To say I haven’t felt like myself for the last couple of years would be a massive understatement. But what it took for a little insight was not a massive breakthrough in session; it was during savasana on a Sunday night, as my yoga instructor asked over Zoom what my intention for the week ahead was going to be.
How did I want to feel?
The words came clearly: Powerful, purposeful, and full of possibility.
John, you were a great friend, a true ally, and one hell of a motorsport engineer. You may not have known how much you taught me, so I wrote you this letter. Cha Gheill.
Life lessons from the middle of a Zoom yoga class, when our instructor guided us to “step away from striving.”
Greg McKeown’s latest book, Effortless, is a guide, and in the case of us perfectionists, a permission slip, on how to make what is essential easier to do. It’s necessary reading for all of us, burning the candle at both ends, who need a nudge to choose the easier path.
With all the things on your to-do list, writing a business blog never seems to be the priority. But if you’re struggling to keep clients coming to you, then a business blog could be the answer you need to let your content do some legwork for you. To attract people to you and your services or products, you have to be producing content online that draws them in, helps them out and keeps you top of mind.
It’s December of 2019, it’s not the end of the world. I think we all learned about how silly we could be in 1999, when we thought all computers would just stop working and the economy would come to a grinding halt at midnight.
Newsflash: The only difference between December 31, 2019 and January 1, 2020? A few hours.
No matter what you call it, your muse, the magic, that creative spark of an idea, you have to nurture it, every day. To carry on the thread of a novel, it’s essential. But on the whole, our bodies and brains love routine. They thrive in consistency.
I actually found myself a bit embarrassed as I was explaining how I shifted gears and became an editor and then a writer, before deciding to do more technical work. I felt like admitting that I enjoyed something creative was a chink in my technical expert armour.
There’s something heavy on my heart this week that I want to share. I realized and felt what it was like to have mentors in my corner, cheering for my success and pushing me out of my comfort zone, up-levelling to where I belong, with the help of people who have known me for over a decade.
Do you ever start a piece of work and then after an hour or two get stuck and start to think - I can’t do this? Self-sabotage sets in and, for me, I begin saying to myself: “What made me think that someone like ME could actually accomplish this?”
Creativity is the opposite of production.
Creativity has no deadline.
Creativity does not reward volume.
Creativity cannot be measured.
Creativity fills you up, while production drains you.
I only realized how underpaid I was after I left my 9-to-5 job and started to open up with people about what they make, what their experience level was, and what the industry standard dictated. Now, I’m in a position, as a freelancer, to start asking for what I’m worth and choosing to work for and with people that respect what I bring to the table.
There’s only one way to do that: start talking shop with your freelancing colleagues.
Addictive behaviours take you away from pain and give you a superficial dose of dopamine to make you feel better. Some people drink, some people gamble, others scroll mindlessly in Facebook and Instagram.
One day a week to stay off social media has been totally doable and easy to fit into my schedule without serious FOMO. Yes, social media is necessary for my job - I literally write social media content for others and I share about what I’m doing in my business. But, I do not have to be on it all the time to see the benefits of sharing what I’m up to.
Unless you’re a copywriter, like me, the last thing you want to do as your editing your podcast is write the show notes. To make the process much less painful for you, I’ve come up with a framework that you can run with.
Life is a funny thing. You can work and work and work. But your health isn’t something you can control, and often if forces you to shift gears and suddenly look at things in a different light.
Instead of spending as much time as I did in the planning and research phase, you can use this template to launch your podcast quickly and with very minimal investment.
On this week’s podcast I talked with my friend Karen Calder about what I means to be employed by someone else. We both spent years as employees, and then branched out on our own. So we’ve experienced both sides of the coin (pun intended).
This week was a trial run at focusing solely on writing and ditching the editing. I decided to do this because I was feeling stretched too thin, and I was frustrated that I didn’t have the mental capacity to focus on my own creative projects.
Whether you work for a small consulting firm or you are an entrepreneur, using an on-demand service means you can avoid huge upfront investment costs in hardware, making easier than ever to operate as a start-up or a freelance engineer.
