Ep 154: Did I manage to stop striving this summer?

Speaker A: 00:00:43

Foreign.

Speaker B: 00:00:52

Welcome to Unfrazzle, a podcast for solo business owners with a big vision who are ready for a kinder, more sustainable approach to productivity.

I'm Louise Miller and each week I share bite size insights to help you step away from the hustle, stop faffing and stay focused so you can make your brilliant ideas happen and make a bigger impact in the world.

And before we dive into today's episode, if you enjoy what I'm sharing here on Unfrazzle and you'd like to support the podcast, you can buy me a cuppa by going to buymeacoffee.com louisemiller and making a one off donation. I'll pop a link to that in the show notes. Okay, grab yourself a cuppa and let's get started.

Speaker A: 00:01:30

In the middle of July I shared an episode of this podcast called Do we need to Be with what Is? I think it was episode 146. I'll pop a link in the show notes if you want to have a listen.

But I was talking all about how it might feel if we stopped pushing, even if just for a moment. It was a challenge to myself as much as a suggestion for you, because I'd noticed the pattern that I think so many of us experience.

I was always looking to the next thing, refining the things that already exist or starting to work on something new. And I just wondered for a moment what would happen if I challenged myself to only do the things that had to happen in my business.

So for me, that looked like taking care of my clients, sending my weekly emails, publishing my podcast every week, plus the occasional LinkedIn post if I felt like it. And I was curious to see whether I could do it, even if just for a week.

So today, as we get back into the swing of things after the summer, I thought I would give you a behind the scenes glimpse into what actually happened for me after I'd shared that episode and whether or not I managed it.

So the first potential obstacle to me just sort of sitting back and being with what is came in the form of something that I had the opportunity to get involved in that I really didn't want to miss. So Teresa Heath-Wareing was running a messaging month and because I know how brilliant she is, I really wanted to get involved.

So I did spend some time diving into that and as part of that I decided to host a round table so that I could chat with my people about their challenges and see how they're feeling about things right now. But as well as that, in mid July, I was also inviting people to come along to my 12 month planning workshop.

Now, over the last few years, I think this is the third year I have run that workshop now. And in the last few years, that workshop has sold out with relative ease. But this year things felt different.

I actually ended up selling 60% of the places available. And whilst yes, I could have pushed harder, I chose not to.

So I remembered my intention to be with what is to stop striving, stop pushing so hard and have a more gentle time of it over the summer. And I just trusted that the people who needed the workshop had signed up.

And that mental shift from stress into acceptance made a really massive difference. And I know lots of people are finding things tough right now.

So the fact that I had a lovely group of people who trusted me enough to hand over some money and gather to plan their year with me really did fill me with gratitude, rather than keeping me fixated on the places that I hadn't sold.

So once I decided not to keep pushing for more workshop sign ups, and once I decided that I was going to just press pause on the messaging work until I'd had that roundtable conversation with people, that was the point at which I was able to lean back a little bit. So that last week in July was lovely.

I had some client delivery to do, which was great, but I also took the opportunity to head out and buy some pottery supplies. I went and met up with a friend and sat in her garden with a cup of tea and a biscuit one afternoon. Hadn't seen her in a while, so that was lovely.

And I also took some time to do some pottery. You know, my intention at the start of all of this was to take the afternoon off as much as I possibly could over the summer.

And I managed to do that during July quite a lot, which was really lovely, especially with it being so hot and I was struggling to function in the afternoons anyway.

So the other thing that happened was that a few collaboration opportunities came my way during that first part of the summer, one of which came with a very tight deadline to deliver a presentation. So obviously, you know, I made the choice to say yes to that.

And I did that because it felt in alignment with where I'm trying to go in my business right now.

But it meant I had to get my head into prepping for that during that first week of August, which was also when I was taking part in a summit that I was really excited about, and I wanted to be as present for that as possible.

So I did spend quite a lot of time that week recording personalized thank you messages for the people who'd engaged with my content during that week as well.

I had some client sessions that week, had my roundtable that week, so it was feeling quite full and didn't really line up with my intention to stop striving and just be with what is. But everything I did do I did with intention, so I'm not giving myself a hard time about that now.

Also, with all of this going on, I realized I hadn't actually blocked out any time for a break. So I decided to take the second week in August off completely to down tools and step away from my laptop and that was absolute heaven.

So Teresa Heath-Wareing, she'd asked me to make some candles for her next in person event. So I got the clay out and basically made one heck of a mess all week.

I also took some photos of some finished pieces, listed them in my Etsy store which I've been meaning to do for ages. So it felt really good just to pootle around and create at home for a week.

And to be honest, that week off probably did mark the end of my attempt to stop striving and just be so I think at that point it had been a month since I released that podcast episode and when I came back to work after that break I realised I needed to ramp things up again because I wanted to apply all of that messaging work that I'd been doing in July to the launch that's been happening over the last week or two. So there were emails and sales pages to review and rewrite.

I've been getting ready to deliver Quiet Action, Big impact and the 12 month planning workshop. I've also decided to run my own summit in November and I want to chip away at that steadily over time.

I I'm the sort of person I prefer a marathon to a sprint, so I've been working on that. And just to top it all off, I have also decided I'm going to move everything over to a brand new platform.

So I need to start transferring my website and my emails and everything over and I want to have that done by November as well.

So there is a lot for me to focus on now and I'm actually feeling really good about it, particularly because I let myself take things gently over the summer and I had a really lovely nourishing week off. So did I manage to spend any significant amount of time at all where all I was doing were the essentials? Well, kind of, but also not really.

So there were gentle moments, there were lots of afternoons off where I wasn't pushing and feeling the need to create anything. And that felt really good. I definitely gave myself space. I gave myself grace during July, choosing not to keep selling.

That planning workshop felt aligned with the not striving ethos that I wanted to play with. But the messaging work meant that I was doing something over and above the basic essentials, and I'm okay with that.

The timing of that was out of my control. I chose to do it and it turned out to be incredibly valuable. So what's my conclusion from this experiment?

Well, I think I've discovered that whilst it might sometimes be tricky to only do the bare minimum, you know, opportunities present themselves and things come up, it is possible to cultivate a greater awareness of the things that you're saying yes to to give yourself permission to take your foot off the gas. For example, I chose not to work on my summit during July even though I knew that that would give me more to do later.

And it is possible to bring that lighter energy to things. And for me, having that intention in the back of my mind made a huge difference to how I felt during the summer.

So I'm curious to know, how did this go for you? Did you give it a go as well?

I know a few of you got in touch letting me know how much this resonated for you, so feel free to drop me an email or send me a message over on LinkedIn.

If you brought this sort of energy to your summer as well, let me know how you got and I realise this episode has been a little bit different to usual. I hope that you found this peek behind the scenes interesting and helpful and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Speaker B: 00:08:43

Thank you for listening to Unfrazzle. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe.

Speaker A: 00:08:47

And share it with a friend who.

Speaker B: 00:08:49

Needs a dose of calm productivity in their life and I'd love it if you could leave me a rating or a review as that will help more people discover the podcast.

And if you're struggling with productivity right now, take my free assessment to find out what's really getting in the way of you getting things done. It takes less than three minutes to complete and I'll send you tailored resources and insights that will help based on your score.

You'll find that@louisemiller.uk quiz and there's a link for that in the show notes. So thank you so much for being here and I look forward to seeing you next time.