Welcome to Minisode 3 of Alchemy for Authors!
In this short episode I share my thoughts around recalibrating your author career when you feel like you’ve gone off course or not made any progress at all.
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Find the full transcript of this episode below.
Minisode 3: Birthday Recalibration
Jo: Hello, my lovelies. Welcome to Minisode 3 of Alchemy for Authors. Today as I record this it is the 17th of February, 2024 and it’s my birthday. Woo-hoo. Right? Except I have noticed that there’s a theme that seems to repeat itself around the build up to my birthday every year recently. It’s where I take a look at where I am in my life, ask myself whether I’m happy, and then check in with how much things have changed from the previous year. I take inventory, if you will. And if things look like or feel like a Groundhog Day where nothing is really all that different, then you can cue a bit of a melancholic funk that lingers until a stubborn defiance kicks in that this year will be different. It’s a weird place to be.
Right now I’m feeling pretty close to how I was feeling this time last year: rundown, burnt out, annoyed and frustrated with the amount of energy demands made on me in other areas of my life that I feel take away from my writing and my podcasting and the things that I’m really passionate about, and how little I feel that I’ve achieved towards my goals recently. Much like I did last year, I’ve come to the conclusion that the way I’m living my life now is, quite frankly, unsustainable. So, I want to pose the question, what do we do when we realize that the life we’re living is so very out of alignment with the life we desire? When the distance between our present reality and our dreams seems to be staying exactly as it always has, or else is growing?
For me, I’ve been trying to take a step back, work out where it is exactly that I feel out of control in my life, and what parts of my life am I not enjoying, and why. Now this is important because I’ve said it before, sometimes the thing that we see as being the crux of the problem, isn’t really the problem. And instead, we’re avoiding the truth staring us right in the face. At this time, I’m usually reminded of a Simon Sinek quote, “Working hard for something that we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.”
So, if you’ve found yourself in a similar funk, think about the areas of your life that cause you the most stress. Those times, events, activities, or people that leave you feeling tired, depleted, or unwell. In what areas of your life are you spending the majority of your energy? Are you working hard on the right things that bring you joy? Or not? It might just be that if you eliminate those things from your life, you’ll feel happier, healthier, or more energized. Ending that relationship, dropping that client, quitting that job, might be the answer. Or, it might be you avoiding something else.
Consider or even track how much time you’re devoting to the things you love, those things that feel good and make you happy. Maybe you’ve noticed that when you’re doing the things you love or spending time with people you love, you feel more energized or creative or joyful. Work that you love no longer feels quite so much like hard work. Maybe the answer to us feeling stuck or in a perpetual momentumless Groundhog Day is simply that we’re not allowing ourselves to do and spend time with those things that we love.
I tend to think of myself as a hard worker, to the point that I have definite workaholism tendencies. And yet, depending upon what activities I’m doing, and nothing to do with the energy I’m physically and mentally exerting, I am either thriving or wilting. The work or tasks are either easy or painful, energizing or energy sapping. They either leave me with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment and that contented type of tiredness at the end, or they leave me feeling unfulfilled, exhausted, and feeling like I’ve wasted one of the most precious things, which is time. Time that could have been better spent with someone else or doing something else.
Alexander Den Heijer has a famous quote that reads, “You often feel tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.” I resonate with that quote heavily. Where are you stopping yourself from doing those things that you love, that bring you joy?
Sometimes it can feel like we’re doing all the things. We’re trying desperately just to keep our head above water. We’re writing the books, we’re doing the marketing, growing our newsletter list, posting on social media. We’re tired, but we convince ourselves that over time our consistency will pay off. And then the rules might change, like Amazon shuts down our account or Instagram marks external links as spam. Yes, that is happening, I learned today. Or maybe a particular launch, or book, or series, flops despite the blood, sweat and tears and multitudes of time and money that we’ve invested into its success. What do we do then, when it feels like we’re back at square one?
Sometimes it can be all too tempting to quit, right? But maybe what the universe is really asking of us is to pivot. Maybe what we thought was our path wasn’t our path, and we’ve just drifted out of alignment. And the universe is asking us to recalibrate. And as much as we may want to blame that book marketplace or social media platform or the readers for that feeling of being stuck or blocked or holding us back from our inevitable success, maybe again, the problem is not really the problem. Maybe, as Taylor Swift says, we’re the problem.
Maybe we’ve been avoiding our truth. Maybe what’s not been working hasn’t been working because it’s not where we’re supposed to be.
Here’s something that I’ve noticed in my life. When I go through these periods of dissatisfaction with my life, or aspects of my life, I should say, I have one very particular party that I tend to blame over and over again, because hey, playing the victim, not taking accountability, so much easier than admitting when we’re our own worst enemy, right? And if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ll probably recognize the villain that I’m referring to. It gets the blame often for monopolizing my time and my energy and keeping me from doing those things that bring me joy. But I have also noticed that behind my denial and accepting responsibility for my present funk is fear. Because I innately know why everything is feeling completely unsustainable right now. I also know the action that I need to take to recalibrate. And it is scary. I also recognize that from past experience, it is easier for me to take a risk and step outside of my comfort zone when I feel forced to do so. For example, and maybe you can relate to this, where you can’t take action until your job gets so destructively bad that there’s little choice but to leave. Or the relationship becomes so toxic it reaches the tipping point where the fear to stay is greater than the fear to leave. Or as in the case of my favourite social media platform, making it horrendously hard to post links without being slammed as spam, being the catalyst for me thinking more seriously about selling direct. Something I’ve been talking about but procrastinating on for a while now.
As humans, sometimes we need things to get ugly before we’re motivated to take action. Maybe there is no villain holding us back from progress. We’re just not recognizing the fact that we’ve outgrown something, that it’s our time to move on and up level. Sometimes the bad stuff’s just stuff, seen through the lens of a refusal to acknowledge our calling to a new path.
So your calendar will show you what you truly value. And this hits me hard. But it also makes me reevaluate, and maybe you too, how we’re investing our time and energy. Are we investing it in the things that we truly value? Those things that light us up, that bring us energy and joy and move the needle forward to where we actually want to go.
Or, are we reliving the same day over and over again, or maybe the same year, locked in victimhood and fear, because change and realignment can bring with it uncertainty. So ask yourself, what needs to change? What do you need to let go of? What have you outgrown? Where can you incorporate more of the things that you love into your life?
One of my absolute favorite quotes from Annie Dillard is “How we spend our days is how we spend our life.”
On average as a human being we’re only given about 4,000 weeks on this earth as this being. Some of us more and some of us less. I’m already halfway through that allotment. I don’t want you to wait for your birthday to reflect on whether you’re on the path that you know that you should be on. So check in with yourself every day. Don’t wait for an area of your life to get really ugly before you consider pivoting. Particularly if you’ve been given the nudges to do so. Take action now.
Today, on my birthday, I’m actually all about self-care and recovery from the burnout and frustration that has been building up for a little while lately. I recognize the areas in my life where I’m going to have to make some serious changes. And I think I’ve reached the point where I’m committed to do so. I’m going to learn and pivot and probably learn and pivot some more this year. I’m going to do more of what I love and less of what I don’t. Which in itself is going to require some seriously uncomfortable boundaries being laid down and some sacrifices made.
I’ll do it all because the things that I love and the people that I love are ultimately more important even if they haven’t taken pride of place on my calendar lately. And things have just become far too uncomfortable to stay at the status quo. So here’s to my birthday recalibration. And maybe if you’re feeling this little reflection of mine resonating with you, you’ll consider recalibrating too.
So thanks for tuning in my friend. Just a quick reminder that the doors to my friend, Carissa Andrews’s Millionaire Author Manifestation Course are now open. If you need some support on your way to creating an aligned author career, consider checking it out. Click on the link on my show notes and use the code ALCHEMY, A L C H E M Y at checkout to save 30% when you pay in full or 30% off the first payment if you enroll in the payment plan.
I also have my eBooks available for 50% off for the next few days. If that is something that you’re interested in and you want to actually check out some of my fiction writing, you can purchase them through https://payhip.com/jobuer and just make sure that you use the code BIRTHDAY at checkout.
If you’ve been enjoying the show, make sure you subscribe, rate, or review. This helps support the show and helps get it in front of the eyes of others. You can also support the show by going to https://buymeacoffee.com/jobuer and that helps pay for show related costs and my time. And it is infinitely appreciated by me.
Next week, I’ll be back with a wonderful full-length episode with the lovely Orna Ross. So make sure you tune in for that one. Until next time, my friend, bye for now.