Before we dive into this episode of the podcast, please click here to find your enough number. That way, you’ll have precise and accurate estimates to work with as we create a strategy for the coming months in your business.

This podcast episode comes as a result of looooots of coaching clients (spots open in January, get on the dibs list!) wanting to abandon projects and services they’ve worked on for years to start something entirely new, then pushing on that new thing to start making income immediately. Like, it launched on Tuesday, and by Wednesday we need to be making $4,000 a month, every month until the end of time.

What if we could actively arrange for you to earn two types of income in your business?

And before you ask, NOPE, they’re not active and passive income. These are much bigger, broader, and more interesting categories than those served up by cis-white-male marketing gurus.

There are two types of dollars you can earn in your business at any given time: steady and experimental.

Steady, as in, a product or service is selling well, and it’s been selling well for a while.

Experimental, as in, it feels risky to make the work, and/or you’re in some kind of new territory.

If you’re completely new to business, it’s all an experiment, but this might help you reframe some of your ambition in interesting ways, so keep going!

Let’s walk through my numbers, with my steady and experimental breakdowns from years past, so you can see what I’m talking about in practical terms.

In 2013, the biz income was 31% steady and 69% experimental.

The steadiness came from ghostwriting, previously launched programs, and a few coaching calls.

The experimenting came from creating a summer camp for adults and then selling the shit out of it.

That experimental nature paid off, so the pendulum swung to experimental in 2014.

High on just how much amazing and wonderful shit had panned out by experimenting, I went even more experiment crazy. 83% of the year’s income came from launching and holding Brand Camp, writing Introverts at Work, and hosting a few coaching sleepovers.

The remaining 17% of income came from steady, previously released or available sources: coaching, books, workshops, and ghostwriting.

And then the pendulum swung the other way.

In 2015, I swung wildly toward steady income, as Brand Camp the camp was like dropping a financial devastation bomb on my business.

65% of income came from coaching, previously-released programs and books, and ghostwriting.

Experiments made up only 35% of the year’s income, in which I repackaged the (admittedly brilliant) Brand Camp classes as the Business Blitz, launched a program, offered a 1-on-1 year-long coaching package, and founded three new workshops.

Less risk, more month-to-month work. Less launching, lower costs, more 1-on-1 clients.

And on and on it goes.

In 2016, I paid off the $43k in debt I’d accrued the year before, and in 2017 I released a bunch of new and exciting stuff: a different coaching package, lots of breathwork classes, and one-off courses to help peeps communicate and break up with their phones.

I’m always playing with the balance of how much work is entirely risky and how much is completely stable.

The trick of earning income through your business without being utterly bored or utterly broke lies in balancing your steady and your experimental income sources.

Further, steady work funds experimental work.

I’ve come to learn about valuing steady work the excruciatingly difficult way: by devaluing it and then scrambling to make ends meet at the last minute.

I always want to throw out what I’ve done and start over. I want everything I do to be an experiment. And yet.

The way to build a sustainable business is to innovate on some fronts while remaining stable on others.

2020 is about taking on a few more yearlong clients while playing with breathwork programs like The Softness Sessions, podcasting regularly, and keeping an ear to the ground for what’s next.

AND YOU, FRIEND! HOW DO YOU WANT THE NEXT FEW MONTHS TO PLAY OUT?

STEADY QUESTIONS:

Which income is steady in your business?

Which products or services consistently bring you income, month after month and year after year?

Which income-generating elements of your business do you want to keep?

Exactly how many clients do you need?

How many products do you need to sell, as your steady baseline?

The more you feel your health or your personal life is wobbly, unsteady, or overwhelming, the more likely it is that your business should be focused on steady income.

Steadiness requires time, energy, and consistency. Releasing a weekly podcast, showing your work on social media, sending regular e-mails and updates, responding to client inquiries in a timely manner, talking about what you’ve got for sale, and following up with inquiries: these are consistent practices that bear fruit over time.

If your work is consistent but sharing your work is not, that tweak alone might fix the income weirdnesses that ail you.

Once more, in case you missed it because you were skimming: if your work is consistent but sharing your work is not, that tweak alone might fix the income weirdnesses that ail you.

With steady work squared away, we move on to trying new things in experimental phases.

EXPERIMENT QUESTIONS:

What are you dying to try out in small doses?

Do you want to hold an event, start a class, write a book, release a project, try out a new product line, or offer an all new service? You can choose anything, but you’ve gotta choose one. Just one.

Do you want to collaborate with someone else? Do you want to try something entirely new and completely unlike what you’ve been doing all along?

What does the experimental thing look like, and what would be a first step toward making it happen?

If you’re like, ‘I can’t possibly talk about that while I also sell THOSE,’ think again.

I sell business coaching and also host regular gatherings for breathwork, both in person and on the internet. You can say those things are entirely unrelated, or you can say that when people opt in to hearing more from Kristen at Kristenkalp.com, it all fits. It’s all welcome.

Unless I start selling buckets of canned food and potable water for the apocalypse while spouting Biblical verses about the end times, because WOW I’ve been presenting myself as the opposite of that for a decade, I’ve got free rein to experiment with whatever has captured my fascination, has helped me, or has borne fruit in my life.

You get the same freedom, too.

You can absolutely be a photographer and a painter. A writer and a maker. A health coach and a reiki master. A coach and an author. A floral designer and a teacher. (Of course these are real examples of past coaching clients, by the way…)

You deserve the right to experiment. Period.

Further. Instead of deciding you have to give up X entirely in order to start Y, you can do both.

You can design t-shirts and see how they sell while you continue to be a doula, or plan larger and larger events while you keep on podcasting and mentoring colleagues in the wedding industry.

LIFE IS AN ‘AND.’

When we treat it as a series of ‘or’s, we limit our potential and clip our own wings. Whatever it is you want to do, yes you can do that AND you can keep on being a person with that degree or those experiences. ‘Or’ people end up switching focus a bunch of times, while ‘and’ people make room for ebb and flow. Some products come in, some go out. Some services last a long time, and others are offered only once.

You don’t have to do that mental and energetic thing whereby committing to a single project suddenly means committing to doing that same thing for the rest of your life.

Clipping your own wings is fucking tragic, so let’s not do that, okay? Let’s make some stuff, sell some stuff, and then repeat the process all over again.

And let’s not make any of this a BIG HUGE DEAL HOLY SHIT WOW while we’re at it! Amping up the energetic value of a new product or service is a sneaky asshole brain move to keep us stuck in fear and overwhelm.

STEADY AND EXPERIMENTAL QUESTIONS:

How much steady work do I need to sell each month to reach my enough number?

EXACTLY what sort of experiment do I want to make in the next six months?

And how much money will that make me, in a perfect world?

In a realistic world?

In a horrible world?

What you want to make as an experiment is entirely separate from how much money you want to make.

In fact, for our purposes, it’s safe to assume your experiments will cover costs and make very little money. That way, you’re as free as possible to make an amazing thing, and then to iterate on that thing with profitability in mind.

Assuming minimal profitability instead of a sold-out spectacular keeps you from blowing $20,000 on an experiment your first time out of the gate.

If you assume you’ll be making only your minimal costs back, what shape does the experiment take on?

It will generally get smaller and more doable when you limit the budget to something entirely reasonable. This is not downsizing your dream, but testing the viability of your dream before you swipe every credit card you’ve got to rent an arena. And a 7-piece orchestra. And a team of trained dogs. And a donut wall.

How can you build sources of revenue elsewhere in order to fund that project?

How can you use stable income sources to build experiments for yourself, and vice versa?

Can your experiment be added as a bonus gift or limited edition offering for something you already sell regularly?

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER AND TIE IT IN A BOW:

For the next six months, I’ll sell #___(quantity) of ________________ each month to reach my enough number.

I’ll also offer ____________ as an experiment.

#___ (quantity) are available, and will be released on this date: ___/___/___.

Again, this is a super-chill, low-key, NBD way to do business. You’ve just banked on your steady income while opening yourself up to an experiment, too — thereby assuring that you won’t die of boredom in the coming months!

If you dig this podcast episode and it helped you out, please leave a token of gratitude.

Tipping means I don’t fall into the despair of working for free, and it means you’ve actually enjoyed the material, too! We both win!

P.S. Here are six potentially devastating side effects of bringing your business dream to life — and why you should do it anyway.

The most painful parts of healing happen at the beginning of the process, when we’re shedding old skins that have calcified, or crawling out of boxes where we were contorted into cramped positions for lots of time, or walking with a limp because we’re still bleeding out from several wounds at once.

This is an episode of That’s What She Said, my weekly podcast! Keep reading or listen in below.

As we staunch the bleeding; as we shed the skins; as we move around and learn to shake out our wings, we soften and grow.

We start out shedding the debris that’s hardest, structurally — walls, gates, and shells — and move into ever softening variations over time. Imagine pulling sticks and bricks over your softest bits, then imagine pulling tomato skins over them. That’s how healing unfolds over time. It gets far less brutal, stabby, and hard as the years go by.

We consciously clear the old shit that needs to be cleared, tossing it onto the great compost pile of life, so we are free to push through the soul’s soil in new and tender ways.

The new and tender soil pushing doesn’t hurt. It’s an expression of life that’s far more lovely and new and invigorating than we can imagine when we’re on the bathroom floor, weeping, certain that life is over and nothing will ever change.

(Spoiler alert: life is not over. And everything will change.)

I promise healing gets better — softer, lovelier, and more full of wonder — with consistent courage and hard work.

My god, the softness that’s possible.
The depths that are possible.
The waking up in wonder that’s possible.

I’m telling you, after having slogged through two decades of depression, that it’s possible.

It’s possible to wake up and not worry about how you’re going to find the energy to shower or to eat breakfast or brush your teeth today, where once that consumed the first hour of waking.

It’s possible to do your work with far more enthusiasm and far less effort, so that what took you three hours a few years ago takes you thirty minutes today. And it’s possible for that work to be better and more nourishing than the work of years ago, too.

I promise it’s possible for depression to leave you.

It can. It does. It might take meds and new meds and acupuncture and dietary changes and working out and cannabis and trial and error and hopelessness and breathwork and days that are so horrible you’ve blocked them from memory, but it can leave your system. It can be cleared.

I can’t promise that I’ll never be depressed again, but I can promise that I’ve learned the language of my mind and body to such an extent that I’m only 3 steps into The Dark Woods before I make changes, instead of waking up 30 miles into The Dark Woods and then battling my way out.

Over the weekend, I texted Bear that in the past month or so, I’ve started to take for granted that I feel good when I wake up. When we begin to take something for granted, it’s the new normal.

It’s possible to recover from The Big Enormous Darkness so completely that you eventually wake up and feel good, with no weird remnants of the big dark hanging on to your body, mind, or spirit. It’s possible to feel so good that you make a new normal, and that new normal is light and requires only a cup of coffee to reach its maximum potential.

I promise that sometimes it gets better for no discernible reason, lest you think you have to earn healing like you’d earn a master’s degree.

Sometimes the season finishes and the fog lifts with no effort on your part.
Spring arrives.
The beach opens for summer.
The book is finished.
The neighbors move.
The kids graduate.

Seasonal resolution is a gift, so please embrace it without any guilt.

I promise the path is worth the price.

At the very least, those of us who are committed to healing and growing, experimenting and failing, get to see far more of the world than our inner basements and a dusty collection of untouched emotional boxes.

We don’t live in fear of ourselves, and that is a rare trait in the modern human.

To put it another way: I am not afraid of myself.

I have been to the basement and in the attic, up on the roof and all around the internal property. I have seen my darkest, worst sides, and I’m aware of my most flattering angles.

I am not afraid of myself.

As the fear of ourselves falls away, we’re far less likely to fall into hoarding of any kind. We stop trying to protect what we already have at the expense of everything we haven’t yet seen — and so we’re far more likely to make changes as they’re offered by life circumstances, rather than three decades too late.

We live with fewer regrets because when you have confronted your biggest pain, your deepest secrets, and your shame, you travel lighter and further than ever before. Inside, outside, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

I promise the growing is far more pleasure than pain.

Whether you want to learn to be in your body, enjoy sex more, clear emotional debris, receive more of life’s goodness, or give up on the ‘next level‘ of business and enjoy the phase you already inhabit: there is pleasure waiting.

Sure, there are rough patches, but those rough patches are often helped along by drinking plenty of water and going to bed earlier than usual. (I wish I was making this up or exaggerating, but I’ve often found solutions to my own bullshit by going to bed with the sun.)

Your growth creates resiliency without any extra effort on your part, and that resiliency is tended through sleep and rest.

I can *also* promise there will be resistance.

Whenever we know something is important — a conversation, a workshop, an event, or a habit — we resist the shit out of it.

We pretend we’re too busy to make it, or it will ‘only’ be a little money we’re wasting if we cancel, or we’ll do it next week/month/year, or we don’t have to participate because X. (Where X is usually something really clever like, ‘You deserve it!’ or ‘You need a rest anyway.’)

Resistance is common for everything important, and it doesn’t stop just because you’ve been doing something for a long time.

I’ve been doing breathwork weekly for a bunch of years, and instead of running toward a recent training weekend with arms open, I almost ran home scared.

Resistance is normal, but it’s not something we have to give in to.

We can listen to the asshole brain voices that say we’ll do it ‘later’ or we ‘don’t need to do it’ or ‘there’s probably nothing to learn anyway,’ and then laugh.

We can observe the fear doing its fear thing and then show up anyway. Likewise, we can move toward what we know is important instead of downplaying it, pretending it’s not calling to us, or acting as if it’s no big deal. (Related: coming out of the spiritual closet.)

I promise you will wake up one day and notice the ways the landscape has shifted.

Maybe you push through resistance for one more day, and tomorrow it will disappear entirely.

Maybe you used to trudge for forty-three minutes up You’re Not Enough mountain to get to your truest work, and now it’s only three minutes. Progress!

Maybe you used to take three hours to write to your peeps, and now it only takes two. Progress!

Maybe you used to associate your work with your worth, or give up on selling after you mentioned a thing once, or refuse to ask for money owed you, or trust doctors with poor solutions instead of putting your own health at the center of your quest for wellness.

One day, you realize you don’t do those things any longer, because you’ve been training the emotional muscles required to withstand greater and greater challenges.

You’ve been doing emotional weightlifting this whole time, and no one thought to stop and say they’re proud of you, because emotional weightlifting is mostly invisible and internal.

So right now, lemme say: I’m so proud of you. I see how hard you’re working — yup you, just by virtue of being here — and you are doing such a good job.

SUCH a good job.

Which brings me to my last point.

I promise that you’re making progress so long as you’re committed to making progress.

It’s almost impossible to see this when everything appears to be standing still. But the world is never, ever standing still. We’re always moving in the direction of growth or of decay, and simply choosing to be committed to growth for its own sake is enough to ensure that progress is happening.

When we step into the world in the spring, we know things are happening below the surface for weeks and weeks. Then, one glorious morning, the daffodils burst open and spring arrives. The patience through the standing up in soil, the lengthening, and the creation of buds isn’t so obvious in humans, so we tend to think we’re useless or hopeless and should throw in the towel.

Please, don’t.

So long as you’re willing to wrestle with and to explore your interiors, progress is assured.
So long as you’re willing to show up and do your work in the world today, progress is assured.
So long as you’re strengthening your emotional muscles, one day at a time, progress is assured.

Even if you’re drowning in emotions or emails or both — please don’t give up on yourself, on your interiors, or on your own progress.

And for what it’s worth: I’m so very proud of you.

P.S. As you heal, you hide less.  Here are 29 ways to stop hiding.

I’ve had a secret for a bunch of years, but I’ve felt too much SCARY BEING JUDGED FEAR to share it in any sort of meaningful or worthwhile way.

Here goes: most of my work days last for three hours or less.

I’ve been consciously shaping a shorter work day for myself for years now.

Before you form a mob and come at me with pitchforks because I’m such a spoiled brat, lemme tell you how this started.

For a bunch of years, I was struggling with depression. I also had worsening-but-undiagnosed thyroid issues. For about eighteen months there, I had both extremely intense thyroid issues and clinical depression.  (Story of how I slooooowly healed my thyroid here.)

Translation: naps were not optional. Getting out of bed and showering were serious achievements.

Not like, ‘Hehe I know! Showering is a pain in the ass.’ More like, ‘I have to lie down now that I’ve taken a shower since my body is experiencing a power failure.’

Where I could once happily work for eight to ten hours a day, the picture of productivity (see: capitalism), I found myself struggling to retain focus. I could only write for a few minutes at a time. I had trouble crafting zippy and witty responses to clients.

My brain fog was so severe that if you asked me to describe it in any detail, I would burst into tears and wobble my mouth at you like a sad, ancient animal with no will to live.

I was scared that my brain would never recover and therefore I’d have to give up writing forever.

Naturally, I decided to go down fighting. I cut my hours back again and again, beating myself up all the while: I’ll work until 4 pm. Until 3 pm. Until 2 pm. You can’t handle working until 2, really?

Okay fine, I’ll work until lunch. I was so embarrassed to be so ‘sick’ and ‘broken,’ but that’s how I ultimately came to set up a lasting schedule. (See also: your brain is an asshole and your shame is not interesting.)

I’ve currently got a 9:30 to Noon routine. That’s my time for getting absolutely everything important done: writing, podcast recording, emailing, selling, coaching, planning, and the like. Only two and a half hours to do it.

In the afternoon, I do tasks that don’t require as much of my magic: scheduling, uploading, downloading, and updating. That lasts for at least half an hour, sometimes up to 2 hours, but consists mostly of tasks that are optional or that take place away from my computer. I schedule time to do breathwork, cook dinner, stretch, pick up library books, and otherwise take damn good care of myself most afternoons. On Fridays, I coach until about 3 pm because I know I’ll have the weekend to recover if I overextend myself.

What I’ve found over the past few years of working-at-a-screen less and working-by-taking-good-notes-in-the-world more is fucking SHOCKING.

The softer I can be with myself, the more I can get done.

Not soft like ‘fuck it,’ but soft like ‘let’s do our best with clear priorities and well-defined tasks.’

When you’re only working for a few hours, you have no choice but to prioritize. There’s no time for clicking on a rabbit hole about author’s diaries, fiddling with Spotify playlists, scrolling on Instagram, squeezing in some online shopping, or eyeing the competition. No time for answering texts, fiddling with group chats, or distracting yourself with household tasks that are suddenly quite urgent because WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK IF I HAVEN’T TAKEN OUT THE RECYCLING TODAY.

You’ve only got time for your work.

If you’re like, HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THIS MAGIC TELL ME HOW…let’s do this.

First, you’ll need to prioritize the shit out of your work life.

Let’s think of your work in three categories: magic, mogul, and muggle.

Magic is the work that ONLY you can do.

No one else can write your books, speak at your gigs, do your coaching sessions, or…whatever it is that people pay you (and only you) to do. Bear cannot send me to one of his DJ gigs, ’cause I’ll just play Ace of Base’s ‘The Sign’ on repeat until everyone goes home. That’s his magic.

My magic is writing, editing, communicating with peeps via the podcast, coaching, and holding or planning breathwork classes.

Magic is scheduled for your most productive time of day.

In my case, that’s first thing, which also keeps me from wading into my inbox and getting distracted by whatever is waiting for me each morning. Magic is blocked off for 1-2 hours on any given work day.

Most people skip their magic 100% of the time.

They try to schedule it for big blocks of uninterrupted time — preferably on a desert island — and allow every other urgent-but-not-deeply-important task to eat away at their work time. If you’ve ever dreamed of doing all your work Somewhere Far Away With No Interruptions for 7 to 30 days, you know this predicament well.

Making magic a daily activity changes the nature of your business and ups your quality of life significantly.

If I tried to shove all my most awesome talents into use for 6 hours on Friday, then left the rest of my week to things like spreadsheets, updates, and answering emails within 40 seconds of their arrival in my inbox, I would hate my life. (If you currently hate your business, I’ll bet that this lack-of-magic-time has something to do with it!)

If you’re like, ‘Okay, but uh…WTF is my magic, Kristen? What should go into that time for me?’

Some questions to suss out your magic:

What is it that only you can do?

What will make 5-years-from-now you proud?

What will move the ball forward on the project you’ve given the most significance at the moment?

Hint: that will rarely be answering emails the minute they come in, returning phone calls within 30 seconds of receiving them, or putting your best work at the least alive part of your day. My most alive part happens when I wake up, so I hit the breakfast train and get to work as quickly as possible. Some people say you MUST work out before you sit before a screen, but that takes up too much of my magic time.

Next, there’s moguling. This involves any and every activity you do to bring money into your business.

That’s selling, marketing, planning a launch, following up with potential clients, talking with potential clients, and letting current clients know about referral perks of any kind. (For example: refer a coaching client to me for KK on Tap and you get a free 1-hour coaching call! There are 5 spots left.)

If you’re afraid of selling or marketing — or simply new to it — you’ll naturally push this off until it’s absolutely necessary. Read: you’re out of money.

When you can make moguling a habit — even for 10 minutes a day — you make massive changes in how you perceive and talk about your business.

You promote your work before it’s crunch time. You respond to clients in a timely-but-not-instant timeframe. You handle any issues that come up before they’re a big deal, and you do so without trying to batch every last miserable marketing task imaginable into a single day at a time when you’re completely out of cash.

Eventually, you don’t avoid these activities because they are a tiny stripe of time built into your day between magic and muggling. They are not a dreaded task that sucks all of your mental energy, or an enormous task that feels far too stressful to even begin. Consistent workday moguling is one of the keys to how I get a great deal of work done in a small period of time without freaking out about how I should be doing more (and more and more and more and more).

To suss out moguling in your life:

How often do you mention your products and services to: your email list? To social media? To those you meet?

How many times do you follow up with potential clients before assuming they’re not interested?

If your work is limited in some capacity, are the number of available spots in your calendar extremely clear upon visiting your website? (i.e. 5 KK on Tap coaching spots are left for this year! Learn more here.)

Do you keep an updated spreadsheet of your actual and projected income for your business?

Do you keep a regularly-updated marketing calendar, and then stick to it?

Here’s how to make a marketing calendar if that’s new to you! Also if you’re like, OH GOD HOW DO I DO THESE THINGS, pick up a copy of Go Your Own Way: free yourself from business as usual.

If you’d like to begin to cultivate the habit of communicating with your peeps — i.e. to send a damn newsletter already — I’ll walk you through how to do that without wanting to curl up and die in my How to F*&(ing Communicate course.

Finally, there’s muggling. These are non-magical, ordinary tasks.

This is the great time sink of life: the scheduling of appointments, the answering of emails, the attending of meetings, and, frequently, the avoiding of much harder activities. Most peeps I coach tend to give this category about 90% of their total resources on any given day. (In case you’re like, ‘NO NOT ME I NEVER MUGGLE:’ scrolling on your phone is muggling 100% of the time.)

We all know that muggling is often urgent, which is how it skips to the front of our to-do lists. It also requires the least amount of risk on our part, as it’s generally shuffling messages around, making plans for everyday tasks, and staying afloat in life without making any waves.

If you’re risk avoidant or generally feeling tired on any given day, it’s absolutely normal for muggling to show up and take over your business life. Let’s change that.

To suss out muggling in your life:

Which everyday activities take up most of your time?

How many times a day do you check your email?

How many times a day do you respond to your email — because checking and responding are two different things?

How much time do you dedicate to taking care of everyday business needs, versus working on projects and tasks that only you can do?

Which recurring tasks need to be scheduled so that you don’t keep missing the time necessary to complete them each day/month/week? (Here’s everything I know about time management.)

Which muggling tasks can be outsourced to another human or batched on a regular timeframe (i.e. checking email and voicemail twice a day instead of every 2 minutes)?

The good news is, it’s fairly easy to steal time back from muggling.

The first and most important step to having a shorter work day is to STOP WORKING WHEN YOU’RE DONE WORKING.

If you only check your email twice a day for 20 minutes at a time, you’ll free up those hours where you’re sitting at the computer not-working, but feeling guilty about how little you actually have to accomplish today.

If you’ve handled your obligations, completed your magical time, and let your peeps know how much of your work is on offer at the moment, YOU ARE FREE TO MOVE ABOUT THE WORLD.

You’ll have to give up a tremendous amount of guilt to make this a shorter work day thing happen.

Ah yes, the guilt: I know it well. My friends are working so hard at their 9 to 5’s, shouldn’t I be miserable, too? My friend in corporate America answers more than 200 emails a day, shouldn’t I be able to answer my emails immediately in order to compensate for how few I handle? My other friend in corporate America is in meetings for 3 to 7 hours a day, so shouldn’t I be sitting at my computer to — in some strange and energetic way — atone for the fact that I’ve got my own business and could be doing anything at all right now?

You don’t have to curb your freedom because those you love aren’t as free.

To put it another way: the belief that we should be working for eight hours a day, five days a week, at a screen, without fail, is bullshit.

When you get softer, you can give yourself many permissions in order to work through your asshole brain’s nagging about how lazy and useless you are.

These might help you unlock a shorter work day:

Permission to work for as long as you have legitimate activities to complete — and then close up shop for the day.

Permission to schedule as much or as little work as you can handle on any given day — and in any given season of life.

Permission to keep your business as big or small as you’d like — particularly small, which gets shamed by internet gurus the world over.

Permission to give up scrolling, procrastinating, and other forms of bullshit in order to do your work and then get on with your day.

Permission to admit that screens are only a small part of many businesses! If you’re a dancer, dance. If you’re a painter, paint! If you’re a writer, write. On notebooks and away from screens whenever possible.

Let go of trying to control everything, or trying to find the thread that leads to all systems coming together perfectly, all ills disappearing, all boxes being checked, all signs pointing to go, all beings blissful at once. (This is much harder than it seems, and will require continued effort.)

If you’d like to experience my particular magic, look no further than The Softness Sessions!

The Softness Sessions will help you take the first steps toward being softer with yourself — with your schedule, with your productivity, and with what you can achieve on any given day — with the help of weekly wisdom throwdowns and breathwork.

Breathwork is an active 3-part meditation that is like a scrubby brush for your soul. It cleans up emotional residue, inherited or outdated thought patterns, and habitual actions. All you’ve got to do is lie down and breathe.

I’ll walk you through the common areas where we humans encounter major tangles — loneliness, mess, doubt, wandering the wilderness, steadiness, and joy — and then we’ll move through each one with breathwork.

You’ll come out the other side less attached to guilt, shame, fear, and the bullshit that’s lived in you for so long that you can’t see it anymore.

Expect to feel brighter, lighter, and softer at the end of the sessions.  We start March 19th, 2020, and Early Bird Pricing is in effect.  Buy now!

 

P.S. How to *actually* change the whole damn world.

I went to the doctor and found out I’m just shy of weighing 200 pounds. My highest weight in high school was 169 (HA!), I got married at 137 in 2006, and this is the most I’ve ever weighed, ever.

The thing is, I have very little shame about that 198.6 number. I’m really fucking healthy in the other health categories that count: mentally, spiritually, sexually, energetically, financially, and emotionally.

I didn’t get depressed last winter, which is the first time I felt fine during that season in over a decade.  (More about my depression and its lessons here, here, and here.)

Further, I’m on top of my Adulting — my library fines are paid and I’m making art regularly and my house is clean and my car is inspected, which are the things that slide in not-so-healthy-times.

Most importantly: I DON’T WANT TO STOP LIVING LIFE. I am not suicidal. I can read the news without sinking into a ball of despair and losing 3 hours to weeping uncontrollably about things I cannot change. Read: I deserve a slow clap.

Aside from that single measurement — my weight — I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.

Psst! This is an episode of That’s What She Said, listen in below or keep reading if you dig a transcript!

So, why did I have to sit through a shaming lecture about it? Because nowhere in the 9.6 minute doctor’s visit that cost $165 did she ask about My Actual Health.

She checked in with her notes about what I should be doing — Synthroid, you’re on that? No? (Back story of how I healed my own damn thyroid: Tiny, Annoying Progress.)

Well, I need bloodwork. Why didn’t you get bloodwork? Oh, an enormous battery of pointless tests is expensive.

Well, why don’t you have insurance? Oh, because paying $600 a month for insurance costs more than paying cash for when you need to see a doctor.

Well, you can go to a clinic if you don’t make enough money to pay for the tests.

You need to lose weight. You know what to do — fruits, vegetables, whole grains… I literally said, “Yah yah yah” until she moved on.

Let’s break down this emotional gauntlet and then provide alternative questions that would actually benefit both health professionals and patients.

Shaming people about their perceived lack of health merely by weighing them is not only irresponsible, it’s dangerous. I know many skinny people who are dead inside and many overweight people who are healthy as fuck.

In my experience, a doctor dons a white coat and knows what you should do, despite not asking once about what you’ve learned this year, or where you’ve gone internally, or how your relationships are affecting you, or even what your mental health is like on any given day.

“Celexa, 20 milligrams? Still need that?”
“Yup.”

Next point of order. That is not an exaggeration of how I got a full year’s prescription for anti-depressants.

Rather than trusting the healthcare system to help us, let’s find ways for you to gauge your health from home with Really Fucking Good Questions. (RFGQ, for short.)

You can ask these of yourself first, then share what’s actually going on within you with the health providers of your choice. (If you’d like to regain your belief that health practitioners can be amazing people, look no further than Aimee Derbes.)

Really Fucking Good Questions that actually help determine your overall health:

How many deeply meaningful relationships are you cultivating at the moment? How often do you feel lonely?

When did you last sing, dance, or otherwise express yourself for no ‘good’ reason? When did you last place your bare feet on the earth and/or sand?

How is your mental outlook on any given day? Do you feel as if you’re growing more or less resilient over time?

How much time do you spend on screens each day? What would you tell me you know you ‘need’ to do in order to correct your relationship with those screens?  (Have you seen Space, my email course which helps you reduce your phone usage by 50% or more?)

Do you get more than seven hours of sleep per night? Will that be changing in the foreseeable future, for better or worse?

Do you engage in sexual acts with yourself and/or partner(s) on a regular basis? Do you find those activities enjoyable — and if not, how might you find them more pleasurable?

How does your financial situation feel on a day-to-day basis? Has anything about it changed drastically in the past few months? Is there anything about your finances that you’re avoiding?

Do you have at least one nutritious meal each day? What would adding more nutrition to your diet in a doable way look like?

How much time do you spend in your body each day, whether for work or play? Has this increased or decreased significantly in the past few months, and how has that changed your overall outlook?

Read: YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO TO THE GYM EVER AGAIN, IN FACT GYMS ARE SOME OF THE LEAST HEALTHY PLACES ON THE PLANET. At my gym, you literally cannot work out without having 24 enormous screens in view. They surround the perimeter of the main workout room, and every single treadmill also has an attached screen. If you are working out to fill some sort of internal well, you have to battle house demolition shows, stock news, the latest headlines, talking heads on Fox News, and assorted music videos for the duration of your workout. The workout brings you no closer to your own interiors, thus divorcing it from the wisdom of moving your body outdoors, in nature, or in yoga.

Do you have any recurring pains, flare-ups, or bodily issues you’d like to investigate further?

How sensitive would you say you are when compared to other humans? How do you cultivate and nurture your sensitivity?

What do you ignore, pretend isn’t a problem, or otherwise glaze over when describing your life to others?

Finally — how do you cultivate a sense of meaning and/or fulfillment in your life?

“Meaning must be sought out; it’s not built into most people’s lives.” — Rebecca Solnit

She goes on to say that no one will diagnose you as suffering from “social alienation, meaninglessness, or other anomalies that arise from something other than familial and erotic life,” even though those afflictions can be far more burdensome and challenging than carrying around a few extra pounds.

This meaning question is big and hard. It can be absolutely brutal if you’ve never considered it before, so let’s go a touch deeper into it.  I’ll tell you how I make meaning so that you don’t feel judged or like I’m giving any sort of prescriptive, I-know-what’s-best-for-you advice.

Meaning is something I create through:

Initiating and noticing progress, both in myself and in my coaching clients
Maintaining a regular spiritual practice (in my case, breathwork)
Turning the bullshit, the awful, the challenging, and the frustrating into podcasts, classes, and books
Being vulnerable with myself and with others whenever possible

How do you cultivate a sense of meaning and fulfillment in your life?

It probably involves some combination of setting goals, making progress, connecting with your intuition, processing your toughest challenges, and being vulnerable with other people. It’s finding a way to contribute to the world at large while being a damn good steward of your gifts.

Back to the big questions! None of them judge, but they do probe effectively into the parts of ourselves we are most likely to call ‘fine.’

They point you toward simple solutions — less screen time, a single nutritious meal, some singing for singing’s sake — without making you download an app or commit to a 30-day program.

They are, in other words, soft.

Softness means you can be gentle with yourself as you navigate life, move through changes, and shift your bodily rhythms to reflect your current reality. Punitive talks with ourselves about our finances, our health, our sensitivity, and our emotions don’t work.

We cannot shame ourselves into being better humans; that emotion only shuts us down. (‘No pain, no gain’ is one of our culture’s most ubiquitous lies.  Also: your shame is not interesting.)

When we can greet our current reality with open eyes and without harsh criticism, we’re far more likely to find ways to add nourishing practices, healthy relationships, down time, sleep, and nutrient-dense foods into our lives for the long term.

That 30-day plan or 7-day challenge temporarily beats us into submission and creates a false sense of progress.

In most cases, we need to prioritize a single change that moves the needle forward, then spend a long time making sure we build it into our routine. Think 180 days, not 30, with no damaging critiques of our entire being if we screw up and slide back into our old patterns.

So you

…ate an entire cake? Love you.
…slept for 1.5 hours instead of 8 because you were up reading? Love you.
…blew a coupla hundred bucks on shit you don’t need but really, really enjoy? Love you.
…can’t brush your teeth and shower on the daily to save your life? Love you.
…have never managed to make a new habit by punishing yourself? Love you, too.

It’s all love, all the way down — not in the mushy, ‘it’s okay just eat the cupcakes’ way, but in the ‘you’re human and it’s okay to make mistakes’ way. The soulful grandmother barrel laughing at your antics way.

Some days are better than others.

Some years are better than others.

Our job, collectively, is to tend to our own gardens before we tend to the world’s garden.

Otherwise, we run the risk of causing more harm than good, of judging others as harshly as we judge ourselves, or of burning out long before we have a chance to bring our best gifts to the table.

Our job is also to take a look at alllllllll the elements of our health — mental, physical, sexual, spiritual, emotional, and financial — before we prioritize one over the other.

Can you forgive yourself for the work you haven’t yet done, and the weight you haven’t yet lost, and the book you haven’t yet read or written, and the debt you haven’t paid off, and the lurking pain that won’t go away, and the habits you haven’t managed to forge?

Can you, under all the layers of disappointment and fear and doubt and anger with yourself, find some small, steady place within you that is gentle and that loves you, regardless?

Can you love yourself with all the fierce tenderness you use to love puppies and babies and every good thing in the world?

Can you acknowledge what IS, in this moment, without apology or judgement of any kind?

THAT is how you change the whole damn world — by carefully tending the worlds within you with softness, tenderness, and understanding.

First for you, then for everyone else. (Most people start with everyone else, myself included.)

It’s for you to make meaning, for you to decide why you’re on earth, and for you to enjoy as much of it as possible.

“More than anything, she wants to tell him how Purpose, that awful thing that greeting cards tell him he was born with and he just has to find, is actually something he’ll need to create; that it’s not until he feels the monotony of life that he’ll come to decide why he’s living it.” — Honestly, We Meant Well by Grant Ginder

Softness just makes it easier to find the answers and experiment with new ways of being.

If any part of this podcast made you cry, gasp, or giggle with new ideas, let me tell you about The Softness Sessions. Part extremely-personal-podcast, part breathwork, and a book to boot, The Softness Sessions will help you step into the wisest spaces within yourself.

Through extremely dense teachings followed by breathwork, The Softness Sessions will help you defeat asshole brain, ask better-for-your-whole-health questions, make sense of your internal chaos, and feel the feelings you’ve been boxing up and hiding away for a long time now.

The Softness Sessions are the perfect jumping-off point for a kinder-to-you internal life, no matter how much health you’ve currently got.

Find all the details at thesoft.space.

You’ll get a session each week for 6 weeks, as well as a real life book/journal combo in the actual mail. We start March 19th, 2020, and we’ll conclude with a live breathwork session on April 30th, 2020.

Soft humans are gifts to the rest of the world. I’m hellbent on becoming a soft one, and I hope you will be, too.

Again: thesoft.space — grab your seat now.

P.S.  A note for my procrastinators: the sooner you purchase, the sooner I can send you the book!  Waiting until the last possible second to buy means you won’t have the book for the first week or two of our time together.