Speaker #0Regeneration is about life, about restoring life and life is inconsistent. Life is cyclical. Life ebbs and flows and it has flourishing seasons of incredible, abundant growth and then it has long, long seasons where you can't see anything happening. Everything looks dead, quiet and still. That is what I choose for myself and for my business, to change with the seasons, to change as the mood takes me. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. I would like to start by saying how much it means to me that you listen to the podcast. I don't know you as an individual, but you're here, you're taking the time, you're spending it with me. I'm in your ear, I'm with you as you walk, or you clean, or you cook, and I'm grateful. I have been quite poorly. I have had the worst bout of flu I've ever had in my life. I felt worse than when I had Covid. And you may know that this has come on top of a just series of illnesses, basically since we moved into autumn. And also, possibly because of the illnesses or maybe just alongside that, I've had some recurring problems with my back, which is kind of an old thing, a deep thing, but a problem that I've made a lot of progress on but has been flaring up over the winter. And... With this last illness, I actually, I still have, I've got an ear infection from the flu, so I can only hear out of one ear at the moment, and I'm sure you can hear, I'm still all blocked up, and my energy levels are... extremely low and I know I know that I have no choice but to prioritize rest and that my already fairly simple life needs to get even more simple so that I can recover and get well. So when I was in the depths of this last illness I reached out to my sibling who is now very well, but went through a period of, I think about two years, they have asthma and they just kept getting chest infections and the chest infections would turn into pneumonia and they were basically sick for about two years. And I just asked, how do you do this? How do you, how do you have the patience and the resilience to, to go through this? And Brogan, my sibling, said you just have to surrender and don't try to look for meaning when you're in the depths of it. The only meaning in the depths of it is to hydrate, sleep, feed yourself, do what you have to do to look after the kids and the meaning will come with time. Well I'm still very much in the depths of it. But I do think there is a kind of meaning emerging for me, or perhaps a discovery, because I don't believe that it's coincidental that I have been getting sick, and it makes me very sad to notice that my illness has... correlated almost directly with the launch of regenerative work life and I can't help but notice that my body is continually telling me to slow down and to do less and that I'm not on the right path. now that probably sounds very dramatic and maybe with time it will be but what I'm understanding for the moment is I know I love the work that I do I'm going back to my first client session tomorrow morning it's a client that lives nearby we're going to meet in person and actually take a walk and you and be in nature together for our coaching. And I can't wait. I'm so excited to reconnect with her, to hear how her business is developing, to work together. There's no question for me when it comes to the actual work, the work with clients. I love my clients, genuinely. I feel so grateful to work with them. It's just an absolute joy and I don't have to be anything that I'm not. You know, if I'm well enough to get out of bed, I'm well enough to see my clients. They don't expect me to be polished or poised or energised. I'm just me and that brings value to my clients and they appreciate it deeply and they're able to make changes in their life because of our connection, because of who I am. But when it comes to all the surrounding noise, the marketing, the podcast, the videos, the weekly newsletter, there I feel like I've gotten myself into a trap. And it's not that I don't enjoy those things occasionally. But there is a relentlessness to this marketing rhythm that I've chosen, that feels somehow necessary to me. And there is a relentlessness to coming into my office every day and kind of looking at the computer and thinking, what's next? When I do the work, when I'm coaching with someone, it feels so alive, it feels so natural, there's a real effortlessness to it. And yet, all of the peripheral bits and pieces, they feel like a weight to me. And I can tell myself that people get value for those. I, you know, I get comments from people saying, oh, I've appreciated this, or, you know, I enjoyed this podcast episode. But I think what I'm trying to be honest with myself about is that I am approaching those things as extractive tools. I am approaching them with an expectation of something in return. It's not a direct one-to-one transaction. I send you this email, I expect you to buy from me. But there is this feeling overall that if I do good marketing, that should directly feed into my business. That should mean I get more clients. And there is something about that, just that dynamic, that exchange that just feels really wrong to me. the whole energy around it and I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to create content with any expectation of you whatsoever. You should listen or not listen or read or not read. Be inspired, be uplifted, be ambivalent, be indifferent. It's... You don't owe me anything in return and I don't owe you anything. The word consistency comes up for me. It was the very first thing I was taught about social media a hundred years ago, right, when the first sort of explosion of social channels and we were starting to use that in my former business and for clients. And the word was always consistency. You must be consistent. You must show up this many times a week. You must be there at a certain time. And that dogma still hangs around when I set out to learn about podcasting. Everyone I learnt about podcasting from taught that you must be consistent, you must put out a weekly episode at the same time every week. People need to know that they can expect it, but it's not human. It's just not human, it's not natural, it's not regenerative. If I'm sick, why am I putting out a podcast? If I'm not inspired, why am I sending an email? If I have nothing to say, why am I reaching to recycle some content, as I did last week to my shame? Why can't it be okay to speak when there are ideas that I want to give life to? To write because I feel the fire in me to write something. I want to create an image. I want to share something with you. Why can't it be a purely creative process? And so I think what I'm learning, what I'm discovering is that I choose creativity over consistency. I am not a consistent person. It is not something I am good at. I am, I'm an initial spark kind of person. I love the spark of an idea. I love taking the idea and believing in it and trusting it and bringing it to life. I do not love consistently feeding it week after week. I'm not a process person. I've had to teach myself that, but it's just not natural to who I am. I'm flaky. I am flaky and I'm okay with that. I fall in. and out of love with ideas and concepts very quickly. I flit between them. I'm excited by the new shiny thing and I have a gift to be able to make those things real. I have the gift of courage to go, hey, I love that idea. Let's do it. I'm doing it now. I'm doing it next week. Help people to do the same thing. Help people who sit on these ideas for their whole life sometimes. These dreams that they pack away at the back of the attic of their mind. I'm the one to drag it out of its dusty corner and say, let's do this right now. Right now. No more excuses. No more waiting. Let's do it messily and imperfectly and make it happen because I can already see it existing. I can already feel its reality. I believe in you and what you want to create. And that energy has been missing, not from the work when I'm with a client, but from everything that surrounds it. Somehow I've gone back to old ways. I wanted things to feel polished. I've felt comfortable by this expert. guidance, kind of role. I wanted to be the sort of expert guide for you because that was a comfortable place to be. What's really uncomfortable is what I'm doing right now, just speaking to you. I have no script, I have no notes, I have no idea if I have said anything that will be in any way useful or practical but it's just what I want to say it's what I'm feeling right now and I want to commit radically to learning out loud developing out loud and I do believe in regenerative work I believe in regenerative business but I'm also still discovering exactly what that means. And I spoke a few episodes ago about the how of regenerative work being as important as the what, but that concept goes even deeper than I imagined back then. Because regeneration is about life, about restoring life, and life is inconsistent. Life is... cyclical. Life ebbs and flows and it has flourishing seasons of incredible, abundant growth. And then it has long, long seasons where you can't see anything happening, where anything, everything looks dead and quiet and still. That is what I choose for myself and for my business, to change with the seasons, to change as the mood takes me. So come along with me for this ride. Let's find out what this means together. I feel lighter. I feel freer. And if you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, yeah, me too. That's okay. But I cannot go on feeling constrained. I cannot go on feeling like I work for... a marketing schedule of my own invention or that I am subservient to the offers that I've created. I want to create new offers every week. I want to give you new and different and exciting ways to work with me every week. I want to come on and perform poetry. I want to speak to incredible people. I want to... babble and just spew out what's inside me. I don't want to be held down by a niche, a way of working, a title, a theme. There will be theme with time. Regeneration is my theme. Regeneration and rewilding. and also enchantment because i believe in magic oh so funny how gross i feel saying that but enchantment is at the heart of what i do casting spells I know I'm going to want to edit this out, but I'm not going to. I'm going to go and rest now. And I am alive with curiosity to see how this episode feels as it goes out into the world, into your eardrums. I hope both of them are working for you. And I'll see you in the next one. Bye. if something sparks inside you. Thanks for listening and I will be back when I'm back.
