I got lots of questions about how it was going along the way – so I thought I would sum it all up here. Keep reading for my journey from one-to-one to one-to-many (and back again?).
How to Stay on Course
One of the problems with fulfilment or success being a place you get to or a goal you hit is that once you get there, you can stop. When you hit that financial target or book that client, all the good practices start to slide and you can end up spiralling back down the Inward Attainment Map without really noticing. If we want true fulfilment and enjoyment in our work, it’s something we need to get used to working on little and often, rather than something we do one big push towards. We need to learn how to stay on course.
How To Know What To Do Next
Ever get that feeling of not quite knowing what the next best thing to do is? It might be that you have loads of ideas and can’t decide where to start, or that you know where you want to go but have no clue what to do as a first step. Perhaps you’re overwhelmed with options and can’t find a way through them, even though you feel pretty confident about where you want to go. Either way, building a business really boils down to a series of decisions about how to know what to do next, so getting confident about how to do that makes this whole journey a lot smoother.
How To Stop Overthinking
Ok, I’ll admit that’s quite a clickbait-y title, and I don’t know whether it’s possible to completely stop overthinking. But before you switch tabs feeling short-changed, hear me out. When we have any problem, be it overthinking, low confidence or perfectionism, we want to be able to stop it entirely, overcome it – grind it to dust. The trouble is, that takes a lot of time and a lot of energy – time and energy you’re not spending on your business. The fears aren’t ever going to go away entirely, and while we’re focused on them, our dreams are stagnating. So rather than try to stop overthinking, let’s think about how we can keep going in spite of it.
How to Be More Decisive
Indecision is one of our greatest plagues as business owners. It can exist as a constant small doubt in your chest that has you anxiously seeking out validation, and it can also come in huge waves, dashing your confidence against the rocks. “I just don’t know what to do for the best” is one of the most common struggles I hear, and when indecision sets in we stop, lose momentum, stagnate and, sometimes, give up entirely. In this post, I address that indecision and help you learn how to be more decisive.
The Small Things That Build Your Self-Trust
If you read my Q3 review you will know that this current season of my work is fraught with what I’m calling “opportunities for doubt” and practical pitfalls. With the protracted end of a relationship and the shouldering of all the financial responsibilities, I now need my business to step up for me financially (and probably emotionally too). My trust in myself to actually do this has been tested pretty much as rigorously as it can be the last few weeks.
The “Work Is Hard” Myth
“This is work and work is supposed to be hard”. How many times have you told yourself that over the course of your business? Perhaps substituting hard for painful, or miserable, or just a feeling that it’s not supposed to be fun? It might be something you’ve used to justify not doing a project that you were really excited about, or it might be the reason you agreed to do something your whole body was ringing alarm bells about. It’s work, and work is supposed to be hard.
Find Yourself On The Inward Attainment Map – And Know What To Do Next
When you feel disconnected and don’t know how to get out of the funk in your business, it’s easy to try to work your way out of it by doing whatever trick or “must-do” you stumble upon first. Maybe you decide the way back to falling in love with your business is to start getting really serious about your Instagram photos, or that you will feel more joyful if you create a one-to-many offering.