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.
Q2 2021 Review
In my first job, Q2 was the dreaded quarter. For reasons that were never quite pinned down, interest, enquiries and sales bombed during Q2 – which, of course, led to morale dropping and stress levels increasing. My Q2s since then had levelled out, being neither great nor awful, but this year the curse of Q2 came back to bite me. In every conceivable way, this has been one of my worst quarters to date.
Life Lessons From The Mountainside
You may have noticed that I spent much of January and February up a hillside. I walked every day that it wasn’t completely pouring with rain. I studied the map and walked every route from the front door at least twice. I started January with a bit of a pant going up a slope, and ended February 783m up a mountain.
The Eco Lightbulb Principle Of Change
What I am learning, acutely, about change is that it happens glacially over time. Obviously, we don’t want it to happen like this. We want to stand on top of a mountain under a beam of sunlight and shout “I Have Changed” and for that to be all it takes. We want the change of the films we grew up with, where the impossible situation resolves itself and the boy realises he loves her five minutes before the end.
End Of Year Thoughts 2020
For the last three years I have published an End Of Year Review here. They have always been some of my favourite things to read and my favourite things to write – a chance to share everything that happened behind the scenes that made up the whole year. This year, however, is a little different. This year there are too many untied loose ends, too many still misplaced hopes and too much not processed that it just isn’t the right time to share my usual warts and all review. I did think, though, that I would share some end of year thoughts for 2020 that are arising as I reflect on the changes that I have been making – and I actually think this has worked out better than usual.
One-To-One to One-To-Many (And Back Again?)
At the beginning of this year, one of my main goals was to be “appointment-free” by the end of it. I no longer wanted to do one-to-one work and so my plan for 2020 was to phase it out to the point where my calendar was gloriously empty and all my time was my own. This is something I was very open about and shared the detail of in my newsletter and here on the blog and I got lots of questions about how it was going along the way – so I thought I would sum it all up here. Keep reading for my journey from one-to-one to one-to-many (and back again?).
How to Stay on Course
One of the problems with fulfilment or success being a place you get to or a goal you hit is that once you get there, you can stop. When you hit that financial target or book that client, all the good practices start to slide and you can end up spiralling back down the Inward Attainment Map without really noticing. If we want true fulfilment and enjoyment in our work, it’s something we need to get used to working on little and often, rather than something we do one big push towards. We need to learn how to stay on course.
How To Know What To Do Next
Ever get that feeling of not quite knowing what the next best thing to do is? It might be that you have loads of ideas and can’t decide where to start, or that you know where you want to go but have no clue what to do as a first step. Perhaps you’re overwhelmed with options and can’t find a way through them, even though you feel pretty confident about where you want to go. Either way, building a business really boils down to a series of decisions about how to know what to do next, so getting confident about how to do that makes this whole journey a lot smoother.
How To Stop Overthinking
Ok, I’ll admit that’s quite a clickbait-y title, and I don’t know whether it’s possible to completely stop overthinking. But before you switch tabs feeling short-changed, hear me out. When we have any problem, be it overthinking, low confidence or perfectionism, we want to be able to stop it entirely, overcome it – grind it to dust. The trouble is, that takes a lot of time and a lot of energy – time and energy you’re not spending on your business. The fears aren’t ever going to go away entirely, and while we’re focused on them, our dreams are stagnating. So rather than try to stop overthinking, let’s think about how we can keep going in spite of it.
How I Deal With Comparison Online
There will never be a time when the title of this post isn’t relevant. Whether you’re busy or quiet, positive or frustrated, focused or distracted, comparison can jump on you at any given moment.
A Letter To Those Who Think 'That's Not For People Like Me'
Come join me out here on the balcony. Not just the physical one (although you’d be very welcome), but the metaphorical one too – a romanticised space, jutting out on a limb from the ‘normal’ structure where faith and trust is needed that when you step out there it will hold you aloft and not send you falling to the floor.