I'm not sure why I felt need to blog about life at the moment but I thought what if it helps one person feel a little less alone.
I have been running this small biz rodeo now for almost 7 years and while lay in bed the other night thinking about the 1000000 things I need to do I realised that there hasn't been a period of time in what feels like forever when I haven't felt stress over some aspect of my self employment or like I am failing in some way.
The cost of living, Covid 19, peoples spending habits changing and so the list goes on... each new little drama sending waves of anxiety through you on whether there is any real point to what you are doing? am I holding onto an idea that I should really let go of? could we have an easier life if we were in "proper jobs"
After chatting to a friend I realised how many emotional and financial blocks I have created around myself over the years. Somewhere along the way I have developed a belief that you can only make real money if you have studied and got a real job... a doctor, lawyer, teacher and I am starting to unpeel lots of layers of fraudulence, I don't feel like I should be here doing this kind of thing and therefore it wont amount to anything big and we will never make any money from it. All the while I have built a business that is just about covering our life style. Its like I discount all of the good stuff and concentrate or worry about all of the bits that aren't 100%.
I like to run this internal monologue of how shit I am and give myself zero credit on the fact I run all of our social media, deal with all customers, design all of our fabrics, deal with suppliers, cut and make every item by hand, wrap, box and post. Sort accounts, reordering, trying to market a product with no budget...…. yeah fuck that I cant take any credit for that I will just whip myself for where I am failing and don't even get me onto mum guilt.
I slightly digress but over the weekend I went to watch the football and when it had finished I could hear one of the dads from another team telling his son how awful he had played, laughing at how poor his performance was (he's around 6) and you could see the defeat in his face. The anxiety that he had let his dad down, that he wasn't good enough, and besides thinking his dad was a bit of a knob it made me realise that no one ever got good at something by hearing how bad they are at it!
I thought about Eadie and her confidence comes from us reinforcing how great she is, how she did her best, how we are proud of her and that's the opposite of what I have been doing to myself. Constantly telling myself how shit I am or the areas I am failing at and then wondering why I don't improve or enjoy learning new skills. My approach has been pants!
So I decided for the next week I am going to try and be gentler with myself and talk to myself how I would talk to a fellow small bizzer. Encourage myself, help myself by planning and setting small goals. Just generally not being THAT dad from footie. Sewing all of these seeds of doubt into my head constantly is holding me back so much and hanging heavy, so I thought I would give the other option a try... I'm not sure if this helps anyone at all but its helped me!