When we wait for mood and motivation to show up to our work, we can be waiting a long time.
Better to learn how to show up with. Show up with our doubts and our confusion and our questions… to dance with rather than opt *out* of the tension.
When we pin our businesses on a narrow, rigid set of conditions, we put ourselves in a precarious position. Yes, we need space to honour ebbs and flows and take necessary breaks, AND we need to learn how to show up for our work in a way that doesn’t rely on an exacting emotional state.
Show up with, show up anyways.
This can look like:
- Creating containers that hold the width of you. If you’re committing to showing up to something regularly in your business—like a newsletter/blog/podcast or employee check-ins—make sure the format is flexible enough that you trust yourself to show up to it on both high AND low capacity weeks. If everything has to be *just so* for it to work, it’s not workable.
- Getting specific about where you’re stuck. “I’m lazy” doesn’t help us. What part of the process tends to stick you up the most? Getting started, staying in it, or finishing. I thought I was bad at cooking until I learned… Oh! I just don’t know what to cook. Once I had meals to pick from, I could absolutely be trusted to make a grocery list and shop and cook and so forth. Getting specific allows you to get creative.
- Redefining success for yourself. Are you telling yourself, “I have to write a great piece today” or “I simply have to write today”. If you’re starting something new and/or showing up where you’re unpracticed (marketing or sales, anyone??) this is where I’d start. Make your measure of success “I showed up today” rather than anything to do with quantity or quality. Build the habit first, refine it later.
We don’t need to be all of one mind about a thing to do good work.
Multiplicity is natural. Let yourself see what happens when you show up with more of you, in a wider range of conditions. Confidence doesn't come from knowing you can do a thing under an exacting set of circumstances, it comes from letting yourself be surprised by what you're capable of alongside your doubts and fears and questions.
“I am willing to be surprised.”
Maybe that’s the sticky note you pin above your work space today.
Cheering for you,
— Kate
P.S. I'll also share here as a postscript… we can wait to ask for help until we think we have the mood/motivation to make the best use of it. Sometimes that's wise and true. Sometimes it's through the connection, the community, the witnessing and perspective of another that we're returned to health. Amanda (a feminist marketing strategist, if you're looking for such a person) and I had a conversation about that this week. How often we hold out hiring help—or a client holds out hiring us—"Until things are more settled/figured out.” I get it, and—sometimes the very purpose of support is so that you don't have to figure it out alone. You don't need to have the answers before your start, etc. It's by getting *in* relationship that the mood and motivation comes.
P.P.S. What are you practicing right now? Is there anything in your work/business that you're wanting to show up to more consistently, even/especially when that feels hard? Reply and let me know (seriously! I love chatting with you here!). For me, I'm working on building up a writing practice (specifically for blogs and longer form stuff). Returning to this kind of writing (and making stuff for my own business rather than other people's) is bringing up SO much clunkiness for me. It's been a real slow and steady process. Create the space, show up and write-without-outcome sort of thing.
P.P.PPPP.S. Office Hours are coming up in November! More info and a link to sign up next newsletter :).
