What To Do When You Feel Like Giving Up?

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. Hey ladies, welcome back to the She's Crafted to Thrive show. Thank you so much for joining me for the solo cast. I am going to share with you a story, but first, before I do that, I want to say thank you so much for being such a I always like to take the time, especially in my solo cast, to say this because I know that you have other people that you like to listen to and other things to do besides maybe multitasking and listening to my podcast. So I really, really appreciate it. And I thank you, thank you so much for your support and for being a loyal listener. So if you love the show, please don't forget to leave a review on iTunes and if or wherever you're listening to the podcast. Or if you want to reach out to me personally, you can always reach me at Instagram @craftedtothrive or on my website at sheescrafted.com. All right, so this month I was working on a collaboration with the amazing Christy Cross, which is a photographer based out in New Mexico. She is a branding and portrait photographer and she does product photography as well. She's just amazing at what she does., and we did a collaboration, 2-hour live workshop called Selling with a Purpose for a Profit. Yes, a very long name because I'm horrible at making names. Like, I really, really am. Like, when I'm trying to do my podcast episode titles, it feels like, oh my gosh. So anyway, in that workshop, Chrissy and I were both talking about how to use your story to identify and link you to your ideal customers in your business so that you're very purposeful, intentful, so that you can create more profit and loyal customers to your business. And so she was sharing from a visual standpoint how to, how to create stories with your images using flat lays and your phone as a professional DSLR, basically. Like, that was really cool. And I shared how to create a plan that really works for you to Identify how to tell your story to connect to your ideal customer. And I gave a story profit planner and she gave presets for the workshop. So if you're interested in something like that, definitely check out the shop. You can just go to craftittothrive.com/shop. And in that preparation for that workshop, I had to tell my— what is called hero story or one of a hero story. And it's not really a hero story, say like, like, I'm not a hero, but this is just, um, that's a way that you tell stories so that you can really help people see, um, all the emotion and the texture and put themselves into it. So I shared with them a story and it got me thinking about just 2020. Um, so many of us are experiencing so many different challenges, or on top of the challenges we already have, we have a worldwide pandemic that's adding another layer of whatever yuck or guck or whatever you want to call it to it. And there's so many layers to what we experience in our personal lives that totally can relate to us in our business life, right? And what we— or how we perceive life in general. And one of the things that this brought me back to was 2017, about 3 or 4 months after I had my hysterectomy surgery. I was in so much pain. I had the surgery because I thought it was going to alleviate my pain. I had tried all the different things. This was kind of one, like maybe the last hurrah, but not technically the last hurrah. There's other options for me, but at the— at that time it felt like my last option to have a little bit relief of pain. And I wonder if We feel like that sometimes about our business. I know sometimes in my business I'm like, man, I'm going to try this one thing and if it doesn't work, I'm just going to give up. Like, I'm just going to do something completely different. And I've tried workshops before and they didn't necessarily work out. And this one went really well. The feedback was amazing. And that kind of goes back to my story with the endometriosis hysterectomy story. So I just remember this one day and it just came to me so clearly and it came on my heart just to share this with you guys. It was a Friday morning, like around 3 or something in the morning. I am horrible, um, like my pain is horrible at night and early mornings and during the day, um, like early morning during the day. And, um, I just remember crying and praying and just pleading for peace and pleading for it all to go away and pleading for something or someone to help me because at that point I was like, I don't know what else to do. I don't know what else to do. And I felt broken. I felt tired. I felt like I just had enough. And in that moment I realized that I've had that feeling before. I've had that feeling before where I felt like I've had enough, I'm broken and I'm tired, and I'm so ready for whatever this is to be over. In those moments that I have found that just maybe a couple hours or maybe a couple days or a couple weeks, something happens just when I'm at the end of my rope. There's a knot that I can grab onto to pull me out. And that is what happened for me the next morning or later on that day. A friend reached out to me that I hadn't heard from in years to share with me about her new business venture and also just to connect with me. And it was Young Living. She was sharing with me Young Living, and I was like, yeah, I mean, I tried it before, like, as like, oh, let me make candles with them or something like or salt baths or whatever. And she reached out to me, and before we even got into talking about what she was doing, she asked me how I was doing. And it was that moment that I was like, oh my gosh, she's like, you know, she's been a part of my life for a long time. I just hadn't seen her. We kind of, you know, became distant for a while because she was volunteering and helping in a third world country, and I just hadn't seen her. So for her to reach out to me and then to ask me how I was doing before she wanted to share this thing that she what she was doing, I kind of just broke down and shared with her what was going on because we kind of had that relationship. She also knew my grandmother, um, and I just felt open and free enough to share with her what was going on. And when I did, she said to me, Nikita, I've been there. I, I have, I have literally lived that my whole life, and I know what you feel. And she started explaining her story, and she started telling me her story. And in that moment, I was like, oh my gosh, like, it was such a relief to hear someone else who had experienced feeling tired, broken, and like they've had enough. And here she was, all happy and excited and sharing something with me. And in that moment, I wasn't happy and excited, I was just depressed and over it. But she gave me hope, and then she shared with me what she wanted to share with me. She's also a certified health coach, so she helped me see a whole new world of possibilities in her just reaching out to me. So basically, if you feel like you're tired and you've had enough and you're like, I'm done, just wait. Just take a pause. Take a breath, take a step back, and just wait before you make any big decisions. Sometimes we make decisions quickly out of desperation, out of frustration, out of pain, and, and, and we miss out on the knot that we can hook our hand onto that can pull us out of a situation. And so 2020 has brought you lots of those feelings, lots of those things going on your business. You've tried different things in your business and it has, you know, flopped. Or maybe you had a whole plan for 2020 and things completely went up in flames in a sense. Or maybe you are living in an area that is dealing with flames, like, you know, with the fires in California and Oregon and all those different parts of this, um, the country, or if COVID became your flame, that thing where you were just afraid to leave the house. If you're like me, you have a chronic illness, and this has just added a whole nother layer of stress dealing with, um, a chronic illness and a pandemic. I just had to go this past week to get a CT scan in a hospital, and let me tell you the stress and the things you have to say to yourself to calm yourself. And, you know, the prayers you say, um, you know, things feel different. It feels different. It feels a little bit scarier, um, dealing with this during this time. But like I said earlier, don't give out, don't give in. I always like to say, say yes to the random thing that happens or this random person that reaches out, because I have found in my own personal journey that a lot of times the very thing that I needed to hear, the very thing I needed to become aware of, came from someone or something else. It didn't come from me because what's at the moment while I'm going through whatever it is I'm going through, um, I couldn't see outside of that. And so many times, you know, that's part of the reason why I love being a coach is that You know, so many times there's so much in our own head, in our own situations, that we don't see the possibilities outside of us. We don't see the things that we could do in order to get us out of this rut or out of this, this pattern or out of this, this pain situation. For me, with this own personal story that I just shared with you, I couldn't see past I thought that I had done everything, but I learned very quickly there were so many other things I had not tried. I didn't even know about. I wasn't even aware of. It's that thing when you hear like, you don't know what you don't know. That is the thing. I didn't know what I didn't know. But if I had said no to this conversation that I knew it was going to be about something that I had kind of already knew about, but I didn't really know, I would have missed this opportunity to one, reconnect with a beautiful person that I just love to death to this day and to, to hear someone else share their story with me so that I no longer felt alone. And then her experience that helped me to see other possibilities. So get with a business bestie, get with someone that is, um, be a part of a networking group that's positive and uplifting and up building. James Whitmore has this, has this quote that is— I love it. It's one of my favorite quotes when it comes to business. It's, when it gets hard, just remember, this is the point at which everyone else gives up. And so that is the thing, right? When we give up, we lose. We lose when we give up. But if we continue to look for the possibilities, just keep your eyes open, keep your arms open, right? You don't have to necessarily be the person, pull you out, someone else or something else can. And I have experienced that for myself in a physical, emotional, mental place as well as in my business. There have been times where, like I said, I tried doing workshops on my own and they didn't go as well as I wanted them to. And I just really felt like they failed. And I decided to try something different based on some information that I had read on a podcast or I had listened to on a podcast. And then I researched it and then I did it with someone that I really, really admired and it worked out really great and the experience was awesome. So don't give up, don't give out, keep trying, keep going. And if you're listening to this message, you're listening to this episode and you're like, Nikita, thank you. Or you're like, Nikita, this is way too much, this is way too deep. That's okay. I just want to put this out there because I feel like I was telling my husband the other night, we sometimes don't talk about the yucky and the hard stuff enough because we feel like it's too personal or we feel like it's too much information. But I feel like it's those things that we should share where we feel comfortable to do so, because we never know what other people are experiencing and feeling like they're alone and dealing with. So if you're feeling like I mentioned, I keep mentioning this because I think we all experience this. If you're feeling tired, broken, or like you've had enough of your business, you've had enough of dealing with your chronic illness, you've had enough. I want you to hear that this is a message. This podcast episode is kind of like that knot that you can just reach your hand out to and it pull, pull you to other possibilities, other ways of thinking, other answers. That you weren't really aware of before. So that's pretty much it. So I wanted just to share that with you guys and also tell you a little bit about what's coming up for the rest of the year since we are in October. I've never done this on the show where I've kind of taken a break. I have 4 more episodes, maybe 4 or 5 more episodes until the end of the year, and then I'm going to take a little break in December, so I won't most likely have any episodes coming out in December, but I'll be back and briny and bushy-tailed briny. I don't even know what that means. I'll be back shiny and bright in January 2021 to share with you guys some more amazing episodes with amazing women. So in the meantime, if you have any questions or you want to tell me what you thought about this episode, please reach out to me at info@craftstothrive.com. Or like I said, you can always reach me on Instagram @craftedtothrive. Um, but in the meantime, as I love, love, and want you to remember that yes, you are crafted to thrive.