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 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.
Q1 2020 Quarterly Review
It was always my plan that this year I would share my quarterly reviews on the blog, although I hadn’t expected to be publishing the first one in the midst of a global pandemic. While it is not my intention to spend this whole post discussing tragedy, as a planet Q1 has been destructive and traumatic: Australia on fire, devastating storms and floods and now a global lockdown and millions of lives irreparably changed by a virus.
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.
Why it’s so important to reflect before taking action
We live in a work culture where perpetual motion is valued highest. A constant state of activity and optimisation is more or less the only respected way to be working in your business. When things aren’t going as we’d hoped or we get disappointment, we tell ourselves we’re not doing enough; when things go really well and we get a big success then we say it’s no time no rest on our haunches, we need to make the most of this, do more of what’s working. Our view of business is action-centric, and if you’re not doing something you’re automatically failing.
Experiments in Time Management: Turning Off The TV
I’ve spoken about the effects of neglecting your phone on your productivity before, but this week I’ve been practising ignoring another technological intrusion: the television. At the risk of sounding like a pearl-clutching commentator from the 1990s lamenting that TV is ‘desensitising the children’, I have to admit that it has desensitised me. But let me start somewhere at the beginning.
How I Got Into Tarot & Use It In My Business
Every time I post a tarot spread on my Stories, as well as a flurry of unfollows (!) I always get questions about what I’m using and how. Tarot is a tool I use daily as part of my year of being Powerful, with everything from morning intentions to big decision making, but just a little over a year ago it was something I would have never even entertained the prospect of. So today, I thought I would share how and why I got into tarot, how I use it in my business and the resources I use.
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’.
Trusting The One Thing You Can Control
This post was first sent to my newsletter subscribers, and I thought I’d share it here as lots of people found it was what they needed to hear at the start of the year. If you’d like to get more pep talks like this to your inbox once a month (as well as a reading/listening list of resources) then you can sign up to my mailing list here
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.
My Course Creation Process
Creating an e-course can feel like an overwhelming piece of work – developing the idea into an outline, spending weeks or months writing the course content, deciding whether to use video or images or slides or whatever else, figuring out the tech to deliver the course, and then all of the selling or marketing.
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?
The ‘Own Your Space’ Myth
You’ve probably seen the advice to ‘own your space’. I’ve probably used that phrase myself over the last few years. But recently, as I’ve been working with clients to help them stand out in increasingly crowded markets, I’ve started to question whether this is actually the good advice it sounds like.
Five Struggles In My Business, And How I’m Working Through Them
As I’ve been working on my new course The Playbook, I’ve been reflecting on what struggles I’ve experienced in the last year of my business. I think it’s natural that as you work through something to help others, you start to reflect on where you yourself needed help and what walls rose up in front of you as you made your way through the business wilderness.
What My Working Week And 4 Hour Days Look Like
“It’s rare I work more than four hours a day.” The words came out of my mouth quite nonchalantly; it was, after all, the truth of my day to day in my business.
Using ‘Carrots’ To Stick To Your Marketing Plan When You’re Low On Motivation
If you read last week’s post you’ll have seen that I’ve been struggling with indecision and demotivation over recent weeks.