As humans, we are continuously evolving. And in the process, we can’t ignore the many things that influence us into the person we are becoming. But that doesn’t mean we are helpless in that transformation. In fact, we have the power to decide how much of what is around us can shape us. Thus, the question remains: do you want to change for yourself or for someone else? In this honest conversation, Whitney Lauritsen takes us deep within ourselves as we figure out when to change, how to make decisions, and how to trust in ourselves. She also breaks down the difference between getting uncomfortable because it’s serving you and getting uncomfortable because it’s not serving you. As the new year begins and resolutions are in place, it is important that we reevaluate the life changes and transformations we want to take part in. At the heart of it, we must keep in mind to set our boundaries and be our most authentic selves because maybe your change looks different than somebody else’s.
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Do You Want To Change For You or Someone Else?
If you are reading this episode around the time that it was originally published on January 2nd, 2023, I want to start off by saying Happy New Year. I often think about the fact that people read these episodes at all different periods of time. When I go through my show analytics, I’ll see people reading episodes that were published years ago now that it’s been a few years of doing this show.
I’m very mindful to, as they say in the marketing world, keep things evergreen and acknowledge that you could be reading at any time. This episode will be slightly timely. I’m going to do my best to keep it evergreen. The subject revolves around resolutions, and I’m very aware that resolutions can happen any time of year. There’s so much focus placed on resolutions around the New Year.
It’s also interesting because I’m doing this episode on December 15th, 2022, and I feel like I’m speaking into the future and sitting here wondering what’s 2023 going to be like. I haven’t put that much thought into the new year in a while. I used to have a lot of practice around it. Maybe the pandemic has shifted some of that because sometimes I think about what New Year’s Eve was like transitioning from 2019 to 2020 and all these people talking about their grand plans and how 2020 is going to be such a great year.
We often say at the end or the beginning of a new year, “This year is going to be better than ever. I’m going to make all these changes,” but sometimes things are out of our control. It’s interesting how I think back to before the pandemic started, and there was that typical cultural mentality around newness, excitement, and to refresh, but sometimes we don’t know what’s around the corner.
Things might not necessarily be better. It sounds a little dark, but the truth is that we don’t know what’s coming for us, what a great reminder to stay present, and what a great reminder to seize every day and not save our resolutions for certain times of the year. If you’re reading this episode well beyond the beginning of a new year or the end of a year, it’s something to reflect upon, “What about right now, in this very moment? What if I either set resolutions now, no matter when it is, or what if I didn’t do them at all?”
That’s the interesting thing. I ponder a lot about the way our society has a tendency to focus on quick fixes and formulas. If you’ve been reading this show long enough, if you know me, I have moved away from that. I have not found that it worked for me. I found a lot of shame in trying to follow somebody else’s formula and oversimplify my life or thinking that something was wrong with me because the formulas weren’t working or because my life didn’t feel that simple.
Comparison Goes Both Ways
For instance, wondering why things seemed to be better for other people. It seemed to be working for other people. Why didn’t I get that? It reminds me of this scene in the show Hacks on HBO. In season two, the main character, Deborah Vance, meets another comic. The actress is Jean Smart. I don’t think this is a spoiler, but if you watch the show and don’t want any chance of a spoiler, fast forward for a minute because this is a relatively minor thing, but it got me thinking. Deborah Vance runs into another comedian.
If you don’t know this show at all, Deborah Vance plays a famous standup comedian, and she’s older, in the later stage of her life. There are a lot of age-related and how you approach a career with your age. In this episode, somewhere in the midst of season two of the show, when she meets this other comic, she feels a sense of guilt because she’s had more success than this other comedian who’s as funny as her, in her opinion, and she wonders why did she make it and why didn’t this other comedian.
I watched that scene and found myself in the shoes of this other comedian who seemed to have a good life. There’s a great scene in it. I’m still going with a spoiler. If you’ve been watching the show and you’re not looking for spoilers, maybe fast forward two minutes, so I can finish telling this story. This other comedian ends up telling Deborah that she opted out of a career in comedy, not because she didn’t feel successful as Deborah thought.
Deborah thought that this comedian failed and gave up, but actually, the comedian decided to opt out of being a professional comedian because she wanted to focus on her family. She saw that Deborah seemed to be sacrificing her personal life for her professional life. That resonated with me because, first of all, there are so many levels to this little story. One is that what you may perceive about other people may not be true, and that goes both ways. We fall into the comparison trap of thinking, “This person who I could compare myself to seems to be having life better than me. Why don’t I have that?”
I’ve thought of this a lot like, “I’m working as hard as this person. Why do they seem to have more success? Why do they have social me followers, more podcast listeners, or more whatever?” “I’m doing all this work on my body all the time. Why don’t I feel satisfied with my body? Why do they get more attention physically?” Even saying that out loud triggers me. Part of my life’s work is working through my emotions around my appearance and comparison.
It’s hard because a lot of people put their bodies on display, and it’s easy to look at somebody else’s body and compare yourself. We feed into that as a society. Social media certainly does. The traditional media does this through magazines and various pieces that go out. It’s hard not to see other people that are being praised and rewarded for their appearance.
If you don’t feel praised or rewarded, you might feel similarly to me, thinking, “How come I don’t receive praise and reward?” I have received plenty of that over my life, and I still receive it from people I know who loves me. I don’t have a lack of it. It’s just that I crave more of it, and I feel a sense of envy when other people are getting it. It’s a long thing, and that’s not what this episode’s about.
I’m talking about this perception feeling, and the opposite can be true just like on the show Hacks, where maybe you feel like you’re getting a lot of things and seeing other people that aren’t getting the same thing. I think a lot about this in terms of privilege and disparities in marginalized communities and sometimes feel guilty that I’m a White woman and come from a privileged background. Sometimes I wonder why there is so much inequality and why I naturally luck out because I was born into a family with privilege, and I was born into my skin and gender. I was born into a body that conforms to a lot of societal things. The comparison goes both ways, and it can be tough.
Change For You: Comparison goes both ways, and it can be tough.
The other thing I was reflecting on from that Hacks episode was that sometimes it’s okay to choose a different path that maybe goes against what path you think you should choose or the obvious path. That’s a huge case for me. We can go back to the beautiful thing where I feel envy and pressure to conform to the beauty standards, but I’m going to continuously choose what’s in alignment with my value, which is that I don’t want to spend my time and money focused on my appearance.
When I opened up the recording tool that I used to do this episode, I looked at myself, and I didn’t feel great about my appearance. I haven’t in a long time. I’ve been thinking about this. It’s been throughout 2022 that I’ve had moments, especially when I’m in front of other people. When I travel and I’m seeing somebody I haven’t seen in a long time, I feel self-conscious. I get very concerned about the way weight looks on my body, especially my stomach. I feel uncomfortable with the way my face looks. Does it have more wrinkles? Does it look fuller? I have a weight that shows up around my neck. Right now, at certain angles, I feel super uncomfortable with that.
I feel uncomfortable about the gray hairs coming in, and I feel uncomfortable about the way my hair looks but simultaneously, I feel comfortable. Now, my hair’s up in a bun. I like the way that feels. I have a lot of physical sensitivities, and I like the sensation of my hair up in a bun. Even if it’s messy, even if it’s not flattering, this feels good, and that overrides my desire to look beautiful and pretty or fall into those standards.
Speaking of comparison, somebody could perceive me as beautiful and desirable despite me not feeling that way about myself and despite me not falling into societal standards. In fact, I know that the people who care about me enjoy the way I look because they care about me. I can understand that, but I can still feel self-conscious simultaneously. I can embrace my age. I can embrace the way that wrinkles show up, gray hairs show up and the hormonal changes that might be impacting my weight.
Do I Want To Change?
I can embrace that I am comfortable in the shirt that I’m wearing even though it’s flattering. My aim is to feel comfortable even when I feel uncomfortable. That’s the big theme of this show. It’s a lot of this discomfort, but recognizing the values and how they tie into resolutions around the beginning or an end of a new year, throughout the year, or at any point. It could be a birthday. There are so many milestones we hit where we might start to reevaluate, or there’s a trigger or something happens in life, a big thing that gets you thinking about life.
You read a book and some transformation. You start to ponder, “Do I want to change?” but maybe you don’t have to change, or maybe your change looks different than somebody else’s. Maybe it’s not about conforming. Understanding values has become a huge part of my life. I saw this reflected a lot in the therapy sessions I do with my therapist, as well as the well-being coaching that I started offering in 2022.
Maybe you don't have to change, or maybe your change looks different than somebody else's. Share on XWhen I went through the emotional well-being training program, we focused on setting the foundation for what they call change talk. That’s a big part of coaching, guiding someone towards the change that they want, but allowing them to discover this. This has been super fascinating as I’ve been working with and coaching clients. I can often identify change opportunities in other people, but they have to find it within themselves in order for it to be sustainable.
That in itself is a big metaphor. I’m very drawn to that, both on a personal level for myself and the changes that I sometimes seek, as well as my relationships with clients and noticing the psychology around all this. People can have the desire to change but still not be ready for change or have the desire to change and not want to change. It’s like what I’m describing, where I have desires about my weight, feeling uncomfortable in my skin, not fully embracing it, and yet, I recognize through my values that I don’t actually want to change that much.
I want to feel comfortable in not changing. That sums it up pretty well. I don’t think I have much else to say there at this moment, except that’s all part of authenticity. There are other elements of this, too, whereas tuning into yourself, that authenticity, knowing your values, and being in alignment with yourself helps you also make decisions. I guess a decision is similar to a change, or maybe they are the same thing.
Making Decisions And Trusting Yourself
Making a decision sometimes requires us to change. I don’t know about that at this moment, but the decisions are interesting. I struggle with those because I’m used to making decisions, even if they go against me. Something new that I’ve been working on is not seeking external approval, validation, or guidance first or primarily. I might use external information. I find that very helpful, but I also feel like it’s a coping mechanism or maybe even a reliance, as if my internal answers are not good enough or right.
Change For You: Making a decision sometimes requires us to change.
I don’t trust them. Trust has been a big theme for me. I struggle to trust other people, and trust has been part of a goal of mine for years. I think I developed a lot during some New Year’s resolutions. I don’t even know when this started. I would guess maybe 2018 or 2019. I could probably go back and figure it out, but somewhere at the end of a year, I wanted to pick out a word for myself that would represent my focus for the next year.
Now, I feel like it’s a little. If it feels good to you, do it, but for me, it wasn’t as transformative as I hoped it would be. I use the word trust because I was trying to trust other people more but what I’ve recognized over time is I would prefer to trust myself more. That’s what I was looking for. I was noticing that I simultaneously trust others more than myself, and yet, the opposite too. People would sometimes comment to me like, “Why can’t you trust me?”
It was this interesting simultaneous conflict of wanting to trust myself and wanting to trust other people. The two can happen at the same time, but similar to putting on the oxygen mask on an airplane, you need to trust yourself first in order to trust others. Whereas I was trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to override my self-trust to trust someone else. Maybe that’s why I was struggling with trust because that couldn’t work.
You need to trust yourself first in order to trust others. Share on XAll this is coming up at this moment, some of these realizations here. Knowing my values and figuring out who I am has been key. I’m still on that journey, and maybe that’s why trust still feels hard for me. It’s interesting to examine in the context of decisions. There are a few small examples I can give. One was noticing this signal in my body. I have a tendency to get tightness and/or butterflies when something feels off. I’ve been working with a client, and we needed to hire somebody else to support my work because I don’t have the bandwidth to do it all myself.
It’s been months trying to find the right person to fill this position. I had put out some public comment, and some stranger reached out to me saying, “I saw that you’re looking to hire somebody. This is what I do with my business.” My first instinct was, “This person seems nice, genuine, and professional. This could be good.” I guess that that’s the first feeling, but as I continued to gather information about this person, I felt the opposite of, “This isn’t as good as it seemed.”
It’s almost like dating. Online dating is a great example. You read someone’s profile, and they sound like a good match. You start talking to them, “This feels like this could go somewhere.” Either through those conversations and/or meeting in person, you recognize it’s not what I thought it was. It could be a catfish or that the more time went on, you realized it wasn’t a fit for what’s been happening in this situation. With me, this person started off seeming nice and genuine, and over time, just their words.
As of the time of this episode, we have not talked on the phone, me and this potential colleague. We haven’t talked on the phone because my preference is to gather information first before moving to the next level with somebody in whatever context. I’ve had my fair share of challenging business dealings, and it’s created me to feel a bit cautious. That leads back to what I thought were “trust issues.” Maybe they weren’t issues. Maybe they were signals to me that this person was not trustworthy. Maybe I don’t have an issue with trust. Maybe my intuition is guiding me toward who I should trust and shouldn’t, and it’s okay not to trust everybody. That internal compass is not to be ignored.
It's okay not to trust everybody. That internal compass is not to be ignored. Share on XThe way this was showing up in this dynamic with this stranger is interesting. Maybe that’s why it feels confusing to me. It’s like, “Why did I trust somebody in the beginning? Why did they feel good to me? What changed?” They started to talk differently to me. I found this a lot when it comes to setting boundaries, especially with men, and that feels sad to me. There’s part of me that is so in desire for equality that I’m still caught off guard when someone who is different than me in gender, for example, seems to be treating me differently, and that might not be the reason.
It could also be a neurodivergent thing. As I’m learning more about the way my brain works, I know now that my brain works differently from the “average person.” If you haven’t heard me talk about this, neurodivergence in general, statistically, from what I’ve learned, and I don’t know if this is a factual thing or a current agreed-upon statistic of one in five people having some form of neurodivergence.
For me, I’m falling into the categories based on my traits of ADHD and autism, or maybe even OCD. I have glimmers of that. There are a lot of overlaps in neurodivergence, and it seems to impact about one-fifth of the population, which means that 4/5 of the population, their brains work differently. They’re the majority. For me, falling into the category of the minority of different brains, I’ve discovered that if I’m talking to somebody whose brain doesn’t work the way mine does, there seems to be some judgment or mistreatment. I attributed that to gender. It happens so much with men where men don’t seem to be in a business setting respectful of my boundaries, and they start to become aggressive or rude.
It’s led to me having either tension with men I’m working with and/or the relationship dissolves. Granted, this has happened to me with women too, but my experience is that women have been a little bit easier to communicate with. Maybe it is a gender thing, but I’ve also had great experiences with men throughout my life. I don’t know if it’s a gender thing. It might be. It’s a way of communication, and neurodivergent people tend to communicate differently than normal typical people.
That’s the context here. Let’s go back to this example with the person I was thinking of hiring and working with. They were nice to me before they started to get to know me and understand my needs. Once I articulated my needs, they started to almost pressure me to conform to their needs, and I thought that was strange. It’s similar to dating. I’ve had this experience too. Someone seems to like you based on what they see on the external. Let’s keep it about me because I don’t want to apply this to everybody.
In my experience, the treatment you might get when someone sees you at a surface level, whether it’s about your appearance, your resume, or what somebody thinks they can get from you, but when someone gets to know you or your circumstances know me, which has been my experience, I have found that if I reveal my needs in an authentic way and communicate in a way that’s true to me, I have often felt rejected or treated differently. I didn’t intend this episode to go in this direction, but it speaks to the authenticity and deciding when you change, how you make decisions, and how you trust.
How do you trust that you’re making the right decision? How do you trust that you’re changing or doing things in a good way? How do you define your version of success? Those are all thematic here. As some people call it, I have a lowercase T, trauma around not feeling accepted for my full real self and being rejected when somebody gets to know me.
That’s going to lead me to not trust people and to set boundaries and also feel confused. It’s also going to lead me to trust them more than myself because if I feel like my needs aren’t met when I express them authentically, then maybe it’s best for me to change or hide my needs to appease somebody else, but that doesn’t serve me in the long run because then I’m only changing for somebody else. I’m only changing to feel a temporary sense of fulfillment, which doesn’t last long, so then again, I’m going to want more fulfillment. The cycle continues feeling temporarily fulfilled and then unfulfilled over and over and over again.
That’s been a big theme as I reflect on ways I want to transition from year to year, from birthday to birthday, and from season to season. I’m constantly reflecting on my evolutions as a human being and coming back to the sense that even though it’s painful to feel rejected, even though it feels risky and I’ve experienced it time and time again, if I don’t speak up for myself and ask for what I want and what I need, if I don’t state my boundaries with pride and communicate in a way that’s effective and comfortable for me, then I will not get what I want. I will just be giving what somebody else wants.
Getting Uncomfortable: What Is Serving You?
I will be conforming to them, and that’s never going to feel good. It’s never going to meet me in the life I truly want. I was describing the physical sensations of my body even as I’m talking about it now because I haven’t resolved it with this person. At this moment that I’m doing this, there has not been a resolution with this person because I’ve been waiting to see and tune into myself, and I feel this butterfly tightness combination in my stomach.
Sometimes I get it in my throat. That’s such a great sign to tune into those feelings of, “This doesn’t feel good, so maybe I should say no to this.” What feels confusing to me sometimes is that is discomfort. As the theme of the show goes, things in life might get uncomfortable, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we grow most when we’re uncomfortable. That’s the cliché phrase, but there’s a difference between getting uncomfortable because it’s serving you and getting uncomfortable because that’s a signal that it’s not serving you.
Change For You: There’s a difference between getting uncomfortable because it’s serving you and getting uncomfortable because that’s a signal that it’s not serving you.
That’s the tricky part. That’s usually where I pause and think, “But I have enough knowingness, and I think deep down I always have the answer between which is which. This is a discomfort that serves me. This is a discomfort that doesn’t.” In the case of this stranger, it’s pretty clear to me, not 100% clear, but 90% clear, that this person doesn’t seem to be respecting what I’m asking for. I’m trying to hire them.
The funniest part was some of their responses to me via email. Sometimes things get lost in translation when someone emails you or texts you or whatever, versus when you have a live conversation, or you can see someone’s facial expressions. I’m laughing now at some of the ways they phrase things. I was like, “Do they mean it this way? If so, that’s rude.” They weren’t telling me what their price rates were right away, and I understand from a marketing tactic. I can see through them. I’ve been working in marketing long enough. What was amusing to me is that I was trying to present myself and my needs right away like, “This is who I am. This is what I need.”
This person didn’t seem to be listening. They kept presenting things to me. I’m like, “They don’t seem to get it. Do they not know what I do and what I need?” I thought I was very clear about it, and they kept saying things. Ultimately, that was part of it too. This is a mismatch, or they’re not even paying attention. They’re not honoring or respecting me enough to look at what was needed in this situation. It was like they were trying to protect themselves and fit themselves into those circumstances.
It reminds me of this old child’s toy, like a puzzle. I don’t know if they still make this for kids, but it’s a little square box with holes cut out in it, and they have a triangular shape, a circle, a square, and some other shapes. There are little blocks, and each of them can fit into different shapes. It’s trying to fit a square into a triangle. You might be a square, and that’s great, but you’re never going to fit into the triangular shape. You can force it. I suppose you could cut off the sides and conform, but then you’re leaving behind some of yourself, and you probably don’t want to do that.
Why are you trying to force it so hard? Is it because society has convinced us to do that? That’s where I struggle with marketing a lot, as I mentioned, the media, the mixed messages we get, and all the comparison traps we fall into. I have a lot of conflicted feelings around marketing because a lot of marketing is based around trying to make somebody feel bad about themselves in order to think you have the solution.
I saw this guy doing that to me, and it’s laughable because I see right through him. I’m like, “I know your sales techniques. I’ve been around the block,” and the fact that you don’t even recognize that I can see right through you, maybe that in itself is the sign of someone not even realizing that you are savvy enough to know when you’re being manipulated.
Sometimes the word manipulation is a little too strong, disrespect, etc. I don’t think this particular person I was talking to was trying to be those ways. I think that’s only the way they do business, and it’s not a fit. That’s okay too. It’s like dating. Just because someone’s not a fit for you doesn’t make them a bad person. It only means you’re not compatible. Where I struggle is, with my history of being a people pleaser, I want to be compatible with everybody. I want everyone to like me, value me, and respect me. I want to have good relationships and a good reputation and all this stuff, but sadly, that would come at the cost of me being my true self and what I’m trying to embrace.
Just because someone's not a fit for you doesn't make them a bad person. It just means you're not compatible. Share on XI suppose if I have a goal for or resolution for 2023 and beyond, it’s finding the courage to be my full, authentic self. If I am in fact neurodivergent, to unmask, to stop masking, to drop that mask and go through life confidently, even if that means being rejected and even if that conflicts with what other people want. Sometimes I struggle with my clients, mostly on the marketing side. It’s usually not coaching. I could see myself more and more leaning into my coaching services.
I started technically doing well-being coaching in 2020. It was at the end of 2020 when I started experimenting with it. I went through my official emotional well-being coaching training in 2022 and felt so good about that. It’s very rare that that doesn’t suit me. Marketing, as I mentioned, I feel conflicted about sometimes, and sometimes people hire me and discover that we’re not in alignment.
That happens a lot. The marketing world is rough because it’s so convoluted. Knowing that helps me have compassion for this person I’ve been talking about because they are just trying to get by, and they’re getting by on the standard. They’re getting by using the techniques that a lot of people use and the business that seems to be the standard. I’m not a standard person. That’s why I feel like I’m neurodivergent. I do not fall into the majority of the way other people think. I think differently, sometimes to my benefit and sometimes to the cost of rejection, and that’s okay.
That might come at the expense of me “losing out” on opportunities, losing out on clients, losing clients, and no longer working with people. I have to evaluate that constantly like, “Does this person feel like a good fit, or am I trying to conform so hard to please them that I’m losing sight of my values, what’s important to me, and what makes me feel good?”
At this moment, I’m like, “This feels like a good way to proceed.” I want to feel good, even if feeling good comes at the expense of an opportunity. That’s the big lesson. That was the theme as I was pondering what to talk about in this episode. I want to start off the year with the first solo episode. The first episode of 2023 is this episode for me, for the show, and that feels like such a good place to start.
Nothing Has To Be Permanent
It’s continuously checking in with myself and having the courage to be deeply authentic like, “Can I turn more inwards and spend less time outwards?” TikTok, for example, is a platform I spend the most time on. I rarely listen to podcasts, believe it or not. I don’t spend much time on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest. I subscribe to newsletters and rarely ever read them.
The place where I spend my most time personally is on TikTok, for better or for worse, because TikTok is such a popular social media network as of the end of 2022 that you get exposed there. When I first started using it at the end of 2019, it wasn’t very popular. It wasn’t mainstream, and it felt authentic, fun, and exciting. It also felt uncomfortable because I felt like an outlier or a con. I’m that weirdo that uses TikTok. People thought it was a joke, truly. People had so many misconceptions, and I’ve spent years speaking on TikTok professionally.
I’ve done public speaking and coaching courses on all sorts of stuff on TikTok, and the majority of the people in those audiences were trying to open their minds to TikTok. It was like I was trying to convince them to use TikTok, and then there was a big pivot in 2022, where suddenly it became mainstream. That was happening for the last few years, but I saw a shift in 2022. Almost ironically, I’m feeling like I no longer want to use TikTok anymore. I’m not quite there yet, but I see myself feeling less and less interested in it. This is a pattern for me. When something becomes popular, I lose interest.
When something becomes mainstream, it’s no longer appealing to me. What is the term? I like things that are on the outskirts. Maybe that says something about my personality too. I simultaneously like being different and don’t like being different. If it feels uncomfortable, it’s an interesting relationship there. The fringe is the term I favor. TikTok also, from a mental health standpoint and a privacy standpoint, there are a number of things that concern me. There are things that I think, “This isn’t fully in my value, so if I cut back on TikTok or stopped using it altogether, what would my life be like?”
It’s probably not that different. Something else would fill that time. Something else would fill that satisfaction. I’d be okay without TikTok. It’s not a make-or-break thing for me. Maybe you would benefit me. What if that led to me spending less time on all social media? I have been wondering for years, “What if I completely cut social media out?” I think a lot of people wonder about that.
People take breaks. They go on “social media detoxes.” It’s an interesting thing because it’s a huge part of our life and society to use social media. That’s something that I hope to better understand in 2023. I have to say, too, that it’s an ongoing process. It’s so common to see people “quit something,” like, “This is the last time I’m going to do this,” and then they come back, and that’s okay
Another lesson as we reflect on resolutions and transitions is knowing that nothing has to be permanent because the only thing that’s permanent is death, but before we die, we have the right and the privilege to change our minds to try something, to identify with it and then revert to where we were before. Dabble in and out, pulsate in and out. It’s all okay, ultimately. The only way we can find what’s okay for us is to know ourselves that deeply and use our inner guidance to tap into that.
Change For You: The only way we can find what’s okay for us is to know ourselves that deeply, to use our inner guidance to tap into that.
That’s exactly why I wonder about TikTok. I wonder if it’s getting in the way of me knowing and understanding myself because it’s spending a lot of time knowing and understanding other people. I’ve often thought about this podcast like, “Do I stop doing these solo episodes of just me talking like I am right now?” Sometimes I wonder if they’re serving other people, if they’re beneficial or if people like them.
Sometimes I feel vulnerable about doing this and feel like it’s all about me and it’s in my ego, and that feels super uncomfortable, but there are big benefits for me, to be honest. It’s this exploration. This is my time to talk directly to you, just you and me, but also, I’m talking to myself, and I’m learning things out loud in these moments. It’s very humbling and eye-opening. It helps me tune in. It’s a special sacred time.
Even if you don’t enjoy this, it has a benefit for me, and that’s okay. Sometimes we do things that aren’t the “best use of our time.” I hear this a lot in business like, “You got to set your priorities. Where are you going to spend your time?” What if we spend our time doing something we like? For me, that’s TikTok. What if we spend our time doing things that are therapeutic? For me, that’s these solo podcast episodes and my therapy sessions. I spend plenty of time working with clients, focusing on them. I can focus on myself. That’s okay.
I can go against the grain of what other people recommend, and I can also go with the grain when I feel like it. All of this stuff is one of those that can be true in the same scenarios. It’s not about this interesting version of perfection many of us have constructed and of checking off all the boxes. The best practices and following the formulas.
If that feels good to you, great, but if you’re like me and that doesn’t work for you, and it doesn’t feel good, you find yourself in resistance, and you don’t feel like you’re honoring yourself, maybe this episode has given you permission to lean more into what does feel good and what does feel right, authentic, true, and nourishing. Also, you have the prerogative to change your mind, experiment, and pulsate in and out throughout the year. You don’t have to stay in a straight line.
I’d Love To Hear From You!
This felt like a good pep talk for me. If it resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you truly. I’ve mentioned how I struggle with responding to people. I get extremely stuck with responding to emails, text messages, or direct messages. I go through a few periods where I can do that, maybe once a month every few months. It might take me quite a long time to get back to you. For that, I do feel a sense of guilt. That’s something else I’m going to work through like, “Why do I feel guilty about that?”
I don’t have the answer yet, but when you send me messages, I read all of them. I’m great at that. I read every message that comes through. I take it in. I feel it. I love that. I’ll see where I can get in terms of my response. If you’re okay with meeting me where I’m at as of now, then I would love to hear from you. I’ve also mentioned that my private community, Beyond Measure, which is currently free to join, is a great place to connect. It’s probably the best place to connect with me right now because I show up for the members of that community every week, at least once a week.
We have these coaching calls we’ve been experimenting with. I have been offering currently free coaching. Eventually, in 2023, I may charge for my group coaching services there, but I hope to keep Beyond Measure at least either very affordable and/or part of it being free. I’ll continue being very transparent about the way that works. If you check this out soon, you’ll be able to opt into at least some of the free versions and just toy around there. I want to continue to share the evolution of that community as it’s going into its third year.
If you’re looking to connect with me and other people in a private, safe, non-judgmental space devoted to supporting people with their well-being, that’s Beyond Measure. Anybody can join. It is open to all as long as you’re a kind and considerate human being. You have to be a true person. You can’t create a fake account. I guess you could, but it’s hard to fake using the platform I’m using there because privacy is a big focus of ours. I say ours as a full community. I deeply value people’s mental health, so I protect it every way I can and mine too.
Part of the reason I created Beyond Measure was with social media, it is so easy to be unkind to people. It’s easy to fake who you are to catfish and con people. There are a lot of unfortunate things that people do to one another using platforms like social media. I wanted a space that was more sacred and protected than that. That’s how Beyond Measure got created, and that’s why I show up there for the amazing community of people that have joined. I would say my preference would be that you come to join us in Beyond Measure. Check it out and see if it’s a fit for you. I’d love to get to know you there.
If that’s not for you, you can certainly email me or direct message me. I appreciate you. I hope that 2023 is either off to a great start or has been going well no matter when you read or maybe you’re reading, and you’re reflecting back on 2023, what you went through in that year, and what’s next for you. Wherever you stand, whatever day it is for you, I hope it’s the best it could possibly be for you, your needs, and your authentic self. I’ll be back again on the next episode with a guest. I have a guest every Friday. They continue to open my mind and my heart in so many amazing ways. I hope they do the same for you too. Bye for now.
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