Overcome Brain Fog and Build Your Business with Ease

Brain fog. Have you ever like been in the middle of doing something and your brain goes like, wait, what? And then you're like, oh my goodness, and then it gets kind of blurry and dark. I don't know if I'm the only one that experience— experiences brain fog like that, but I definitely do have those moments. And that's why I definitely plan and kind of have created my business around the fact of when that happens, I feel more empowered and I don't create more stress for myself when dealing with brain fog in my business. And so because of that, I'm sharing that with you here on the podcast. I recorded this episode on Instagram Live to share the same thoughts with my audience and get some feedback from them about what does brain fog look like for them. You might have a different definition or experience with brain fog, but basically to me, brain fog means it affects how you function mentally, cognitively. How do you think? How do you see when you are dealing with stress or pain?, and I'm sharing with you the different ways that this doesn't have to be a burden in your business. It could be a part of the thing that helps you to feel more empowered and confident when those things happen if you plan for it. So definitely stay tuned and remember, this is something that I love helping my clients to do. This is very tailored one-on-one. Every client has a different experience with brain fog or flare-ups, and I definitely think that my sharing, what I'm sharing is just one way that might look very different for you. And that's really what I work with my clients to do, is really to define their dream way of making money while honoring what their life is living with chronic illness so they can make their first or next $2K in business with ease. So if that's something that you're interested in learning about more about, be sure to go ahead to the link in this show notes and book a sales call with me. I'd love to chat with you and see how I can support you in defining your dream way of making money. But in the meantime, Go ahead and hop into this conversation on brain fog and how you can build a business despite it. 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 will hear the 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.

Thank you. Today I am to talk about what adds to brain fog and a tired mind, which is really one and the same, and how does that show up in your business and how to overcome that when you have that going on because of your chronic illnesses, things, and trying to grow a business. Um, my name is Nikita Williams. I am a clarity and confidence coach for women living with chronic illness and for those who, want to grow a business and have chosen that the vehicle for their freedom as far as their time flexibility and their energy is— excuse me— is growing a business. My name is Nikita Williams, like I said, and I can't wait to get into this topic. So this is such an important topic, especially if you live with chronic illness. Like, it is not a a matter of if or not ever happening. We're going to have brain fog. Case in point, today I'm a little brain foggy, um, and this is why I do the work. Hello Blissful, bye, um, by Yoga and Williams, Darnella Williams, how are you? Hey Akila, how are you guys? So if you're watching now and if you're watching the replay, I would love for you to share— sorry, I got something in my eye. How do you feel when you have brain fog or when your mind is tired? Like, what kind of things— if I were to look into your, your window, what are some things that happens when you're feeling brain foggy or tired in your brain? Like, what's going on? So the acknowledgement that this happens when you're running a business has so much to do with knowing yourself. And also being really clear on what does this look like for you. Um, it's gonna look different. So for me, brain fogginess during— like, my brain fogginess happens for a couple of different reasons: sleep or lack of sleep and pain. Like, straight up, I could actually get great sleep and still be brain foggy. Um, it really— the pain can distract me my brain. It makes it really hard for me to have cognitive function. It mildly is impaired by that. And so if I haven't had enough sleep, my brain definitely does not like that. It makes it feel very off in some ways. And nutrition has a lot to do— that— a lot to do with that for me as well. So like, have I drunk enough water? Have I eaten? Like, have I got all my vitamins and all of those different things? And so knowing what brain foggy— brain fog looks like for you is really important. And like, what things trigger it. So in case you're wondering, like, the definition of what brain fog is— brain fog, it's kind of like our terms, like humans' non-medical terms of, like, cognitive difficulties. So you have a— things are difficult. You cannot make, um, things happen as quickly as they normally do, AKA you're I'm experiencing this myself right now, and you are therefore probably hearing it. I have a hard time grasping for words, and I'm looking at my notes because of this. Hey, Lucy. Um, so brain fog looks different on everyone, and it's experienced differently. But besides difficulty focusing, you could have slow thinking, confusion, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, or haziness. In thought processes. So this is something to just give yourself some grace around, because some people feel like, you know, they should be able to push through brain fog. And it's like, but I just listed a whole bunch of things of why that's actually even more difficult. Um, some things that onset or create brain fog or happens into your— like brings it about into your life is like what I said for me, nutrition, lack of sleep, pain. Um, it's just the thing that makes it harder for your brain to process information and to go, like, you know, click, right? And it makes it difficult. So what adds to this is stress, right? Knowing this is so important. Stress adds to brain fog. Not having already set in place a plan, right? So for these lives, I don't, you know, most times I'm pretty good The last couple months have been really good. Today happens to be a day that I am extremely brain foggy, but because I have something in place, AKA notes, when I wasn't brain foggy and I was really clear, I'm able to show up. So if I didn't though, the stress of that and the maybe the conversations that I'm having— hey Brianna, oh my gosh, hey girl— um, can make it more difficult for you to show up. So things that add to brain fog too is about what are you putting in your body. You know, some things definitely affect you more, like sugar or dairy, inflammatory foods. I am not a health coach, y'all. I'm not a health coach. I just know from my own personal experience that certain foods can add to the haziness of brain fog, right? So just knowing some of these things and paying attention to when those things are happening can also inform how you choose to show up in your life, in your business, specifically in your business. I know that when I'm brain foggy, I have to be— I have to have pen and paper. If I have a coaching call, I have to have no distraction whatsoever. If I have like no distractions, like I straight up need like quiet. If I have meetings, I have to make sure that I take breaks in between to stand up and go walk. I also know I have to look at my list and see if anything I must do or delegate, right? Or can I like just delete off of my list because it doesn't have to happen right now? Those are the kind of things you want to pay attention to. Some other things that adds to brain fog and like a tired mind is decision fatigue. Knowing, like, for someone like me, and you probably feel the same way, a lot of my clients that I work with are super high achievers, Type A. They have like all the lists and all of those things. Sometimes that is like to your benefit in this time, right? In this time of having brain fog, it's so much more helpful if you are kind of organized in that way. And so if you aren't organized in that way— hello Susie— figure out some ways that helps you, right? So it's so funny because my client— the clients that I work with are chronic illness warriors, creatives, and also some of them are very type A, so they're already very organized in mind. But for some of my clients who are like me, who are a little bit more flow flow, having like sticky notes or lists and things like that that I easily can grab— like for me, one of my favorite tools to help me, especially during brain fog, is my Notes app in my phone. It's to list things out that I need to do, things I thought of, and all of those things, right? And it really helps me to not have to decide what I need to do, decide where I need to go, decide what I need to delegate, what I don't need to do, all of that jazz. So if you can clean up like how much things you have to do with decisions, will help you with brain fatigue. The other thing that adds to brain fog, I believe, if you have a business and you're a service-based business is offers and services that are complicated, right? That are so complicated that people don't understand what they're getting and you don't understand what you're like, what you're sharing, like what you're selling. When you can simplify your business so that it's simple, like even in your brain, in a brain foggy state, that you can still deliver to some degree, right? Sometimes brain fog will knock you out and you can't— you have to delegate and outsource and like reschedule everything. Trust me, that's happened to me before. But that happens more frequently when you haven't set up your business with the concept of like, I'm gonna have brain foggy days. It's gonna happen. It's not, not gonna happen. It's going to happen. So what offers do I have and services right now that makes it more difficult, like adds to the fact that it makes it more difficult for me to show up to do the thing, right? What adds or triggers more stress to me doing offer or service that increases my likelihood of being more brain foggy, right? So I always like to tell my clients to take up— take their business and their offers and their services and streamline them, looking at it like if you had to deliver this during a flare-up of brain fog, pain, what would it look like? Like, what would— what would it look like if you knew you could do a little something right, just a little something versus like not doing anything. What could it look like if you just were able to do a small little thing? And that's how I've built my business. That's how I work with my clients, especially clients that are wanting to grow and scale. It's like some of the priorities when you have chronic illness and deal with brain fog and things like that, on the order of events of like what you need support in, in your business might look different than someone else who's not dealing with some of these symptoms of brain fog, right? Because your support will be in leaning on others to give yourself the capacity at times to just do the job that, you know, you can do regardless of what's going on, right? But here's a word of caution. If you are dealing with brain fog and you are pushing through all of the time, that's probably not a best— the best way for you to healthily grow a sustainable business. There have been times in my life, especially with my business, where I had to press pause, right? I had to slow down, press pause, and be like, how is this gonna look? How can this look differently? Well, giving me myself the space to figure out what's going on with brain fogginess, right? Give yourself that permission, right? Give yourself that permission. I have an email going out later on today that's talking about like creating momentum and what does that look like when you have to have a pause, literally. What does it look like? But when it comes to brain fog, one of the best tools in your arsenal, um, with overcoming that is knowing for you what adds to it, like what makes brain fog worse. And then how are you building your business offers and services around the times where you are going to have that? So I always like to tell clients, like I, for myself, like have a different way you can deliver the product or service in different ways. So for most of my clients, obviously if they are service-based, they're working business to business, or if they're creatives, they are like out with a client doing photography shoots, or they're making products and things like that. Give yourself the capacity to have brain fog days by generating time in your schedule and your deliverables with a little cushion, right, to, to, to overcome maybe like a day like I'm having today, feeling a little brain foggy. Also, if you are having a business where you need to slow down for a second— hey, Garden Mixology, we're talking about brain fog. Would love to hear in the comments if that's something you deal with and what does that look like for you. I'm just kind of scrolling up and I'm just sharing different things that can help. One, to be aware of that adds to brain fog, and then two, what are some ways you can set up your business that gives you this space and capacity to deal with that. Okay, so the, the last thing I was just talking about, I think, because I'm dealing with brain fog today, um, according to my notes, was like what to do with your offers and your services, being able to, be able to deliver them in a different way, right? So one way might be batching. So maybe you create products and services and you know, like products specifically, and you know about 2 or 3 times out of the month, you will not be able to functionally, mentally, cognitively do the job, right? So maybe you batch some things for that time frame. Maybe you know that in your delivery, like when people order something from you, you know that you can put your shop on a kind of like orders will be delivered in 2 weeks' time, something that lets people know when you'll be able to deliver this product. It's a little bit longer than you normally would. If you're a service-based business, I always like to say be able to fulfill the service in a couple different ways. So whether it's email, whether it's Voxer, whether it's, um, video, be able to flexibility— flexibly deliver communication to your client in multiple different ways. So there have been times, and I love sharing this because I feel like there's not enough conversation about this, where I am cognitively just not all there, but I can to some degree, because I have a framework that I work with my clients that I just kind of go through that I can use to help me work with my clients. When I have a video conference and I need to be in a coaching call with a client, I have less of a brain decision fatigue and thinking if my camera is off, but I speak, right? I have learned that part of my brain fogginess that gets in the way of things is sometimes having too many things in front of me makes it harder for me to focus. So when I tell my clients, hey, I'm gonna have the camera off today while we're doing our coaching call, just know that that's one of the reasons— there's multiple different reasons I might do that, but that might be one of the reasons that I'm conserving what my brain has to like take in so that I can really do the thing I need to do, which as a coach is listen and ask questions. That's my biggest job as a coach, is it to be able to ask questions and to listen. And those questions have to be based on what my client is saying. So distractions could happen if I'm looking at a screen, I'm like focusing on what's going on or what their hands are doing or whatever, and that can add to my ability— or slowing down my ability to respond to what they're saying or telling me, right? So just knowing how you work helps you to create a way that you can show up maybe in a different way to deliver your products or services. So some other things to note that add to— that adds to, um, brain fog or tired mind, if you will, is complication. Like overcomplicating, um, things in life. This is not just business. So I already talked about making sure that your business is simple, it's easy. Maybe you have a framework that you can always pull on. And honestly, these are the— some of the things that most businesses already do that are ahead because they understand the efficiency. We're doing this mostly for our own health, right, and our own sanity, but also because it is a profitable way of growing a business. So I always feel like this challenge of having a brain— like, having brain fog is kind of like a superpower in the sense, like, we have to deal with this, like, on the onset of growing a business, which puts us ahead of other businesses that don't think about this until, like, they are into their 5th or 6th year, right? So, hey, Teresa! So it's really about thinking about what does doing— what does your business need to look like in order to sustain growth even during these up and downs of living with chronic illness and dealing with brain fog. Because it's a symptom that for most of the women that I talk to, they deal with it at least once or twice a month for a couple of days. So it's really important to make sure you're incorporating different methods in your business and in your life. So going back to your life, What things in your life add to your brain fog? So beyond decision fatigue, maybe there are certain people, right? Like certain energies about certain people's needing something, or people— you not being able to communicate with people to let them know what you need or what is needed for you, and it drains your energy to have to over-communicate. That's something that can add to brain fog. Okay, so when you feel that going on have like a bank of statements that you can tell people. I don't have the brain capacity right now for this explanation, so I need space, right? Or can you just simplify that for me? That's one of my favorite things. Like, can you simplify? Can you get to the point? Because I don't have the brain capacity right now to deal with all of these extra things, right? So that can add to your brain fog, the people around you, right? The people around you and how they're responding to you during this season of, or this moment of dealing with brain fog. Some other things that can add to brain fog is medications, right? So medications can add to brain fog, and it's just knowing your body, getting to know your body, which medications do add to your brain fog or create brain fog, and being aware of the timing you take those, right? That's really important. Some other things that might affect your— or add to brain fog or tiredness is Um, what to wear. I know this sounds so funny, but it's like legit— like, it goes back to what I was talking about, like, with, um, decision fatigue. Legitly trying to decide what you're going to wear when you're brain fogged, which means— again, I'm going back— that it's cognitive difficulties. You are slower, really. You're, you're more— cannot talk— you are processing information more slowly, and your concentration to details is less. So I have a go-to of clothes that I will wear on my brain foggy days, hence the head wrap. I don't have to deal with my hair. I can put something comfy on and I can just go. So like, just knowing what things you can put in place that don't like tax your brain more. Got me. You feel me? So I hope this was helpful. I wanted to share this because I have a lot of clients recently who are like, Nikita, how is it that you're able to function with brain fog? And I'm like, well, it's a process and it doesn't happen overnight. It definitely has taken me time to realize what that looks like, and it has shifted. So be okay with understanding, like, there are going to be times where you don't know, where you are like, oh, I needed to pay more attention to this, right? I need to think about this a little bit differently. I need to add this tool in my toolbox because, you know, this shifted. It's okay, but it's just recognizing that honestly, simplicity is flexibility. Simplicity is freedom. Simplicity is like your go-to— I don't even know what the word I'm looking for. It's just your go-to when you are dealing with brain fog. And guess what, you guys? Simplicity is also the thing that people say in business helps them succeed even more. So I'm just saying, like, don't overcomplicate it. Like, don't overcomplicate your business and don't overcomplicate and bring in, like, the reason why you're feeling this way has to be because you're doing something wrong. It doesn't mean that. It just means you need to give yourself some grace and some time to figure out how to do what it is that you do. And dealing with the different challenges that might bring about. So I hope that is helpful for you guys. Um, thanks for joining me. If you're watching the replay, be sure to put hashtag replay. Um, what do I have to tell you? I have an upcoming workshop on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It's a 3-day free workshop on how to use your chronic illness as your superpower and create $2,000 in your business with more ease than you ever dead. I believe making $2,000 in your business for the first time, or easier than you did before, is the fundamental for you growing to $10K, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, right? And so if you can make and learn how to make $2,000, you can also learn how to more effortlessly or easily create the next step in your income. Okay, so the link is in my bio if you want to check that out, and you guys have a beautiful day. Bye! All right, y'all, that's a wrap. Thank you for listening, and I hope this conversation inspired you.

Be sure to visit the website at craftedtothrive.com to check out the show notes and grab all the goodies that I or the guests mentioned in the show.

Join us for our next one.

In the meantime, remember, you are crafted to thrive.