024: Missing Mojo

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. I'm back with a solo show today on Missing Mojo. When I do these solo shows, they are unscripted. Sometimes I have a little outline in front of me, but the bigger goal is to speak from the heart and tell you truth while it's fresh. What does that mean? It means that sometimes I'm going to come with these solo episodes and I don't have the answers. I don't have the solutions. I'm unfolding a problem or a struggle as it's happening in real time and sharing it with all of you for a couple reasons. One, maybe you can identify with this and you're experiencing something similar so you'll just know you're not alone and you're not crazy. And two, that together we can solve these conundrums and look for new solutions, new ideas, different ways of going about our life work and creative projects. When I say Missing Mojo, I'm specifically referring to that feeling where your mojo is missing. You have a project that you love. For me, it's this podcast and yet something about it has friction. You're not totally in a state of flow and that's something that I've been experiencing recently. And so I thought this would be ripe for exploration in a solo episode. And it also fits into a bigger picture of what else I certainly have going on in my life and business. And maybe for you too. If there's an area that you know you really care about but your mojo is missing, there are a couple ways that we can explore what might be going on.

First a couple of personal updates. So I've been very hard at work on the free time book this year and this summer in particular. In fact, I cleared most of my schedule, partly thanks to Covid. There's no travel for speaking engagements, but also I've I've been very deliberate about not doing one on one coaching, phasing down my momentum community into Insider bff, which is the community of incredible people who support this podcast and really trying to clear as much creative space for writing and editing the book as I can. I decided in April to hybrid publish this one, which means that I'm funding a lot of the publishing steps and that's really exciting. I'll share more about that in a future episode, but it also means we were able to accelerate the timeline. So if I had gone with a traditional publisher, the freetime book might not be coming out until 2023. Now it's slated for March 22nd of 2022 and the Amazon pre order page should be up any day now, which meant that I was doing a lot of writing in the early part of the year. I still did a book proposal and I actually did shop it with my last publisher before deciding to go hybrid. And the book goes through many rounds. So it goes through a developmental edit about the ideas, the structure, do we have the right stories and concepts in place, Then a big copy edit, another big copy edit, and right now it's in the proofreading stage. So someone is looking at it for final errors before we send it to be laid out in the pages and actually designed in the interior of the book. So of course you want to try to catch every last little mistake before the book gets laid out, or as it's officially called, typeset because it's a lot harder to make changes and you introduce a lot more room for error if you try to change the text itself. Once the pages are already laid out and then we send it to the printer, we go through a couple rounds of proofing those typeset pages and then it goes to the printer in early September. That way I'll have advanced copies ready about six months prior to the launch and can start sending those out to media. So it's really exciting. I'm going to let you in on a whole lot more of this behind the scenes process. I just wanted to give myself time to get the book done and make it the best book that I possibly can. And I genuinely feel this is my third book. I really do feel like I've given this the most heart. It's A topic so close to my. Just what I love, you know, free time systems, operations, how to create more efficiency, and hearing feedback from early readers of things they're already doing to block off entire Fridays or hire help around the house, things that they're already doing to free their mind and time for their best work. It just makes my heart leap with joy. It's so exciting and thrilling. You know, for me, the highest compliment is not just that someone says, oh, I loved your book. It was so fun to read or so entertaining or interesting. No, it's that I'm actually taking steps. I'm taking action in my life and my business. I'm freeing up my time. I feel freer and lighter and happier and more joyful. Oh, my goodness. So taking action and of course, recommending something to a friend, these are the things that really, to me, are a mark of success.

While I have been heads down on writing, we've also simultaneously, throughout the summer, Michael, Ryder and I have been moving to through different Airbnbs. So we, we lived in New York City through all of 2020. All the insanity. It was a really tough year for us, for everyone. And at least I'm relatively fortunate. You know, we still had a roof over our head. I could still work remotely and do things that way. But by March 2021, we were just so exhausted and fried from city life and desperately felt like we needed to recharge and just quiet down a little bit. So it's been perfect to do that with writing, getting out of the city, being in nature, having less distraction. The flip side of that is that for some reason my podcasting mojo sort of flew out the window with all these changes. I didn't have my mic, I didn't have as fast Internet, I didn't have this one place that I podcast from where I could really get in a groove. And, you know, since the origins of this show, this has been a common refrain that I cannot seem to get it right in terms of where I'm going to record or the Internet speed or the sound quality. And you all have been so generous saying, it doesn't matter, we love it anyway. We love the ones where you're out in the park with Ryder, and that's amazing. I just, for me, I have not been able to find a consistent pattern with it. So I did a bunch of interviews, got them in the can, as they say in industry speak, in the spring, in the early part of the year, and then we were in our first out of the city location and I was still doing Some interviews. But I noticed a pattern. I was starting to not jump out of my chair on interview days, whereas in the past that's really the feeling that I go for. My benchmark for this show is joy. I want to be elated to show up to interviews and have these super engaging conversations with friends. And for some reason, my energy, I don't know if it's that I was so focused on being in the book, I was so immersed in this really intense all in private solo activity that it was hard for me to come out of that bubble and show up for an interview and then, you know, be with another person in conversation. And it was also really hard without having a consistent podcasting schedule while we've been moving around. It was also hard for me to click into that mode and get in the flow state with interviewing because every time I was showing up, I was kind of having to restart my engines and restart my mojo. I wasn't feeling this sense of like in the pocket, in the groove. So the interviews were feeling heavy. It was feeling like I had to really shift my energy, do a 180 every time it was an interview day. So I noticed myself hesitating to schedule more interviews. Then we got to our next Airbnb. That second one was in the Catskills and the wifi was so spotty and so slow that it was hard to even watch anything on streaming. It was just really low quality. And I knew, I knew I had already been having issues with recording over wifi and I just knew that it was not going to be conducive that there were so many things that could go wrong with the interviews because they already had been at our previous place with faster wifi. So this place with really spotty WI fi, we were, we were a 20 minute drive from a one street town. That's how remote we were out in the forest of the Catskills. So it was really nice to be in this kind of cabin, writing retreat arena while I was doing the big copy editing rounds and just pouring all day, every day, everything I could into the book. But I stopped scheduling interviews altogether. So then it went about a month and a half. And thankfully we still had episodes in the can that I was able to release every Friday.

Now we're in this new Airbnb. We're now exploring the Berkshires, all these fancy places that New Yorkers summer. And I had never gotten to know what they all were and what they were like. So now we're here. And I thought to myself, why is my podcast mojo Missing, Yes. You could say it's because I'm so intensely focused on a bigger creative project that I do a book once every five years. So once the book is wrapped and I feel really good about it, of course, so much more energy will be freed up for the podcast. You could say that it's not feeling grounded. I'm someone for home. I'm a Libra. Home is really important. Having a sense of beauty and peace and grounding in my home is really important. And I have not had that for a while. So maybe that's part of it, just not having the container. But there's also something bigger. And this is really what Pivot is all about, which is that sometimes if you're missing your mojo, it's a sign that something needs to shift or change. And deep down, I know that that is what's going on with this show. I know that it's probably good, it's okay, but it's not great. And when I brought this up with a very close friend, a friend of mine, he agreed. And I was so thankful. He said, I agree, you haven't hit it. You haven't nailed it yet. And I was so thankful. Thankful for this person telling me that because he was right and he put words to how I was feeling, which is. It's not there yet. I'm not totally in my zone of genius. I enjoy doing solo episodes a lot. Those are the ones where I feel the most energy. But I knew that the interviews, and I love the guests that I've had so far, I knew that they weren't different enough. I was not finding in innovative, original enough pocket of the lens for those interviews, how they're conducted, even the duration of time, how long they are. They feel like a continuation of what I have been doing for six years with Pivot. Just kind of great. Let's get on the mic and I'll kind of just go with my gut and I'll ask you some questions. And as my friend pointed out, he's like, yeah, they're, you know, interesting enough conversations with interesting people, but there's no lens, there's no hook or promise that if the podcast is about free time, I explained to him, it's about free time. Free your mind, time and team for your best work. And it's about heart based business. He's like, well, you got to pick one. You know, pick one. That's the main hook. And really make sure every interview gets to the point and you ask specific questions that what is the one thing that has freed up the most time for your guests and dive in or get really specific and tighten them up a little bit. And I couldn't agree more.

So this person's feedback resonated with what I had been feeling in free time. The book I wrote an essay on one of my mantras, Let it be easy, Let it be fun. That this doesn't mean that all of our work and all of our projects always have to be easy. But there's hard work lowercase and then there's hard work uppercase, like oh, where work is such a drag. And I don't believe in uppercase hard work because I do think that it's an invitation to shift how we're doing things. So for me, let it be easy, let it be fun. It means that if something is not feeling easy and fun and flowing, there's an opportunity to pause, recalibrate and redesign either how I'm approaching that thing or the thing itself. So either the process or the intended outcomes and intentions behind what it is that I'm creating.

We'll be right back just after this.

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While I've been having these conversations and reflecting, my friend Leanne, who I've spoken about many times now on this show. What a superstar. She's in episode 17 if you want to listen to the interview with her. She told me about a book, the Courage to Be Disliked. It is incredible. And she left me a voice memo. She said, this book is blowing my mind. It is so powerful I'm highlighting every other word. And so of course if someone recommends a book with that much enthusiasm, I go one click, order it. I don't need more impetus than that. I'm going to put the link to this book in the show notes. I want to read you an excerpt because this goes even deeper into Missing Mojo. And I do think that this is true for me with the podcast. I have a lot of fear around it, even if it's not in my day to day conscious awareness. So let me read you this excerpt from the Courage to Be Disliked. The philosopher says, I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but he never seems to be able to complete his Work. According to him, his job keeps him too busy and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that's why he can't complete work and enter it for writing awards. But is that the real reason? No, it's actually that he wants to leave the possibility of I can do it if I try open by not committing to anything. He doesn't want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn't want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities where he can say that he could do it if only he had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment and that he really does have the talent for it. In another five or 10 years, he'll probably start using other excuses like I'm not young anymore or I've got a family to think about now. Youth says I can relate all too well to how he must feel.

He should just enter his writing for an award, and if he gets rejected, so be it. If he did, he might grow or discover that he should pursue something different. Either way, he would be able to move on. That is what changing your current lifestyle is about. He won't get anywhere by not submitting anything.

The Philosopher it's based on Aldarian psychology. So Alder was one of the peers of Freud and Jung. And so a lot of the book is teaching this form of Aldarian psychology. And this piece that I just read is about our lifestyle and how we choose our lifestyle. And then often if we. If something is not happening in our lifestyle that we're not happy with, like, I'm missing podcasting Mojo. He the author and the Aldurian perspective would say, you are meeting another goal. So maybe secretly, unconsciously, I have a goal to stay safe. So I am meeting that goal by not podcasting or not going all in. So by me putting my attention on the book and saying, yes, I'm all in on my book, and I genuinely feel that I'm all in financially, energetically, time wise, I've put a lot of income earning aside just to work on the book and go all in. But I have not yet done that with podcasting. In six years of having podcasts, it's always been just a little bit on the side, even if I say that it's front and center. And this quote rang so true for me about this novelist because.

Deep down I feel a lot of fear around podcasting. And if I stay safe, if I don't rock the boat too much. If I don't challenge myself to really innovative format or a more structured format even, and I just kind of stay as I am, well, then it stays in the realm of what I'm capable of someday that it stays in the realm of. Well, I haven't gone all in on it yet. So I'm safe. So I'm meeting this goal of being safe. I'm meeting a goal of being having potential in my head, but not actually seeing what happens if I go all in. And for some reason, when I think about publishing books, I don't focus on how many books are published every year and how much competition there is and how many fewer people read books now than ever. And I just don't think about that. It's. With my first book I did, I had all kinds of gremlins. I had gremlins that in inner critics that really slowed me down. And it took me probably three years from start to finish to write my first book. This book I will have written in six months and then finish the editing and layout process two months after that. It's the fastest book I've ever written. It's the most joyful, the most passionate. So I was able to overcome a lot of those fears around the book process. But this thing about missing Mojo with the podcast is partly that fear really tamps down Mojo and me. I could say, I could say that, oh, it's the wifi. But this book, the Courage to Be Disliked would say, well, you're just finding a reason. It's easy. Once you have the goal to stay safe, it's easy to find reasons in the outside environment that will allow you to do that. So, okay, if deep down my goal is to be is to stay safe, then I'll say, oh, the WI fi is not good here in the Catskills. I can't record interviews.

Okay, great.

But I knew darn well I could have recorded solo episodes and still kept a weekly cadence. I have a recurring reminder on my phone. I'm going to read you the exact one. This is supposed to be my reminder to podcast and says solo episode. What's true this week, week after week, I just hit snooze on that reminder. I just didn't. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I talk about in the new book and I've talked about on the Pivot podcast, the power of streaks I tend to do. I'm this all or nothing person. Like, thankfully, I don't do this anymore with things like cookies and dessert but it used to be that if you put a bag of cookies somewhere in my house, I'll just eat the whole thing because I want it gone. I had no sense of moderation. I would just eat things so that they would be gone. I'm not the person that's like, let me take one bite of half a cookie and then I'll leave the rest. It just. I don't work like that. Same thing with working out. Sometimes it's just, I'm either on a daily streak where I'm doing 30 minutes of yoga a day, that's my current, or I forget and I don't do anything, and I'm just not. I'm not that good at just intermittent, kind of randomly planned things. So with the podcast, one thing that's great about working in batches and sprints, where, let's say I record, I did so well right in the beginning of this show where I recorded, I don't even know, 20 interviews in a span of a few weeks or a month. And then I had so many in the can. But what that opened me up to be vulnerable to was falling off the streak. I always mix metaphors, so I want to say, like, falling off the wagon or off the horse, I don't know. But it had the effect of letting me get away with week after week of not thinking about the podcast at all and not putting my energy into it. Meanwhile, I had this goal that I kind of know and even looking into the fall, that I really would love to do two episodes a week. I would love to do one interview a week and one solo episode. And when I was brainstorming with my friend, he was helping me think. I said, I don't always. The reason I hesitate to do solo episodes is because I don't always want to be teaching the podcasts I know that are. That are completely solo. There feels like this pressure to be the expert on all things, all the time, at everything, and that just doesn't feel as authentic to me, as genuine. On the other hand, I know podcasts where the solo riffs are just so personal that I. I like some of them. They're quirky, but I could also see how they would really annoy other listeners. Like, what are you talking about? Just. Just teach me something. Get to some kind of a point. So in talking it through with my friend, he. We kind of decided, okay, maybe I want to do some solo episodes that are a solution, a principle, a process, something I really have figured out even today. Sharing this gauge of friction versus flow that is the crux of free time of the new book is where are you in friction? And where are you in flow? And anywhere you're in friction, there's an opportunity to create stronger systems.

So there, Boom. There's a principle. There's something I do feel that I figured out that I can teach. So some solo shows can be teaching and some solo episodes can be like this one, exploring a problem in process and exploring how I'm thinking about a current conundrum that I'm facing. That way every time I get on the mic, doesn't have to just be pretend, like, oh, yeah, I'm in the best mood, everything's perfect. And let me teach you something because I'm so smart. That's my, like, self critique of that version. And that's what holds me back from getting on the mic sometimes because it's been a tough. It's been another tough year. And I. I'm not saying that to take away from anyone else, but so many things keep happening in our personal life and week after week that really throw me off. And I'm such a sensitive person that it hijacks my whole energetic state. I wish that weren't the case sometimes. And I, I do try to do things to manage that. But as a super introvert, as a highly sensitive person, I find it really hard to get on the mic if I'm feeling down and pretend otherwise. So I like this current hypothesis of how to return Mojo to the show by doing an episode just like this one where I can share just something I'm going through and how I'm starting to think about it and hope that there's value in that for you too. And even when I was blogging back in the life after college days, always the posts where I was very vulnerable, those were the ones that I thought would send everyone running for the hills. And then lo and behold, those were people's favorite posts. Now, that's not as surprising because there's this whole trend on Instagram. I'm never on Instagram, but I mean, I see where the person's like, smiling and looking beautiful on the beach. And then in the text it's like, but I don't always feel this way. And there's this sense of, I don't know, it seems to be now more commonplace, that everyone knows, okay, vulnerability is where the engagement is. That's not my goal here. But I do recognize that. I appreciate, I appreciate honesty. And again, this value that I call truth while it's fresh. So then the interviews. Let's talk about those. How do I get my mojo back for showing up for these interviews? Well, my friend was helping me talk through. Maybe it's shortening the duration of those interviews. Maybe it's being more specific, having a clearer takeaway for all of you listeners. And I love those ideas, so I'm going to play with that. You might see some changes start to happen. In fact, I hope you do see some changes start to happen. Because the whole pivot point, the fork in the road of missing Mojo is that if you don't address the missing mojo, it's just flat. And I don't think any of us wants to create something that we feel flat creating it or like a drag. And other people are inevitably going to feel flat listening and reading or whatever it is that you're creating. So for me, missing mojo is this is why I don't do that well with the school of thought that says, well, button seats time, you just got to show up. It probably could work if I did a streak like I did in 2020, where I podcasted daily for three months when the Pandemic hit back on the Pivot podcast, definitely I could see how a streak could get you in a groove where you have compound benefits from ideas rushing in and getting into a flow and that just by nature of it, knowing you're going to sit down every day, that you will find something to say. I would find something to say. On the other hand, by being more attuned to my own energy, I can actually see where the resistance is. And by not forcing myself to just keep doing things in the same way and actually taking some space away, then I have more perspective and more ability to say, yeah, something's not right. I do need to make some changes. And so I appreciate both schools of thought and I appreciate, I guess some people the more disciplined would say, your energy doesn't matter, show up anyway and just create something anyway. And I just feel mixed about that because my energy is such a guide for me. It's such a teacher that if my energy is not, as I said, jumping out of my chair with glee, then there's an opportunity to be more innovative. And when I listen to that energy, it points me in new directions and challenges me. So now I need to become, well, not become the novelist in the story from the Courage to Be Disliked and Take risks and keep showing up and doing an episode like today where, yes, it's a little bit wandering. I hope you have taken something from it and you will start to see changes and they will probably Be a little slow to come at first because I'm still in a really big push. The month of August is going to be finalizing free time and getting it to be the best book I can be. But starting in the fall, I. And I'm not trying to just punt this to the future, but you probably will see more solo episodes in the coming weeks because, as I said, I paused the interviews until I can restructure those in a way that really resonates and have fun with experimenting. And you know what? It might not work. And there is a small part of me that feels like I might not be destined to have a podcast that can fund my life, that that might not be my Dharma. That is my stated goal. That is my hypothesis of something that I would really love to see happen. But so far I have not taken the steps to be all in to make that happen. And it just. It may or may not work. And I have to be really honest with myself about that and still be honest with myself about what I'm willing to do to try. Because as long as I'm not trying and taking too many risks, then it still stays in the realm of possibility and hope. And that again, it just meets that goal of staying safe. So at least now, thanks to Leanne, thanks to this book, the courage to be disliked, thanks to my friend and his super direct, honest, caring feedback, which is one of his biggest strengths, I feel a renewed sense of at least being willing to try. And then it is only when I have gone all in and given it everything I have, that if it still wouldn't catch and wouldn't get traction, then I can make some decisions. Then I can say, okay, this can remain in the side project realm because I really can't see myself wanting to remove it. I do. There is so much that I love, but I won't know, I won't know until I. Until I do that. And that's the big question is where are you willing to go all in? And are there areas in your life or your work where you think that you are fully committed to something 100%, but your mojo is missing? Or you, to truth be told, you have not given it everything you've got because you're sort of afraid, what if I do that and it doesn't work? And the thing that gives me the confidence when promoting my books is that I know I've given them everything I've got. I've given them my best ideas and my best efforts and that then the book takes on a life of its own or it doesn't. But I know that there's nothing more I could have done to put into the product to make it, to help it fly. And so then if it doesn't work out, that's okay. I did the absolute best that I could. And that's something that is scary. You know, it's really vulnerable. It's really vulnerable. And the writing process always comes with all of these inner critics and potential critics. You know, the one star reviewers of the future are sitting right on my shoulder reading line by line with me. But the key for me with my books is I've always done it anyway. The key for the podcast, I've always done it anyway. And that's where I think we give ourselves the chance for serendipity to happen as well. So I hope this is helpful for you in some way today. Remember, let it be easy, let it be fun. And if you have mojo missing or you're feeling friction and you're not in a flow state, give yourself permission to pause and give yourself permission to admit what it is you might be afraid of and how not going all in might be keeping you safe in some way. Like that example I read from the book. I'll put all of these links in the show notes as always, and I really thank you for being here, for listening, for being part of this journey. And if you have any thoughts or feedback, if you have show formats that you love that you think I could try out, let me know. You can always leave me a voice note@itsfreetime.com Ask or click the contact form on the website and send me a quick note. All feedback is welcome as I continue reinventing the show. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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