I know! I almost swore there for a second! And you know I NEVER do that, but sometimes things DO rile me up – I used to believe that anger was somehow a ‘negative’ emotion- as if any emotion you feel could be ‘less than’ another?!

In fact – while we are on the subject, – just quick I promise 😉

Anger is NOT a ‘bad’ emotion, and if you try to repress it it’s going to one day come bite you in the ass 🙂

there is no such thing as a bad emotion, you are allowed to feel the FULL SPECTRUM of your entire being and IF you allow yourself to do so, and stop fighting who you are for one minute, you’ll find it amazing how actually, you can use your anger in ways that are actually pretty productive – you should see the blogs that fly from my fingers when I’m feeling fiery 😉

Anyway, I’m not angry today, really.

But I spent a lot of time in my business bottling up anger

Angry that I didn’t have enough time to work
Angry that I couldn’t work fast enough
Angry that I couldn’t always find the words
Angry at how there were all these little, niggling things that surely MUST be important or they wouldn’t be on that great, big, long exhaustive to-do list that I was angry I could never seem to work through!

So much anger, really, not that you would ever know it because I’m not really an angry person, it’s just more that now I look back on it and think – wow! I used to be a lot rantier / rigid / restrictive.

And note, I’m not talking about my coaching practice here but more my previous businesses

Because I tried everything

Literally, everything.

I tried Asana, Basecamp, Trello. I had several assistants – I had an entire team of people working with me at one point I think I counted I had ELEVEN people I had to pay at one point-

And still – always

Endless stuff to do. I could never quite seem to get up early enough. Never finish my to do list. Never be done. Never switch off.

And I guess the news you probably don’t want is… you’re not supposed to be done. Or be able to switch off. Because your work IS love, it IS passion, and if you can’t stop thinking about it it’s not a BAD thing

-although we might come to believe it is by people who tell us we have to ‘switch off’ – why you would ever want to switch off passion and something you love!? I’m still not sure –

But –

One tiny moment.

The chill mountain air was filtering through an autumn ray of sun, the kind of morning air that feels good on your skin

The kind where you want to rush out and buy jumpers and hot chocolate

The season was changing

And her words were kind as I described our morning routine

And she smiled, this beautiful teacher that had been gifted to lead my children in their tiny hillside wild school, and she said, simply

Here, we follow rhythm.

And just like that the warmth of the new enveloped and infiltrated my being.

It wasn’t an instant shift

But a slow unpacking

Buried in my journal

Of what it would mean

To let go of it all, the things we have learned, that hold us together.

And it’s schedules and meetings and appointments and alarms

It’s to-do lists and tick-lists and visibility and productivity

And it’s the end result, the WIN, we have come to prize

No wonder then, we have to come to hold ourselves in such low self-esteem

Beating ourselves up daily with the list of things we have not done

And looming ahead of us, all of the things we have to-do.

Our ego has been constructed upon the winning, and anything less than ‘winning’ and ‘done’ we feel dissatisfied.

When really

The challenge itself is not the to-do list!

(LOL at the thought of our challenge as human beings, rainbow beings! – being a tick list of ‘getting stuff done’! I mean could you ever imagine a more BLAND existence)!

The challenge is mission, purpose, focus, and passion and keeping those things alive every day –

The irony is, the to-do list kills those things off – which is why we know what we ‘have’ TO DO yet we still struggle TO DO THEM!!!

I asked.

-What would it look like instead

To implement into my business – into our lives –

Rhythm. To ditch restriction? To ditch boundaries?! (Scary concept for you if you’re just discovering boundary setting)!! To ALLOW IN INSTEAD – full creativity and full flow and full freedom

To dream, write, create –

Whatever the hell I liked, whenever I liked?

What would that mean!?

And so

Butterfly emerging into the raw new world-

We ditched alarm clocks
ditched set bedtimes
Certain times of day for ‘homeschooling’ (in fact we ditched that altogether and when the girls finished at their magic school above we unschooled instead)

And in business

I ditched the daily to do list in favour of
Waking up and doing
Whatever I feel like. Whenever I feel like. And working for however long I like.

BUT

I have rhythm to guide me.

So I wake. Cuddle the kids / husband if he is lucky 😉 we eat together, drink coffee together, cosy up together until I feel ‘ready’ to work, which often is earlyish because I love it, and sometimes is not.

And that is better than ok – there’s always another coffee pot waiting 🙂

And instead of restrictions and the things that have to be done today

I have nurturing, nourishing habits

Journaling
Coffee
Writing
Creativity + Art + Sharing my message FIRST, always, like now –

And from that place I then decide

Well, what next?

And alongside this
I implemented simple SYSTEMS in my business

To ensure my business flows regardless of whether I take the entire morning off, or the afternoon off to go walking and for a picnic like we did a few days ago, and actually even the concept of on/ off being let go of because it’s all ONE >>

And this is how business
Becomes easy.

When you let go of what you THINK you have to do
Open your eyes to different ways of working outside of what the ‘get shit done’ parade will tell you

Ways of working
Which uplift
Sustain
Nurture
Your creativity
Passion
Emotion
Fire

Guess what happens? You don’t just work your way through a list of things which are probably relatively pointless anyway and the reason you haven’t done them is because deep down your creative soul is rebelling against the crap we THINK we HAVE to do in order to MAKE IT!

BUT-

Alongside feeling awesome every day and like Queen of the world (remember that feeling? That time when you had the world at your feet?? Because you did… not too hard to get it back you know but the old way won’t work any more, it’s gone, better embrace the new)!

AS WELL AS THAT

What happens is
Funnily enough

Everything you ‘get done’

Is really + truly

What is needed to be done
To get you to where you want to be.

In fact it’s kind of crazy how it works
And it’s not about doing ‘less’ in any way

But simply WHAT you are focussing on that matters, and HOW you are doing it!

I mean – did you really think that showing up in your business with the waaah I don’t REALLY want to do this, but I guess I should because it’s the steps and XYZ said it’s the RIGHT thing to do, so therefore I should BUT –

You really believe that serving your clients
Showing up with THAT energy
Is going to bring you closer to what you want!?

No, my darling. Never.

But working staying in alignment to the things that have always called you –

For me that’s the wind and the rebellious and the words and the wild

For you that’s the call of your closet or the dance of your dining room or whatever grabs you through your lens with its siren call or begs to drip all over your canvas

(did you see my birthing vagina painting yesterday by the way?! It kinda caused some raised eyebrows lol, but it was BIRTH! It’s not meant to be CLEAN + TIDY + STEP BY STEP!, and I painted it after my soul sister sent me her birth video!!)

And that’s the point

Follow the things that call you home and go there in the way YOU desire

Because they will always, always lead you to where you need to be.