#69 - Prioritise You: Crafting a Healthy Business with Personal Intentions

"In my daily life, I play numerous roles, including that of a mom, spouse, entrepreneur, friend, student, teacher, and patient. Each of these personas demands specific attention and care. Without a clear plan of action, I would often feel overwhelmed, struggling to prioritize tasks effectively.

I vividly recall a time when my daily routine left me feeling drained and unexcited about my business. I would open my shop, feeling weighed down and directionless. I took on tasks as they came, without a strategic plan, resulting in stagnation. Despite having knowledge and ideas about what I should be doing to grow my business, exhaustion and lack of direction held me back."

This excerpt touches on the challenges of balancing multiple roles and the impact of not having a clear plan in both personal and business life. It sets the stage for the importance of personal intentions in achieving clarity and focus.

FULL SHOW-NOTES WITH TAKEAWAYS

https://www.ja-wol.com/blogs/podcast/69

BEST QUOTE FROM THE EPISODE

"A healthy and happy person is a better business owner."

LINKS

• Notion
• Bullet Journal Method
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

If you don't know what you need as a person, you don't know what your business needs. You have to do some work around your personal intentions before you can set your business goals. Hi, welcome to the Patent Shift podcast, where small businesses, in slow fashion, get actionable insights and pro tips so that they can grow their business and lead a good life while taking their personal health as seriously as their business growth. I am Saskia de Vaiter, serial entrepreneur, artist, designer, marketing and branding expert. For the last decade and a half, I've got some health problems and big dreams, and I set out to streamline my business and help you to do the same, while we show the world that slow fashion is the way forward. Goals are like stepping stones over a river. As people and as business owners, we can't oversee our whole mission, and so we have to cut it up into goals and, in turn, cut those goals up into actionable steps. This way, we get focused. But before we get down to business goals, we'll look at our personal intentions. While goals are measurable over a certain amount of time, intentions are more of a commitment to a process. As writer Carol, the inventor of the bullet journal, says, goals are the what, plans are the how, and intentions are the why. Intentions are defined by present actions. The purpose of intentions is to be, rather than to arrive. Now, I play many roles at any given day. I'm a mom, a spouse, an entrepreneur, a friend, a student, a teacher, a patient. All these personas need specific attention and specific needs met.

Speaker 1: 2:06

If I didn't have a plan of action, I would drown in all the things that are thrown at me. I would be in a state of overwhelm constantly. About five years ago, this was my daily state of being. I ran a needle craft school, taught knitting at a primary school, had an indie yarn shop that sold my own brand's design products and hand-died yarns. I had two kids and a partner, friends and family and a bunch of chronic illnesses. I dragged myself out of the bed, sometimes went into the morning, chaos, dropped the kids at school and when I opened the door to my shop, I felt so weighed down instead of excited and happy to get going. I did not know where to start and so I just took on what was in front of me, without a plan, and it was the same thing every day. I took on the same things and I never got to the things I needed to be doing to grow the business. I had ideas and knowledge of what I should be doing, but I was too exhausted to make informed decisions and, honestly, too tired to even say no to things. So I could pick better tasks to work on. I just had no gusto anymore. It was just hard work, fast forward, global pandemic self-care research and implementation.

Speaker 1: 3:33

And I'm a new person, although I still get overwhelmed. In fact, I'm right in a period of oops. I got a little bit too much going on at the moment, and I know exactly how to deal with it now, because I have a plan and a practice, or should I say a practice which results in a plan? Intentions are a huge part of that practice. They bring meaning to my life. They help me navigate my life based on what is rather than what may be. They provide focus, so I guess you can say they're pretty important. Alright, I will give you three steps of how to get your intentions going. You will check in with yourself, you will set your personal attentions and then you will start using them in your life. Now let's start with checking in with yourself.

Speaker 1: 4:35

So my mind goes and overdrive or it completely quiets down. When the latter happens. I know I'm in trouble when I just kind of zoomed through the hours. I need a break and I need it yesterday. The overdrive state is usually the warning state just before or just after I go. My normal state is just everything everywhere all at once, but it kind of it feels more like me, if you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 5:08

After a few decades of living, I now know what happens to me when I get overwhelmed. I've learned to listen to my body and my mind. My muscle tension is through the roof, my neck and my shoulders are hard as marble and my joints to just protest when I want to move, it's like they're telling me to sit the hell down. Listening to your mind and body works best in silence. So I find it very useful to meditate. I love to meditate, but when I am full on, overwhelmed, in that kind of a status, I cannot go there. It's too big of a step.

Speaker 1: 5:47

So for me, the first thing I need to do is to write it out first. So I grab my journal in the morning, preferably when I just wake up and I start writing everything that pops up, everything. This is kind of how that can go. My back itches. I need to remember cat foods. What the hell? I don't want to do this. My ears seem to be buzzing more lately. Why hasn't my package from the bookshop arrived yet? And I think my neighbor thinks I don't actually work. I hate that. I work my butt off Not quite enough, because my butt is very present. Anyway, you catch my drift. You just keep writing and writing whatever pops up into your mind. It doesn't matter what you write, as long as you keep doing it for at least 30 minutes. But it's better if you can focus on getting six pages in. Honestly, I never really get to the six pages, I feel.

Speaker 1: 6:48

For me, the 30 minutes is about what I need to get my clarity of mind. I do this every day and you can keep it going for as long as it provides value. I've done this for weeks on end just because I really needed it. In fact, one of the students in my program is so enthusiastic about it she she learned it in a program and she keeps doing it every day. I personally use it as whenever I think I need it.

Speaker 1: 7:24

So this is not a process I invented. It's actually the morning pages from the book the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It's an exercise that is part of a bigger practice to reawaken your creativity, but it's on its own. It's used to check in with yourself and your needs, and it will uncover your emotions and thoughts about certain things, things that are on your mind. When you have your intentions in the back of your mind, figuring them out, they will automatically land on your page.

Speaker 1: 7:59

Step two, when you set your personal intentions. So this is not a process I invented. It's the morning pages from the book the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It's an exercise that is part of a bigger practice to reawaken your creativity, but on its own. It's used to check in with yourself and your needs, and it will uncover your thoughts and emotions about certain things. Now, moving on to step two, setting your personal intentions. After a few days of doing the morning pages but keep it going as long as it provides value you'll get a pretty good idea of what your needs are and what you want.

Speaker 1: 8:43

You can divide your life into separate areas. Take a piece of paper or your journal and divide it into areas that reflect to your life. Here are some examples Work, finances, social environment, health, leisure and culture, qualities and values. You collect your thoughts and ideas from the days where you did your morning pages so you can do this for, let's say, a week and highlight, read through them, highlight the areas and put them under one of the topics. When you do that, ask yourself questions like what do I need, what do I want, what can I offer? Where are my boundaries? What is non-negotiable and, simply, what is my intention for this topic? Try to get some clear intention for each topic. Short sentences it's not like it's your life's work and it changes over time, so be kind to yourself.

Speaker 1: 9:48

It could be anything like I need more time alone during the day. I want a space where I can be alone. I need to be left alone between 12 and 1 to do some meditation or things like that. What are non-negotiables? Sunday is for the family. I will not do work on Sundays. These are the kinds of things that we are talking about. What do I need? I need my business to provide me with 25% of our family's income. That makes me feel like I'm providing part of the income of our family and it makes me feel good about myself. I need to feel like I am providing Social environment. What do I want? I want to check in with my friends every week, consistently, every month, depending on the kind of friendship or how busy you are, all these kinds of things. What can I offer? I have a lot to give. I love going to the theater. I can take my neighbor to the theater and make her feel less alone while also taking care of myself. These kinds of things can come up. I'm just making them up as I go along Just to give you an idea Short sentences in the end, you can do a lot of writing but end up with short sentences so you can check in with them regularly.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Third part is using these intentions in your daily life. Every day, every week, every month, you can set new intentions. You can go back to the intentions, you can review them. Some of the intentions can last a lifetime. They are all different, but it's really good to check in with them regularly, I would say at least weekly. We can learn to get a better sense of what fills us up, aligning our actions with our beliefs. And with these intentions in the back of our heads, we have compasses ready to guide us and give us better focus. It's so much easier to decide if we want to say yes or no to something if we can reflect on our intentions and our non-negotiables, our beliefs, all of that.

Speaker 1: 12:34

The best way to bring all of this into practice is by starting a bullet journal. That's my bullet journaling. All of this, what I'm talking about here, is embedded into this practice. Bullet journaling literally changed my life. It brought me clarity and focus when I needed it most, and I believe this is one of the best tools you can have as your private person and as a business owner. It's a mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system designed by writer Carol as a way to deal with his ADD, currently usually referred to as ADHD. And, come on, who doesn't love a thing that has multiple uses? Private business put it all together. Have some insights, be mindful, like moving along, doing the focus, all of that. So if you want some more information about bullet journaling as a practice, you can go to bulletjournalcom or you can leave me a voice note or an email so you can talk to me directly and ask me questions. I plan to do a whole lot more with bullet journaling connected to business and all of the things that we're talking about today. More to come in the future. So, but if you don't want to get into bullet journaling as a whole thing in this moment.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Here's a short summary of the ways you can set your personal intentions as a base ground to build your business goals on what we talked about today, something you can immediately start doing. Here we go. One check in with yourself by meditating and or journaling long form style, using the morning pages method. Two divide your life into separate areas that make sense for you. Go through your notes, highlight the things that pop up and divide them under the areas, turning them into short sentences that you can refer to. Three look at your intentions daily, weekly, monthly and use them as your guide for navigating your days and taking care of yourself. No-transcript. A healthy and happy person is a better business owner, and your groundwork is done. Building sustainable businesses is also mostly, first of all, about sustaining yourself, your personal happiness and health.

Speaker 1: 15:01

I would love to hear about your thoughts and ideas around this episode. Please go to wwwpatternshiftfm, leave me a voice message or comment below the show notes. Do you want more actionable business tips and insights that speak your language? None of that icky businessy lingo, but coming from a slow fashion business expert In bite-sized chunks. Stay a bit longer on wwwpatternshiftfm while you're there and sign up for our bi-weekly emails and information about the Platinum. I'm building a solid base against fast fashion. Until next time, remember every stitch counts as we work together and create a pattern shift for you, your business, the crafters and the fashion industry. Bye, bye, bye.