Picking Your Perfect Pace in Business

You're listening to the She's Crafted to Thrive podcast, and this is your host Nikita Williams. On this show, we're talking about what it's like to start, grow, and scale a business while living with chronic illness. You will hear from other creatives and CEOs as they share their stories and the lessons that led them to learn to lean more into what works for them. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection, and fear, negative thoughts, and challenges are all a part of the journey, but there's always an abundance of wins. So stay tuned and you'll find the inspiration and tools you need to craft a life and business that thrives. Hey there, beautiful. I've got something for you. If you want to feel more ease and joy in your business without sacrificing your health, energy, and creativity, but you feel like you've got to, you know, pay your dues first, or you're feeling sort of lost in your business, then you want to check out my mini course, 5 Days to Getting Crystal Clear in Your Creative Business. Created this course to help you remove the frustration that's blocking you from receiving exactly what you want and go from stuck to creating the business that you want with ease and joy. So visit ThriveWithNikita.com/minicourse and use the code THRIVE to get it free. Again, that's ThriveWithNikita.com/minicourse and use the code THRIVE to get it free. That's my special gift to my podcast tribe. So go off and thrive. All right, let's hop on into this new episode. Enjoy. Welcome back to the She's Crafted to Thrive podcast. I'm so excited that you're here because this is a new series that's going to be like within the She's Crafted to Thrive whole podcast thing. I don't know how you technically call it, but this is going to be a series dedicated to all my chronic illness warriors. My women who are living and running a business, a creative business, an entrepreneurship, something that is— you're doing this as a side hustle, or you're growing your business in some way, shape, or form, and you deal with chronic pain like endometriosis, fibromyalgia. Um, I see chronic bladder syndrome, anything, lupus, um, MS, any of the things, right? I like to list out some of the things. Chronic migraines. Because sometimes I know for me this year I had a big aha moment, which was that I actually have a disability. And the disability is multiple of my chronic illnesses that do affect multiple areas of my life more than 3 months out of the year. And that's really the definition if you look it up under the ADA, which is talking about the name or the label, if you will, of living with chronic illness or having a chronic illness. It has a lot to do with what the government would say is a disability. And I was so honored earlier this year to be featured on Rising Tide on their Instagram as someone who's living with that. And what does it mean to me? And when they asked me, I'm like, I've thought about that in the past and I thought that was me. But just to have someone reach out, because what I have to deal with is invisible. Like, a lot of people can't see my pain. A lot of people don't know that I have chronically debilitating pain that affects my sleep, that affects my everyday life, what I eat, um, all of the things. I can get really graphic, but we're not going to. But it does have a lot to do with everyday things that seem easy that can affect, um, my ability to do things. So I felt like I needed to create a curated, um, couple of episodes specifically talking about some of the things that I have come to learn as a certified mindset business coach and essential oil specialist, because these things have been the things that work for my clients. And they first started to work with me, and now I'm sharing with my clients, and they're having amazing transformations, not only in their business but in their life. And I also feel like we need more people talking about the hard stuff. So many women, um, that I talk to are going through these different things, and they're giving so many, um, messages that actually create more of a problem and create less space for giving yourself that grace. So I want to start off with this first series and this first topic about finding your pace and uncertainty and why that is a hard thing to do when you have chronic illness, but why it's also the reason why you're built to succeed. The truth about uncertainty is that chronic illness is just one of the things in our life that creates uncertainty. So as imperfect people, as human beings, we have so many things. Like, everybody is waking up with some level of uncertainty about what their job's gonna have, what their spouses and children are going to do and what their job is going to do and what's going to happen in the world. Like, we all live with uncertainty. That is a common ground we all have. But for those of us who are living with chronic illness, we come to look at uncertainty in a way as kind of like our zone. Like, it's our comfort zone in a lot of different ways because we literally wake up every single day Knowing that something's going to happen but not knowing how much is going to affect our day. The world has made us come to believe that we can show somehow just push through and figure everything out if we just work harder, and that messaging is not serving so many of my chronic illness warriors, y'all. Like, I have had people that I'm connected with in my network say to me that they've had coaches and mentors just say, you just gotta push, you just gotta work harder. And honestly, you guys, that mindset and that mentality— and there's going to be a whole nother one that I'm going to have recorded about this, this whole hustle culture and how many of these sayings that we hear are driven from that thought process of hustle, right? And for many of us living with chronic illness, we have limited amounts of energy. And so we don't need the, the conversation for us to just work harder. Our bodies is already doing that. Um, as chronic illness warriors, we're always trying to figure out different ways and methods to push through our day and deal with our day. And so that's not a mindset that actually empowers us. And for most of it, it makes us feel like, man, do I need to do more? Like, what else more do I need to do? In order to become successful. And I want to remind you again, going back to the beginning of this, I want you to find your superpower or your comfort zone in understanding why you as a chronic illness warrior like myself, even though we find and feel that we deal with a lot more uncertainty, that experience, this experience of living with chronic illness, is actually something that we can be proud of and lean into because we've had to learn how to live life with this uncertainty in every moment, in every minute. So what are some lessons that we can learn about uncertainty? Well, for one, not taking things for granted. How many of us have heard the stories of those that we admire? And I'll have— we have multiple women on the show who have shared, like, they've had those aha moments or those life-altering changing moments where they're like, oh my goodness, I cannot believe I needed this harsh wake-up call that I need to do something differently. It's affecting my health, it's affecting my relationships. And when you have that wake-up moment, it's just like, okay, I'm not going to take things for granted. Like, people have a new zest or way of thinking about life. And for us who live with chronic illness, maybe we did have a wake-up call because of that chronic illness. That is a gift of uncertainty. Uncertainty brought that into our life and into our awareness. But now we have a completely different view of what matters to us. So a lot of us, when I talk to my clients that I'm coaching with, like, there are conversations that we're having with the complete understanding and speaking about, well, some things just don't matter as much because these things matter so much more. And that is such a gift, really, that uncertainty can bring to us. Every decision— this is another lesson I feel like uncertainty has taught us, and this is something my mom kind of talked to me about, and you've probably heard me mention this before in an episode before— that every decision has a positive and negative ripple effect on someone or something. So my thing with uncertainty is, so why not make sure that we make choices that come from the place of where we're okay with the results for ourselves and for those that we love. We cannot make everybody happy. And I think when you live with chronic illness with this uncertainty, we realize that, like, we realize when we're given, like, so many different conversations about, like, if you try this method of helping you get better, or if you do this thing that the doctor says, or if you go with this naturopath, there is a give and take. There's a positive and a negative effect. There's a potential positive positive, negative. And if we allow other people to make those choices for us and don't see the bigger picture and don't really connect to our values, we could be letting uncertainty rule our life in the sense of we're not owning our decisions. And so uncertainty has taught us to be very, very connected to the reason why we're doing what we're doing. And to me, that is a win, right? That's a win for uncertainty, like, for us. Like, we may not know with all of the things that these choices are going to make for us, but we know deep down that the reason why we make this choice in this very unpredictable but yet predictable situation of a flare-up or new diagnosis, that there are some things that we in our core know we are not going to do and what we are going to do, and we're okay with the consequences. There's a lot of people who don't have that, that haven't discovered that. Also, another lesson of uncertainty is that it keeps us humble. Like, this year has been— or last year, 2021, whenever you're listening to this— had been a year of really keeping Nikita humble. I had gotten to a place of a rhythm of knowing how my body worked and what was working with me, and then something weird started happening more intensely. And the pain, and this new symptom came up, and then I got diagnosed with chronic bladder disease, which is painful, you guys. And how I managed that, which was completely uncertain, like, I was like, that's an uncertainty kind of thing. That's like, that's something that happens when you weren't expecting it, even though deep down for the last couple years I've kind of known that something was going on with my bladder. To officially have it come into my world and be like, this is here and me trying to approach it from the standpoint of how I've always dealt with other things of my health helped me to realize, Nikita, you don't know everything, and you have to kind of be okay with leaning into not knowing. And what a humbling reintroduction to myself I've had. And to me, when we are in a humble place, we can receive and we can grow. And that is a thing that I think we all can appreciate. And that's a lesson that I think uncertainty teaches us, that we're just not going to know all of the things. And humility is one of those things that leads us to understand that and have an appreciation for it in our lives. Also, I think uncertainty keeps us curious. Like, it keeps us curious in the sense of looking for other ways to do something differently. To help us in a state. And that in itself helps us in life, right? You know, being curious about the right things that Bill does that try to help us in different ways. For example, with this new thing that I'm dealing with, I'm trying a different way of eating and trying to pay more attention to what foods flare it up and trying different foods that I probably would never have tried. But that's the beauty of this uncertainty of not knowing. That's that I'm getting able to try things that I probably would never have done because I had been stuck in a certain way of thinking something would work. So curiosity also creates growth and understanding about things like being willing to ask questions. What a beautiful thing uncertainty can bring us with that. Also, I believe that there's a lesson that uncertainty teaches us that might be harder for some of us, is that it keeps us looking or seeking for hope, right? Like, when you don't— like, hope is the thing that anchors us, that it can potentially be better, or there is something out there that could help serve me in this situation that I'm just not aware of. Hope is a beautiful thing that we can hold on to. And I think when you have uncertainty, hope is like that balancing factor in our lives that allows us to be okay with uncertainty. And it also just keeps us thinking and reasoning, like again, going back to the curiosity and humbleness, it keeps us like really being in a state of learning and growing. I cannot say that enough. Um, another word for uncertainty is doubt. And I know we think that doubt oftentimes is a bad thing, but what if we thought about doubt sometimes when it comes to our health and circumstances that maybe it's something we need to learn more about? If we can cast doubt on the things that we're thinking about ourselves, that's usually negative, and we were able to doubt those thoughts and replace them with positive evidence and reassuring ones, how powerful is that, right? And so there's a lot of lessons that we can learn from uncertainty as chronic illness warriors. Now, if you're running a business, right, and you have chronic illness, all of these lessons are literally things we need to have in our business. We need to take like stock of what— how much living with a chronic illness has such an effect. Like, like, it's such a parallel experience when you look at your business. I'm gonna go back through these lessons that, you know, I've learned and seen my clients learn as they are growing their creative or coaching, consulting businesses, is that not taking things for granted. So when you get that one person that says yes to you, you know how much work it took you to get someone to say yes to you. You know how much time it took to research and, um, learn more about this craft that you're doing in this creativity, or the time and energy it took you to actually do it. You're not going to take it for granted when that one person shows up, and when they stay around, you're gonna love on them forever. That's something that I find that I have to talk to others who don't necessarily have that way of thinking about life, taking things for granted. They're just thankful so much so for the yeses and the people that come into their world. And you need to do that for your business. Every small success is not just guaranteed. It is work. It required energy. And we don't take that for granted because we know how much it took, right? We also recognize that we can't be all things to all people. This goes back to that thought process of there's a positive and negative effect in business. We are doing a lot of attracting and repelling at the same time. We, when we're clear and aligned on who we want to serve and what we want to do, we're going to attract those right people and we're going to repel those who are not. There's a little bit of uncertainty of like how many of the people are going to say yes and how many people are going to say no. And we're not really— we're like really excited all the nos because that means that gets us closer to the yeses. They may be far if not abundantly in between of those who are saying yes to you. Yes, many yeses will come, but so will the nos that lead you to your yeses. And we recognize that when we decide to niche down in our businesses, we're creating that positive results, that ripple effect. Humility, like I said, it keeps us in a place of thinking and, and questioning and like wanting to know the answers. And in entrepreneurship, it is this experiment that we're all trying to figure out. And if we are not coming from a place of humility and curiosity and a place of thinking and reasoning, we don't really succeed. Like, businesses don't grow from that place if you don't have some humility and thoughts of curiosity, trying something and doing something and seeing how it works and then tweaking the results. So when I say find your pace in uncertainty, I really mean embrace, right? Embrace uncertainty and look at the lessons that we've learned throughout our journey. One of the biggest things that I've learned through living with chronic illness and having a business is that one, 9 times out of 10, all the negative things that I'm thinking are way, way in my head. And I've heard this before in an illustration. At a Bible convention where it's like, it's a whole bunch of smoke, but there's no fire. And that is the thing about uncertainty. We can get so in our thoughts about the negative, the results and the negative what-ifs versus seeing the lessons that we can learn in uncertainty. And then the things that have helped us to become parts of who we are and how we show up in our businesses. So I want to end this with the thought of that uncertainty is kind of a pain in the butt sometimes, like no joke, right? But it's a necessary evil, I think, for us to continue to grow as people. And to also, if you are a spiritual person, that allows you to have faith and hope in a place that really is rooted in truth. It really is. And it also keeps us humble. And to me, that's the best place for any of us to be. Is to always be willing to learn more and to be wrong and to grow from that place. So that's why you're built to succeed if you have a chronic illness, and that's why your business is built to succeed, because even though uncertainty is bound to be a part of our lives for now, you have learned so much to get you to where you are now, and you will continue to learn as you grow your business. All right. So the next part of the series that you're going to hear is like how chronic illness remaps your brain and how that affects your business. Now, this one I'm super excited about because it's kind of intertwining some of the things I've learned this past year in my certification with essential oils and how it affects our brain, like how our brain actually works. And it also centers around the things that I've learned more about some other courses that I took about mindset. So I can't wait for you to tune into that. Because you might be mind blown. No pun intended, but pun intended. Hahaha. All right, y'all, that's a wrap. Thank you for listening, and I hope this conversation inspired you. Be sure to visit craftedtothrive.com to check out our show notes, connect with our guests, and grab some of those goodies. Join us for the next episode, and in the meantime, remember, yes, yes, yes, you are crafted to thrive.