It’s ok to rest

Daily Digest: 8

Read a book. Take a nap. Set down your phone for an hour.

It’s ok to unwind. It’s ok to rest!

You aren’t meant to produce something every minute of your life.

Stop rushing. Slow your mind.

When we take time to relax it gives our brain space to let go of the focus which opens up our thinking.

Take a deep breath.

And another one.

That’s so much better already, isn’t it?

Ok, now seriously put your phone down and rest because it might just give you your next big idea.

Just run it

Daily Digest: No. 7

Is loading the dishwasher a point of contention in your home?

Do you stand there and labor over it to see if you can fit one more thing in if you just… move these other seven things around first?

I totally do this to the point where it drives my husband crazy because we could just close it up, turn it on and go back to our show.

Lately when he catches me laboring over plate placement decisions he yells from the sidelines, “JUST RUN IT!”

The first few times I argued that we just needed one more mug (…or bowl, or spoon) and then it would be full enough to run.

He’d always insist that if we just run it then we could have all those clean dishes in the morning.

The concept has been so effective at keeping our dishes under control that now I find myself using this as my new mantra when I feel stuck at something.

It works in in my day-to-day business, too.

What if we stopped laboring over every word in our email newsletter or every detail in a photograph?

What if we just rolled up our sleeves and clicked send on something that is slightly less than perfect?

What would happen?

We would finish something!

We would make progress on a project giving us a nice shiny clean to-do list in the morning.

Say it with me… Just run it, Heather.

Let it be easy

Daily Digest: No. 6

I’m here to tell you (and me) that you can let this job be easy.

You can wake up every day and decide to say, “I get to do this today. This is exactly what I dreamed of before I started my business.”

I think a lot of the challenges we face as independent business owners is from our own internal struggles.

Maybe we don’t know how to do something so it feels challenging to learn.

Maybe we have a to-do list a mile long so it feels daunting to tackle.

Maybe we have outside requests for our attention so it feels like there’s never any time to accomplish what we need to in a day.

But you know what? We’ve learned something new before. We’ve finished several to-do lists over the years. We’ve gotten a lot of work done even with other people asking us for stuff!

Whatever the struggle is it’s there, it feels real and it happens to all of us every day.

But I’m here today to think about a new way to approach our work day. What if we just sat down and got to work? What if we just chose the most important small task at the top of our list and did it until it was done? What’s more satisfying than finishing something? Not much! What a great way to start the day.

Which is why –

  • I want to sit down every day and remember why I do what I do.

  • I want to sit down every day and just get something done.

  • I want to get out of my own way and let my job be easy.

I chose this job (career, life path…) for a reason and I want that reason to stop feeling like an uphill climb.

I’m going to let it be easy and see where that takes me...