Grow With Soul: Episode 127 - Elevating Your Perception, Creating Ooze and Following “Sheep Trails”
Q4 is always a bit of a strange one because there is this push/pull between “making the most of the end of the year” and also hitting November and thinking “well that’s the year done”. Even as the product businesses shout at me that the year is very much not done, I do feel that no matter your business, by the time you get to November there’s a sense of “getting through December” and thinking forwards to plans for the next year. This is not a time for starting, it feels, but a time for culminating and looking ahead. So today I thought I’d speak to this a little bit, and give you some ideas to shape your thinking.
What I talk about in this episode:
The struggles of Q4
Changing your perception and considering possibility
How to parent your big ideas
Structuring your vision and plans for the ooziest possible life
Recognising the ‘sheep trails’ in your work
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Read the episode transcript:
Q4 is always a bit of a strange one because there is this push/pull between “making the most of the end of the year” and also hitting November and thinking “well that’s the year done”. Even as the product businesses shout at me that the year is very much not done, I do feel that no matter your business, by the time you get to November there’s a sense of “getting through December” and thinking forwards to plans for the next year. This is not a time for starting, it feels, but a time for culminating and looking ahead. So today I thought I’d speak to this a little bit, and give you some ideas to shape your thinking.
You may already have some ideas of what you want to do, maybe you feel totally lost about what direction you want to go in; maybe you know deep down that the new ideas aren’t what you really want but you’re too scared to really deal with that. Wherever you are on this spectrum, there are things to consider at this big picture stage.
What got you here won’t get you there - that’s what they say. And we take that to mean that what we did to get us here won’t get us there, and we set about looking for different things to do but we’re thinking in the same way. If our thinking, our perception of the world and what is possible, doesn’t change, then we are just doing new things in the same old ways. We get fixed in our thinking of what’s possible for us, of what we’re allowed to do, of the routes that are open. And sometimes we need to alter our perception.
Last week I wrote a blog post about becoming a 21st century witch in the hut as a way of being rather than doing in my work. I wrote how What I wanted, what I truly wanted, was a backing away. To not have to help so explicitly, to be able to create, to be present on my own terms, to be free of commitments, to be leaned way, way back from the usual model of “online entrepreneurship”. I suppose, when you boil it all the way down, I wanted to do what I wanted all day.
Which presents the thorny issue of monetisation. It is a combination, I think, of being socialised female and of online business advice, that means I have a deep belief that you get money for providing value, and value = service = help. So I was in a bind, not wanting to be a “service provider” anymore, but having no way of conceptualising earning without helping.
But that was just my perception. Nothing within that bind really existed, it was just my thoughts and assumptions. What I had to do was simply consider the possibility that those thoughts and assumptions were not the absolute truth. That there was a possibility that it might be possible. When you start to consider what else might be possible your parameters broaden and you really see how you are and what’s stopping you - instead of seeing the “not helping thing” as an impossible bind, I began to see it as the object of my work. When you open the door to possibility, you see the world behind it has completely changed.
So if you are there unsure of where to go because nothing feels like it, or even (dare I say, especially) if you’ve picked a super clear direction, perhaps ask yourself… what could be possible? Look back over the things you automatically discounted because they’re not for people like you or “who’s going to pay for that?”; think about how you actually wanted to feel or the work you actually wanted to do but you told yourself off for being selfish or unrealistic. Think about in what ways those things could be possible for someone who’s not you - and then you might find that they are possible for someone who is you.
Ok, you’ve considered the possibility. The natural impulse is to plan the hell out of your ideas but I find this can crush them. I have, more than once, had the world’s best idea for a book when I’m on a walk, and then I’ve got home and opened a Google Doc to write the chapter summaries and the idea has just, died in my arms. It was too soon, just a little spark that needed some time to flesh out into a flame but my over-attention snuffed it out. We are moving something from the imagination and into reality, and that is a delicate process. Like when you buy fish from a pet shop and you need to float the bag on top of the tank rather than tipping them straight in - the idea needs to acclimatise. And the bag we’re floating it in is called a vision.
Now I’m saying it, I think I need to find a less over-used word than vision because it feels a bit flat but I haven’t got time right now so let’s just run with it. The vision is the conduit of bringing the idea from dreamland to reality; it shows it the form, the shape it needs to take, provides a mould for the idea to flow into so it knows what it needs to become.
I have, I think, told you before about my idea called Mapping, about how it was a name I have had rattling around in my brain for a couple of years. I have tried to squeeze it straight into a real form in the past (a strategy course or a planning course or an upper level marketing course) and every time it nope’d straight out of there and those courses never even got to the preliminary Google Doc stage. But then this year I had a witch in the hut style vision for a programme for people didn’t know what they wanted but know it wasn’t this, that would lead them in a very beautifully delivered and independent way, become acquainted with their own power and find their own way. And I remember distinctly walking up the garden steps at my old house and stopping because I knew “oh, it’s Mapping”. This was what Mapping needed to be but also I needed the specific vision for the type of programme that needed to fit into the type of life that I wanted in order for what I had thought wasn’t possible to become possible.
You can allow your idea to play independently in the corner of your brain - it is learning what it needs to be, growing stronger and smarter. Check in on it so you both know you haven’t forgotten it, take it a cup of orange squash and a biscuit, but don’t feel you have to helicopter parent it. Instead, think about how you want to feel in your life six months from now. Think about a day, what you’re doing, what you’re working towards, how you’re feeling. And once you feel aligned with that vision, you can point the idea in that direction and run out the door together.
Another thing I need a better word for is the ooze. I, personally, feel the ooze when I’m walking up a hillside that is clad in bracken and I reach a corner a little out of breath and this vista opens in front of me with the sun breaking on the mountains and I just think yes this is it. I feel it when I put a first slice of stone baked pizza in my mouth and it is so good. I feel it when the fire is on and I sit in front of it with a book I’m enjoying. I suppose the ooze is the emotional reaction to the stuff of life; it is like joy, but not as exuberant. It is a kind of calm, seductive, relaxed shoulders, sure of itself, blissful serenity that brings a small smile and yes this is goooood.
You may already know where in your life you feel your own kind of ooze (if not, look out for it). There are two things to think about with your long range planning. The first is, structuring your vision and plans for the ooziest possible life. Consciously making space to experience the ooze once a day, once a week, once a minute, whatever is doable. The ooze is what makes life worth living, and that is enough of a reason to make room for it. The second thing to think about is, how can your work be more oozy? What is the work you currently do that feels the closest to the ooze (the bits you really look forward to, that make you feel great, that you are conscious of just really enjoying in the moment). How can you take those conditions and apply to more and more of what you do to make it all feel that much better.
The last thing I want to talk you about is sheep trails. When you are hiking in the hills, the footpath is not always signposted or even visible - and then you see a little track and you think “that must be it” and you start happily walking along it and then you check the map and see you’re a long, long way off route. You found a way made by sheep, and followed it thinking it was the way you wanted to go because it was so clear, so obvious - but it wasn’t true. Sheep trails are neither good nor bad: they won’t take you where you want to go, but they also won’t lead you into danger. A sheep trail will skirt around the edge of a bog, avoid craggy boulders and not go over deep holes in the ground. A sheep trail is a place you can safely get your bearings, but ultimately it won’t take you anywhere.
There are sheep trails in our work. For me, 121 client work is a sheep trail. It’s a route that is comfortable, one that I can safely follow for miles, but it is not my route. A sheep trail will look and feel like the right path, you will be able to see clearly ahead, be able to comfortably make good progress - this makes it hard to tell that it is a sheep trail. All you can do is hold them in your awareness: is this really where I want to be going, or is this a sheep trail? Does this feel like it can take me towards my vision, or does it have the capacity to wind me further away?