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.
Q2 2021 Review
In my first job, Q2 was the dreaded quarter. For reasons that were never quite pinned down, interest, enquiries and sales bombed during Q2 – which, of course, led to morale dropping and stress levels increasing. My Q2s since then had levelled out, being neither great nor awful, but this year the curse of Q2 came back to bite me. In every conceivable way, this has been one of my worst quarters to date.
The Messages In Disappointment
At the end of April, I felt pretty indestructible. I was fitter than I had ever been in my life, climbing mountains with ease and following the daily yoga practice I’d aimed for for years. I’d just turned 30 and had made my list – and as part of that list I’d booked a guided trip to do the Welsh 3000s at the end of June. I was excited to start training, and excited for a summer working through my list and being out in the green hills and woods.
Where Are The Things That Make You You?
I was talking to someone the other day about bedtime routines, and they said that they had to go to bed early because “I can’t do the things that make me me when I’m tired”. And at the time, something about that statement clanged like a gong in my mind but I couldn’t put into meaningful thoughts exactly why it made me…uncomfortable.
The Person I Am and The Person I Want To Be
As I began to think about creating my 30 at 30 list, I began coming up against the same recurring block: The Person I Am. I capitalise The Person I Am because it really does feel like a proper noun; a thing that exists that has a bearing upon me that doesn’t always feel under my control. It is within me, but also independent of me, telling me what I can and can’t do regardless of what I actually think about the matter.
My 30 at 30 List
This week, I turned thirty. For some this is might mean nothing more than an extra candle on the cake or for others it might signal the unwelcome arrival of the end of youth. But for me, thirty feels, above all, like opportunity. Following an undeniably life-changing 6 months I feel like I am just now starting to scratch the surface of who I really am, what is possible for me and how I can truly, deeply belong to myself.
Life Lessons From The Mountainside
You may have noticed that I spent much of January and February up a hillside. I walked every day that it wasn’t completely pouring with rain. I studied the map and walked every route from the front door at least twice. I started January with a bit of a pant going up a slope, and ended February 783m up a mountain.
Guilt and Balance: Breaking The Productivity Addiction
When I was going through the responses to my annual survey, I began to see the same struggle coming up over and over again: guilt. More specifically, guilt about not being productive enough, whilst simultaneously not taking time for oneself: “I WANT more balance, but I always seem to feel guilty when I’m not at my desk”. Over and over, in different words and in different ways people were chastising themselves for not working more, doing more, achieving more – and not being more balanced.
The Eco Lightbulb Principle Of Change
What I am learning, acutely, about change is that it happens glacially over time. Obviously, we don’t want it to happen like this. We want to stand on top of a mountain under a beam of sunlight and shout “I Have Changed” and for that to be all it takes. We want the change of the films we grew up with, where the impossible situation resolves itself and the boy realises he loves her five minutes before the end.
Goals, Intentions and Word Of The Year 2021
This new year is different. This new year there is not the clean break to “start again” that other years have. Of course this is always the case; the ticking over of a digit at the end of the year denotes nothing but our human need to control and measure time. Usually we manage to kid ourselves that the ticking over is meaningful, that it can birth us anew into a whole different world – but this year, with ongoing lockdowns and vaccine rollouts and continuing deaths around the world, it is harder to feel the change in the air.
In This House We Do Not Glorify Busy
Ever hear something come out of your mouth and have no idea where it came from? A moment where you float outside of yourself for just a moment, those words hanging in the air and think “well…that’s new”. Let me set the scene – it’s sunny, and I am lying on our front wall, propped up by bolster cushions and reading a book. My boyfriend walks out of the house and asks, “busy?” – in that semi-taunting, semi-shaming way that people do. My eyes flick up to him, and I say, “in this house, we do not glorify busy.”
How To Stop Being A Perfectionist
“Oh yes, I’m a perfectionist” – that’s always been my default position. At school, if my exercise book had an unruly dot or ink flick, I would carefully eek the page out from the staples and start again clean. There was a time in primary school where we thought I might need extra time in exams because I was so slow doing my work, but actually, I was attempting to complete each task to microscopic levels of perfection. As an adult, this morphed into an inability to take criticism and flat refusals to try anything new – as both would show the world that I was less than perfect.
The Unexpected Magic Of Low Expectations
I have always had high expectations for myself. That was something I never expected to change. I have always been planning my high achievement, whether that was ordering university prospectuses when I was 14 or setting a goal to make £100k in 2020.
How to know what you want
I just want to know what I want. It sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it, like that should be the very least that you know. It’s fine that you might not know how to get it yet or exactly when, but you should at least know what it is you want. But I think sometimes this can be the hardest thing to know.
Maintaining the New Year Energy
So I definitely had a bit of a New Year high this year. I flew down from the sky and landed in 2020 in superhero pose; around me, the dust of 2019 swirled and settled as I slowly looked up grimly towards the coming months, a vision of focus and determination. I was grounded and committed to my goals and intentions, I had so many ideas for content and products that my Notes app was getting out of control and I was going to make 2020 a positive and transformative year. But then January was 7 weeks long and things began to, fizzle.
Getting Into A Focused Mindset For A Productive Day
Sometimes we just need to have a really productive day. Maybe there’s a looming deadline, maybe you’ve got behind on your to-do list for the week or maybe you’ve got a precious free Saturday to work on your business. Whatever the reason, there’s an amount of pressure on that day – it weighs heavy with your expectations and you’re worried that you won’t be able to ‘make the most of it’.
Create The Product *You* Want To Buy
Whenever we want to create something new in our business, we tend to start with ‘what do people want?’. This is good! In fact, you might go so far as to say that it’s a pretty hard and fast rule of business ownership – create products that your customer really wants. Do surveys and research and put together their suggestions with your know-how and hey presto! But sometimes, business ownership means breaking the rules…
The Power of ‘Being’ vs ‘Having Goals
It seems trite to say it, but goals are important. They help you keep an eye on where you’re taking your business (and your life!), they translate your dreams into actions and they are a motivational force. I don’t think anyone is under any doubt that setting goals is a Good Thing.
Goals, Mindsets and Word of the Year for 2020
Here is the second part of my end of year ritual, moving on from the review of the old year by taking those insights and turning them into positive changes or actions for the new one. (By the way, if you’ve not yet read my review of 2019 this post will be more enriched by the detail in there!).
2019 Year Review: The ‘Difficult Second Album’ Year
Sometime around October the thought struck me: “boy, my year in review is going to be quite an epic this year.” My year bounced from burn out to heartbreak to bereavement; I made £20k less than I did last year; I spent a lot of the year not trusting myself, not committing to decisions and flip-flopping over every little thing.
A Rallying Cry To Your Deep Down Dreams
Whenever I start working with a new coaching client, there’s a one question I always ask them. Among the usual questions you’d expect from an introductory questionnaire (“what to do you?”, “how do you feel about your business?”, “what are your goals?”) there is another: what is your deep down dream that you never say out loud?