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Rough Patches | Dealing With Disappointment In Business
“I’m not as far along as I should be or I thought I would be.” “I thought I would be further along than this.” “I can’t quite see what the problem is, but I know there’s a problem.” Do these lines sound familiar? If you’re in the middle of a rough patch, perhaps you’ve heard yourself say these things. On today’s show, Phoebe Mroczek tackles dealing with disappointments in business. Maybe this year hasn’t started off or continued on as you expected or hoped it would. This might be one of the most uncomfortable conversations you’ll have all year, but it also could be one of the most important. Are you ready?
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Rough Patches | Dealing With Disappointment In Business
On this episode, I’m talking to you if you feel like you’re in the middle of some rough patch. Maybe the year hasn’t started off or continued on as you expected or hoped it would. This might be one of the most awkward or uncomfortable conversations you have all year, but it also could be one of the most important.
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We release shows every week and you can find me either on iTunes or Spotify. If you’re reading this and you feel like the year is not going the way that you hoped it would, I have a big conversation to have with you specifically now. However, if you feel like business and work is thriving, maybe your relationships and your health and spirituality are all ten out of ten, then great. You still might get something from this conversation. In the unlikely event that you are a nine or below, we’re going to have a very serious conversation.
Before we do that, we are nearing the 100th episode, which is very exciting and I would love to ask you to go and leave a review. It only takes a couple of minutes to leave a review for this show. It helps us grow as a platform, grow as a community and also get better guests. Everyone always looks at reviews to make sure that you are a five-star podcaster and hosting a five-star podcast. Please leave me a review. I would love to shout you out on the show.
I’ve mentioned that we are teasing with the idea, toying around with the idea of having a live tour bringing Unbecoming to your city. If you are a connector, if you are someone who has a lot of people or knows a lot of people or wants to bring people together, if you want to be seen as an expert in your local community, I would love to invite you to apply to be on our tour list. We’ll have a shortlist of cities across the US and Canada potentially. If you can bring together a minimum of 45 people and a maximum of 100 or 200 who knows, maybe even 1,000. If you are in that space and you want to be seen and positioned as an expert in your local community, this could be a great opportunity to do that. You can head over to UnbecomingPodcast.com/tourguide and apply to be one of our stops on the live tour. I don’t have dates set for you yet, but it’s something exciting that we’re trying to piece together and see if this would be a fit for the community. If we do have enough interest, we might take this show on the road. Please leave a review, share the show and apply to be on our live tour if that is of interest to you.
Let’s go ahead and jump into the show. I’m going to give you a little context for this show. I speak to people or potential clients. I do free calls and I talk to people all the time. People probably like you that are overachievers, high performers, people with a mission and a purpose and people who want to make either their community better, themselves better or the people they serve better. One of the phrases that I hear more than any other is, “I’m not as far along as I should be or I thought I would be. I thought I would be further along than this and I have a problem,” or something along the lines of, “I can’t quite see what the problem is but I know there’s a problem.”
The people who make the shifts first or sooner than everybody else are the people who have actually hit the wall. Click To TweetThis is the way my brain works. I automatically put them into one of two categories. It helps to compartmentalize a little bit, so I know where to go in that conversation. The first box that I put somebody in is, “The pain of reality isn’t bad enough,” and the second is, “The path to clarity isn’t clear enough.” Based on the conversation, based on how that person shows up to speak to me and to ask me questions, I can separate them and put them into one of two boxes. I’m going to turn this over to you. I’m curious where you fall in this and I’ve been doing this long enough to know the signs and which box you fall in. I’m going to throw it to you and see which one you believe you fall into.
The Pain Of Reality Isn’t Bad Enough OR The Path To Clarity Isn’t Clear Enough
From those, we can assume two things. In order for things to change, for you to achieve whatever it is that you say you want, for you to be, do and have those things that matter to you, here are the two assumptions that we can make. Number one is if the pain of reality isn’t bad enough, if that’s the box that you’re sitting in, that means that the pain needs to get worse. It could mean many different things, but for a lot of the people I’m talking to, it means that they might have to burn through their savings or that might require more clients to leave them or even fewer clients accepting whatever product, program or service that they’re offering.
If you are in, “The path to clarity isn’t clear enough,” box, then the assumption we can make is that the path to clarity needs to reveal itself but you must be willing to take action. I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t want to be sitting in the first box. I don’t want the situation to have to become dire in order for me to make a change. I don’t like pain and I like to remove the chance of pain as soon as possible before it happens or better yet to prevent it from happening. A lot of what I say and what I do with people, especially in personal development, is that we are always waiting for catastrophe.
It seems to me that the people who make the shifts first or sooner than everybody else are the people who have hit the wall. Somebody has died, somebody got sick, they got sick or someone got injured. Something major happened, they lost their house, they lost their spouse or whatever it is. I have always said that I want to intercept people before they hit catastrophe. Here’s the typical situation. We recognize that there is pain. We’re not making enough money, we’re not happy in our relationships, we feel overweight, we got a diagnosis, whatever it is and then they don’t change anything. The pain then gets worse and either they become desperate or in a business situation that could look like taking on clients that you don’t enjoy because you need the money. You keep taking on clients and then you burn out or you call it quits too soon because that pain starts to take over.
Maybe you have to get a job. The pain has to get so much worse that you’re in a toxic relationship and you have to leave. I’m not saying to anyone in a toxic relationship that you shouldn’t do that or you should stick it out. I have to give that little caveat, but I want to acknowledge that neither one is good situations. We don’t want you to feel the pain and not do anything and then continue down the path of pain because that’s not going to get you anywhere. I learned the phrase on my motorcycle trip through Europe. It’s called object fixation. What we focus on, we hit when you’re on a motorcycle. The same can be said for how we are in life and business.
Dealing With Disappointment: What we focus on is what we get.
What we focus on is what we get. If you’re constantly like, “The pain is not that bad.” It’s almost teasing the universe to say, “How bad can it get?” When people say, “It could get worse.” I hate that phrase because that sounds to me like an invitation, which we don’t want to do. If you’re in box number two, “The path to clarity needs to reveal itself,” and you have to be ready and willing to take action. What we’re not acknowledging is that oftentimes the solution has already presented itself probably many times. With the opposite of object fixation or maybe in the same vein, you don’t see or you don’t get what you don’t look for. There are maybe hundreds of thousands of people in the world that could help you towards that clarity, but maybe you haven’t seen it because you weren’t ready or the pain wasn’t bad enough.
Now an honest question which might get a little pushback. Can you honestly say that you’ve been looking for solutions or are you going to put your hands up and say, “I’ve been looking for reasons why it won’t work?” If you got defensive and said something like, “Of course, I’m looking for solutions,” then I invite you to get honest with yourself because there are many solutions out there. There are many people who have been there, done that and would love to take your money to tell you all about it, but if you’re unable to find the money, then the pain isn’t bad enough. I’m always asking, “Have you tried everything? Have I tried everything? Am I looking at this through every angle, every lens, through every lens at every angle?”
A lot of times we feel because it’s us, it’s our life, it’s our relationship and it’s our business. It’s things that feel personal to us and so to remove that emotion is challenging. If I can hold my life out in front of me, like it’s somebody else like I’m peering into someone else’s life, what decisions would I allow or ask or want that main character to make? I’m not going to tell you to drain your bank account or liquidate your 401(k) or like many people I know, beg your friends for money. I’m not going to do that, but here’s what this episode is here to do. It is here to remind you that if nothing changes, nothing changes. Ask yourself the question, “What is it going to take?”
If you’re now sitting in the second camp of, “The path to clarity isn’t clear enough,” then we’ve already talked about how the path to clarity needs to reveal itself. We can sit and take a more feminine approach to this topic and say that the masculine is go and get it, be ambitious, strategic, logical, whatever. This is not gender, it’s masculine and feminine. The feminine is more intuitive. They sit, wait, ideate, be creative and allow to be in receiving mode, to be in allowance of what is coming for you. We know that in order to have clarity, we need to have that time and space to allow the clarity to fill that space. The second part of that is that we have to be willing to take action. It is this dance, this important and delicate balance of the feminine, which is the intuitive side, the creative side, the receiving and allowing and then pushing into the masculine saying, “Now, I’ve got to take action. I’ve got to go after what I want” and what are you looking for?
If we say that the path to clarity needs to reveal itself, it’s like this solution is going to drop into your lap. Maybe it has or maybe it’s tried but the space wasn’t there. What solution and what clarity are you looking for? A quick little side story, I constantly offer up these free clarity sessions on this show. I try to do it once a quarter or whenever I think about it and when they’re not booked up. I was having a conversation with one of my girlfriends and we were talking about these ten-minute calls and she’s like, “How are you not charging people for this?” I was like, “I want to engage. I want this to be a two-way conversation.”
The number in your bank account is directly correlated to how you really feel about yourself. Click To TweetI’m not sitting here at the microphone every week talking to you about something. I want to hear from you what’s important to you and what you’re struggling with so that I can tailor and refine the content to be as valuable as possible. I’m not charging at the moment for that. She was like, “Are they always booked up? They must get booked up so fast.” I was like, “It depends. It comes in waves.” I often ask myself, if I’m talking to the right people on this show, because unless your business is thriving beyond what you thought possible, my belief is that you should be booking in for these calls. I know that whenever a free call comes out and to be honest, my mentors and coaches don’t even give out free stuff. If they were, I would be consuming it because I want to take action and there’s always something that I can be learning and maybe that’s the clarity. It’s wrapped in this free session with me, with somebody else.
If you’re somebody who doesn’t take action on things like that because you’re afraid that you’re going to say the wrong thing, you’re going to look dumb. Someone’s going to know the truth about your business or you don’t even know what to ask. I feel like that’s a cop-out. It’s frustrating to me to see good people tuning in to the show. They’re sharing it online, they’re doing all the things and then they’re not booking in for our call. If you’re willing to consume the free stuff, that also tells me you’re willing to stay anonymous and in the background. When the offer presents itself, you don’t pull the trigger.
Pulling The Trigger
My mind goes to two places. The first one, if you’re not willing to pull the trigger, you’re not willing to book the session or whatever it is, what else are you not pulling the trigger on in your life? That’s where my head goes. What’s the impact of that on your life? How’s that working out for you? If you’re not willing to take the action in one area, something simple and it’s free, what else are you selling yourself short on? How else are you not showing up in the way that you need to show up in other areas of your life? In other areas, how are you not standing up and speaking out for the things that you want and putting your dreams first?
Our Netflix episode has had so much good feedback even though the audio sucked. Many people were like, “Thank you.” It was inspiring to hear somebody else taking action and going after what they want and doing all of the things that we all talked about how we want to do. We oftentimes coach people on all those things that we’re supposed to be doing ourselves. Maybe you’re not pulling the trigger because you’re afraid to look dumb, to say the wrong thing, to be vulnerable, somebody is going to know the truth about your business or whatever. Even the confusion and not knowing what to ask is still playing small because you might get the question wrong, but the conversation right. Oftentimes, if you listen to the Netflix show, I talked all about the outcome wasn’t important in the same way that the question that you’re asking might not be that important.
It’s you taking a stand for yourself and going through the motions and having that decision at that moment where you say, “I am going to put myself first. I deserve this. My dreams are important and what I do matters and I matter.” Because when you’re not pulling the trigger, nothing changes until something changes. If you’ve been sitting in this pattern of not taking action on something, go now and take action on it. If you’re sitting in this pattern of not finishing or completing something, go out and do something with the sole intention of completing it. It doesn’t matter what that is, but you’ve got to prove to yourself that you can do those things that you don’t think you can do or you’re not currently doing. Even if it’s one area of your life, which we all know that it’s never in one area of your life, it’s in all areas. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
Dealing With Disappointment: How you do one thing is how you do everything.
If you’re not pulling the trigger on a free coaching session and not just with me, this is a metaphor for anything else in your life. However, I would ask you, “Where are you not stepping up? Where are you not playing bigger?” Number two, when I’m talking about how you’re not booking into this thing, I’m not attacking you per se. I’m hoping in a very kind, gentle bubble-wrapped way, maybe not so much bubble-wrapped, but trying to give you some perspective that even these seemingly insignificant decisions that you’re making carry a lot of weight. When you’re not willing to pull the trigger on this free coaching session, I also think that it’s a complete worthiness issue and that’s hard to hear. You might be reading this and starting to nod, “Yeah.”
Fortune Favors The Bold
You don’t think that you’re worth ten minutes of free time because even if you’re like, “She’s going to try to sell me something,” which I’m not. Even if that was a thing, it’s like, “How does that conversation go in your head?” It’d be interesting to unpack that because I guarantee if you’re doing it with me, you’re doing it with all the other people that matter in your life and it’s causing your relationships to suffer in whatever area. I have said so many times, but I think it’s relevant and important to bring back. The number in your bank account is directly correlated to how you feel about yourself. If that’s you and you’re sitting here and you’re nodding or you just had an a-ha moment because you realized for once that you aren’t giving as much of a crap about yourself as you should be. You’re unhappy with the number that is staring back at you or that you keep logging into your bank account wishing that number would go up, I totally get it. The great news is you can change that if you want to because we all know the phrase or the quote, “Fortune favors the bold,” and I love that.
When I was writing a couple of things out, what I wrote down in my notes was, “Luck favors the bold,” and I was like, “That’s not the right phrase, is it? What is the right phrase?” I looked it up and I was like, “Fortune favors the bold.” Here’s the thing, we all know that we get lucky when we take bold action. When I have prepared for an interview or something along those lines, I know that I can show up to the conversation and be present. We find intuition and our gut and all of those things that need to come out. The truth of who we are comes out when we’re present. It comes out through intuition and it comes out through our gut.
Making bold decisions forces us to be in the present moment. If I told you that we had to shave your head right now, I guarantee you will not be able to think about anything else. You wouldn’t be able to think about your business, your marketing funnel, your email marketing copy, the next client that’s showing up in two weeks or whatever. Because at that moment as I was buzzing your head, you would be in the present moment. That’s what those decisions feel like. Now that I’m thinking about it, there is a Chinese belief that just one piece of human hair holds 30,000 worries. Whenever you get a haircut, know that you are chopping off lots of worries.
Let’s ask ourselves a couple of questions. Number one is, “Does the pain need to get worse?” If you’re sitting in camp number one, what needs to happen for you to get out of that box and do the thing that you want to do? Are we going to sit like waiting ducks waiting for the next worst thing to happen to us before we make a change? “No.” I have a girlfriend of mine who said the other day, “I want to start off this next month as though it’s January 1st. Can I do that?” I’m like, “You can do that.” Why does it have to start on Monday? What if our week started tomorrow and we started to get clear on what needs to happen as though the catastrophe already happened? Let’s remove that part. Let’s step right over and leapfrog the catastrophe into what needs to happen, into what we want in life.
The truth of who we are comes out when we are present. Click To TweetThe second question if you’re sitting in that second camp about clarity, “The path to clarity hasn’t revealed itself yet.” Are you even ready to find it or are you even looking for the right path? When I say that, I think to myself, a lot of times, I’ve been resisting this clarity because if I have the clarity, that means I have to do something with it. If I have the clarity to where I’m going and we all know it’s never going to happen that way. However, if we can see the path that’s on our path and if we can see our path and we have that clarity and let go of the attachment to the outcome, then all the other pieces are going to fall into place and who knows where that would lead?
It all starts with clarity and from that clarity comes bold action. If you don’t know what the next right step is in your business, then you need to find someone who can give that to you. You need to find someone who will sit down with you and map it out and that’s probably a coach. I know that the investment that everybody talks about, coaches are expensive. Yeah, the right ones are. What’s it worth to you? What’s that clarity worth to you? If I handed you a big ball of clarity now that you knew for the next two years exactly what to do every single day to get you to your goal, would you take it? How much would you pay for it? The first question is, “Would you take it?” That’s the best first question because a lot of people say they want it but I don’t think they actually do.
What would you do with that big ball of clarity? How much would you pay for it? What could that be worth? That could be worth to some people $20,000. To other people, that clarity could be worth $1 million. That clarity could be worth tens of millions of dollars if you follow the plan, you get that momentum and you build something worthwhile, something that’s fun and meaningful. Are you ready to find or are you even just ready to look for that clarity? If your answer is no, own that. I sat for so long on this little roundabout being like, “I want clarity so badly, but the truth of the matter was that I couldn’t handle that clarity.” I didn’t know what I would do with it or if I was willing, able or experienced enough to do what it took to make those bold steps, to take that bold action.
Now I’m like, “Bring on the clarity. Bring on the action steps.” Because I’m constantly searching for little quick wins to remind me of who I am and what I’m here for. Here’s going to be my offer to you. If you are sitting here fist-pumping, getting excited, being like, “I want clarity. I’m in that camp.” I want to give you an option. I want to tease you a little bit and let’s see how this experiment goes. If you’re ready to find this path to clarity and you truly are ready deep down at your core, I want you to message me on Instagram, let me know and ask me. I will give you the link to my calendar. You can go to my Instagram, @PhoebeMroczek.
Find me on Instagram and send me a message saying, “I am ready to find that path to clarity.” Give me a, “Yes.” Give me whatever you need, but commit. I need you to signal. I need you to take that big bold step and tell me that you’re ready for clarity and I’m going to send you this link. Get booked into my calendar and I promise you, deep down girlfriend promise that if you’re clear on wanting help and you’re willing to do the work, I will give you all of the advice and guidance that I possibly can. If I’m not the right person, I’m going to tell you. I will refer you out to the right person. That is very much my personality. I know what I’m great at and I know what I stay away from. If you’re going to approach me with some problem that I can’t handle, I can probably direct you to the person who can help you.
Dealing With Disappointment: Constantly search for little quick wins to remind you of who you are and what you’re here for.
What this is going to do to the audience, I would guess it’s going to be about 1% of people are not going to take me up on this. I’m happy to extend my calendar out as many days as I need to help every single one of you. Ninety thousand people, that’s a lot of hours. Here’s the thing. I’m putting this out there to see who has lasted this long in the conversation and who’s willing to go there, who’s willing to look vulnerable to reach out to me, not just send me an email, but reach out to me on Instagram. Signal that you have a question, that you want something and I need to know who the big, bold action takers are. Those are the people that are going to change the world because nothing changes if nothing changes.
If you’re sitting in a pattern of not taking, not asking for what you want and not going after those things that are important to you because you don’t think you’re worth it. Even if you know on the surface you’re like, “I know I’m totally worth it,” because we can sit there and pamper ourselves, paint our nails, meditate and rub our crystals together. At the end of the day, what matters is how we deeply feel inside of ourselves and what that background music is playing in the back of our head. What patterning we have in our head that is running the show? If it’s a toxic playlist, then there’s no point in trying to outmuscle the next person. That’s the way we’re wired. We’ve got to re-wire this whole thing. It all starts with a decision and reaching out.
This was a little tough love for you. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I want to bring it back to the two camps of people. If you’re feeling like you have not achieved the things that you want to achieve in your life up to this point or in your business wherever you are, then I can put you in one of two camps. The pain of reality isn’t bad enough or the path to clarity isn’t clear enough. I want to encourage you that pain is a very powerful motivator. Why not avoid the pain where we can and take the easy way out, which is to go to the path of clarity, to take big and bold action? You’re going to come back to this episode. Many months from now, we’re going to have the same conversation. Now that you have no savings, you have no clients, all your masterminds are imploding, your product is not selling. You might have to get a job. You’re feeling the pressure from your spouse. Maybe your kids are asking you to come to school for PTA meetings and you can’t afford to take that time off.
Maybe you can’t afford to watch things like The Bachelor because you have so much to do, so much work to get done and you’re spinning your wheels because you don’t know which way to go. If that’s you and any of that resonates, I want to encourage you to take me up on my offer. The other thing is the path to clarity. The path to clarity isn’t clear enough and if that’s you, then let’s get that masculine-feminine stuff working for you so that you feel like the intuitive side of you is waiting for the guidance. Maybe this is your sign. If you needed a sign, here’s your sign.
We can get that clarity for you, but do you even want the clarity that you say you want? If you don’t, it’s time to get honest with yourself about why you don’t. If you do, then let’s get honest about what needs to happen to get you from point A to point B. Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for being here for a tough-love conversation. If this resonates with you, share it with people that matter to you. People that need some tough love. Maybe they’ve come to you and told you that their businesses aren’t doing as well or they’re struggling with one area or aspect of their life or business. Give them this show and if somebody referred you here, give them a big hug because they care about you. They want you to get the information to take that next big bold step.
Lastly, I want to invite you to book a session. Let’s do it. Let’s do a ten-minute call, you and me and let’s figure out what is going on here, what program is running the show and let’s get you out of the pattern that you’re stuck in. Let’s get you off the roundabout. Let’s get you into a better question, whatever that looks like. All you have to do is go to Instagram, message me, @PhoebeMroczek and say, “I’m ready to find some clarity. Can you send me the link to book into your calendar?” That’s it and I cannot wait to talk to you then and also to talk to you on the next episode. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. I will see you soon.
Important Links:
- The Unbecoming Podcast on iTunes
- The Unbecoming Podcast on Spotify
- @PhoebeMroczek on Instagram
- www.UnbecomingPodcast.com/tourguide
- www.UnbecomingPodcast.com/itunes
- www.Instagram.com/phoebemroczek
- www.unbecomingpodcast.com/98
Multi-Passionate To Focused | How To Choose The Right Thing
At some point in our lives, we’ve all been caught up in several engagements. We took on so many opportunities that we find ourselves overwhelmed with projects not knowing which ones to prioritize. While it is true that opportunities knock only once and we were taught to grab them, you shouldn’t spread yourself too thin. Pursue whatever you want just within your priorities. Phoebe Mroczek teaches on how to get focused and choose the right thing. She illustrates this using a Venn Diagram with the three bubbles of clarity, action, and beliefs converging into a central point which is the focus. Don’t miss out on this episode if you want to transition from being multi-passionate to focused.
If you’d like to be considered for the Live Tour, visit www.unbecomingpodcast.com/tourguide to apply.
Leave a review for Unbecoming: www.unbecomingpodcast.com/itunes
Connect with Phoebe on Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoebemroczek
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Listen to the podcast here:
Multi-Passionate To Focused | How To Choose The Right Thing
If you have several projects on the go and you don’t know which one to choose or how to prioritize the one that you want, this episode is for you.
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I am very excited about this episode because it feels very relevant and I tend to attract an audience that are good at a lot of things and that have a lot of passions. This is something I struggle with and so I’m bringing you into my world. I’m going to give you some concrete, practical, actionable steps and also some good examples of what has happened in my life to want to create this show. I wanted to first thank those of you who continue to share the show with people that you love and care about. I have been asked to be a participant and a trainer in several masterminds.
I have had a bunch of audiences reach out to me asking if I could train in their masterminds, in their programs, in their courses. I am honored to be able to do that for you. If you are reading this show and you’re like, “She would make a great addition to our show,” please let me know how I can help and assist you and spread the message of unbecoming, which I think is an important one and something that I don’t think enough entrepreneurs are spending time with. This whole show is dedicated to entrepreneurs, high performing people, former athletes or former overachievers that want to get better in business and better in life. They understand that business and life are connected, that our relationships are determined by the quality of our health, our businesses and the relationships that we have.
That is all that I’m talking about on this show, how do we create this cohesion across all areas of our life? This is why I do this because it’s so important to me. I don’t do this for myself, although that is a bonus of this that I get to read back to my episodes because more often than not, I’m speaking to myself because we tend to help people that are similar to us, that are in a similar position to where we were. I speak to myself a lot on these shows in hopes that that helps and inspires you to make changes and avoid the mistakes and pitfalls that I have made. I threw out an idea about doing a live tour, Unbecoming Live. I’ve had a lot of people reach out and say how can they get involved, how can they help?
What we did was we created an application. If you believe that you could get an event space and fill it. There’s no limit to it, but I would say anywhere from 45 to 200 people in your local community. I want you to head over to UnbecomingPodcast.com/tourguide to apply to have Unbecoming Live come to your city. This could be a cool opportunity to position you as an expert to get all those people that you want in your city to see you as an expert, to see you associated with a successful show. We get over 350,000 audiences reading this blog.
I will give you a shout out. Maybe we’ll do a live recording in your city. We are very close to 100 episodes. I am over the moon excited. We have a lot going on and a lot of things that are going to happen to celebrate a momentous occasion. There are very few podcasters that even get past seven episodes. That’s when podfade begins after seven episodes. I started this show off in 2017 with the understanding that I would do 52 episodes and we are pretty much double that. I’m proud. I’m grateful to you for reading wherever you are. I am so grateful because it allows me to do what I love and that is to share and connect with people that I care about. Thank you so much. Please, if you love this show, continue to share it. If you want to be a tour guide or you want to share our show with people in your local community that you think would love and resonate with this message, please contact us. We would love to help you.
Let’s go ahead and jump into our topic. This show is for you. If you have several projects on the go and you don’t know which one to choose or how to prioritize or how to get focused. This is something I have struggled with a lot and I did an episode on being a multi-passionate person and can multi-passionate people get things done? What my message for that whole thing was that there are very few people that are passionate about several things, so do you? That was the real message. Pursue whatever you want just within your priorities. I started to realize that a lot of the people that read this blog and this might be you, they took that as permission to spread themselves thin. We know that spreading yourself thin leads to burnout, frustration and nothing going well. What I recognized was that I had fallen prey to the multiple projects on the go, none of them is doing great.
Feeling Good But Not Really Good
I had about four to five projects on the go and I had my hands in a lot of pots. That felt good because I felt needed. When people ask me how life was going, the business was going. I could hang on to that badge of honor being like, “I’m busy, I’m great, chaotic, whatever.” Whatever it was that I was saying that I thought sounded good but in reality, it was bleeding me dry. It was leaving me with the sense of unfulfillment and a feeling of dissatisfaction. Because what I realized was in doing all of those four to five projects, starting all of the things was that the feedback loop was delayed. That what I was chasing. When I started one, I wasn’t getting feedback fast enough.
I do think that as entrepreneurs, as coaches, creators, whatever it is that you do, and maybe you can resonate with this, maybe your sales cycle is quite long. Maybe you’re starting a chorus or a coaching program and it’s nine months long. You have to wait nine months in order to figure out how that person did, how you did and get any feedback unless you set up quarterly check-ins or monthly check-ins, which I definitely agree that you should do. In the grand scheme of things, that is a long feedback loop. If you’re a podcaster, you know that there’s very little feedback that we get. I try to open the channels but in the grand scheme of things, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of people engaging.
I have hundreds of thousands of people reading, not necessarily leaving reviews or sharing the show. The reality was that I wasn’t getting it, so I was constantly searching for that feedback for those quick wins, for a real feeling of satisfaction and confidence. With those four to five projects on the go at all times, I wasn’t doing anything well. I have had clients that all have stories about this because we attract that which we are. It was no surprise to me that I have lots of clients that are juggling a lot of balls. There are a lot of balls in the air. When we went back to the real stories, which all start from childhood, here’s what I was hearing.
How To Get Focused: Don’t spread yourself thin. Pursue whatever you want just within your priorities.
Three Things To Address For Focus
Number one, I’m used to someone else telling me what to do or how to do it. Maybe that’s a corporate job or maybe that was in their family dynamics. The second one was I’m fearful of making a mistake. What if I choose the wrong thing or what if I miss out on a great opportunity later? What if one door closes and I can never get it back open? The third one was I like all of these things, so I don’t want to limit myself. I’m here to say that I get all of these because I am all of these as well. We attract that which we are and so as I’m hearing my clients say this, I was like, “I’ve been all of those.” I have been the person that was used to someone telling me what to do and how to do it.
As an athlete, you have a coach for a reason. They tell you what to do and how to do it and then you go fulfill on what they said. I did do Mary Kay for a couple of years where I was calling the shots, but I still had guidance under the MLM umbrella and then I moved into corporate. I moved to the UM. There’s so much red tape and nothing gets accomplished quickly. It’s heavy machinery. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made in order to implement the thing I was working on. It was always this other people were telling me how to do what I needed to do. When I branched out and stepped out on my own, suddenly there’s nobody telling me what to do or how to do it.
I was doing all the things and I didn’t quite know how to focus. What I want to address is going through these three things and hopefully, you can find yourself in one of those three things, if not more. What I want to do is dissect those a little bit more because I’ve spent a lot of time with people that tell themselves this, that say it out loud to their coaches because they’ve been clients of mine or it’s been me and myself. I know what this feels like used to having someone tell you what to do or how to do it. That could also be a relationship dynamic that you might be in or have been in the past.
Just remember this codependency is you need someone to tell you what to do. In some moments it could be a seesaw, so you’re telling people what to do, they’re telling you what to do. It’s that close connection and conversation that maybe you’ve have found yourself in. Also, remember that we choose entrepreneurship because we want to call the shots. This comes from a lack of confidence in ourselves. To combat this, it’s all about finding proof and gathering evidence to support the notion that you can do it on your own. That codependency is the opposite of this entrepreneurship game. We choose entrepreneurship because we want to be the boss, we want control but instead, we find ourselves in codependency, which is the opposite. It’s autonomy and codependency. When we resist it, it persists.
If we don’t have confidence in ourselves to call the shots, then that is just a belief that we can’t do it on our own, that we don’t have the skills, the tools, the guidance, the clarity, whatever it is to do it on our own. Maybe you can find yourself somewhere in there. The second one was that you’re fearful maybe of making a mistake, of choosing the wrong thing, of a door or opportunity closing. What happens if we remove the notion that there could be a wrong choice or there could be a wrong or bad decision? We know that clarity comes from action. Action is dictated by our desires and our beliefs, most importantly, our beliefs about ourselves.
We attract that which we are. Click To TweetWe also know the clarity comes from commitment. We can only be committed if we are taking action. If we’re committed to the belief, then nothing happens. If we’re committed to the action, then we can get into momentum. We only take imperfect action and get that momentum before we’re ready, which is the best time, to start if we’re focused and intentional about why we’re doing it. It all starts and ends with four things, clarity, action, beliefs, and focus. We know that what we focus on expands. If our energy and our attention are spread across 50 different projects or even three to four. Maybe you’re not doing 50 things, but you’re doing three to four things. Remember that that energy and attention is then diluted across all of them.
If we think about something like a hose, for example. When it sprays out of the little nozzle thing, it can spray far and it can come out of the nozzle with an incredible force. If it has a bunch of holes in it, then it’s leaking water and that force isn’t nearly as strong. What are you focused on? What is coming out of the nozzle and where are you leaking time and energy? To the point about what if the door closes and I can never open it back up, I want you to know that that was my story for so long. I totally hear you on it. What has helped me was the belief that the right opportunity, the right person, the right project, the right product, the right idea will never pass you by.
If you are truly able to focus on what you want and who you need to be, the how is going to find a way. It has to because we’re so focused on what we want and who we need to be to set up to raise our vibration so that the how, the strategy, the action will find a way. The outcome will find a way and oftentimes it’s not the outcome, the way, the strategy or whatever we thought it was. Joseph Campbell’s quote, which I absolutely love is, “If you can see the path, it’s not your path.” All of these “gurus” that tell you that they have the one way to do the one thing that you want, remember that just because they say that that’s the one way that they did it and that’s the one blueprint or template to success, if you can see the path, it’s not your path.
Limiting Yourself
The third one, this might be you. If you have ever found yourself saying something along the lines of, “I like all of these projects and I don’t want to limit myself. I don’t feel like I have to limit myself.” That’s not reality. That’s not how people do things. I have said this to myself a million times and this is something I hear more than the others. This story is something often made up to support the idea that you maybe have felt or currently feel stifled or maybe silenced in your desires from the past or even your present. Maybe someone told you that you had to do it a certain way. Maybe that was growing up. Maybe that’s in your health, your spirituality or your relationships.
This belief that you’ve chosen is how you’re choosing to rebel because you’re choosing self-expression. You’re saying, “I like all of them. I don’t want to have to choose. Don’t put me in a box.” You’re trying to rebel and jump out of that box. I hear you because here’s the other big distinction that I think is important to make here, which is that this decision is often a safety blanket and this is what it was for me. It was a way of keeping me on this roundabout year after year. It was keeping me safe, but in reality, that’s what I thought. To be in that roundabout of confusion meant that I didn’t have to take big, bold action and make myself uncomfortable. That was what was running the show in the background.
How To Get Focused: If you are truly able to focus on what you want and who you need to be, the how is going to find a way.
In reality, it was making me frustrated, angry at myself and staying in this scarcity mode where I didn’t know how to get out. The truth is something in me wanted to stay on that roundabout. It feels backwards, weird and hard to explain but hopefully, I did a good enough job. I remember being in a mastermind and my coach said, “I want you to draw your current reality.” I drew this roundabout. We need to present it to the group and I was so embarrassed and I almost cried. I thought I’m going to look like bad because I’m in a room with such high achievers, in a room with people who felt focused and on fire and their lives looked amazing and here I was saying that I’m stuck on this same roundabout and I don’t know which exit to get off.
Getting Off That Roundabout
If this sounds like you, then I hear you, I see you and I get it because it’s hard to get off that roundabout. What I realized at that moment as I was presenting it, I saw everyone’s heads nodding. I had many people in that room came up to me and said, “I totally know what that feels like.” Personally, the most frustrating thing that I have ever said is, “I feel like I’m back where I was X number of years, months, weeks and days ago.” When you feel like you’re climbing up the pole and then all of a sudden, you slide right back down to where you started.
I can’t find anything more infuriating or frustrating or saddening than that. That all comes back to this one belief and this one thing that I was telling myself was like, “I like all of these things and I don’t want to limit myself.” When the reality is any of those exits with enough focus, the clarity, attention and action behind it are going to lead to exactly where I want to go. As long as I’ve been intentional about choosing which exit to get off the roundabout at. That’s the most important thing that you get off the roundabout. Because where you think it is and the point and purpose that you think it’s serving are doing the opposite. I wanted to get off the exit to take that big bold action and be that leader that I knew I could be and I knew that I was, but I was nervous to get off because I didn’t know which one would lead me there. When in reality, looking back, any of them would have.
It took me getting off the roundabout and it was that moment that I decided to get off the roundabout to choose an exit and go with it. Having full faith because I took the bad and wrong decisions off the table and said, “I’ve just got to choose.” When I chose and I made that decision, everything else shifted into focus. From then on, everything is leading to the next thing. It doesn’t matter how you get there, it’s all the focus on what you want. If you know what the end goal is, you know what the destination is. If I want to get to Hawaii, I don’t care if I’ve got to stop in Boulder or Vancouver as long as I get to Hawaii.
Protection Mechanism
I know all of these stories. I know the ideas behind them because they’ve all been me. Here’s the biggest truth that is a little bit embarrassing to say, but I’m in the company of a good friend. I don’t want this to feel like a one-way dialogue. I’m going to be honest and hope that you take this honesty and you be honest with somebody else. I know that the depth of this show then transitions into the depth I hope of your relationships moving forward. I hope to create a ripple effect of transparency, honesty, and vulnerability. Here’s what was holding me back. When I sat down with that and what I like to do is I’d like to take out the belief and examine it through all different lenses from all different angles so that it doesn’t feel like my life. I can remove the emotion from it, so it looks like I’m watching someone else’s life. That helps me connect the dots a little bit more.
We chose entrepreneurship because we want to call the shots. Click To TweetWhat I realized was that I was so nervous, scared, fearful and all of the bad feelings that if I went all-in on one thing and it flopped, it failed and it didn’t get off the ground, what would that say about me? What would my reputation become? Would everybody laugh at me? Would I be called a failure? It was all in protecting myself and helping me feel safe and comfortable so that I didn’t even have the opportunity to feel uncomfortable. This is translated across different relationships of mine where I would leave before I got left. If you’re somebody who’s been in that pattern where you want to hurt someone before they can hurt you, that’s a protection mechanism and I get it. It’s ugly and it’s not nice to think about yourself in that way. If you can resonate with that and if that strikes a chord with you, then just know you’re in good company. That has been something I’ve struggled with because I felt like what would it mean to actually go all-in? You go all-in on your business in the same way.
Let’s talk about our relationship. We all know what it feels like to fall in love and how scary it is. The first time you say I love you to someone, you’re like, “I hope they love me too.” It feels the same way. It’s like you’re dropping all your guards down and saying, “I’m putting all my eggs, all my chips on the table for this one thing. This is what I’m gambling on and I’m going to go all-in.” What is that going to say if somebody else has four aces and they totally beat you and you’re like, “I look like an idiot because I put everything I had on the line.”
The Force Than Is Created
However, what if the opposite could be true? What if you directed all of your time, attention, focus, resources, energy, everything in one direction rather than having it leaking in 27 directions? What force could be created there? That’s what I’m curious about on this episode. That’s why I want to talk about it because I’ve been preaching this whole thing about multi-passionate people and I do believe that we can have many passions and we should have many passions. When it comes to our business and when it comes to things that we care about, the focus is the key. I heard something that said, “Focus is the new IQ.” I thought that is brilliant because I totally agree. We are so distracted and pulled away from the things that matter, social media and notifications. I’m in talks with someone, we’re designing an app for business and he was like, “Notifications, how do we stay top of mind all the time because we want to bring and divert attention to your phone?”
That’s the reason that all of these things exist, why Facebook celebrates how many friends you have, who’s going live, it’s real-time and it’s distracting. How do we remove those distractions so that we can focus on the very thing that we say that we want? What would that mean for us and what would that mean if we succeeded. Some people have a fear of success, some have a fear of failure. In my experience, I have both but one is bigger than the other. For me, my fear of failure is much bigger, much greater and much more potent than my fear of success. I’m a very visual thinker and so I see it as a Venn diagram.
Venn Diagram
If you don’t know what a Venn diagram is, I’m sure you’ve seen it before in math class somewhere or some English class where it’s three overlapping circles and all of those circles overlap to one major central point. From my three circles, I see it as being clarity, action and beliefs. I’m going to go through all of them and then I’m going to tell you where they intersect at that one point and why that’s so important. In the clarity bubble, it’s what is the one project that you want to focus on? I’m telling you this because I just went through this. It feels very fresh for me. Which one project do you want to focus on and why? What feeling does that project give you if you succeeded and not even in the outcome, but in the journey or destination? I know that feels so cliché, but what are the qualifying factors for you?
How To Get Focused: We can have many passions and we should have many passions.
The number one lens that I look through everything that I gauge whether or not I’m going to do a project is, “Does it feel fun, bright, big, light and impactful?” If it does, then it’s a yes and then we continue down that path. I want projects that feel fun, exciting, empowering, that tie back to my big missions in life to end loneliness, to help connection, to help people grow and understand their true gifts. That’s what this one project that I chose to focus on had to give me in order for that to tick that box. This was a pivotal moment for me when I said I’ve got to be honest with myself.
In this conversation with a friend of mine, I said, “I don’t believe that I have all the information that I need to make this decision.” She goes, “That’s a great realization because I’m asking you to go all-in for 60 days and I’m going to give you that same invitation.” However, what I didn’t realize was that I was comparing two things where one felt sure and certain, and the other one felt I didn’t have enough information. It felt uncertain. It’s comparing apples and oranges and I needed to get them both on the same page so that I could compare the apples to apples. Do you have all the information that you need to make that decision and if not, what is needed? Here were two questions that my friend asked me, which I thought were good. I have a version of these but the way that she said them to me was much more impactful.
The one question is if you spent the next five years doing what you’re doing now or doing this one project, would you be happy? Would you feel fulfilled? Would it be fun? At all of those words that in there that means something to you, happy tends to be the word that I choose or easy or light, whatever that word is for you. Here’s another one. This was the most impactful one for me of clarity, which was if you spent the next five years doing this one project or doing what you’re doing now and it flopped, how would you feel? Because here’s where my brain goes. If I worked my tail off and I did all of the right things and I made all the decisions and it didn’t get off the ground, would it be a waste of time?
Maybe I’ve been building this thing to sell it and nobody bought it. Would I be content where I was at the time either carrying on the project or putting it down? Look and evaluate this decision. Whatever the project is through the question of which project feels heavy and which one feels light? I often do this visualization with my clients where you’re going down two paths. Which one feels heavy and light? It’s a whole guided meditation that maybe I’ll create for you if you’re interested. Let me know. Send me a message. Put it on Instagram, get my attention and maybe I’ll create it for you or I’ll put it in our Facebook community.
That’s the clarity bubble. There are many different aspects, but we’re boiling it down to the most essential ingredients. The second circle is the circle of action. These are simple. Number one is what does a win look like? Because if we chose to focus on this and get specific because I know that we toss around words like successful or profitable. What I’ve come to realize is that people aren’t 100% clear. This is where the action and clarity overlap because if we don’t have clarity in the outcome, how can we have clarity in the action?
Let’s think about what would a win look like? What would success look like for this project? We can look out five years, we can look out two years and we can look out six months. For me, I was looking out 60 days. I have all of those things set, but the most helpful for me at that moment was what does a win look like in the next 60 days? The question that I don’t think a lot of people are asking is what does a loss look like? What does a failure look like? Let’s say we’re planning an event. It’s a massive event for however many people. Maybe a win would look like 100 people registered six months from now. Maybe a loss would look like 50 people signed up. At least we have the clarity in the outcome.
Clarity comes from action, and action comes from and is dictated by our desires and beliefs about ourselves. Click To TweetThe third question is what actions do we need to set up and what habits do we need to build to create a win so that even if you do nothing outside of the habits that you build, you know without a shadow of a doubt you’ll be successful and you’ll have that win. What does that look like and what’s the action plan? That’s all I’m concerned about building here is helping you build an action plan. Because when I talk to entrepreneurs, either on our free calls or clients of mine, the reason that they’re not getting the results that they want is not from a lack of action or hard work or desire to be in action or desire to work hard. It’s because they don’t know which action to take.
What Actions To Take
I’m trying to help you clarify that and clean off that lens so you can focus on what you want by taking the right actions. The third circle is the beliefs. I talked about that clarity comes from action and action comes from and is dictated by our desires and our beliefs about ourselves. In the belief bubble or circle, here are the questions that I like to ask myself or that I did ask myself and I’m going to ask and invite you to consider. The first one is, proof or evidence that you have been successful or can be successful. What we need to do is create a file folder of wins. When have you won? When have you take action and succeeded and it’s gone well? If it’s helpful for you, which it’s not helpful for me, sometimes you could come up with if you’re one of those people that you can focus on the failure and you’re like, “That didn’t go so well but here’s why,” and we can learn from that.
For me, it’s not as important as it is to consider all the proof and evidence to gather all of that together to prove to yourself that you can be successful and that you do have what it takes. Take a few moments and think about times in your life when things have gone according to plan, when you’ve gone all-in on something, someone, a project, a product and it’s been successful. Maybe it wasn’t successful through your lens in the present moment, but at the time I look back to my Canva course and that was the first thing that I sold on the internet. Within a week, I think it was two webinars, I made $3,300 and I was over the moon. I can still feel the feelings. I know exactly where I was standing.
When I looked at the results, I was in my apartment in Berlin and I thought I had just won the lottery. I thought, “I can actually do this.” That was all I needed. If I look through it through my present lens, I’m like, “$3,300, that’s nothing, or I can’t do anything with that.” I would never have that same reaction to making $3,300. That’s not the way that my lens looks now. That’s not to say that’s not the lens that you are looking through, but what I’m cautioning you about is to make sure you’re looking at it through the lens of where you were at the time when it was a win and success. Gather that proof, gather that evidence. I want to bring you through a very short exercise because this helps me and hopefully, it will help you.
How To Get Focused: Asking alternative questions to some of the more common questions that we get helps us get out of the logical brain and into the intuitive, creative side.
Close your eyes and I want you to think about the person who is doing the big thing that you want to do. If you can’t think of that person, think of someone similar. Maybe in the same industry, but somebody that you resonate with, maybe that you’re jealous of. That’s a great indication of what we’re supposed to be doing. Do you have that person in your head? If you do, keep your eyes closed. I want you to picture opening your laptop, going to your email, seeing an email from that person. The subject line reads, “I need your help.” In the body, you’re going to open it up and it says, “We’ve gotten screwed over by someone. “Our team fell through, or the venue fell through, now we’re one person short for our next event, our next session, our next episode, our next launch, could you help us?”
Turn the dial up on that excitement. Turn the dial up on the feelings, “What an opportunity.” As you think about that moment and how excited you are, you feel the pit in your stomach. It feels like anxiety. Maybe it’s doubt, maybe it’s fear. It’s heavy. I want you to turn the dial up on that. Make that feel big. Maybe it’s the tightening in your chest. Maybe it’s a pit in your stomach. What I’m going to ask you is, what is the first feeling or thought, belief or phrase that comes up for you? They need your help. You’re sitting there thinking, “I’m going to do it. Wait, but,” fill in the blank. Maybe it’s, “I’m not smart enough. I’m not ready. I don’t have enough experience. I’m not pretty enough. I’m not thin enough. I’m not far enough along.” Whatever it is, what is it?
I want you to name it. Call it what it is and without judgment, who cares? We’re trying to extract this thing out because this is the primary belief that is preventing you from the very thing that you say you want. There are other ways to arrive at the same answer, but I find that visualization has helped me get to the root of what’s holding me back. You know that I love asking alternative questions to some of the more common questions that we get. It helps get you out of the logical brain of what you think you should be saying and into the intuitive, creative side.
Rewiring The Story
You can now open your eyes. We have to rewire that story. We’ve got to change that pattern of belief that is crucial to you getting what it is that you want. I created a short exercise that’s going to help you do that and it’s in the episode Integration Guide that you can find at UnbecomingPodcast.com/97. I’m going to take you through an exercise to change that pattern of belief. Because whatever came up for you at that moment when we did that visualization, that’s what’s running the show. Your brain, your body, your beliefs are conflicted. You say you want this thing, but all the proof and the evidence that you’re trying to use to support your desire to have that thing is telling you the opposite. It’s telling you that you’re not smart enough. You don’t have enough years of experience. You don’t know what you’re doing, whatever it is. We can’t let that run the show anymore. Complete the short exercise because it’s impactful. We have those three bubbles, the clarity, the action, and the beliefs. Where they meet in the middle, that central point is focus. I’m going to ask you for the next 60 days to commit to focus. What do you need to clear off your plate to ensure that you can focus on the right tasks?
In my example, I knew I wanted to pursue this new show. I said, “If I’m going to start pursuing the new podcast that I’m starting, what needs to happen? What do I need to clear off my plate? How do I clear the path so that I can walk through it?” What I needed to do is I looked at this show and I said, “I’ve got to batch all these episodes.” I carved out time to do that. At the time where I started the race, I had my shoes tied. I knew where I was headed. I’d run the track before, all of this stuff and I was ready to go. What do you need to clear off your plate to ensure that you can focus on what you need to focus on?
We can't give ourselves a powerful 'yes' if we don't know what 'no' sounds like. Click To TweetNow that we have our 60 days and we know what a win would look like, we’ve got to list out everything that you need to make that happen and keep asking. If you don’t have a coach to do this and you’re working on this at home, then what I want you to do is list out everything that would make a win and then list out all the tasks that are associated with those wins and keep asking yourself, “What else? What would that look like and how would that feel?” That’s all you’ve got to ask because then you’ll have a list. It’s like a task to-do list. It’s perfect and it makes everything so much clearer.
What you have to do is go through because I like to know what’s around the bend. If I don’t know what’s around the bend, I have done this enough times maybe that I can predict some of the things that are going to be around the bend. What has helped me is to visualize or brainstorm what obstacles could get in your way as you are committing to these 60 days? Maybe it’s birthdays, holidays, parties, people, vacations or new opportunities. Sometimes with the new opportunities, it’s just giving yourself the language in order to turn things down. We can’t give ourselves a powerful yes if we don’t know what no sounds like.
When we say no, we can say, “No, thank you.” If you’re like me, I get a little uncomfortable telling people just no, even though that’s a complete sentence, says my mom. However, I know that I want to have the language and create that language for myself, so it feels more comfortable. Here’s what a no sounds like for me as I’m in my 60 days. I just say, “I appreciate you thinking of me. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that right now. I’m currently working on or excited by this.” I had all of these things collected in my Notepad app here on my computer before I started those 60 days.
If there was something that was pulling me away or a new opportunity, the other part of that is, “Could I circle back with you in 60 days once I am able to pick my head up above the water, would that be okay?” They respond and they’re like, “Circle back.” Here’s the important part is you must set a reminder on your phone or if you use Boomerang like I do on Gmail, then Boomerang it. If no reply, send this back to me in 60 days or at the end of that 60-day period, so then you can erase it from your brain and it no longer occupied space in your head. Give yourself the language. Give yourself the tools, the resources that you need to almost create a buffer bubble to keep yourself safe.
We are creating the egg curtain. When you were a little kid and you had to keep the little egg safe and you put all this cotton. You need to create that bubble to protect yourself for the next 60 days because everything that is trying to pull you away is a distraction. It’s feeding into all of those things that we talked about in the beginning. The next thing is now that we know what our winds would look like, what tasks are associated with that, what obstacles might get in the way. We have the language and the tools and we know how to clobber the obstacles. We need to break it down into weekly goals. Sixty days would be eight weekly goals and then even further into daily tasks.
How To Get Focused: Laying out all the cards will help your coach, mastermind member, or accountability friend help you stay laser-focused on what you need to do.
This is a long, seemingly tedious process, but I guarantee if you take the time to do it, and maybe it’s weekly goals and then on Sunday night, you break down the weekly goal into daily tasks. As long as you dedicate a certain amount of time to do that because maybe you got so much done in week three that week four is no longer relevant. All those things that you thought you were going to do, now we have new information. Keeping it up to date and staying on top of things, making sure that you have five to ten action items in order of priority. The highest priority would be something that directly affects the overall outcome. All the other things we can fill in the blanks, but that way you know what you need to focus on and then your goal for that day is to cross off as many things on your to-do list as possible. Make it sound something fun.
The next thing is accountability, “Who do you know in your life that could help you stay focused?” I know I have several women around me and for some reason, I needed that female support. Whether it’s a mastermind or a coach or however you’re doing it, make sure that those people know what your overarching goal is. One of the things I found to be most impactful, especially as I’ve worked with coaches, is to lay all cards out. I asked my clients this too. I’m like, “Here’s the overarching goal. What does it look like when you start to sabotage? What’s your trump card?” For me, when I hired a personal trainer in San Francisco and I did this to him, he was very impressed. I said, “I want to lay this all out for you. When I start to act confused or I talk to you too much about your life and your relationships and I make it all about you. That’s me not wanting to do the exercises. I wanted to let you know ahead of time that this is what I do. This is my pattern so you can identify it to make me do the thing that I need to do.” They’ll appreciate it.
Whoever your coach or mastermind member or accountability friend, that’s going to help them help you. That’s going to help you stay laser-focused on what you need to do. 60 days fully commit. Here’s the overarching question that I need you to answer for yourself because if you’ve read this far, something’s resonating, “What would it look like to go all-in on you? What would it look like to go all-in on the thing that makes you the happiest, that makes you the most excited? What could be possible for you over the course of the next 60 days?” That’s the question that I’m going to leave you with.
To quickly recap, we have the Venn diagram, clarity, action, beliefs and then they all meet in the center at the focus. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. This was a long one. I hope you found some value in this for you and I cannot wait to know what you’re going all-in on. I would love to ask you to share this show with people that you care about. People who need to go all-in on their dreams. If somebody shared this episode with you, know that they care about you. Know that they need you to go all-in on you so that it gives them permission to go all-in on themselves too.
If you haven’t yet left a review for the show, please as we’re nearing 100 episodes, I would love a 111. That would feel great. Let’s aim for 111. Please leave a review. It takes two minutes and it means so much to the longevity and the quality of the show. If you want to be on our live tour and you think you would be a great tour guide, you could bring together anywhere from 45 to 100 people in your local community or you already have an event and this would be a great opportunity to merge parties. I would love to invite you to apply for our live tour, UnbecomingPodcast.com/tourguide. I would love to come to your city and impact as many people as you know and love.
I know that good people attract good people. That is why I’m reaching out to you first. The last thing I want to leave you with which is what would it look like to go all-in on you? Who could you give permission to go all-in on them? Oftentimes, when we see other people going in on themselves, their business, their dreams and what they truly want, it gives us permission to do the same. Go out and choose the thing that you’re going to focus on. Choose one project for the next 60 days. Message me on Instagram, send me an email and get ahold of me on Facebook. I want to know what that one project is and what it would look like for you to go all-in on you. Thank you so much for being here. I love and appreciate you. I will see you on another episode.
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A Better Approach | Alternatives To Life’s Biggest Questions
How can you be a better you? In this episode, host Phoebe Mroczek talks about a fun trick that she has discovered to help you get answers to life’s biggest questions. Offering alternative questions to life’s big questions, she also teaches how to be better versions of yourself. Have a conversation with yourself and ask, “What do I really want, who am I really, and why am I here?” This episode will help you understand and inspire you to create alternative questions so you can get better answers.
Get Your FREE Episode Integration Guide: www.unbecomingpodcast.com/96
Leave a review for Unbecoming: www.unbecomingpodcast.com/itunes
Connect with Phoebe on Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoebemroczek
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Listen to the podcast here:
A Better Approach | Alternatives To Life’s Biggest Questions
On this episode, we are talking about a fun trick that I’ve discovered to help you break down life’s biggest questions. Grab a pen and paper or your episode integration worksheet and let’s get this party started.
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I can’t wait to dive into this very important topic about life’s biggest questions. We all know the phrase, the quote by Tony Robbins that says, “The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself.” I have three major questions that come up for me all the time and also for my clients. I want to share an alternative approach to answering those big questions. Before we jump into this episode, I want to give thanks to those of you who have been sharing this show on your Instagram Stories through email to a couple of email lists. It’s so interesting when I see a spike in the numbers and then I have to go and do a little research to see who is sharing, where that’s coming from. I do know when I see my little inbox on Instagram be full of people mentioning me and this show, it shows me that whatever I’m talking about that week is resonating.
If our show resonates with you, please do me a favor and do the people around you a favor and share the show. Some of the things we’re talking about are so important that I only have a certain amount of reach, but I rely heavily on the hope that what I’m delivering is of value to you and anything of value. Personally, I love sharing with the people I care most about, whether that’s the people in your life, being your family, your friends, your clients or whatever it is. I ask that you be somebody of service and of enormous value that I know you are and share the show. That is how this show grows. That’s how we get more opportunities and also how we get better guests on the show. Thank you for doing that. I have called out a couple of people in the last few episodes, so I’m not going to do that now, but I do want to let you know that it does not go unnoticed. I see you.
Thank you so much for being such a huge part of this show. I appreciate it. With that said, the people who have left reviews, I think we’re almost at 100. My goal for the 100th episode is to have 100 reviews. That’s also only in the US market. I can only see the US ones, so that’s how I am counting them technically. Everyone else, if you are out of the country, wherever you’re listening to this and you have left a review, I saw that and it comes through every week. Thank you for those reviews. If you’re here in the US, please take a moment and do me a massive favor and to your yourself. Whatever we give we get. If you want a review or you want positive feedback, then you might as well leave positive feedback for me. If you like the show, wherever you are, leave a review. It means so much and it only takes just a second. I consider reviews to be a tip jar. Until there are tip jars on podcast apps, which I won’t get too much into it, but it’s in the works and until we have that, consider your review a free tip to me. It’s a win-win situation for us both.
I do want to put it out there that I am looking for some opportunities to speak and to be of value to other organizations, schools and universities. I’ve been approached by my own alma mater, which has been pretty cool to talk hopefully, in 2020 at their Business Week. We’ll see how that goes. I have put myself forward in so many different arenas that I thought the one place that people listened to me every week is here on the show. If there are any opportunities that you’re like, “This would be great locally for me or in my community or even virtually.” I’m trying to do more in-person stuff because I love to actually put a face to some of these names that I see popping up each week. If there are any opportunities, send me a message, let me know. I would love to meet you in person and to help your community either in business or with some life and personal development. Those are my two real passions among many other passions that I have at the moment and those could change. However, I do want to mention that here as you’re reading this that I am available for that.
Also with the conversation about traveling, I’m thinking about doing a live tour. I was at Podcast Movement and there were a couple of shows that took their shows on the road. I thought, “What better way to actually come and meet you than to do a live tour.” That is in my periphery maybe for 2020. If you want to be a stop on the tour, reach out to me and let me know. I am most active through Instagram. You can find me @PhoebeMroczek. I would love to meet you and to come and record an episode live. Maybe have some people come up and I can ask them questions and I can give my insights. We would just have the most fun time ever and then maybe a couple of coffees or cocktails after the show. I want to throw those out there as possibilities for us to get together. If you’re here in Austin, Texas, I would love to meet you as well. That’s probably the easiest way to make it happen, but I do realize that you are probably reading this from somewhere else in the world and no place is off-limits and I truly mean that. I’ve been all over the world, in 70 countries and I love to travel. I love to see people in person.
What Do You Want?
Let’s go ahead and get into the show. I am excited about this conversation because it’s something that has been building for many months now. I have been sharing these thoughts with my clients. A lot of times, I like to share things and test it out first before I put it on the show and sometimes, I just decide to go for it and we’ll see what happens and see what the feedback is like and how many people are sharing the show or commenting or responding on Instagram or through email and sometimes Facebook. This one is important to me because I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I go to these personal development workshops or these business training, I’m listening to all this stuff and they’re asking the same questions over and over. Personally, “What do you want?” is a very impactful question. I don’t think enough people consider what they actually want and if you don’t know what you want, you don’t know how to get there. You don’t know what actions to take and that’s when we feel stuck.
If I sit in front of you face-to-face and I keep asking you, “What do you want?” I have found that sometimes it loses its magic. It loses its ability to actually inspire a response. I know what I have said through all of these personal development training. I was having this conversation with a girlfriend and we were talking about, “What do you want?” That’s what she asked me. I said, “It’s so interesting. Every time somebody asked me that, I go to my default answer, which sounds good.” The answer that I say in many personal development workshops or have in business training and all of these things and masterminds and whatnot, “I want to create adventure experiences for entrepreneurs.” That is such a pre-packaged bubble-wrapped fancy way to get everyone off my back because it feels concise and people are like, “She knows exactly what she’s going for.” When in reality, what I want has changed so much. Permission for you to change your mind. I say that probably once in an episode because I do think it’s important that we have that permission and this adventure experiences for entrepreneurs. That is also happening. It doesn’t always have to look a certain way. It can evolve and change.
When I hear myself say that, it’s almost like I roll my eyes in my head because I know that’s not the truth based on where I am now. We can continue to ask ourselves the, “What do you want?” question, “What do I want? What do you want?” We can have somebody sit in front of us, whether that’s a coach, a friend, a colleague, a peer, whatever, asking us, “Ask me what I want. Is that it? Is there anything else?” For me, it loses its magic, but it also loses the charge. Because I’ve heard it so much, I start to tune it out. I was thinking, “What is an alternative way to asking the same question or to getting the same answer?” I came up with the question, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” It’s almost a game and here’s how this game works. If you’re by yourself, it works. If you’re with friends, it works. It puts you in a really vulnerable state, which is where I believe the most empowering and the most honest answers come out.
If we inspire play and if we all just played a little bit more, that’s what we’re designed to do. As kids, we’re in our natural state. If you are a fan of this show and a fan of the concept of the show, you know that the quote that I have modeled the show after is the Paulo Coelho quote, “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s actually about unbecoming everything that isn’t you, so you can be who you are meant to be in the first place.” If we look at the origin of that quote and we consider who it is that has come into this world in an unbecoming setting, who has already unbecome, it’s the little kids in us. It’s the little two to three-year-old kids.
Answering Life’s Big Questions: “What do you want?” is a very impactful question.
We know that the majority of our developmental growth happens before the age of seven. All of those patterns and beliefs happen before then. We look at that and we say, “These kids are the representation of who we are at the core and they are not sitting down journaling. They’re not sitting down and rubbing crystals together, meditating their way to the top and meditating their way to what they actually want. They’re going out and they’re playing.” Play is our natural state. It’s adding a little bit more play to these serious questions.
One of the hardest things that I have around personal development and growth is that it all feels heavy and serious a lot. There are a lot of tears for me and in all of the conferences. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve spent a lot of money in personal growth and development because I love it so much. In those conversations, we leave and we go home and we think, “I’m exhausted from thinking, from crying and from digging through those painful memories oftentimes and the mess.” What if we just made everything a little bit lighter and we actually had fun discovering who it is that we are and what it is that we want? In this question, “What do we want?” the game that I created was, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” Here’s how I play is I get one of those big poster boards and I write at the top, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” and I label everything. I set a timer, I put some music on, I light some candles, I do all the things to make me feel safe and also light and fun.
I’ll put some music on. I don’t like music with lyrics when I’m doing creative stuff like this because my natural inclination is to sing to the music or to think in terms of lyrics. What I want is the honest truth of who I am to come through in what I’m writing down. If writing doesn’t work for you, maybe it’s sitting on the couch and thinking through all of these things. It’s important for me to capture what I’m actually thinking and feeling. One of my things was, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I aged backward and look 28 forever?” It brings this lightness. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I made $1 million in the next 90 days by not changing anything that I’m doing?” I say, “That would be awesome.”
I can also play and expand my vision into some fun things. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if all of my friends had babies in the next year and I got to be the best aunt ever?” I’m just making things up off the top of my head. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I got a Netflix series and all of a sudden was helping people film and create a version of their life that they didn’t even see possible?” That would be awesome. I’m looking at my office, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I no longer had chairs in my office and I only sat on pillows?”
It’s the stupidest things that can come out. We get to look through and sift through some of those things that it gets us out of the left-brain logic into the right-brain creativity because that is where we are able to see beyond what we know possible. We are able to see past all of these beliefs that we think things need to look and feel a certain way and into this creative version of who we are. If you have friends that want to play this game and I actually was just talking to a good friend of mine here who was looking for some exercises for entrepreneurs in Austin to get out of their heads. We were talking about being on a boat every Wednesday at a specific time and we’re going to bring together the connectors here in Austin. He was like, “I don’t want it to be classical, what we would consider networking.” He wants to pull people out of their shell and I said, “I have the best exercise. It’s called, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?”
Inspire play and just play a little bit more; that's what we're designed to do. Click To TweetWe would go around in a circle and set a timer for ten minutes. I have two of my clients coming and maybe by the time this blog has been published, it also may have already happened. My plan is to have this exercise and the three of us are going to go around in a circle for ten minutes because it feels light and fun. It’s what we want comes out of that. If I tell you that I want my whole office instead of a chair and a desk and whatever to actually be pillows and for it all to be white, what does that tell me? We’re not going to overthink it, but I want my business to look a different way than it does at the moment.
Maybe sometimes it feels a little rigid with a desk and a bookshelf and all of my things around and I want it to feel more fun, playful, comfortable and safe. We can read through the lines, but we’ve got to get that bigger picture out. The way that we do that is through fun and play. You can play this with your friends and it also brings the level of depth. I strive to create in my friendships is to bring that level of depth, understanding and vulnerability out in a way that feels a little scary but within a safe environment. All of this play helps me personally get there with my friends.
When you’re ready and if you’re doing this on your own and you put, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if” at the top and then you just go nuts. Write in different colors or let your brain turn off for a second and let the intuitive right-brain side come through your pen, come through the pictures you’re painting, whatever it is. When you’re ready, see if you can assign one action item to each thing. I’m going to use this example now throughout because it’s a little ridiculous that I want my office to be full of pillows. I can look at that and be like, “What could I change? I’m going to take the bookshelf out because maybe it feels a little rigid. Maybe I’m going to add a pillow to my chair. What is one action item that we can take?”
I got this from this friend who has the boat and we were talking about it and he actually wrote to me. It truly brought a tear to my eye. He said, “I want to thank you. During my meditation this morning, I focused on the question, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if?’ and spent about 30 minutes thinking of things. Once I came out, I decided to journal on them. As crazy as the notions and desires went, there’s one action item to almost every one of them. It’s amazing, you made my day.” Getting that text, I can’t even put words to it. Just the fact knowing that there was something that I did that impacted him and now he’s going to take more steps in the direction of what he wants is so inspiring. It’s so exciting to me and it fills me with such joy.
The action items are just the bonus. What we need to do is get all of the mess that’s in our head that’s tangled so tightly. We need to unwind that. I always think of it as like a big ball of yarn. We start by pulling the end and seeing where the ball of yarn takes us. If we look at that, it is all this exercise is designed to do and to create for you. What we look for now is then the left-brain logic wants to come in and evaluate everything. Some things look crazy and my crazy notions and desires that he texted me, they’re not crazy. There is some truth behind everything, behind every joke, every throwaway comment. There’s a little bit of truth in that.
Answering Life’s Big Questions: There is some truth behind everything, behind every joke and every throwaway comment.
Before you get in a rush, immediately assign an action item. Even if I give you the homework to put an action item behind it, you’re naturally going to go into that state before you even start the exercise. I don’t want you to do that. I’ve never assigned an action item to any of those things. There are two approaches. He decided to make that call, to assign an action item. However, I look at that list all the time and there are some things I laugh at. They’re like, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I aged backward and looked 28 forever?” “What? Why did I write that? I don’t know.” In that moment, that’s what felt important to me to write down.
I actually don’t assign action items, but if you want to go back and I would encourage you or invite you to give it even three days. Don’t be in a rush to assign an action item. Here’s another version. We’re going to get off the “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” but I want to encourage you to try that. Even if nothing good comes out and whatever we label is good. It’s all a label, all the meaning-making machine that is our brain trying to create something from nothing and from just words on a paper. Please try this exercise. Even if it doesn’t work for you the first time, whatever that means, try again in a couple of days. See what comes out and grab some friends. That’s another way that you can do it.
Under the umbrella of what do you want, here’s another great thing that I have worked through, which is to follow the envy. We are told all the time that we shouldn’t envy people because it’s negative and we’re as good as them and all of this stuff. The truth is we all have it and I don’t care who you are. There’s somebody that pops up on your Facebook, your Instagram or whatever that you’re like, “I wish I had that,” or that makes you feel that type of way. When we can look at the, “Who do you admire?” because that is obviously a lighter, nicer, more positive approach, but I have found personally asking myself, “Who do I feel jealous of? Who am I envious of?” That leads me quicker to the path of what I want. What I think of is, “Who do I feel envious of?”
I was doing this exercise with one of my friends and I said to her, “Sometimes I envy Rachel Hollis.” If you don’t know her, you should. She wrote the book, Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing. The thing is what I am envious of when I go there and I put myself in her shoes and when I look objectively at why I envy certain things. I’m going to go here because I wasn’t planning on it, but I might as well. What I envy about her is that it seems like she’s got a great home life. She’s got a supportive husband. She’s got amazing kids. Obviously, we can always say, the grass is greener or it always looks great, but we just remove all of that judgment and I say, “What am I envious of?”
I’m envious that she has some bestselling books. That’s awesome. When we talk about envy, it feels negative and it feels heavy. What if we remove those feelings and say, “This is a magnifying glass for what I really want?” She’s got the books. She’s got a loyal cult following. She’s got people that believe in her and are taking action. She is not somebody who’s just preaching to the masses and nobody’s taking action. They’re signing up for her events. She has these massive live events that have thousands of women and men and she’s carved a unique path for herself. She has shut out all the noise and gone her own way. I’m very envious of that. Those feelings I think are normal.
Envy is a shortcut to the things that we want. Click To TweetI’m trying to normalize those feelings in my own head because I actually don’t think envy is a bad thing. I think it’s a shortcut to the things that we want. Ultimately at the end of the day, I look at that and I say, “Here’s what I want. I want a supportive partner and family. That matters to me. That’s what I want. What else do I want? I want people that subscribe to what I’m talking about and are taking action, are implementing some of the crazy thoughts and ideas that I have and putting that into practice in their own life. She’s having such an amazing impact. I want that too.”
I look at her books and what is it about? “Do I want to be an author? I do.” I love to write. She’s just gone and done it. She sold out on QVC or something crazy like that. I think about it and I’m like, “Do I want to be on QVC with a clothing line?” I don’t know. Maybe. There’s something about that that I see that I’m like, “She’s building an empire. That’s what I want.” What does that mean for you? Follow the envy. Who are you envious of? Who do you listen to? Rachel Hollis is a very small person in the grand scheme of things and I’m like, “That’s what I want.”
It’s basically real-life vision boarding. It’s no longer cutting things out of a magazine, but it’s thinking things through to put on your mental vision board. Those are things apparently that I want. Who knew? I just knew that if I identified somebody that I envy that there are characteristics. If you’ve ever heard the work of John Demartini, he talks about normalizing things and that with every positive there’s a negative. I’m sure that having four kids looks beautiful and they have a beautiful family but there is probably a downside of that too. I’m not even going to look at that right now because I’m not trying to equalize or normalize anything. It all comes out in the wash. This is getting back to, “What do I want?”
My invitation to you is to look at the people in your newsfeed, the people that you pay attention to, whose books you’re reading, who you see at a restaurant, even strangers. You’re like, “She looks cute. He’s got it put together.” Think of all of the things under that. Why is it that came to your attention? What are you telling yourself about that person and how does that apply to your life and what you want? We can look at who we admire, but why don’t we look at who we feel jealous of and let’s normalize that? Let’s call it out, call it like it is. That happens and it’s a feeling that everybody has.
The next part of this, “What do you want?” is to follow the feelings rather than the outcome. How do we want to feel in our life? If I say I want to feel inspiring, I want to feel creative and intuitive like I’m making a difference. I want to feel important. I want to feel significant. All of these things that I want to feel, those are now the guiding feelings that are helping me make better decisions in my life and business. We can list all of those out. List them all out on a piece of paper. I love to journal, so that’s how I do it. I also love to paint. That’s a recent thing. That’s only a couple months old, but I’m going to own that. When we get to the, “How do you want to feel?” and you’ve listed all these things out or drawn them or whatever, then the next question becomes, “Is there a better way to achieve that or is there a faster way to achieve that?” My favorite, “Is there an easier way to achieve that feeling?”
Answering Life’s Big Questions: With every positive, there’s a negative.
Let’s say for me, I want to feel rich. It means a lot of different things. Rich in my relationships, rich in my business, rich in life, rich in love, rich in significance, so many different things. I noticed through a conversation that I had with a friend of mine when we were mapping out our whole lives and going through this and if you don’t have friends like that, you need to find some. If you don’t know how, ask me and I’ll tell you and I’ll create it because I want a community, this Rachel Hollis type cult following of people that want the same things in life and are committed to taking actions towards those things.
In that conversation, we were talking about how I want to feel. When I was talking about the Netflix, I want a Netflix series. Why? What is the feeling associated with that outcome? With Netflix, I want to impact a lot of people. I want them to see what their real gift is. I want to tell a better story and asking people tell different stories. It’s not just a story about me, it’s not about the fame. For me, it’s about highlighting other people and fanning the flame of empowering people so that the viewers or the listeners feel empowered to take action.
“Does it have to be Netflix?” “No, it doesn’t.” These are questions that one of my girlfriends and I were going through, “No, it doesn’t have to be that way.” “Is there an easier way to achieve that same feeling?” Yeah. If I just grew this show and was impacting people that were taking action and felt empowered to make better decisions in the direction of what they want. Do I really need Netflix? No, but I have hinged so much of my identity and my goals and my dreams on this one thing, which is not a great way to go through life. Because then what you’re telling the universe is that you know better and the universe, God, whoever you believe in, you’re like, “I know better so it has to look this one way.”
At the end of the day, is my heart going to be broken if Netflix never comes banging on my door? Of course not. I know that there are other areas. This is right-brain creative thinking that is like, “If it doesn’t look like this, what other ways could it look?” It expands your level of possibility, expands the responses or the answers, or the way that other ways that could show up for you. Is there another better, faster, easier, cheaper, insert whatever adjective you want to put in there to achieve that same feeling? Then continue to ask yourself, “What else is possible?” I love that question. Just keep going down that train. If you’re like, “It’s pulling the yarn.” I want to feel significant. There are other ways for me to do that. I want to feel like I’m inspiring people to take action. “Are there other ways to do that than Netflix?” “Yes.” “What other ways?” “Through the podcast, through the books I’m going to write, through showing up live on Facebook, through my Instagram posts, through my communities that I’m building, through my clients. What else is possible?”
Who Are You Really?
Keep asking yourself until all of a sudden at the end of the day you’re going to be like, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” and then you’re like, “Wow,” full-circle moment where now we’re tying all the pieces together. This is the beauty of taking the time to refine your goals, visions, dreams, and we’re going to get into that. That’s all I have for the, “What do you want?” question. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if? Who are you envious of? How do you want to feel and is there a better, faster, easier way to achieve that feeling? Then ultimately, what else is possible?” The second question that I tend to see here in all of these personal development things is, “Who are you really?” I ask this question at the beginning of all my interviews because first of all, it sets the tone for the show and it brings that level of depth right off the bat. That’s why I love asking that question.
Follow your feelings rather than the outcome. Click To TweetI find that people tend to struggle a little bit through that. Everyone’s like, “Oh God.” It’s the same response because it’s unusual for an episode to start off that way or for an interview. Whenever I’m in an interview being interviewed on different podcasts and shows and masterminds and training and stuff, the first question is always, “Phoebe Mroczek, how do you say your last name?” It’s always the same thing, but I don’t actually care about any of that, any of the surface level stuff. Let’s just drop right into it.
If you are wondering how you would answer that question. If I brought you on the show and I said, “Who are you really?” Would you get uncomfortable? If yes, cool. Me too. It’s designed to do that. I have a couple of questions that I have used to figure that out for myself and it’s a practice. Unbecoming is a practice. I talk about that all the time and that’s in the intro. It’s the practice of releasing judgments, expectations, past conditioning to find out who you are at the core so that you can create this more meaningful life and business. That’s ultimately what we’re out to create is more meaning. I asked myself, “How do I consistently show up for myself and others?” It’s important, that first point, “How do I consistently show up for myself? Am I putting things that I say I want on the back burner all the freaking time?” That’s not good. That’s putting my own dreams.
I’m basically pursuing something inconsistently. We all know that first of all I wouldn’t do it to a friend. I don’t like to show up inconsistently for my friends. I like to be that unwavering support that they need whenever. I am a 4:00 AM friend is what I call it. If you don’t have 4:00 AM friends in your life that if something happened at 4:00 AM, you know you could call them unless my phone is on Airplane mode or the sound machine is too loud or something. Normally, I am that kind of friend. You can call me at any time. I’m very reliable. I can say that I’m reliable to everybody else but am I reliable to myself? I’ve gotten so much better. If you had asked me that question a few years ago, definitely not. I was the last person on my totem pole and that’s so backward. How you show up for yourself is how you show up for others. How you show up for others is how you show up for yourself. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
That is a great way to see who you are is how you show up. Sometimes that will change, the version of us, the evolved version that we want to be better and we all make mistakes. That version that we want to be better can dictate who we are or who we want to be but who we are really. The first step of the unbecoming process is the audit. We have to assess where we are in life and how we’ve been showing up. Who are we really? I think a lot of us lie to ourselves and say that we are this unwavering support, but at the end of the day is that how you show up across all relationships, across all areas of your life? If it’s not, then maybe you need to reconsider or reevaluate. This is the tough love that we all need sometimes in our life.
I’m saying this to you as much as I’m saying it to myself. I love having this show because I listen back to my episodes and a couple of weeks later I’m like, “I needed to hear that.” My belief and my trust is that somebody needs to hear what I’m talking about. That’s always whenever I turn on the microphone, that’s the way I do things. “Have I consistently shown up for myself and others? Also, what habits have I built that honor my greatest values?” I got this question from the interview that I had with Jon Vroman. If you haven’t yet read that interview, go read it because he talks about how we build habits and then those dictate our actions and those all need to be in alignment with our values. That’s something I talk about all the time and the way he encapsulated it I thought was beautifully done. Go read that episode.
Answering Life’s Big Questions: You are your habits. You are how you consistently show up.
You are your habits. You are how you consistently show up. That is a great question to figure out who you really are and then also how do you spend most of your time and money? I always say I can tell who you are and what you value by your calendar and your bank statements. If you looked right now at my calendar and my bank statements, I can tell you what I value. I value personal growth and development. I value myself. I’ve been doing a lot of self-care, booked out my mornings for a lot of this. I value business and being of service. I value creativity. I block out time for creativity, for this painting thing that I’ve been talking about. I think that might be its own episode because it’s cool some of the things that have come out of that. That’s how I spend a lot of my time. My money is spent in safety and security like rent. I love where I live. It’s spent traveling. I value travel and adventure and then a lot of personal growth and development. I spent a lot of money in that. I spend a lot of money in my own spiritual development. Where do you spend your time and money?
We can take it a little higher level, “How do I hope people describe me at the end of my life? Who are you really? In that conversation, it’s how are you showing up. We can also go back to that question that I asked about the, “Who do you envy?” If you’re envious of somebody, that’s going to tell you who you really are. I’m not envious of a violin player in an orchestra. There are parts of that I’m like, “He or she is in the moment and I’m envious of their presence or whatever.” In reality, I have never thought about that person in the orchestra because that’s not my path. Whereas somebody who is doing all the things that I want to do, that’s the piece of the puzzle that you’ve been missing and you only have a reaction because it’s a reflection of who you are. How do you hope people describe you at the end of your life and looking at other people to see how you see them? How you see them is how you see yourself.
If I had to give you a couple of building blocks and we wiped out all of your past and wiped out all of your future and you only had now, what three building blocks would you include in terms of your identity? What three values would you put together? I liken it to dumping your purse out on the table or your suitcase or whatever. I tell this to my clients, “I don’t care what you put back in the purse or back in the suitcase as long as it’s intentional.” This is a great question for communities or in your own friend group if you’re having a girls’ night in or you’re doing a dinner with a bunch of people to get vulnerable and bring the conversation to a depth that I believe most people want. We want that real true connection.
That question is something that came from a gentleman that I met here in Austin who I interviewed for my new show called New To. I went over to his house to meet his family for dinner and he said to me, “Phoebe, you seem really well put together. What area of your life are you not put together in?” I was like, “I’m going to delay it for a minute because I’m thinking, but that’s a great question. I’m going to use that in more of my conversations with other people,” and so I have. I’ve probably asked that question ten times because it brings that depth, it brings that vulnerability and oftentimes we have to go first.
When he asked me that question, I immediately jumped to the area of my life that I feel like I’m not put together in. I went first, then he went first, then his wife and then his daughter and it was such a much more impactful conversation. Goals and dreams are important. We were bumping up against some real vulnerability there and that opened the flood gates. It became a much more impactful, inspiring, honest conversation. If you’re sitting around with a group of friends, I would invite you to ask that question and then go first because the depth that you are willing to go is what opens the invitation for everyone else to go just as deep. “What is one area of your life that you’re not put together in?” and that will tell you who you really are. That wraps up the, “Who are you really?” question.
How you show up for others is how you show up for yourself. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Click To TweetThe last one is, “Why am I here?” What I hear a lot of people saying is, “What is your vision, your legacy, your purpose?” insert whatever word feels the most honest to you. I have struggled with this so much. The concept of purpose is something I speak very openly about because I don’t believe that we should be chasing our purpose or that it’s something that we’re trying to get a grip on or we’re trying to catch it or whatever. To me, I hear and feel so much pressure. I have always felt that. In any conversation that I’ve ever been in any mastermind, seminar or whatever, when people are like, “This is my purpose,” it gives me such anxiety because I don’t believe that I have this one thing. What I do know is that I have a passion for several things.
Why Am I Here?
When I talk about your vision or your legacy, the legacy for me doesn’t resonate as much. I’m going to make a sweeping generalization. With the male clients that I’ve worked with, I find legacy to resonate more strongly with them than it does with my female audience. When I speak to my female audience, vision or purpose seems to resonate more. Whatever that word is for you or maybe it’s just the, “Why am I here?” conversation, which I have a lot with myself and with my friends. One of the questions that has come up for me a lot has been, “What is one issue or problem that creates a real visceral reaction in my body?” Not in my head, but it’s something that’s uncontrollable. That when somebody says something I’m like, “Oh God.” Maybe it’s not plastic straws, that problem in my life is not a real issue for me. It doesn’t create that discomfort in my body. When I hear about kids not getting an education or poverty or anything having to do with sick kids, anything having to do with people not really fulfilling on their purpose or not believing in themselves or talking negatively. Even saying that brings up tears in my eyes. I feel a tightening in my chest. That is what I’m talking about.
If you don’t know what that is for you, then that’s okay. This is why my conversations are here to activate something in you to dig a little bit deeper than where you’ve gone potentially before. Maybe if you’ve already asked yourself these questions, it’s an invitation to do it again. What is one issue or problem or something going on in the world that creates that response in your body, whether that’s the tightening of your chest, whether that’s your palm starts sweating? You feel generally uncomfortable when that conversation comes up. Maybe for you, it is plastic straws and that’s awesome because we need someone to care about that. Maybe it’s the environment, maybe it’s the burning of the Amazon, maybe it’s an illness. Whatever it is for you, know that there is something in that for you. When I see people not believing in themselves and not going after what they want, that puts a pit in my stomach. It’s this heaviness where I feel I could cry over the microphone. We’re so much better than that. I believe so strongly in people that when they don’t believe in themselves, it makes me want to cry. That’s the first part.
“What are you doing or what are you talking about when time seems to fly?” That for me is such an easy answer. I don’t know if that is the case for you too. For me, what I’m talking about when time flies is this visioning this, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if? What do we want out of the world and our life?” When I lived in China from 2010 to 2013, my friends called it the Phoebe Corner. It’s because whenever I would have too many beverages, they’d be like, “I got Phoebe cornered last night.” I remember being embarrassed about that and I’ve mentioned it on a couple of episodes. There was a lot of truth in that for me, which was when I have had too many Baijius, which if you don’t know what that is, it’s like Chinese vodka. It’s gross.
If I had had too much of that or too many beers, I would corner people, not in a creepy way, but talk to them about either how much I love them or what they want out of life. I thought, “All I want is connection.” That’s what that tells me that I give a crap about what you want out of life. If you were here and we were having too many cocktails or even just coffee at a coffee shop, all I would want to talk to you about was who you really are, what your real gifts are and how do we communicate that in an authentic way. That is all I want to talk about.
Answering Life’s Big Questions: Asking the right questions helps us realize that the answers that we want are within us.
It starts with connection. I want you to know that you’re safe here, that I’m a good friend of yours, that you can tell me anything. Nothing is off-limits. I want you to feel that connection with me. That’s why I’m going to tell you how much I like you. That goes back to some of my personal stuff, which is like you should never leave a conversation where somebody doesn’t know how you feel about them. That’s my personal communication and how I want people to feel connected to me. The other side of that, which is how I want you to express your thoughts, feelings and dreams and how can we make that happen? How can I fan your flame? I’m sharing all of these not to tell you how wonderful I am. You might be hearing this and you could have one or three responses like, “Me too. I’m with you,” and another part that’s like, “No, this doesn’t resonate at all, but here’s a conversation.” Then if you’re like, “That’s the worst.”
Hopefully, you’re in one of the other two camps. I’m hoping that this is inspiring you to have that conversation with yourself, “Why are you here? What’s your vision, purpose, legacy or whatever word you want to use? How could you be of service now? How could you support one person now?” When I’ve always heard the, “What is your purpose?” I focused so much on the utility and what that means and then breaking that down, the total left-brain logic, “What is that? How do I break it down?” I compartmentalize. I’m like, “Three action steps that I can do every day. How am I building the habit?” What that loses is the spontaneity. What it loses is the real feeling and emotion behind why that’s important to me. Rather than searching for all the answers, just being in the answer. Being in the service rather than searching for what that service could mean or what that could lead to, it’s being in it.
That feels true for me because for so long I’ve been trying to create this overarching mission statement that sounds amazing and it’s going to impress everybody. When you ask me what my purpose is, I’m going to have this perfectly crafted mission or vision statement and then you’re going to be impressed and you’re going to think I’m smart and all this stuff, rather than doing the thing and figuring it out on the way. Collecting the breadcrumbs, seeing where that leads, pulling the piece of yarn to get back to why we’re doing the things that we’re doing and who we’re being in that moment. Get out of the doing and into the being is the overarching theme of this show. There are so many questions that we ask ourselves and those are the three questions that I pulled out. “What do you want? Who are you really and why am I here?” If we can look at that and extract it, pull it out and examine it from all different angles, maybe we can find that the answers that we want are there within us. We just haven’t been asking the right questions.
As Tony Robbins says, and the way that I opened the show, “The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you’re asking yourself.” If you’ve been feeling stuck, feeling stifled or unsure of who you are, what you want or why you’re here, I hope that this episode helped you understand or inspired you to create alternative questions to get better answers. Thank you so much for being here. If this episode resonated with you, please share this show. You can share it on Instagram or Facebook. You can even text message your friends. I do it all the time. I’m like, “Susie, I know that we were having these conversations at dinner the other night and I heard this episode. It made me think of you. Skip to minute 34 or listen to the whole thing, whatever.” The way that we create a deeper connection with the people that we care about is through day-to-day engagement. If this episode resonates with you, I’m sure it will resonate with your friends too. Hopefully, it will bring a new layer of depth to the conversations and the connections that you have. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. I can’t wait to see you on another episode. Thank you so much.
Important Links:
Sarah Jenks | The Journey To A Whole Woman
Being a woman is tough. Add motherhood, career, and the pressure to follow society’s beauty standards to that equation and all you get is a girl who’s lost herself. Sarah Jenks, a mom of three, life coach, emotional eating expert, and sacred space holder, helps thousands of women find their true self and get the courage they need to face challenges. Sarah reveals how being in the winter season of her life led her to become a priestess. She talks about Whole Woman, a moonly online membership for women she founded, and Live More Weigh Less™, the most popular online emotional eating program, and how these platforms are committed to helping women find their own unique path and celebrate each other’s success.
Share the love, leave a review: www.unbecomingpodcast.com/itunes
Connect with Phoebe on Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoebemroczek
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Listen to the podcast here:
Sarah Jenks | The Journey To A Whole Woman
On this episode, I’ve invited a friend of mine, Sarah Jenks, to the show to talk about evolution transition and her mission behind the Whole Woman.
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I just got off this interview with Sarah Jenks and it has me fired up. I cannot wait to jump into this episode. However, before we do that, I want to remind you that if you have not yet left a review, please go ahead and do that. Because we are nearing the 100th episode of this show which is very exciting, what I have decided to do is if you are one of the first 100 people to leave a review, I am going to pick out somebody at random and give them a special prize. This prize is going to include some one-on-one time with you and me digging into your life and your business. Be sure to be one of those first 100 people. If you have not yet left a review, please go to that. You can find it at UnbecomingPodcast.com/itunes. That is the best place to leave a review, so you can do that on your web browser or you can do that on your phone. I would appreciate it.
As you are reading this, if anybody on your sphere whether it’s your friends, family, colleagues, clients or whatever pops into your head, I would love for you to share the show. That is how we get more amazing people like Sarah Jenks on the show is by having more people following, getting a bigger listening community behind the show. Keep that in mind as you are reading this because Sarah Jenks is a powerhouse on a mission to help other people stand up and speak out for what they truly believe in.
We share similar passions and it’s very evident in this show for figuring out the who piece and fusing the masculine and feminine to create a holistic approach to life and business. She is going to talk about how her work has evolved and why she has transitioned to a more honest and meaningful expression of who she is. It’s been beautiful to watch as I followed her and her story and her mission for the last couple of years. What strikes me throughout this conversation is the depth, time, research and also the intentionality with which she has arrived at some both painful and passionate truths.
We go a little into the woo here, which is awesome and is an area I love to play in. If you would not consider yourself a spiritual person, that is totally fine. You’re still going to get a lot out of this and I would invite you to suspend any preconceived notions or beliefs as you read because there are many gems hidden in this interview and I don’t want you to miss it. If you’re a gentleman, it would be so easy for you to skip to the next episode and catch us next week, but I encourage you not to do that. It is so important that you hear all that Sarah has to say. She talks about her relationship with her husband and how that has been such an important conversation to have and to be intentional about. I love that. This is as important for you, gentlemen, as it is for the ladies.
As always, as I do with all of my interviews, I asked Sarah to stay behind to impart some business wisdom on us. If you’re looking to build a more connected community or want to grow your membership, look no further. She is the expert in doing that. She has grown her community to over 100,000 members and has so much to share with us about her experiences. She even goes a little bit into the mistake she’s made, what she had to let go of and how she continues to stand out online even as her business has evolved and transitioned. That’s so important. I got a lot out of this conversation. You can listen to all of this and more at our After-Hours segment. Get all of her recommendations by visiting UnbecomingPodcast.com/95. Let’s go ahead and jump into this episode with this beautiful human, Sarah Jenks.
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I am so excited to welcome our guest, Sarah Jenks. Sarah, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
I have been looking forward to this for a long time. I want to start off with a little bit of context for people that may or may not know how we became friends. I don’t even know if you know this, but I was in your Live More Weigh Less program. I was in it when I was living in Berlin. I remember where I was listening to your audios, sitting on my little balcony in Berlin going through a tough time. I have that. You lived in San Francisco and we never got to connect because you were about to move, but then you are hiring and then you had family in Austin. I am so grateful that you’re here. To kick things off, I would love to hear who the real Sarah Jenks is?
I am on the anxious side. I will be real about that and I am a mother of three. I’m always in this dance and this balance around motherhood, work and self-care. I’m constantly looking at that and figuring out what’s right for me. I have had a very long dance of paying more attention to who I think I should be versus who I am and all this pressure to be normal, to fit in, to blend in, to not rock the boat and to follow the rules. I’m every day finding my way back to who am I as the rebel. Who am I as the rule breaker? How am I creating my own code of motherhood? How am I creating my own code of work? How am I creating my own code of self-care and my spiritual practice?
I am a priestess initiate in the 13 Moon Mystery School, which means that I am on the path of training to be a priestess. I’ve been doing that for eight years. That has informed my life and my work in the world at this point. It also took me a very long time to say that out loud. I used to be an emotional eater. Once an emotional eater, always an emotional eater. It comes out from time to time. I’ve learned how to use that as my guidepost to understanding what’s off in my life and where I need to be more of a rebel. I have an amazing marriage and that is constantly challenging me.
Finding a balance around motherhood, work, and self-care is like being in a constant dance. Click To TweetI like to break things down into. I talk a lot on this show about the idea of seasons, seasons of life, business and purpose. I have this picture of you where you post it somewhere on social media, your hair is wet and it’s like you’re shaking or something. It feels like the expression of you is coming out. I would love to go back a little bit and if we were sitting here with two versions of the younger Sarah, one maybe being around nine or ten and one maybe being about a few years ago, how would those two Sarahs answer that question about who is the real Sarah Jenks?
My nine or ten-year-old would say I am such a feminist and girls are the best. I was so gung-ho about women’s rights when I was little and I still am, but I thought it was unique for someone at that age. I loved to dance. I was playful and I could feel the magic all around me. However, I was starting the dive into the darkness around my body around that age. It was probably like you either would have caught me a week before or a week after, like the fall off the cliff into the abyss of self-loathing around my body. If you were talking to me a few years ago, you would have gotten the answer like, “I have no idea who I am.” I think I want to be an advertising executive or maybe an event planner in New York. My whole life revolved around shrinking my body at that point in my life.
That is such a great analogy for many different things, especially as I have followed you on social media and seeing this transformation of how you’re stepping out in the world. What season of life do you feel like you’re in?
I’m in an interesting season. I had my third and final child last June. I have had three kids in five years. For the past six years, I’ve been either pregnant or postpartum with one of my kids and my first two are eighteen months apart. I got pregnant when my oldest was nine months old. During this time, my husband was in his surgical residency. He was working between 90 and 100 hours a week.
It was so hard because we were living in San Francisco and he made less money than we had to pay for our nanny. I was the primary breadwinner and the primary parent because he wasn’t around. I attribute that period of my life as winter. I say that because it was very hard. It wasn’t the winter where I’m resting on the couch and doing the whole thing. It was dark and it forced me to question everything. It forced me to let go of all of my attachments, my attachments to fame, relevance, money and to my body. My attachments to how I thought motherhood was supposed to look for me and that’s when I found the workaround the sacred feminine.
Part of that journey was getting clear about the work I wanted to do when Jonathan was done with residency. We knew we wanted to move from San Francisco to Massachusetts, which is where I grew up and where my family is. I also felt called to be back here because I wanted to help land the Sacred Feminine in New England because it felt alive and well in San Francisco. I felt like there’s a need to have a bit of a boost over here. I ended up manifesting this house and we ended up buying this retreat center in Medfield, Massachusetts about 35 minutes outside of Boston. I got pregnant a month after we moved. We were hoping to wait a year or two so I can catch my breath.
I got pregnant again and money was super tight because we bought this huge situation. I found myself in a similar situation where I was needing to hustle a bit for money for us to continue this pattern of working and pushing through pregnancies, which felt hard for me. I think it’s hard for most of us, but I’m not going to speak for everybody. I had Hazel in June and I continued the patterns of pushing unconsciously without understanding what was going on. Finally, in January I said, “Enough, I can’t do this anymore.” I didn’t have as much financial pressure anymore because things had gone well for me. Things have gone well for Jonathan and I can relax.
I fired the majority of my team that works for me and I canceled all growth plans that I had for my business. I had not worked for that long in my life in the past few months. I feel like in that, I got the real winter, the cozy, relaxed by the fire type winter and it happened to happen during winter, which was also quite convenient. Now, I feel like I’m in this sweet early spring, but I’m timid about it. I’m learning and it’s messy. I’m trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to express myself in this next iteration of this next season of my life where I’m post-kids. We are not having any more babies. I’m a financial partner with my husband instead of carrying all my by myself. I’m co-parenting with him. He’s much more available. It’s like an open blank canvas. When we have a canvas, it sounds like it’s going to be awesome, but in practice, I realize that it’s challenging.
I think so much of, especially even entrepreneurship. It’s like when you can do anything, you can do anything and I find it paralyzing. It paralyzed me for a lot of years where I would dip my toe into something but not actually be coming out with both feet into anything. I do want to mention when I reached out to you. I said I’d be so honored to have you on my show and your text back was, “I’m currently in a state of being particularly fired up.” I want to know what are you particularly fired up about? What was that in reference to?
I’m so sick of the BS around women living for other people. It’s time for that to be done. The other thing that I was thinking about when you texted me was I’m working on this article that’s called “Feminism starts at home” because I’m seeing so much anger around how our culture treats women rightfully so. There are lots of power around it and lots of marches and all of these amazing things. When I talked to the hundreds of clients I have in my Whole Woman membership program, when I get emails from the women after I send a blog post in response, it’s very clear to me that we are not showing up as a whole feminist, powerful women at home. That’s the hardest part. It’s so easy to show up to a march for five hours with everybody else who’s doing it and with a sign and all that stuff. That’s awesome and important. The real work has to be how are we claiming what we need and desire in our relationships or with our kids or with our parents? I want women to take some time and center themselves and understand what it is they want and why they don’t feel empowered to ask for it.
As you are talking about this more openly, what is coming up from either your members or why do you think women aren’t stepping up and asking for what they need? What is the reason behind that?
A lot of it is generational. Our closest teachers are our parents. I’m very lucky to have grown up with a mother who was home with us and yet was the total power center of our household. She did not take any shit from anybody. She was such a great role model because it showed that the money didn’t hold power in our house. She was clear about what she needed and she asked for it. We respected her and she took the time to take care of herself and do the things that she loved and all those things. A lot of us have seen in movies and magazines, from our parents, grandparents, friends’ houses we went over to are inundated with this set of rules around the roles women are supposed to play.
These rules can go back far, but we can trace them to the dawn of capitalism. This is beautifully written about in the book, Caliban and the Witch. The woman who wrote it talks about how in order for capitalism to have worked in the beginning, because there are ways to move into conscious capitalism. Capitalism was a labor-centric way of making money where people had to show up to the factories and produce things. In order for that to happen, there needed to be an entire population of labor producers, AKA women. These labor producers couldn’t question their role of producing labor or else it would upset the needs of this specific model of capitalism. All these things were put into our culture around women are supposed to have kids, stay home, do the housework, do this and do that.
Our foremothers have done incredible work around the vote and the workplace. We’re working on equal pay and yet, I haven’t seen a real shift at home in the housework. Women don’t even know that they have permission to ask for help. There’s also this rule around it’s part of our worth and it’s part of the way we pat ourselves on the back around like, “Look at all these things that I’m doing. I’m holding down a job and I’m doing the kids, I’m making sure the lunches are made, the dishwashing is done and the laundry is done.” There’s all this brainwashing around guilt for hiring help, guilt around asking our spouses for help. I even see a lot of guilt in my friends who live alone who feel guilty hiring a housekeeper. I’m like, “Who cares? Just because you don’t have to clean up other people’s mess, doesn’t mean that you can’t have support in that area if you can afford it.” I see how we’re in this a bit of a trance and that there’s a real opportunity to wipe the slate clean and take time to look at how we want to be spending our time instead of falling in line with the things we feel we’re supposed to do.
That’s so much of what this show is. I talk so much about how we have to have this unraveling, this releasing of judgments and expectations and all of these things that we’re supposed to be as women, as entrepreneurs, as sisters, as daughters and also the men. It’s interesting to me that this show started off as a show for women. I have a lot of very vocal men in my audience, which I appreciate. I’m grateful that they’re here and they’re allies. They want to help and they want to listen and be heard, which is exciting. I see so much crossover, overlap and alignment in what you’re doing with the Whole Woman. I would love to hear more about what that means to be a Whole Woman and why is this so important, not in general but specifically to you.
I do want to say something since you brought up the men. I feel pretty clear like this is not men’s fault. It is our responsibility to wake up to the trance and to ask for what we want. Usually, if we’re married to good men and I know most of us are. They’re like, “I’ve been waiting for you to be clear about that forever.” To me, being a Whole Woman is around understanding that all parts of ourselves support the other parts. I came up with this name, it was many years before I even launched the Whole Woman, which is my moonly membership program, because I read this article about the Four Burner Method, which was written by a man who believed that you can only have one burner on high. The only way your business can be super successful is if you turn down the volume on your relationship and kids and other things. I felt like I did not want a life like that. I didn’t want to have a life where I had to trade my business success for my happiness and motherhood. I didn’t want to have a life where I had to trade my relationship for motherhood or my health for my work. I didn’t believe that these things were in opposition to each other.
I wanted to believe that they supported each other. I started doing some experimenting and my whole thing is that work has always been on a high for me. That’s always been my burner that’s on. There have been times and I talked about this earlier where it hasn’t felt in alignment, it’s felt hard and it’s felt overwhelming. I’ve gone past the point of burnout. I kept fixating on what am I doing with work? What am I doing? Why is it so off? One day I turned and said, “What’s going on with motherhood right now?” I realized, “I feel out of alignment in motherhood. Let me spend half an hour journaling about how I feel I am meant to mother.” I spent some time on that and then I shifted how I mothered that day.
All of a sudden, I can see work differently. I had all these different ideas. There was a time when my spiritual practice felt so dead in the water. I’m trying to sit down and meditate every day. I’m doing all the things, I’m pulling the cards and I wasn’t feeling the connection. I kept being fixated on it and I said, “What is my relationship like with my body right now?” I realized, “My relationship with my body is out of alignment. Let me look at that.” I spent some time and I asked my body, “What is your ideal day look like? How do you want to move to? How do you want to eat?” I was able to make some shifts and then my spiritual practice got so much stronger and I felt so connected.
I saw that we’re only as strong as the weakest part. It’s important for us as women to take time to tend to all of our parts. I overlay our parts onto the elements being earth, air, fire and water, which also overlay over the directions. You can also look at this with the tarot suits, with the moon phases, with the seasons and with our menstrual phases. They are all aligned with similar energies. I’m always going around the compass and asking myself how is each part so that I can be woven together into this Whole Woman.
Is this only for women specifically? Do you think that any of this applies to men or is this women-specific?
It applies to men, though I haven’t necessarily studied it. If I’m looking at my husband, I see how he is so much more of a big dreamer now that he’s working out every day. He is so much happier in fatherhood now that he’s dreaming on a regular basis. I will say looking at him, I do think it’s true.
On your site and in a couple of things that you’ve written on social media, you talk a lot about this coming back to life, which would insinuate that something has died. What part of women do you think dies most often or first or what are the red flags and why do you think that happens?
Feminism starts at home. Click To TweetWith women, if we look at the course of our life, the first thing that dies is our relationship with our bodies. At a very young age, we are taught that if our bodies are not a very specific way, then we are broken. I believe that this is a very specific, deliberate tool to keep women in a constant state of overwhelm and striving. It’s like striving and shrinking so that we never get around to the important work of our purpose. I think that’s the first thing, plus as part of that body stuff, we are brainwashed into thinking that we are only as good as how little we weigh.
That affects how we think about ourselves in romantic relationships. It affects our sensuality. It affects our spiritual practice because it steals our worth from us. That’s the first thing. Another major thing that’s happened for me is that when I became a mother, I instantly felt like my entire life was taken away from me. I felt like I wasn’t that respected in society anymore. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to be a sexual woman anymore. I felt bad for working. It was like, “Am I ever going to work and be a terrible mom or be a mom and lose myself?” For me, those are the two major times that I felt like my vibrancy was ripped out from under me.
Did you feel like you always wanted to be a mom? Was that important to you?
It was always very important to me. I always knew I wanted to be a mother and my initial experiences of being a mother were terrible. It was nothing like I thought and I thought I’d made the biggest mistake on the planet like, “How did I get myself into this mess? This is terrible. I’m going to be miserable for the rest of my life. I can’t do this. What’s going on?” I blamed it all on me and my own emotional well-being. Instead of being like, “Sarah, of course, you’re feeling terrible. You’re on the other side of the country from your parents. You have to support your entire family and your child is crazy. This is hard. It has nothing to do with you.” I think because of this pressure for women to do it all, we feel crazy, terrible and depressed doing it all, we think we need to meditate more. I would say, “No, your life needs to be completely reconfigured so that you have a thousand times more support than what a lot of us are currently getting.”
There’s so much about when you need self-care, people are like, “Go to the spa, get your nails done.” It’s all like, “That’s cute,” and it’s self-care. It’s so not what it needs to be. Even when you’re saying about you’re becoming a mother. I have a good friend of mine who I remember. I know exactly where I was when I was talking to her and she was bawling on the phone to me saying, “I thought I was going to be good at this.” I was like what does that even mean? As somebody who is not a mom yet, I had so much compassion for her at that moment and I was even confused because I don’t know what that feels like. I can relate it to other areas of my life. I hear it a lot from women who are mothers and they think it should be this way or, “I’m being shamed as a mom because I’m not the homeroom mom,” or whatever it is because you have to choose. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of two things, which is the idea of balance and the idea of women having it all. You’ve touched on it a little bit, but I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on the two of those.
It’s important for all of us to understand that none of us is meant to know what we’re doing when we first become mothers. That would be like showing up to a PhD program in Biophysics having never opened a Biophysics book and thinking that we’ll be able to understand what’s going on. I did the same thing. I was like, “I’m going to be great at this. Motherhood is intuitive. It’s built-in. I’m a nice person. I coach my clients.” None of us had any idea of what we’re doing. It’s important to have mom mentors. It’s important to lean on our own mothers if we have a good relationship with them. I think it’s a good impetus if you don’t have a good relationship with your mother to work on it. Even if you don’t want to do motherhood exactly the same as your mom did, they know so much more than we do when we first have kids. I lean on my mom so much more now than I did when I had Marshall, who’s my first.
What areas do you lean the most heavily on your own mom for?
I’m talking to her to things like, “Will my kids learn how to swim if they don’t take the lessons during the year?” Before, I would have been like, “No, I need to figure this out. I need to pay attention to what I want in my kids.” Now it’s like, “Why don’t I get my mom’s opinion?” She raised all three of us. I think we did some lessons, but I don’t remember. It’s things like that. It’s also things like I’ll admit to her that it feels so hard and I’ll cry and be like, “Can you tell me that it was hard for you too?” She’s like, “You have no idea. It was hard.” A lot of it is whatever we need to do to not feel like we’re under the microscope and to have permission to be human and permission to not be a great mom all the time. I love it when my mom tells me I’m a great mom. That goes a long way. Every time she tells me that, I’m like, “Thank you so much for telling me that. Please keep telling me that.” Oftentimes, she’ll offer advice and sometimes I’ll want to be annoyed, but I have to stop and be like, “This is great advice and I don’t know what I’m doing, so I should listen.”
Listen and do what you want, but where do those two intersect?
Listen and then remember that you’re an adult. You’re not ten years old anymore and you can then decide but get all the information. To talk about balance and doing it all, this is my opinion on the whole thing. My opinion is that we each have an incredibly unique way of doing everything. If there’s any part of us that’s trying to follow the rules or follow a program we read in a book or, “I’m going to do homeschooling exactly the way everyone does homeschooling or I’m going to run my business and have the same hours as this successful businesswoman that I know.” If we find ourselves doing any of that, we’re missing the infinite quantum intelligence that we have in our souls around what is right for us.
What we need to do is stop looking out there at what everybody’s doing and commit to having space in your day every day. I suggest that women take at least fifteen minutes every morning to sit in silence. I love sitting at an altar and coming into our souls and asking if we have all these questions, “How am I meant to mother? What does it look like for me to mother? What does it look like for me to work?” Assume that the way we are going to do things has never been done by anybody else before. When we look at all parts of ourselves and we think about each area and how we have a unique expression in it, that’s what ends up creating balance. Somehow, we have to make radical choices too.
Talk to me about that. What are some radical choices that you’ve had to make or you see people having to make?
Something that feels pretty radical for me is since Marshall was born, I’ve been working with the plan to have a full-time housekeeper. This isn’t something that all of a sudden, we discovered we could afford and hire. I’ve been planning, punching the numbers, saving money, figuring out how we can do this for five years. We have an amazing woman. She’s also Annabelle and Hazel’s nanny. She takes care of the house 100% because for me when I tuned into myself, I knew that those responsibilities weren’t in my system. I did not find joy from that.
One of my best friends, Nisha Moodley, she loves to clean her house. It’s a spiritual experience for her. She does a whole cleansing thing and she loves it and she loves creating beauty. It’s not my thing. Claiming that and that’s something I desire and then doing it and spending very real money on something like that feels radical. The other thing for me has been, and this is something that’s in process and hopefully, we can talk again in a few years. I will have to figure it out. I would only like to work ten to fifteen hours a week and be a multimillionaire. I feel very clear that I can do that. I don’t know how, but doesn’t that sound great?
I’m in alignment with so much of what you’re saying. One of the things that I see so often is that we don’t know it’s possible because there aren’t as many people doing it or speaking about it. I struggle a lot with role models. I love the thought of I get to be a role model in the way that I’ve chosen to live my life for the right people. The right people get to resonate with you being a multimillionaire, working ten to fifteen hours a week. You have proven that that’s possible.
Not quite yet, but I will. I love that you brought up the term role model because the perfect role models are people who are unapologetically themselves. To have a role model doesn’t mean you are going to be how they are or have a life that looks like theirs, but it’s important also to see what it looks like and feel the frequency of being unapologetically yourself. It’s usually the person you’re jealous of.
I love hearing that because I want to hear who do you look up to?
A few years ago, I came across Rebecca Campbell, the Rise Sister Rise. I read her book and I loved her book. Then I got jealous and judgmental. I got her deck and I never used it. I’m like, “What about the shadow work?” I had a moment with myself because I’m always curious about who I’m jealous and judgmental of. I was like, “She’s good at being her.” She owns her stuff and we do similar work. I’m also doing Avalonian sacred feminine work, so she is a sister of mine. I had this whole thing in my head and I got over it. I started working with her deck and her deck shifted so much for me. I had this whole experience. I pulled the same card seven times in five days. That was wild. In the car with one of my friends and she’s like, “One of my good friends is coming to visit. We should all get together.” I’m like, “Who?” She’s like, “Rebecca Campbell.” I’m like, “Of course.” I look up to her. I love how she owns that she’s a spiritual teacher because that’s been an edge for me. She does a great job being her and I appreciate that.
You said that you are in the process of becoming a high priestess. Is that what you were saying at the beginning?
Not really a high priestess. The 13 Moon Mystery School was founded by Ariel Spilsbury and it is an Avalonian-based mystery school. Avalon is the location of one of the last light temples that touched down on Earth. Another light temple would be Lemuria or Atlantis. It’s a place where there was a hub for the sacred feminine and all of these beautiful teachings. A lot of people have read the book, The Mists of Avalon. It’s very similar. Ariel has taught my teacher, Kalila, and it’s all based around thirteen feminine archetypes. The archetype would be the great mother, the high priestess, the weaver dreamer, the primal goddess, which is a lot like the wild woman, the goddess of love. You can see lots of different deities from all different cultures in each of these feminine archetypes.
The way we practice is by holding temple. In the temple, you’re creating a very specific frequency or vortex of connection to the sacred web or the goddess. It’s a place where we can drop our personality and tune into our soul’s pure essence. For me, it’s been such a profound way of no longer figuring things out, but instead being empty and seeing what wisdom arises and to also be in a temple space that has candles, beautiful colors, sacred pictures and sacred tools. I had all of these past life memories of having a church-like experience, but for the sacred feminine. When I say church, I’m thinking more like Catholic cathedrals that have so much beauty. Catholic cathedrals were built to have people feel like they were in heaven. This is like that, but the frequency resonates more with the path I’m walking in this lifetime.
How do you create that? What does that look like as far as a temple and creating these experiences?
Stop looking at what everybody is doing. Be committed to your own unique expression to make radical choices. Click To TweetI have a temple on my property, which is such a gift. It’s a round building. I hold temple once a month, but it’s been a little bit less since I’ve been taking this break. What it looks like for me is I do a beautiful usually mandala altar in the center of the room and everything is candlelit. We set the frequency like doing the things that I’ve been trained to do before people even come. I’m setting a sacred container based on calling in the directions, me connecting to the heavens and the earth, having other women come in who are trained in this to also hold different parts of this circle. When women come in, it’s like you can’t explain it. You step into a room and it feels different. It doesn’t feel like a room. It feels something deeply sacred and we smoke cleanse them. We’re starting to anoint them with oils and they find their place and they drop into this container. We let the personality fall away through guided meditation and then I take them on some journey that I feel needed at the moment.
A lot of it for me is learning how to get my own plans out of the way and sit in the empty presence and connect with what is needed. What’s been cool is that I’ve started doing this in the Whole Woman because you can do temple in your living room, you can do temple at a community center. I’ve also been working on how do you hold an Etheric Temple where we all journey to this commonplace. I explained what the template looks like. I hold the gate. I have women see themselves stepping in. The difference in Whole Woman from before we were holding Etheric Temple to after is such a huge shift. You have this sense of, “This is who I am and I must do this now.” We can feel the power of source or the goddess or however you want to name that Higher Power behind us. We feel supported and we feel we have this web of magic all around us. All these ways we were feeling stuck before, we can gracefully step through because we have a completely different source of courage.
As I’m listening to you talk about all of this and also at the beginning of our conversation, you were talking about how you want it to be an advertising executive. Where did that shift come in? Because it seems you’re very aligned but also confident in what you’re saying and how this is running. You’re taking people on journeys and all that. You have so much training in this, but also was there something that shifted for you? You also said that’s an edge for you. I’m curious how has that evolved from the ad exec to you holding temple?
When I moved to New York, I worked in advertising for a couple of years and then I went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. When I was there, I started working with Gabrielle Bernstein in her home, when she did her group coaching in her home. That’s when I discovered A Course in Miracles version of spirituality, meditation and miracle work. It shifted so much for me. What I realized was that when I brought up that work into my emotional eating work, women healed quickly because it was leaning on different courage than permission from everybody else or all the roles that we’ve been talking about, all the brainwashing and all the trance that we’re in.
When I moved to San Francisco, I was struggling. I didn’t have any friends. Jonathan was working all the time. I got this therapist that I thought was in San Diego. It turns out she was down the street from me in San Francisco. We did therapy together for probably three months. One day I walked in and there were all of these purple chairs on the floor and pillows. The incense was burned down and then the candle wax was everywhere. You could smell the incense in the air. My whole body went bananas like goosebumps everywhere. I heard this voice like, “Pay attention.” I asked her, “What happened here last night?” She looked at me in this knowing look and she’s like, “When you’re ready, I’ll tell you.” I was like, “I want in.” I remembered and it’s so hard because we can’t explain those feelings in linear time.
A lot of us have had those experiences where we can call it Déjà vu. We walk into something and something feels so familiar. I walked into that room and I remembered being a priestess. We did more therapy and finally, I kept banging down the door. I was like, “You have to tell me what’s going on here.” Finally, we talked about it. She started a circle for me and some other women that we knew and we did a full two-year process together. Since then, we’ve been doing more guide-oriented work. That part is not important. Through that whole time that I was in San Francisco, I was just the Live More Weigh Less person. I was talking about spirituality and our last module, but it was very intro. It wasn’t something I was talking about on social media or my blogs or anything because I was worried that people were going to think I was weird.
I was planning on having Live More Weigh Less be this huge situation and I didn’t want to be the weird woo-woo woman. I got sick of doing Live More Weigh Less and other things were calling me. I had two babies and I felt like I didn’t know who I was. I worked with this amazing woman, Katina Mercadante, and through our work, she got me to see that I’m a spiritual person first. It’s not a tool in my tool belt, but it’s what I’m here to do. I wrote this five-year vision and I got clear that I want to come to New England. I want to gather women here, have huge gatherings in open fields, have moon circles in the woods and do these cool ancient practices.
I was like, “I’ll do that in five years, but first I got to move to New England. I’ll get a cute small house. I’ll have another baby in a couple of years. We’ll lay low and have a normal life.” Two weeks later, this retreat center comes up on Trulia and it’s everything on my list like opening fields. I was planning on building this huge Four Season Temple already built here, a lake and all the things. I was like, “I have to do this now?” It was a constant practice of going to my morning practice and connecting, “Is this what I meant to do? This feels scary. What is this?” I got clear. This is big and scary. I meant to hold temple in this place and I did. Once you have a temple in your backyard, you can’t hide it anymore. I had to own it and here we are.
I feel like I could talk to you for a thousand more hours because I have so many more questions, but I do want to respect your time. I do have one final question for you. Before we get to it, if people are interested in learning more about you, about what you’re doing with the Whole Woman, if they want to learn more about the Live More Weigh Less, can they do that? How can people find and learn more from you?
The best way to spend time with me is to join the Whole Woman. I give out a secret link sometimes that I will give to you. It’s WholeWoman.me/secret. Normally, I only open Whole Woman up like it ends up being once or twice a year, but you can get in through the back door. It’s affordable and you can cancel anytime. We do a temple every month and a full moon group gathering where we do questions and then I teach a lesson every month. It’s a combination of sacred feminine work and strategy plus an amazing community of hundreds of women who are all committed to being real and finding their own unique path and then cheering each other on. It’s a great program.
For Live More Weigh Less, you can join that if you feel like you’re struggling with emotional eating. It’s an amazing program and it’s all set up as a self-study. It’s LiveMoreWeighLess.com. There’s a cool video there that I love. It’s still my favorite video to date. If you want to follow me on Instagram, it’s @SarahJenks and then you can always go to SarahJenks.com to check out my blog. With my blog, it’s a lot of oversharing.
The final question that I have for you is if this episode was broadcasted to the entire world for the next 30 seconds, what would you say?
You are way bigger than you think you are. The biggest dreams that you have is your path that you are meant to walk. It’s your map. Dream as big as you can and know that is the blueprint that was built into you when you came to this planet in this lifetime.
Thank you so much. I truly thank you for your time. I know that we ran a little over and I’m so grateful. The way that you step in and share is so inspiring, either on social media or on here. I’m so grateful that you took time out of your schedule and knowing what you have going on in the background is so awesome, so impressive. I am excited to share this and share you with my audience. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me. You are an incredible interviewer. It was such a joy.
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Was that not an amazingly empowering episode? I found the layer or the level of depth in this conversation to be refreshing. You can tell how passionate she gets when she’s talking about her life, raising kids, having relationships and running a business on her terms. If you’re inspired by that and you want to see how she has built her membership, her community to over 100,000 members, then you don’t want to miss this After Hours conversation that she and I had where you can get all of her recommendations for how to grow a connected community, grow a membership and the mistakes that she made because you can learn a lot from this as much as I did. Head over to UnbecomingPodcast.com/95. Before we go, I wanted to leave you with this one thing. I show up every week and try to bring you the most impactful and empowering people like Sarah so that you can gain some new insight and some new knowledge to help you grow, transition, evolve, whatever it is in your life and business.
If this show resonates with you, I would love for you to share this show. Take a screenshot, share it on your Instagram Stories, whatever it is, share it on your Facebook, go Live, talk about the show because of the more momentum that we have moving forward with this show, the bigger the community that we are building and connecting around the world. The better the conversations and the relationships we’re going to have in our life and also the higher-level people we can bring on the show like Sarah. If you enjoy this show, please leave a review. Share it with the people you love, your friends, family, colleagues and community. I would appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us and I look forward to seeing you on another episode.
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What is the greatest strategy, tool or resource that you have integrated in the last few years that’s had the most significant impact on the growth of your business?
Writing very heartfelt emails.
I’m assuming you have a big list. Have you always had a big list for years? How did that work?
I grew my list through affiliate launches. That’s been my major mode of list growth and it has not grown much in the past few years. It hasn’t been a focus of mine. I’ve been nurturing the women who are there.
Number two, what is the biggest mistake that you see female entrepreneurs are making as it relates to sharing their gift or using their voice?
The biggest dreams that you have is the path you are meant to walk on. Click To TweetThey’re trying to mimic other people instead of being themselves.
This might be related, but what is one action step that someone could make now who’s reading that wants to stand out online?
Be motivated by creativity instead of attention. When I have created a piece of writing, even if it’s an Instagram post that feels creative, I don’t need to see who likes it because the joy was in creating it. There are other times when I write Instagram posts that I think might get more likes or something I should do or it’s like, “I’m trying to get my followers up.” I’m constantly checking to see if other people liked it and I work with that.
What is one thing that you’ve had to stop doing to become more successful?
I have to stop doing Facebook ads. I don’t know what it is. We’re like oil and water. I’ve been blacklisted. It hasn’t worked. I’ve tried to hire many different people. It never seems to work out. It ended up being a huge energy leak. When I stopped doing Facebook ads, I was able to focus on the things that did work for me.
That’s a real answer. I appreciate that one. The last one is when people approach you about stepping into being a Whole Woman, what is the most commonly asked question that you get? How do you respond?
The most common question I get is, “I don’t know what I want. How do I even figure out what I want?” I always say, “You don’t know what you want because you’re exhausted. All you want is a nap or a break. That’s going to take over all actual desires that need to spring out of rest.” It’s hard for moms, but you’ve got to get away for a day and a night. You have to sleep alone on your friend’s couch even and get some headspace to start figuring out what it is you want.
Thank you so much. The last thing I will ask is what is one thing that our audience and community can do to help you spread your message?
The actual action step would be to tag a friend in one of my Instagram posts, something that resonates with you. I also say that because many women feel there are very few women out there who get them, especially in their immediate friend circle. Instead of making new friends, why don’t you bring your friends into the circle of the goals that you’re doing? Tag your friends on a point on Instagram posts that I make. Once you join the Whole Woman, I have a code that you can send to your friends to try it out for a month for $5. There are ways to get your circle into the things that you’re doing. I would love to help educate and create a new language for you and your community.
Thank you so much. That was so helpful and I learned a lot as well.
Important Links:
- Whole Woman
- Sarah Jenks
- 13 Moon Mystery School
- Caliban and the Witch
- Rise Sister Rise
- The Mists of Avalon
- WholeWoman.me/secret
- LiveMoreWeighLess.com
- @SarahJenks on Instagram
- SarahJenks.com
- Sarah Jenks’ blog
- www.UnbecomingPodcast.com/itunes
- www.Instagram.com/phoebemroczek
- www.unbecomingpodcast.com/95
About Sarah Jenks
Sarah Jenks is mother to 3 rambunctious small humans, a life coach, emotional eating expert, and sacred space holder. She is the founder of Whole Woman, a moonly online membership for women seeking the answers to “Who am I? And why am I here?” and Live More Weigh Less™, the most popular online emotional eating program. Between her online programs and as proprietress of Hawthorn Farm, her 23-acre retreat center in Medfield, Massachusetts, Sarah holds sacred space to empower women and support them in finding their magic and rediscovering their most authentic selves. Since 2009, Sarah’s community of women seeking a fuller, more meaningful life has grown to almost 100K members.