WARNING: Cursing
I recognize myself as a white woman of privilege and that my experience is not the experience of everyone.
This week has been amazing. The ups and downs can be challenging but it's always an opportunity for my own entrepreneurial and personal growth and it keeps showing up. I'm not always grateful for those moments, IN the moments but I have some clarity today about the purpose of the recent prickly stuff.
I've been stressing about growth.
Professionally, I've been asking myself how am I going to grow the podcast listenership? How am I going to gain more newsletter subscribers? How will I sustain my business? What revenue streams can I count on? Which new outlets can I create that will fill a need?
Personally, I've been trying to grow interest in allyship in my own community. What does that look like? What strategies can we tackle now? What are some long term lofty goals? Will anyone be interested? Is a group even sustainable, especially if there's only a small group that sees there's a need?
It's taken me a long time to look inward for answers. Even longer to realize that the real work is within and trusting myself, in trusting my own intuition and being still enough to let the ideas come. And mostly, to get out of my own way.
I've been a messy human for a long time, and by messy, I mean I fuck up, a lot. And I now realize that it took courage for me to always own that messiness and talk about it. Why? Because everyone fucks up, however the world that we live in doesn't allow us to speak openly about it. Especially in the professional or corporate realm.
When I'm unsure, struggling, lacking clarity, stumbling over my own feet, I'm vulnerable. I say that I'm unsure, struggling, lacking clarity and stumbling over my own feet. Because it takes nothing away from my reputation as an honest, reputable person. I shed some tears sometimes because I'm an emotional person. But that takes nothing away from my credibility or my ability to handle stressful situations. It just means I'm human. And that I have integrity.
Truthfully, since the holidays, my get up and go disappeared in a puff of smoke and I find it hard to focus. I'm on my way, the motor is turning over again, but it's winter, and there's a pandemic, and this is the time of learning and waiting and listening.
It's taken me over 50 years to take these times as they come, to trust in the cadence of my body and mind connection and to give myself some grace. I don't have to have all the answers TODAY. I don't have to respond to anything TODAY. I'm playing the long game.
And the easy thing to do would be to give up. I've done it before. I get impatient and frustrated with myself and I move on to something else. Maybe something shinier or easier to complete.
But if I want to grow anything, it just takes time. It takes patience and time.
I also want you to know that I bawled ugly tears in the shower over the holidays too. So me saying that I appreciate the lessons and growth this week, doesn't mean next week will be the same.
Until then... take good care, amazing humans.