3 Tools Every Entrepreneur with Endometriosis Needs

So there are some surprising things that happen in our lives, right? And one of the things is how we overcome, how we grow through what we go through. And for me, it has been a world of understanding that one area of growth can always serve an area of struggle and challenge. If we learn to tap into it, if we learn how to cultivate those same qualities that we had to lean on or develop during different challenges to also serve us in different areas. And in this podcast episode, I'm going to share with you 3 unexpected tools that literally has helped me to cope and thrive as a business owner living with endometriosis and other chronic illnesses. Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive, a globally ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness and creatives in business. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, chronic illness warrior and photographer turned digital marketer turned award-winning coach. I love helping chronic illness warriors and creatives to live with their chronic illness and creativity as their superpower in life and business. On the show, you hear the very stories that helped our guests, my clients, and myself to define our dream way of making money with proven strategies and marketing and mindset, all to grow a business that thrives without sacrificing our health. So stay tuned because you'll find the inspiration and tools and the resources you need to craft a life and business that thrives. So You all may or may not have heard this story before, so if you're new here, welcome. So check out the show notes for a link to my episode about my story about being diagnosed with endometriosis. But this episode, I'm really going to lean in and talk about the tools that have literally helped me in more ways than one, that I just continue to find so helpful in so many different areas of my life, of healing, of changing, of growing, of, of being, right? And so I'm excited to share them with you. So the, the 3 unexpected tools, and one of them you're listening to right now, I'm going to dive a little bit more into that. But the first is essential oils. Now, I don't talk about this, and here is why. Like, I feel like I don't talk about essential oils as often as I normally talk about marketing and breathwork and journal work, because I was the person who felt like most people who feel when I'm like, okay, let's grab some essential oils and use this to help you with your breathing, right? Because when I was introduced to essential oils, I had that thought like, they are not that powerful. Like, we use them in lotion so things can smell good. We, we make them in candles because they're less toxic. Like, how, how helpful can essential oils really be helping me manage my physical pain and then also helping me feel more clear, more at ease, and more at peace? Essential oils, like aromatherapy, come on now. And literally, y'all, when I say this is one of the most unexpected things that I am so grateful for in every shape and form is that essential oils have literally changed my life in so many different ways. When my coach, um, who I shared with you her story last week of where she is now, Renee, when I first started with working with her back almost— oh my goodness, like almost 3, 4 years ago— she was really helping me find more things to help me with living with chronic illness, living with my endometriosis pain. I had done the hysterectomy to help give me a more quality of life, which I, I can't even lie, it was a bit better. But the other things that have come up because of endometriosis still being in my body, even though I had a hysterectomy, does not make endometriosis go away. So finding ways to manage that pain and discomfort was really important to me. Um, because taking real hard pain medication all of the time is just not something I wanted to live on. It wasn't something— it would have literally degraded my quality of life for me, not for everyone, but for me. And when Renee started sharing with me essential oils, it first literally was like, I'm just gonna borrow your belief. I recently did an email about how you can overcome doubt is by borrowing the belief of others, because you can see the evidence of their belief. And for me, with Renee, it definitely was one of those things where I was just like, oh my goodness, I do not believe that these oils are going to help me. But when they did, it was like, tell me more, how does this work? And what I want you all to hear from this is that essential oils is not just like this thing you can— you have to use, or you use to smell good, and also to even bring you comfort in, um, in dis— in discomfort, right? When you're dealing with chronic flare-ups and things like this, this is something that really helps you. It has helped me to feel more empowered. It's the reason why I haven't gone to the hospital in a very long time for anything endo or chronic illness related, because I now have— this is one of the tools, but essential oils is definitely the 80% of why I feel like I don't have to deal with as much discomfort as I used to, and also the peace of mind of knowing that I'm more empowered to know what to do with them. So over the last couple years, I've gotten, um, certified as an essential oil specialist, and I'm working at— I will be working towards my aromatherapy certification at some point, just taking a break off of that. But I've learned, like, it's no wonder these oils are supportive and how they help us holistically, right? And when I say this has been a hack, not just for me, and a surprise, not just for me living with endometriosis, it also has been something that's helped me in my business. And we all know, we've all heard this, that business is like a 90% mindset game. Like, most of us can figure out how to do the task. Most of us can figure out what we need to do. But essential oils is something that has really helped me discover, like, new thoughts, more let go of, like, doubts and fears in a lot of different ways, and also process some of the things that are blocking my ability to see things because of pain, because of feeling not good enough, because of second-guessing myself. Because for years I was told that I was crazy in some way, shape, or form for all of my new chronic illnesses. And it's just a part of the journey of being a woman. So essential oils really helped me find more, more than just physical relief. It also helped me to find an equal— an equilibrium between my nervous system and my body. And I know they're all connected, but essential oils really helps your mind and your body become more in flow. To receive information, to let go of information and circumstances. And literally, it's the only thing that really has an effect directly to your brain. So our eyes and our mouth and our taste and our touch is filtered through lots of different things that happen in our brain. But the the, the wonderful world of aroma, like smelling, instantly gets to our brain and triggers us into thoughts, feelings, experience from before. It's not filtered. It can bring us back. It's the, it's the same reason why if you go to your grandma's house and it smells a certain way, it takes you back to sitting on the floor, maybe eating candy. Or the same in a negative way where something happened to you traumatically, and if you smell a smell, it almost feels like it takes you right back. It's not filtered. It is literally like felt and seen with this aroma. And so that tells you how powerful essential oils can be. And that's why it's been so powerful in my business. There have been times in my business where things didn't go the way I wanted to go. I felt a certain way, but because I have my room filled with my essential oils, I had done my breathwork, I have done my journaling, I've done my tapping, all of these different things that I use to help me bring more regulation to my emotions. When I go to do the thing again that may have created some kind of uncomfortable feelings, I no longer hesitate as long. I no longer, like, ruminate on how horrible things were, or I thought they were, because they weren't that bad, right? Because I'm like, well, I felt really at calm even though, like, it feels like the sky was falling. I felt pretty at peace, right? And it's because of the essential oils. It really does help regulate that nervous system, that parasympathetic, that fear-flight, rest-and-digest. And it's been such a powerful tool for me and my business, um, just not just physically living with endometriosis and chronic illness, but also in my business. It's really helped me have a greater control of my emotional ups and downs and mindset ups and downs. So that is tool number 1. Number 2 is something called EFT tapping, tapping. So it's Emotional Freedom Tapping technique or technique, and this is like acupuncture with your fingers. So I learned about this around the same time I learned about essential oils, and the two of essential oils and tapping, you might hear it, um, called like aroma tapping. I call it like that with my clients, but it is something else that helps regulate your nervous system, also helps you to release negative energy that is affecting how you feel. Like, it helps you regulate your emotions. And literally, it's like I said, it's like acupuncture with your fingers. Whether— this is not like woo-woo, this science where we have energetic, we have energy running through our body. So it's like when you see something, you have goosebumps, or someone says something to you and the hair on your head, on your neck kind of raises up and you feel that. That's all energy, right? And so we carry different energy. We carry energy in a negative way in different parts of our body because of traumatic because of feelings, situations, and all of that jazz. And what EFT allows us to do is to really, one, create a safe place for us to go to those places and to acknowledge those feelings, love ourselves, and let them go so we can make room for things that we really want in our life. And you can imagine living with chronic pain, there's a lot of things we want to let go. Right. There's a lot of experiences we want to let go because holding on to them like increases our inflammation rate. It increases our stress level and increases our lack of losing weight. It has so much effect on our blood pressure. It has so much effect on so many things. So finding a, a way, a tool that can help you release some of those negative feelings and also reframe them with positive reinforcement is powerful. And as a business owner, we need that every single day. We are constantly seeing everyone else's mirage of success or, or beautiful, amazing, perfect life on social media. We are comparing ourselves to a world that keeps telling us that we have to do more. And while suffering through so many different of the challenges that we all deal with in this system of things. And so having something that helps you beyond your spiritual practice, like for me, my Bible reading and my, you know, spiritual routine of going to my Bible meetings and personal study from the Bible, all that stuff is there always. But this is just another thing that is completely different and is literally just releasing some of this negative energy. It's just like when, um, doctors tell you to go like, what are you doing about your stress? If you just say, oh, I'm just talking about it, they're like, that's great, but what are you doing about your stress? My doctor always says that. I'm like, well, I'm doing some tapping. Some people want— you need movement. These are things that are literally held in our bodies physically, okay? So we have to do something with our bodies in order to release this. And so for me, it's been one of my favorite tools It's one of my clients' favorite tools as well. They're like, Nikita, I cannot believe how when I'm tapping, I feel so much ease. I feel so much more at ease. I also feel more clear. I also can see things that I may not have thought of because now I can see it more clearly because I've removed some of the gunk of the feelings and the emotions out of the way. And it helps you get to some really deep core beliefs that we developed and gained as kids that we had no idea and don't even understand how they're affecting us today. So it's one of my favorite tools to help me hack my way through all the mindset drama and the ups and down roller coasters of, um, having a business. And my last and final tool is sharing your story. So I've had this podcast now for over 6 years now, and I have had ups and downs with how I have done this podcast. So I've done this podcast at first weekly, and then I did bi-monthly, and then there were some times where I kind of was like, I'm just gonna do it whenever I feel like doing it. The consistency wasn't like quote-unquote consistent in like, you know, every Friday. It was just like Nikita might drop an episode at some point. Right. And I never felt the pressure often. I shouldn't say, I shouldn't say I never, when I first started, I definitely felt the pressure to be like, I have to be so quote unquote consistent. But as I grew into this wonderful world of podcasting, I realized it was more about quality and connection and intimacy with the women I was talking with, with myself. Um, and it led to like a real healing journey. It also led to creating a community that I, I wouldn't necessarily have in my business if I, if I didn't have the podcast, right? I wouldn't. I think it would just look a lot different if it weren't for my podcast. And I was thinking about recently like my podcast has been a part of my business regardless of what I was doing. So even when I was doing digital marketing, when I switched to doing website design and stuff like that, and then when I switched to doing coaching, the podcast has always been there. And I have realized recently, looking at my list of all the women that I've worked with, half— about half of my clients have either found me or connected with me through this podcasts. And I have just loved that. And it's also been something I can look back on and go back on and hear even how I've grown as a person. And that's something that's really helpful in a business is to see perspective of how far you've actually come. Because sometimes we're looking at where we want to be and we're thinking we're so far every single day we look at ahead, right? So every day we look ahead, we're thinking, I'm not to this, whatever this pinnacle of success is, but we don't look back to see like, man, there's a lot of things that I've accomplished. There's a lot of things that I've done over, you know, for me over the last 6 years that I have over 100 episodes and I have connected with over like 50 women. I have, you know, been really thankful and grateful for having a community that continues to show up and listen and share their love about the show and reviews and with their friends and family. And I'm so thankful for that. And a part of that, why I'm so thankful, is that one of my biggest fears with this podcast was like, I don't, I don't know how much of me I want to share, of how much of my experience I want to share. And I cannot tell you how many times I get episodes and I'm like, emails about the episodes that I record and that are very personal, kind of like this one, that are like, Nikita, thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for sharing your struggle, um, and sharing how you've been able to cope and deal with it and how that kind of affects your business. And it really has been one of my unexpected favorite amazing tools in not only just building a business but also healing, living with chronic illness. Like from a mindset point of view, even from a physical point of view, I think it really helps me manage my expectations with my own physical quote unquote limitations. But it also has helped me to listen to my body more and give it more care and love versus Negative Nelly vibes. Right. And so I want you to think of things in your life and in your business. What are some things that you kind of think, man, Things would look a bit different if I didn't have these tools. Are any of these tools— essential oils, tapping, and maybe sharing your story by starting and launching a podcast— something you want to learn more about or want to, you know, do some more research on? What could be the thing that you might be a little bit hesitant about, or maybe something you're taking for granted, that is really the thing that's helped you to get to where you are today. So that is it for my episode today. Just really wanted to share that these are tools that are literally unexpected things that have literally helped me to grow a thriving business, helping women create their level of success their way with their reality, and also allowed me to do the same. And so if this is something that was helpful to you, I'd love to hear from you. So go ahead, head to my Instagram page and hit me up on the DMs. And let me know if this episode served you or if you have any questions about my 3 unexpected tools that have helped me thrive in my business and life as a chronic illness warrior. And if you're looking to work with a coach to support you in sharing your story, maybe by launching your own podcast to attract your own, you know, amazing clients that helps you build a business with ease, book a call. The link is going to be in the show notes. And I'd love to just have a chat with you and see if we can, you know, create a plan to help you to create the, the podcast or the business strategy that helps you to feel more free and at ease growing a business while living with chronic illness. All right, loves, have a beautiful rest of your day, weekend, whenever you're hearing this. And remember, and remember that yes, yes, yes, you are crafted to thrive.