As part of the reflection I did on the year 2019, I felt like I needed to do a gut check on how I was feeling about the nitty gritty details of life and business. I wanted to comb through if I was still feeling “lit up” by my daily and weekly schedule – and it immediately became pretty clear I wasn’t.
My business 10X’d its income from 2018 to 2019, and the personal growth stretch that was required to come with it has (at times) felt like it was going to rip me right open.
My business has been built on the foundation of freedom and fitting your business around your life, not your life around your business, and I felt the edges becoming blurred – with work often creeping into other (previously intentional) areas of my life.
As someone who needs a consistent dose of feel-good fitness endorphins, I’d been missing my workouts far too often.
My schedule was feeling all over the place, and I was pressuring myself to cram 40 hours of “work” into 15 hours of childcare.
I had been relying more and more on screen-time to entertain my kids and I missed pulling them into my lap to snuggle and read.
On the business side, my team has grown a lot over the last few months, too, and we are now operating as a team of 7 behind the personal brand.
I recently hired an amazing integrator (Stephanie Donahue!) and told her “I need help planning out a schedule that FEELS good… can you help me figure that out so I can have more consistency in my routine?”
Within hours, she sent me a Google Calendar link to import, complete with room for my favorite hot yoga class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
We ultimately decided it was worth it to fit yoga in… even though it’s during my “scheduled childcare hours” and I had been avoiding morning workouts because I felt like I “should be” working on my business during that time, not working out.
It turns out I’m actually super productive in the wee hours of the morning – and I mean like 3 or 4 am early.
I can get more done in those 3 hours before my kiddos wake up than I accomplished previously in an entire week of 8-5s – (admittedly I was NOT a very productive employee).
Stephanie also helped me break my work tasks into “deep work” – to be completed in my super focused morning time, versus my “light work”, which can happen in the afternoons when my girls are home with me and playing or having some tablet time. It turns out the guilt around screens and kids is also something else I’ve been hanging onto too tightly.
Stephanie has also been categorizing my Asana tasks into checklists specific to each time period, deep or light, which is amazing.
I DID make it to yoga this morning, and at the end of the class – the yoga instructor said: “Surrender into your mats”….
Which felt so, so fitting for how I’ve been feeling.
Surrender into feeling misunderstood – Waking up at 3 am and admitting you have goals of growing a $10M company isn’t for everyone. Nor is amassing and managing the team necessary for product development and delivery.
Surrender into trusting my team and behaving like a CEO – and guess what, everything functioned perfectly for the 2 hours I was at the gym.
Surrender into creating a schedule that fits my best, most creative and happiest self’s interests – I’m here writing this post, feeling inspired after months of mental content drought. (Sometimes space from the work is actually the work you’d benefit from doing.)
Surrender into being okay with my business looking different than someone’s without kids and surrender into my motherhood looking different than a mom who isn’t building a legacy from her dining room table.
Surrender into time spent intentionally – sometimes just 20 minutes of pulling my babies into my lap for a pile of books in the afternoon is enough.
I guess the point of this post is to DO YOU.
Accept that your journey is your own, and you can design it to look however you’d like… and if you DO fall out of alignment, you can shift your focus and course-correct in a matter of hours.
You don’t have to be understood by everyone.
You can absolutely do the scary thing and be successful. Don’t let others’ limiting beliefs fuel the voice inside of your head.
If there’s been a voice that keeps telling you to do the thing – listen.
There are seasons of life (what I call sprints) where your focus might shift – and that’s the ultimate balance – you can always pull the blurry back into 20/20 vision (bad #momjoke). I probably won’t set my alarm for 3 am for the rest of my life – but for now, I’m doing what it takes.
And on to my personal mantra for 2020…..
