Grow With Soul: Ep 68. Grieving The Old Goals, Setting Survival Ones, and Staying The Course With Kayte Ferris
Ordinarily I’d be sharing an interview or coaching episode with you this week, but this isn’t an ordinary week. I have decided to keep the podcast going to give you a little support, direction and normalcy week to week, but with a few changes. For at least the next four weeks, I will only be publishing solo shows. I thought I'd do a series on staying the course. One particularly apt for our current times, but not so peculiar to them that you can’t revisit these episodes when we’re on the other side of this thing and need to stay the course for another reason.
In today’s episode I’m talking about wiping the slate, re-evaluating and getting mentally ready to stay the course. I’ve also put together an email support series for the next four weeks if you’d like to get more active in this topic. After the podcast goes out each Friday, I’ll send you an email with a worksheet to help you go deeper and enact the themes discussed in the episode. There’s no pressure of course to be doing anything if you’re not feeling up for it (productivity is not the measure of how well you’re dealing with things), but if you’d like these extra resources and feel at a bit of a loose end at the moment, you can sign up to my list at simpleandseason.com/stayingthecourse to get the email series.
Here's what we talk about in this episode
How to stay the course
Reassessing your goals
Setting new goals
Working out your milestones
Choosing happiness
What we discussed in this episode
Pin For Later:
Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 68 of Grow With Soul. Ordinarily I’d be sharing an interview or coaching episode with you this week, but this isn’t an ordinary week. It’s been difficult to decide what to do in general - let alone with this podcast. You sway one way then the other, you have a meltdown about money, you feel like things will be great, and then settle somewhere in the middle for a time, before starting the pendulum swing all over again. I have decided to keep the podcast going to give you a little support, direction and normalcy week to week, but with a few changes.
For at least the next four weeks, I will only be publishing solo shows. The reasons for this are twofold. One, because it costs over £100 to produce each hour long interview show, I can financially keep going longer with shorter solo shoes. Second, because I can’t imagine how I or my guests will be able to talk about business with so much else on our minds. The interview and coaching shows will return once we have all steadied ourselves a bit.
This then left me with a second conundrum - what to talk about. I know we’re all quite overwhelmed with information about and around the Coronavirus, and I don’t feel especially like I’ve got handle myself on the best and worst ways to plan ahead and sell during these times. Like you, I’m seeing people seemingly unashamedly using the virus as a hook for their sales copy which feels icky, yet maybe that’s because we’re in the early throes of this thing and they’re actually ahead of the curve.
Basically, I’m not quite sure how I feel about marketing in the time of quarantine, so I don’t want to tell you what to do and what not to do. I put it out on Instagram Stories, and it seemed that most people felt the same way - handling quiet periods, structuring our days, keeping focus and keeping on. One response that especially stood out was for ‘really day to day, not long term thinking’. Of course. This was what I’d been skirting around but not quite able to nail down - it feels impossible to make grand plans and strategies in this moment, when we are existing week to week, 12 hour news cycle to 12 hour news cycle. It is instead a time for keeping the focus, keeping the faith, keeping on - staying the course.
So, I thought 'let’s do a series on staying the course'.
One particularly apt for our current times, but not so peculiar to them that you can’t revisit these episodes when we’re on the other side of this thing and need to stay the course for another, smaller, reason.
In today’s episode I’m talking about wiping the slate, re-evaluating and getting mentally ready to stay the course. In the coming weeks I’ll discuss structuring days and weeks, mindset and focus. I’ve also put together an email support series for the next four weeks if you’d like to get more active in this topic. After the podcast goes out each Friday, I’ll send you an email with a worksheet to help you go deeper and enact the themes discussed in the episode. I’m planning a goal evaluation sheet, a weekly planner, journaling prompts, and a cheatsheet - there’s no pressure of course to be doing anything if you’re not feeling up for it (productivity is not the measure of how well you’re dealing with things), but if you’d like these extra resources and feel at a bit of a loose end at the moment, you can sign up to my list at simpleandseason.com/stayingthecourse to get the email series.
Now, after the longest introduction I think I’ve ever done, let’s get on with this week’s show.
In order to stay the course, there needs to be some element of stability amongst the uncertainty. It’s impossible to stay the course when you’re swinging wildly from optimism to pessimism, changing your business model every time you see or hear something new, chasing shadows. Although it may be slippy underfoot, you need to be steady in your core. In times of extreme stress, there is an element of needing time to pass in order to settle into that stability. In the first throes, we don’t know how to think to feel; we are emotionally wrung out, and really just need to feel the feelings for a bit, let the wave wash over before we start to do anything. Once you’re dripping wet but still standing, you can find the stability you need to carry on.
When I say stability, I’m talking internal rather than external. You may have much out of your control, but are able to return to a calmness and surety inside yourself. When you have this, you can structure your days, find focus, move forwards. But without it, your focus will always be split, and your structure chaotic. I’m finding my stability is coming from acceptance. An acceptance that much is out of my control, but I still have agency. That this year won’t look the way I’d planned, but it can look like something. That much might be lost, but not everything.
When it became clear just how serious things were with the virus, I freaked out about money - that I wouldn’t make any whatsoever, that I might as well give up because there was no way I’d survive this. I think part of this was that initial fear wave, but I also think that somewhere in my head I was equating ‘not meeting my goals’ as ‘as good as nothing’. I didn’t think that I would make no money at all, but I knew I would now not make the numbers that were in my, already stretching, 2020 goals. It felt hopeless. But once I, over time, shifted the bar to make my only goal survival, suddenly everything felt less hopeless. It felt do-able, that I could come out of this period with something of my business still left. Accepting that the old goals were now gone, grieving them and the relief I’d hoped they’d bring me, letting them go, was a big step towards finding some stability. Once they’d gone, I realised my wavering and my money panics went too.
It may take some time to do this, to unpick the stitches of those goals from your heart and soul, but they are not of this time - they are of a previous time and cannot help you now. If you want to, keep a record of them to come back to when things feel more stable, but you may find it more cathartic to let them go and start from zero.
Then when you’re at zero, what do you do? We set a new goal.
For me, the new goal I set came from the refrain I’d started playing in my head - “there has to be something left on the other side of this”. My goal for my business for the next 3-6 months literally became ‘have something left’. You get to choose this. This is like the future vision I’ve talked about before, only for dystopian times. Once isolation is lifted, once there’s a vaccine, once the new normal is established, what do you want your business to be? Maybe, like me, you want it to just still be there. Maybe you want it to look completely different to how it looked before (for example, moved from in-person to digital). Maybe you want to have started something completely new. Just make it something that feels do-able and safe - this is not the time for stretch goals, it’s a time for confidence and stability.
From that big vision goal, you can start to work out smaller goals and milestones.
What are three or four things that are going to get you to that end point? For me, in order to have something left at the end of this I have three goals - make £1,000 a month so I can at least pay my mortgage, deepen the connection with my community as without you I really have nothing, and create new things to help and sell in the short term and be ready to go after things go back to something more like normal. From those more specific goals you can then create actions. So I’m putting my one-off 121 calls back on sale, I have my Kits and courses still available, and I’m going to put Campfire and my new Customer Kit, which I’d been planning to release for the summer anyway, on pre-order so I can afford to make them. I’m then going to post more regularly on Instagram, join in with community projects there, and build my mailing list by sending a few more supportive emails and running the support series. And I’m going to create the Kit and course I mentioned, plus have a brainstorm for a bigger group programme for later in the year. That’s my plan; to have something left at the end of all this. By the way, this is the process I go through in The Planning Kit which I’ll link in the show notes if you think that will be useful for you.
There is a lot out there at the moment of measures and things, and freebies that people are providing, most of which I believe are well intentioned. But I know it can also be overwhelming, and you can think you should start some sort of hashtag project or give something away for free. But only do that because you want to, and because it helps you towards your end point. If it doesn’t, let that be your permission slip not to. If you just want survival, then a freebie probably isn’t going to be high on your list and that’s totally OK.
Do, however, still brainstorm positive ideas of ways you can help others.
You’re almost certainly going to be doing some free marketing content still, whether that’s blogging, podcasting, emailing or just Instagram, so think about what your people may need at this time, and see if there’s a way you can do it without composing yourself too far. Exactly like I’m doing with this podcast. Because even when you’re in survival mode, thinking of others and feeling valued is a huge mental pick me up.
Lastly, choose happiness.
Make decisions based on your future happiness, not your short term panic. Last summer, we lost a family member to suicide. As I was in the middle of that fear wave a few weeks ago, panicked about money, my mum reminded me ‘that’s the one thing I learned from his death, that nothing else matters but being happy’. I’d been considering putting out some 6 month coaching packages, stalling because although I knew financially it would be a good move, I wouldn’t be happy to compromise myself. That was one goal from January it seemed I couldn’t waver on, because my happiness depended on it too much. So whatever you do or don’t do, whatever goals you set for the next few months, choose your own happiness. Let that be thing you have, even when there’s nothing else left.
As I mentioned at the beginning, if you’d like a weekly worksheet related to these episodes, sign up at simpleandseason.com/staythecourse. I am also still running my Immersion programme from 6th April, which as much as possible is going to be a Coronavirus-free zone. Over 3 months I’ll be supporting you to make big decisions and choose a road in your business, whether you feel completely lost or just can’t get over a particular hump. We’re going to reflect on what you really want out of your business, hone in on your value and strengths, clarify your business model and make a plan of action. You can join the programme over at simpleandseason.com/immersion, and you can also find all my other Kits and courses on the website too. But most importantly, stay safe and do only what you need to do.