Learning to Honor Yourself In Business

Part of the beauty of online business is the freedom and flexibility it provides. But that doesn't mean anything if we're stuck in the rigid schedule and expectations that we were always taught. Tune in to hear about a realization I had recently that really helped me understand myself and take advantage of that freedom.

Key Takeaways

• Your unique patterns and preferences for working can be a huge asset to your business
• There are no rules! Working in a way that honors what you need can help you be more creative and more productive
• What is one thing you can do today to honor the way you want to do business?

Resources & Links

• Watch the free masterclass
• Follow Amy on Instagram @artfulcontracts

Next Steps

Thank you so much for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please reach out and let me know by sending me a DM on Instagram @artfulcontracts

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Episode Transcript

This episode is not strictly on a legal topic, but it's something I really felt inspired to share with you just in case it helps somebody else. So if you were really looking for some juicy legal tips today, skip back to a different episode because this is not going to be that. But I do think it will hopefully really help at least somebody with some things that are really important in business and personally. Let's dive in.

Recently, I had a really big realization, and I think it's gonna impact a lot of things in my life. And of course, you know, nothing is nothing is ultimate, right? Like everything is there are things that are super important, but nothing is going to be necessarily so so profound that it changes absolutely everything, but there are things that can have a huge impact and that are important to sit with and and measure their significance. And this is this is one of those things for me.

When I was planning this podcast, I was really struggling at first with the question of do I release an episode every single week, or do I release an episode every other week? And I know that's such a basic question, but of course it's an important one because you want to be consistent for your audience.

And the reason I was struggling with it is, my assistant, she was helping me plan out the whole thing. She basically was like, Okay, you have to do every other week. She didn't say "have to", but you should do every other week. And the reason for that, that she didn't necessarily say to me directly, but I know it was there, is that she knows that I struggle with consistency.

And I know a lot of people struggle with consistency, but I just like really cannot do anything on a weekly basis in my business, and that's and obviously like I'm super consistent posting on social. It's because I hired her and she creates our content schedule and she keeps us on track with it. And she has to nag me sometimes about like going in and editing posts or adding my perspective and my client stories and to stuff. Um, but she keeps ahead of it so that if I'm, you know, two days late on reviewing something she asked for, it's for next week, so it's fine. So she keeps me on schedule with that, and I think she had this awareness of like, if I say that I'm gonna do a podcast every single week, people are gonna expect it and I want to honor that.

But am I actually going to be able to every single week sit down and record a podcast? Totally different question. And so I was struggling with this, and I brought the question to my coach. Her name's Caitlin, and she did what coaches, great coaches should do. And she pulled the question out of me that I wasn't even asking. So I went to her with the question of do I record a pod, do I release a podcast every week or every other week? And she was like, Well, which do you want to do? Which simple, simple way of getting to the answer, right? What do you actually want to do? And I wanted to release one every week because I thought that would be the most value for you guys. And she said, Okay, so do that.

Uh, and I explained the whole consistency thing. And what she pulled out of me was basically this expectation, this pressure that I put on myself to be consistent, or that this feeling that I should have consistent energy and consistent inspiration, and that's just not the way that I function. And so I explained to her that, you know, sometimes I'm super inspired and I work 10 hours in a day, and other times I work two hours and then I have to sit on the couch the rest of the afternoon. And I always feel bad about that. If I have to take that break, I feel bad about it and I worry about it. And she said to me, What if you just honored the way that you actually work? And what if you just trusted that the energy would come back?

And what she suggested for the podcast was, well, we figured out how long I wanted my episodes and how long it would take me to outline them. And so she said, Okay, so maybe saying that you're gonna record an episode on Tuesdays every single week is not gonna work for you. But can you commit to during a one-week time span, you will spend one hour on your podcast? And I thought about it, and I still was thinking that I can't commit to anything on a weekly basis. So I said, all right, well, maybe not one hour every single week, but I could do two hours in a two-week time span. So maybe I batch my episodes and I stay ahead that way.

So I start batching my episodes before I release the podcast. I'm two weeks ahead at any given time, at least. And then I don't have to commit to recording every single week, but I can still release every single week. And so what we got down to was honoring the way that my schedule works, my natural rhythms, and not shudding all over myself for not being able to function in the regular nine-to-five structure or putting myself on a schedule that I'm going to rebel against. But none of that was the realization.

So the realization was while we were having this conversation, she just said offhand, when we were talking about this ebb and flow of energy and scheduling and the consistency concern. She mentioned offhand, well, this is something that my projector, because I'm a projector in human design, my projector clients and my clients with ADHD struggle with, and this is how they have addressed it and dealt with it. She wasn't trying to tell me anything except help me with this question about this podcast schedule.

But I got off that call and I was like, this is not the first time that someone has said, oh, this is like this person with ADHD. So I started kind of obsessively looking up all the symptoms of ADHD, and everything started clicking into place. Things I have struggled with my entire life suddenly made sense. And I have known, I have known that my brain just functions differently than other people's my entire life. And I just haven't been able to put a category or a label on it really.

And when I was a teenager, I struggled with anxiety and depression, and it, I mean, it got worse in law school, and I had a really hard time working at the law firm. And I was reading of these stories of adult women who don't realize that they have ADHD because they can mask it and squeak by in school because they figure out coping strategies and whatever. And then once they get to the point of having a career and having a family or a household, it just gets to be too much. And I was like, oh, oh.

When I started this business, it was partially in response to struggles I was having working in the law office environment. And I've had this feeling, I love working for myself, but I've also had this feeling of like I don't feel capable of going back to an office. And that is kind of scary just because I mean things are working great for my business, but what if they don't? What if something changes and I need to go back to an office? I don't feel like I can. And so it would be nice to understand why and figure out how to cope with that and and potentially address it and solve that. That would be great.

So this was like eye-opening for me. Oh, there's a reason that I have a hard time getting back to people on emails and I text late and I can never get it together to remember birthday cards. And if I don't write it down, it's not gonna happen. And there are a lot of reasons that women in particular can get to their 30s. I'm 30 right now, can get to their midlife and not have had anyone ask them about ADHD or had anyone notice.

And for me in particular, I realized that it's because it's in my family. It is a genetic thing, it's hereditary. And so when I was reading these articles about presentation of adult ADHD, especially in females, I was looking right at my mom. I was thinking about my childhood and things that I would do and things that my mom would do, and realizing that she didn't notice because she thought I was normal. She thought I was just like her. And I am just like her in a lot of these ways. And a lot of things that are considered symptoms are things that are just normal in our brains.

And so when I was having this realization, I was a little bit concerned because I was gonna have to call my mom and tell her, hey, I think I have this thing, but like also you have this thing too, because we are the same. And I of course, like, it's not ideal to have to call someone up and be like, hey, I think you have this disorder, but it's my mom, and I trust her, and I knew that this would could be helpful for both of us. Like, if this is what's going on, then it's something that she needs she needs to know about, and I mean, might help her understand why she feels different too.

So I did, I did do that, and we had that conversation, and she was like, she was also grateful that it just explained a lot of things about the way I was when I was a kid and about her struggles that she's had. But she had that same feeling that I've had when I've talked to other ADHD people.

I had a roommate with ADHD one time, and he would come to me and be and be complaining about all of his ADHD symptoms and everything that he said, I was always just like, that's just life, and you learn how to deal with it, you develop strategies to deal with it. So I don't know why you're complaining about this or calling it ADHD because that's just normal, and you just figure out ways of dealing with it because that's what I had done. And I didn't, I didn't sink in. It honestly took a few years. That was a few years ago that I had those conversations.

So, anyways, my mom's reaction to what I was telling her was the same. Everything I was describing as a quote unquote symptom was just normal to her, and something that she had developed a system or a way of managing over time. She had that same reaction of, yeah, okay, these are things that happen, but isn't that just real life?

That's just part of the human condition, and maybe other people had just figured out how to manage it better than we had. So the idea that we weren't just failing, that maybe we were just wired differently, it hadn't even occurred to her. But by the end of the conversation, she was totally on board. And she asked me a question. So I had told her the story about weekly versus bi-weekly podcasts, and she wanted to know what strategy that we had come up with, me and my coach, what strategy we had landed on to actually get me to be consistent because she felt the same way. She could never do anything on a weekly basis either. So she was really curious about what strategy we chose to finally get me to record a podcast or honestly just do anything on the same day of the week every single week consistently.

And of course, she was completely surprised when I said we didn't. We didn't find a strategy for me to just be consistent because the solution wasn't to try to change me and force me into a mold that would never fit, it was to fit what I wanted to accomplish into the pattern or lack of pattern, the beautiful randomness that would work for me.

This is a obviously a very personal story, but the relevance to business is that piece about learning to honor yourself and the way that you function. And there's nothing wrong with it. That's one of the blessings of being an online business owner, right? Is that you can create your own schedule, you can honor your own flow and work in a way that works for you, and you just have to get to know yourself. And when you know yourself, and don't try to fit yourself into the box of what should be.

And that's what I had struggled with is like I had this idea that because I got through law school and because everyone saw me as successful, that I had to work in a certain way and I wasn't doing that, and I felt like I was doing something wrong, and I'm not, I'm not doing anything wrong.

And if I have to work a bazillion hours one day and then take the entire next day off because I'm overstimulated and need a break, that's fine, and the energy will come back. And if I need a few extra reminders, or if I need to be really careful about writing things down so they don't slip away, if I need someone else to manage my DMs and my inbox and the comments, that all the things that come in that I see and they slip right out of my brain, that's what I do. I that's what I have, Stephanie, for my assistant. And that's okay.

However, you have to work to honor your unique, beautiful brain and the way that it functions, that's what you do. I am very new on this ADHD journey, and so I don't know yet if I'm going to decide to take medication or do therapy or ADHD coaching or what I'm going to do. I'm basically at the point right now of realization of, oh, so that's where my brain does those things. And that just alone is so helpful, obviously, as just like with the things I've talked about in this episode.

So if this has been helpful or interesting to you at all, I know it's a little off topic for this podcast, but uh reach out to me in the DMs. Let me know if this has been illuminating or useful for you, maybe inspiring at all. That would be great.

But my message for today, honor yourself and build your business the way that you want. Because that's why we're doing this. We are building things that work for us so that we can function the way that we need to and honor our own needs and not work for someone else who tells us that we have to have our butt in a chair for eight hours a day. Because I can't do that part either.

So here's my challenge for you go find one thing today that you can do in your business or a system that you can set up in your business that helps you honor what you need and then send me a DM and let me know what it was. All right, that's enough about me. Next time we'll be back with all the legal chit chat. I'll see you then.