In this solo episode of the "She’s Crafted to Thrive" podcast, host Nikita Williams—owner of Crafted to Thrive and a chronic‑illness entrepreneur—shares three mental shifts that can help women entrepreneurs manage chronic illness while running a business. She opens by framing the podcast’s purpose: to support women juggling creative work, health challenges, and life responsibilities, emphasizing that success isn’t perfection. The first shift is "Change Your Focus," where she advises listeners to redirect attention away from personal pain by connecting with others, offering help, and cultivating hobbies that provide mental relief. The second shift is "Acceptance," encouraging acknowledgment of one’s health reality, which creates mental space for flexible planning and proactive decision‑making despite the unpredictable nature of chronic conditions. The third shift combines gratitude, self‑care, and positivity, positioning gratitude as the foundation for self‑care; she suggests concrete practices like keeping a gratitude journal, noting small daily blessings, and using the 1% rule for incremental improvement. Throughout, Nikita interweaves personal anecdotes about living with endometriosis and fibromyalgia, practical tips, and encouragement to adopt bite‑sized actions. The episode concludes with a call for listener feedback, promotion of upcoming guest episodes, and reminders to access show notes and resources at sheescrafted.com.
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Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive. I'm your host Nikita Williams, and this show is for all the ladies who are making and creating things that they love. You will hear conversations about the real everyday struggles of juggling life and business while trying to maintain passion and harmony. As women, we have the skill of getting things done, but sometimes we get in our own way. It's here where you'll see that you're not alone. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection. Fear and negative Thoughts and challenges are all a part of the journey, and on this podcast you'll find the inspiration and tools you need to have a life and business that thrives.
Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive, you guys. Thank you so much for joining me. I am your host Nikita Williams and owner of Crafted to Thrive, and I'm so excited that you guys are here. I'm doing another solo cast this week, um, I have guests coming up over the next couple weeks, so you're gonna get a couple of them, um, just a lot of the people that I'm interviewing over the next few weeks, and then you'll have some of me. So I'm trying to switch it up and see what you guys think and what you guys like. So you guys let me know in the comments, on the show notes, or to reach out to me in my DMs on my Instagram or Facebook page, or email me at info@craftstothrive and I will be happy to hear from you guys to hear how you like to hear the show. Um, just me every now and then or my guests every week. So anyway, I just wanted to come with you guys and share with you 3 ways that you can change and shift your mindset when it comes to dealing with chronic illness. So you guys know that I have endometriosis and fibromyalgia. You guys also know I deal with a lot of other things associated with chronic pain and illness. And I don't list them all out on the show because it's just depressing. I deal with a lot, so, and I know a lot of you guys deal with a lot, whether it's chronic pain, chronic illness, whether it's depression, whether it's just the stress and anxiety of the world today. And you know, my show is all about being positive and sharing tools and tips that encourage you in your life, in your business, to thrive, to do what you love, despite the challenges that you may face on a day-to-day basis. And so I usually give you guys 3 tips when I'm talking about business marketing or questions you might need to be asking, like in regards to starting a podcast. I like to keep things really simple just because I think as women we already have a lot on our list of to-dos, and why not just not— we don't need to add any more to our to-do list. And so when I share these tips, I want them to be bite-sized and something that you guys can definitely, you know, dig into and work on slowly but surely. And 3 steps, I think, are good ways to make an improvement. As Jasmine Star would say, and you guys know how much I love me some Jasmine Star, it's like the 1% rule. You know, you make 1% of a change every month, that's a 12% change over the year. And this applies not only just to your business, but this applies to your life. I'm a firm believer in saying that you start small and then you grow big. Like, you will see the big improvement over time. It's something that I'm constantly reminding dear close ones to me that sometimes we like to look at the big picture and just jump in and bite and just go. But it really helps when you break things down in smaller pieces, because when you accomplish those smaller things, it is just as a win, you know, it's just as much of a win when you accomplish that small step to the next step because it creates, it just creates massive improvement over time. And so when dealing with a chronic illness, I think this has been a really good thing for me because looking at things in a very, um, like what's happening now and what improvements can I make has helped me not to feel as overwhelmed often, I should say, because it's not that I don't get overwhelmed. I do, because it's a lot. I'm in my 30s, and sometimes I get overwhelmed with just that very fact that I'm in my 30s and I have to, you know, watch my energy. So I'm not gonna say that this is 100%, and nothing is 100%, because we all are working on things. So these are 3 steps though that I do think can really help you dealing with a chronic illness, your mindset, and the shifts that you can start to make. It's simple enough that I think that it will make a massive change for you because it has for me. It really has. So the first step in these 3 things that I think can help you in shifting your mindset when it comes to dealing with a chronic illness is to change your focus. Yes, I mean shift your focus. Um, it's kind of like in general if you think about The things that we are constantly paying attention to are the things that will most likely drive us up the wall. It's kind of like if we focus our attention on the negativity of a person, um, all the good things kind of go out the window, right? Like you, it's just gone. And there are some things you can compare this to having a chronic illness. It can seem at times that no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, it's always bad, it's always negative, it's always like a bad day. And what I have found for myself and what I have seen other people have success in is realizing that if you shift the focus to thinking about things in a different perspective, it allows you to have space to get out of your own self. Now, there are different ways you can change your perspective. One of the biggest ways that I have found that has helped me is really staying in tune with other people. Like, I try to connect with other people. I try to email or text or write letters or whatever the case may be, and asking my friends and family and people in general what's going on with them and seeing if there's any way I can be of help. And how that helps me change my focus is because then I realize that I'm not the only one dealing with stuff. And then I also realize it could be a lot worse. Like, my situation could be a lot worse. I get that, you know, when you're dealing with it, you're like, yeah, but my situation is bad. Yeah, it is. We have bad situations, we all do. But it could be worse. Everything could always be worse. Let's just be honest. And so when I'm able to shift my focus to focus on someone else and trying to give them happiness and joy, I feel a lot better overall. As, as far as my mindset, I feel clearer, I feel happier, I feel more joyful. And that's something you can't put money on. You can't buy that kind of shift in perspective. Now, another way that I have found that you can change your focus is to do something else. Like, so when you're in a lot of pain for years, and I don't know if I've talked about this in another podcast because I can't remember if it was on my IG channel, but for years my husband has been encouraging me to find a hobby. And I was just like, yeah, I'm just not really— hobbies for me always usually turn into businesses. I don't know if anybody else is listening and like, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I start things as a hobby and then it ends up being my business. So for me, most things kind of feel like they end up that way. But I have been really searching for a hobby because it helps me shift my mindset. It helps me to think about things that aren't really necessarily focused on my situation, and it really does help. It really does help me be clearer. It helps me be more creative. It helps me to see, you know, past my pain and see more things that I can do, um, than the things that I can't do. So definitely Number 1 is to change your focus. Number 2 is acceptance. Now I know this one is hard. Acceptance is acknowledging that you have something, and so when you acknowledge that you have something, it gives you the clarity and the mental space to take positive steps that can help you now and later. Now when you're dealing with a chronic illness or chronic pain, you know, sometimes these diseases can be progressive, like they can get worse, and we all understand that. So accepting what's going on right now will help you to make better decisions that may prolong that period of time from that, from that condition getting worse, because you are actually actively dealing with what's happening. You're actively making decisions versus just letting things happen to you. And so that's where the power comes into accepting what you're going through. And for a lot of different ways, you know, for a lot of different people, accepting can happen in different ways, right? So for me, accepting me meant that I have to realize that this is currently where I am. I deal with pain on a constant, you know, day-to-day basis. I am, I'm usually in flux, you know, I don't really know what's going on. But that doesn't mean that I can't make plans. It just means that I have to be flexible. Now, before I was able to accept that, my acceptance was like, I can never plan anything or do anything because I never know what's going to happen, and I can't really make any decisions about anything because I don't know what's going on, so I'm just going to stay put. And staying put is never good, right? Like, staying staying in one place is never a good thing to do. It's like, you know, there's no progress, there's no movement, and then it becomes— and then it starts to feel hopeless. And so the beauty in accepting where you are, when you accept where you are, what is happening to you, what's going on, and then you're able to have, you know, go back to that changing your focus, you're able to see see things a little bit differently because now you can make decisions like, oh, maybe I need to eat differently. Maybe I need to understand that, you know, I can't necessarily do this, but I can adjust to do something differently. So acceptance really allows you freedom. It gives you freedom. So being able to accept that you actually have it allows you to have space to see the possibility of something more. Acceptance really helps you to have a better mental clarity. It gives you space to be able to make the right type of decision so that maybe in the future you can have a better outcome of dealing with your current circumstance. Okay, and so number 3, gratitude, self-care, and positivity. Now, why did I wrap all those 3 things into number 3? Well, gratitude is self-care, and being positive is self-care, but in my opinion, the foundation of all of those things is having gratitude. Now, it's really hard to have gratitude when you feel ungrateful for your situation, right? Like, let's be be real. I'm not like sitting up every morning and every night and being like, I am so thankful that I have endometriosis and I have this pain, and I have fibromyalgia that where sometimes I feel like there's needles and like pricking me or someone's hitting me. Or these are not like grateful feelings, right? Like, I'm not feeling grateful when I'm in that kind of pain. But I am feeling grateful in my mind because there are a lot of things to be grateful for. And this goes again back to number 1 of changing your focus. And I was listening recently to a podcast called A Woman's Pelvic Health Podcast. It's very— it's a very raw podcast for women who are dealing with pelvic health issues. And she was interviewing a therapist or psychotherapist psycho— psychotherapist or physi— um, psychologist. And he was sharing that there is a huge correspondence between how we think and how we feel. So the anxiety we have and the pain and the things that we have going on can tend to magnify the pain that we're going through. Our body reacts to anxiety and, and, and stress and negativity. Our body responds to that. So the pain that we probably naturally just have can be intensified by how we feel. So it again impressed on me why this number 3 of the 3 steps of changing your, your mindset of gratitude, why it's so important, because we have something to be thankful for, right? One, it could be worse. I know I keep saying that, but I've really come to appreciate that. Like, every situation, it could be worse. I've heard some things, some stories from women over the past 2 or 3 years, and I'm at the end of the conversations, I'm very like, oh my gosh, it could be worse, right? And then secondly, I'm just grateful that I have friends and family. I have a support system. That really loves me and cares about me. I'm thankful that I have breath today, that I can speak and share my story with other people, that I can go and share, you know, hopeful things with others, that they're not alone and that, you know, you can get through this. I'm grateful for those things. I'm grateful for the fact that even though I don't enjoy dealing with this pain, and these struggles, it has made me a stronger person for it. It has allowed me to have greater compassion for people. It's allowed me to have a better understanding of what other people may be going through that I don't even know because I can't see it, because they can't see it happening to me. I'm grateful for that new perspective. I'm so grateful for a lot of things. And so when I start thinking about the things I'm grateful for, it changes the energy, it changes how I feel about my situation, helps me have a different perspective. It helps me to really accept where I am. It helps me to take all those, like, the number 1 and number 2 into complete understanding, right? And so that's why gratitude to me is the foundation of self-care. It's the foundation of being in a positive state in a lot of ways is because you have to know what you're thankful and grateful for. You gotta know it. And if you have a hard time figuring that out, write it down. Maybe it's small things. Maybe you're grateful for your puppy. Maybe you're grateful for your kitty cats that snuggle up with you with your heating pad when you're in pain. Maybe you're grateful for that cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe Maybe you're grateful for the tea that you get to drink because it makes you feel, you know, nice and warm inside. Maybe you're grateful that you were able to sleep for 2 hours today. Find something and build on it every day. Write it down if you can, put it in a gratitude journal. I think I'll put in the show notes a couple journals that I personally like, but definitely do those things that really help you to have a better mindset. Once you start doing these 3 things, incorporating this in your mindset when it comes to dealing with chronic illness, when you start to change your focus and accept what's happening to you, but then make positive decisions towards a better future or better decisions in the future, when you start to have more gratitude and see gratitude, I think you'll start to feel a little bit better even though you feel not so great every day, just like me. Case in point, today it's raining in Florida. It's summertime. I'm still not used to that, you guys, in Florida summer being like a rainy time. I guess whenever we would come here for vacation, I always saw Florida as like the sunny place, but it's raining, which makes my body hurt worse. I feel like it makes everything hurt. I have a headache. I feel quickly. I feel like, don't touch me. I feel like a lot of things, but I was able to spend some time with some friends today. I was able to do my ministry today. I'm able to record this podcast today. So many things I was able to do, and I'm grateful for doing them. So it just makes the day that even though I don't feel that great, I feel good, you know, I feel good. And I feel like that gives me the energy and the hope and the power to keep going for another day, you know what I'm saying? So I hope this podcast episode was helpful for you guys. I'm going to keep this brief, like I said. I would love to know what kind of tips or tools or things that you guys use to help shift your mindset, whether it's a good book or whether it's lighting a candle or whether it's using essential oils, or whether it's writing in your journal, or whatever it is, I would love to hear what kind of things help you have a better mindset when it comes to dealing with chronic pain and your chronic illness, because I know those things that I mentioned through this show really have helped me. So like always, if you like what you're hearing, please share and subscribe to this episode, to this podcast, and share with your friends. Please leave us a review on iTunes. It really lights my heart when I see positive reviews on there and I get to be like, yes, people are listening and this listenership is growing and I'm so excited about that. Thank you so much for listening and stay tuned for new episodes coming up with other amazing entrepreneurs and women doing the things that they love despite whatever challenges they're going through. And all of that is to say, check out the show notes at sheescrafted.com. And just remember, you guys, all of us, we are all crafted to thrive.
