Pattern Shift
Hi! My name is Saskia de Feijter and welcome to the Pattern Shift podcast. In this podcast, I support overwhelmed small business owners in the fiber and needlecraft industry, helping them set up and organize their businesses for growth and personal well-being. Together, we can be a force for good and a counterbalance to fast fashion, helping makers craft garments and accessories slowly and more sustainably. You can be part of that change and make a profit in the process.
Pattern Shift
#81 - You Need a Mindset Shift! - Let’s Talk Change, Comfort Zones and Taking Action
"People are afraid of change. Some see it as a threat, while others see it as an adventure."
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Why do some small businesses thrive while others struggle to stay afloat? They could have an amazing product or service, but sometimes the mindset of the business owner can make a huge difference. Let's unravel why mindset could be the make or break factor in entrepreneurial success. So I've been running the business circle. This is the program where I support small businesses holistically in marketing, branding and mindful productivity. I've been hosting the business circle now for a few years and I've noticed something coming up in our wins and woes meetings. We share what worked and what needs work in those meetings and I've learned so much just from sharing this in a group. So one topic stood out the most, at least to me, in the most recent wins and woes meeting, but it's something that I've seen happen a lot, and sometimes I call it feeling icky about selling, or sometimes it's hidden away in the way we price our products and services. But it mainly boils down to one thing, and that is mindset. So why does mindset matter in running your small business and how can you change your mindset to deal with resistance, tackle perfectionism and grow personally and professionally?
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Saskia de Feiter and this is Pattern Shift, the show that supports your small textile craft business with practical and philosophical tips about marketing, branding and mindful productivity. I take a holistic approach in guiding you to build and grow your business from a solid base that's built on your values, your needs and boundaries, so that you can run it more sustainably for yourself and our planet. Whether you are already running a textile craft business or dreaming of starting one, if you're trying to make a living or something extra on the side, turning from crafter to business owner can be a steep learning curve. Pattern Shift is here to make a change for you, the crafters and our industry. So in this episode we'll talk about the following topics Time management and mindset shifts for personal growth, overcoming perfectionism and taking action, productivity, creativity and self-awareness, work-life balance and self-care for creatives. It's a lot, but I wrapped it up in a nice compact little episode and by the end of the show you'll wake up to a new truth that can help you grow, hopefully, and you'll feel less alone in feeling scared to take action. And also, hopefully, you'll learn that there are more ways to set intentions and reach your goals than just what everybody keeps repeating. Ps. I'd love to know where you are in the world. Why don't you sign up for the PatentShift emails and just reply to an email to start a conversation with me. I would love to hear from you, find the link in the show notes or go to patternshiftfm and I'm waiting for your mails. Now let's get into today's episode.
Speaker 1:I believe that most problems have a simple start and could potentially have a simple solution. When you look at the work of Byron Katie, she has some simple questions that are very powerful to make a change in your life. When you look at the work of Shirzad Kameen and Positive Intelligence, it is also very structured and quite simple. Looking at bullet journaling the way of organizing that Marie Kondo does it's not so much the solutions that are extremely hard, it's our beliefs around certain things that might be hard to shift, and I think that has to do with trust Trusting that someone else might have a way to help you, leaning into something that is unknown and unfamiliar, so that all boils down to a mindset shift. And not everybody is ready to have that mindset shift, and that's what I encounter in working with people in crafts and businesses. Things that are sometimes very apparent and obvious to me might feel huge to somebody who's not ready to look at things in a different way. So for me to be able to really help somebody grow their business, first there sometimes has to be a little bit of a mindset shift.
Speaker 1:What helps me is the thought that if you don't change anything, nothing will change. I think it's said by Einstein. I'm not sure. It doesn't really matter who said it, it's true. Really matter who said it, it's true. What? If you don't change a thing, nothing will change. So true.
Speaker 1:So people are afraid of change. Some people, inherently, are excited about change and see it as an adventure, but lots of people see it as a threat, the unknown. It's out of their comfort zone. And there are definitely a lot of things that you can gain from stepping out of your comfort zone. I think people know that, but they kind of want to know the answer beforehand so that they then can decide if it's worth stepping out of their comfort zone. But that's the thing. There's only one way to find out if it works for you, and that's by doing the thing and taking action. And then there's another step you need to take whenever you are ready to take action, to get moving.
Speaker 1:Then people struggle with perfectionism, another hurdle on the road to success. They take action and they want things to be perfect or they don't take action because they want things to be perfect and they don't believe in themselves to do a good enough job. And they don't believe in themselves to do a good enough job. So it's my job to let them know that any action is already perfect compared to what they did before, and perhaps quote unquote, air quotes perfect is not the right word here. So I need to help people to get into the mindset where they feel confident enough to start taking action into the unknown.
Speaker 1:It's not easy, and I think what is a great help is to do all of this together with other people, and so this is why I love teaching small groups, because in small groups you can still have an actual connection to people, you can still feel the presence of who the other people actually are, whereas in large groups, the other people are there but you're not necessarily actually connecting to them. And whenever I teach one-on-one, it turns a little bit into a from-me-to-you kind of thing, more of a teacher and a mentor thing, and although I do have a lot of experience and I have experienced things that work really well, in the end you need to figure out for yourself what works for you, and this is a hard thing for me to realize as well. I'm honest here because I would love just to teach you what I know works and be a true mentor in that sense. But I also realize that some people need different solutions, and I realized that more and more over the years, although there are some truths that are generally true for everybody, and I really believe that. So guiding people into a certain mindset and having them work together with others in a safe space to figure out what works for them from a curated list of options is, in my book, the best way to move forward, because you could do it by yourself, but it would take a lot more time and you'd have to do a lot more studying and researching and in the end you could study your whole life on one subject and never do anything with it, never make a dent in the subject if you just study it and don't practice it or communicate it or share it or even critique it.
Speaker 1:So if you don't feel ready for a change, can you talk to yourself and figure out why you're not ready, and do you truly believe that you should be ready for changing, or do you actually truly, on the inside, deeply believe that you want to stay where you are, meaning that if you stay where you are, you should be fully content and happy where you are. And if you're not content with where you are as a person, as a business, change needs to happen. And what are you willing to do to make change happen? What is realistically needed from you to make that change happen? Is it a belief change, a mindset change? Because I don't think the answer is lack of time, because we all have the same amount of time. So the power is in taking the time to do certain things and leaving other things behind in order to pursue those things that make a bigger difference to you. So if you say I don't have time to do things differently, that's just not true and you can use the work of Byron, katie, you can use the bullet journal method to figure out if that is truly true that you want, and figure out how did they get there, what are they doing, what is different in your life and how can you do something in the same way or a similar way. I like to use the example of having a caregiver role. You have less hours in a day than somebody that doesn't. Do you believe that in less time you can do more things, then that becomes the question and figuring out to what extent you can become more efficient or even work slower and be happy with a slower pace, but the same results over a longer period of time. Over a longer period of time, that also boils down to mindset shifts Change what is truly possible for you and what needs to be different to get there.
Speaker 1:I, for example, will never become an 18-year-old ballerina and the ballerina part is not even the hardest thing about it. And the ballerina part is not even the hardest thing about it. I'm 48. I will never be 18 again. I'm overweight. I will probably never become a ballerina in any way, but things are changing and, who knows, I could become an old, overweight ballerina. I can just never, ever, become an 18-year-old ballerina. These are the things that you are working with. So having an honest look at what your boundaries are and what you do have, but also being honest about what you are using your time for and could you use it in a more productive way.
Speaker 1:And when I say productive, I don't mean productive by churning out or like hustling, but working in a smarter way. And when I say productive, I don't mean productive by churning out or like hustling, but working in a smarter way. So for me, that means that I seem to be on this cycle of being super productive one moment and then feeling really tired and not being able to get any work done the other moment. I have figured this out and I'm working with it, not against it. So I'm having another look at the services that I'm offering. I'm also having another look at my values. I'm going to do some really deep work around how I want my time to make a difference in the lives of other people my family and myself in, hopefully, the decades that I will have on this earth. I will do this work soon.
Speaker 1:It all has to do with bullet journaling as well, and so what will probably be true for me is that I will probably have to be on that slow productivity I want to say train, but that's probably not the best word for this sentence a slow productivity pace and feel happy about working on the quality of what I offer instead of the quantity of what I offer, and this means that I really have to think differently than what is generally taught, being consistent in sending out newsletters every week. I've never been able to do it every week. I've been doing it bi-weekly, but sometimes that's been super hard and sometimes I've had enough energy to write a few of them so I can make up for any other weeks where I feel low on energy. But I'm still working towards that. You should be consistent and that consistency could also be once a month, right, and does it really need to be all that consistent? Can it be twice in one week when you're super excited and want to share a lot of things and then perhaps no meals for a month?
Speaker 1:I don't have the answer for that. The answer lies in do you want to work like that and how does your audience react to it? And this is quite a mindset change for me, because I really love and I really thrive on following rules in one way, but then I'm also very much. I think the word is demand, diverse or stubborn, I don't know. I just it doesn't even need to be an authority from somebody else. It could be my own authority, me telling myself that I need to do something and then just going right against it because I just don't wanna, and needing to send out the newsletter every two weeks and then, if I'm in the wrong kind of feeling vibe. I just don't want to do it and I will work against myself. This is what happens.
Speaker 1:It happens a lot to me and I'm trying to bring this all together so I can turn this into a podcast episode or newsletter, or both a podcast episode or newsletter, or both. Actually, this is a great example of the reality. Okay, let's rephrase, let's focus. So sometimes I love to do a little bit of philosophy, but in my life I don't have a philosophy partners where I can kind of talk out loud about all this stuff and they let me talk for long enough so that I can shake my thoughts and shape it. And it's really a hard thing to ask from another person, especially because what's in my mind doesn't always come out the way that I mean it. So I need a lot of time to process. But I can do it by talking to myself. So what I've done is I've talked into my phone using Otter and Otter is a note-taking app and my speech is recorded and then turned into notes, and then I use the notes to write a script and record this episode, as I've been doing and I'm doing right now. I can use the notes to write a blog post I can take snippets from it to use on social media, I can turn it into a newsletter, and all of that comes from an hour or less of talking into my phone in my space, in my workroom, where I'm sitting right now as well. At the same time, I can be polishing my nails, taking some notes in my bullet journal.
Speaker 1:This is such a happy place for me, and although it's not a button I can push I think I haven't really tried yet so usually I do this when I get the urge, when I need to get something out, I do this, and if I don't have the urge, I have not forced myself to do it yet. Have the urge, I have not forced myself to do it yet. But all of this together is a super productive way for me to do work. But I do it when I get the urge, which is not something that you can kind of put into the productive lingo way of doing things, because I kind of have to wait for it to happen. And this made me think of what they say about writers, that there's no such thing as a writer's block. Writing is a craft and you just have to do it every day and it will come, and I'm sure that's true for what I'm doing here. I'm just not there yet. I'm still on the road to figuring it all out.
Speaker 1:So for me, this can really be a great way to do a lot of my work and, at the same time, being super efficient, using not a lot of time but making use of my talents and my comfort zone. But then when I want to make a change and go out of my comfort zone, when I want to turn all of these thoughts into something that would be helpful for my business let's say, I don't know, I've done a bunch of these and I'm like, oh, this could be a book Then I really have to get out of my comfort zone and start a regular pace of working on the text that can then become a book, a regular pace of working on the text that can then become a book. Unless I do it completely self-published, then there's probably no deadline. But I don't work well if I don't have any deadline at all, so that won't work either. But I'm kind of trying to make the point that and also make the point for people that are not fully autonomous in everything that they do.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think this is a kind of way of looking at things and being kind to yourself in one way, staying in your comfort zone and taking care of yourself. Actually, that doesn't have to be the same thing like taking care of yourself and letting yourself thrive in the ways that are helpful to you and, at the same time, don't hide, be aware that sometimes you need to step out of where you are in order for things to change. So, as long as you are happy or content, you're happy and content there's no need to change anything. But if you feel like you're not making enough money or you're supposed to be somewhere in your life where you're not, then it needs some investigation and it needs some deep thinking. And after that deep thinking, you probably need to take some action.
Speaker 1:And within that action of always being super kind to yourself is not not hiding from truths and it's not hiding behind perfectionism, hiding behind your let's call them disabilities or specific things that take you a certain amount of energy or effort. You are still the captain of your ship. You can still say, okay, so I'll go to a festival and I'll make connections to people, even if that takes a lot of my energy and a lot of my time, because I know that these kinds of connections, in the end, will be much more valuable and will have taken less time to turn into opportunities, collaborations or clients than when you would have done it in the way that feels most comfortable to you, let's say, via Instagram DMs. So I believe that there is a push, a pull, a balance, a way of not necessarily being strict to yourself but being true to yourself and deciding what would be the best way forward is not always by staying in your comfort zone, but it's always to do it with care for yourself. So when you do go to that festival and when you really get drained, then make sure that you have a couple of days to recover from it, and that in itself, all of that is a mindset shift that I think would be helpful for a lot of people. So, in conclusion, I want to say that the reason why mindset matters so much for small business owners is because it affects how you deal with challenges, how you bounce back from setbacks and welcome change. Basically, it's a big deal, because it shapes how you navigate the path to success and growth. Be open to change, be open to taking action. Take action in the most messy way, it's fine, but do the thing so you can start the change you want to make for yourself, your business and the world at large.
Speaker 1:If you appreciate the free content and the work I put into this podcast, consider showing your support in a way that feels right to you. This could be by sharing episodes with friends, signing up for the newsletter or making a small monthly contribution through clicking the support the show link in the show notes. Or, when you're listening via apple podcast, click the subscription button and get monthly bonus episodes. Your support keeps the podcast going and aligns with the values we share. You'll find all the details in the show notes. Thank you so much for being a part of this movement and remember every stitch counts as we work together and create a pattern shift for you, your business, the crafters and the fashion industry.