Have you ever felt that prickling discomfort when you think about trying something new in your business of your creative practice? You're not alone. We've all been there - the nervous anticipation, the self-doubt, and the fear of the unknown. But, what if you sat with that discomfort? What if, instead of being a barrier, it could be your stepping stone towards personal growth and achievement? That's what the October premium subscriber episode is all about.
This is a Premium Subscriber Episode available to those who financially support the podcast on Buzzsprout and Patreon. If you'd like to listen, you can sign up too! You'll get access to the full catalogue of Premium Subscriber Episodes!
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Have you ever felt that prickling discomfort when you think about trying something new in your business of your creative practice? You're not alone. We've all been there - the nervous anticipation, the self-doubt, and the fear of the unknown. But, what if you sat with that discomfort? What if, instead of being a barrier, it could be your stepping stone towards personal growth and achievement? That's what the October premium subscriber episode is all about.
This is a Premium Subscriber Episode available to those who financially support the podcast on Buzzsprout and Patreon. If you'd like to listen, you can sign up too! You'll get access to the full catalogue of Premium Subscriber Episodes!
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Speaker 1:
Hello everyone and welcome to the October Premium Subscriber edition of the podcast. As always, thank you all so much for supporting the podcast every month. We are growing just a little bit every month, so I know we've got some new listeners this month. Thank you so much for joining in. I hope you have an opportunity to go back and listen to the older episodes from the summer as well. Every time a new subscriber signs up, it is just such a boost to my morale and makes me feel like this is a worthwhile endeavor.
Speaker 1:
As we're in October, I hope that all of you are looking forward to the holiday season. I'm sure it's started for many of you. I'm sure several of you are doing market prep and getting excited for market season. I hope that you have a successful market season. I actually thought it was really cool to see some of the things that Etsy did in September, which I'm not sure what I want to say about that. On the one hand, it was very cool to see them being very proactive about the upcoming season, which I think all of us are very aware is probably going to be a little bit more of a challenge than previous years just because of the economic situation. It was nice to see them being very proactive with that. If you're not on Etsy. They did a couple of things. One thing they did is that they are now incentivizing it so that Etsy shops who bring traffic to the platform save a percentage on their Etsy fees, which is really great. It really is an incentive to get shops to promote the platform. The other thing they did is they ran a flash sale over a weekend in September where for everyone who spent $25, they got $5 off their purchase. They could use the code for this as many times as they liked over the course of the weekend. They could make multiple $25 purchases and save $5 each time. The beauty of it was for shop owners is that we still got the full amount of the order. It was Etsy that was covering the $5 off. Again, really big incentive for shop owners to drive traffic to the platform and hopefully make some early sales, which I think I just know from speaking to people that Etsy has been very slow since probably mid-July or so I know.
Speaker 1:
For me, august just fell off a cliff. I went from having really decent sales through the summer, which is normally quite slow, to just nothing, which was very worrisome. It was good to see them doing this. I generally don't drive traffic to Etsy because I have my own Shopify site, but this combo promotion of the $25 and the $5 off and then saving on your Etsy fees if you got people to use your Etsy link did motivate me to really promote it. I did a couple of newsletters to my list and I promoted it on social and really tried to get people over there, because it was a really great opportunity. It was nice to see them doing that. I think very often we get frustrated with Etsy when they raise our fees, but if raised fees go to support things like this and we also get rewarded for driving people to the platform in terms of having dollars taken off our fees, I think that I'm okay with those extra fees.
Speaker 1:
Anyway, today's episode is actually not about Etsy. It is about discomfort, allowing ourselves to be uncomfortable in our businesses. I think sometimes there's a lot of messaging out there currently about self-care, which is hugely important, protecting our mental health again hugely important and being gentle with ourselves and trusting our guts, and all of those things are extremely important. But one thing that we don't talk about, and almost seems like it's frowned upon, is allowing ourselves to feel uncomfortable. This episode is actually inspired by a conversation I was having with a podcast guest.
Speaker 1:
After every episode, after every recording session, usually I'll have a little chat with the guest about things that are of interest to the two of us but aren't necessarily something that either of us would want on a podcast, etc. This particular guest was considering starting her own podcast, so she wanted to have a quick chat about that, which I was more than happy to oblige her with. One of the things I said to her that I'd like to share with you is that I'm not a person I haven't really said out loud to anyone other than maybe the odd close friend is that doing this podcast is the most uncomfortable thing I do within my overall business umbrella. So, out of all the things that I have my fingers in be at my illustration, business, creating products, being a designer, being a writer, being a freelancer, a contractor, all those things the thing that makes me the most uncomfortable is doing this podcast, and it makes me uncomfortable every single time I sit down in front of the microphone, and I started to think about that as we were having the conversation. I started thinking about how, how, yeah, how this, every time I sit down in front of this microphone, I have butterflies in my stomach.
Speaker 1:
Every time I sit down in front of this microphone I have to push myself to show up. I'm always so glad that I did show up. Every time I sit down with a stranger who I've never spoken to, it is nerve wracking for me. But at the end of every recording session I feel so good. I'm almost always pumped up, fired up from talking to women who are super passionate about what they do, and I think if I had allowed myself to Skip the discomfort, I would have done myself a huge disservice within not just my business, but within my personal growth, and so that's why I feel like we need to talk about this more, about why it is absolutely okay to be uncomfortable when you do things within your business.
Speaker 1:
That's not to say that you should be having panic attacks or Utterly dreading things or doing things that you just don't like. You know, if something truly makes you feel utterly miserable or has a horrifically negative impact on your physical or mental health, you shouldn't. You know it's not worth it. And the discomfort I feel when I sit down to do this podcast. I don't have panic attacks, I am very nervous, I get very uncomfortable, but I don't have a physical panic attack when I sit down to do this. I I do know I have done this enough times Now that I know that the discomfort is a short term thing, and I think this is why it's important to do things that make you uncomfortable, because you won't know if the discomfort is going to be a short term thing unless you actually do the thing.
Speaker 1:
And what's really important is to think about, or to sit with, how you feel after you do the uncomfortable thing. If you are feeling Joy, if you are feeling like, hey, that was really fun, I'm so glad I did that. Or, wow, I got to meet a really cool new person because I Let myself be uncomfortable. Or I made some great sales because I let myself be uncomfortable. So I'm thinking about, you know, maybe doing a market for the first time. Maybe that's super uncomfortable for you, and yet how did you feel after the market, especially if it was a good market and you did well and you met lots of potential customers and you had people sign up for your email list and all those things? But if you don't force yourself to do the uncomfortable thing at least once or twice. You'll never know if it's truly uncomfortable and truly not healthy for you or if it's going to provide you with that rush that we all need in our business. So I think it really is important for us to Allow ourselves to be uncomfortable, to sit with it, to ask us, ask ourselves why we feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:
For me, I absolutely know why I feel uncomfortable I am introverted, I am shy, I don't think quickly on my feet in terms of when it comes to speaking. So doing a podcast where I have to interview people and where I have to actively listen and where I actively have to say something intelligent after they've spoken and then have to actively come up with another question relevant to what they just said, that's a lot for somebody like me who feels who's much more comfortable when I get to sit and I get to write things out and I get to think things through before I actually speak, having to do that on the spur of the moment extremely uncomfortable for me and yet I get a little bit better at it every single time. I've done over a hundred and I don't know how many episodes were at now. I think I've recorded A hundred and forty three at this point, something like that well over a hundred episodes. Every time. I get just a little bit better at it because I push through that discomfort and I think very often when we're and just to get back to allowing yourself to sit with those feelings like what is it about this that's making you uncomfortable?
Speaker 1:
I know for some people, the thing that makes them uncomfortable, that gives them that sense of discomfort, is the idea that they might succeed or that they might actually make some really good money. There are a lot of people who find that extremely uncomfortable, like what if people suddenly know who I am? What if I'm in the spotlight? Those are all things that can make us uncomfortable, and yet those are all things we need to do to order to be successful. We need to make money. We need to make money because we have bills to pay and we have things that we want to do with our lives and we want to be responsible adults who save for retirement and pay our taxes and do all those things. So we need to make money.
Speaker 1:
Success is a whole other thing because again and I think this is this is an interesting thing because success means something different for everyone and maybe being afraid that you'll be successful means you need to sit down and think about what your definition of success is. You can be successful and not be in the spotlight. That is quite possible Not entirely out of the spotlight, because you do have to show up. We all need to show up in order to To make the money. We have to paint the painting, we have to fire the mug, we have to write the words, we have to do the thing, and that is showing up. You know, if we didn't show up every day and we didn't make any money, we would be sitting in a room somewhere with nothing to eat. So so we do have to show up, and I think it's important to sit down and ask yourself what good success for you would feel like. What would it look like? Sit down and and Imagine it like if you could have the life that you really want to lead? What would that look like? Visualize it.
Speaker 1:
And maybe the reason you're feeling uncomfortable is because the success that you think might come May not be the success that you want. There are different types of success. Everybody has their own definition of it, so Maybe that's part of your discomfort, and maybe being more accepting of the success that you actually want to have would make that discomfort feel less. Maybe success to you means having more time to spend with your family. Maybe it means being financially stable doesn't necessarily have to mean that you want to make gobs of money or that you want to be an Internet or an Instagram or a tiktok superstar. You don't need to be any of those things. You can. You can live A quiet version of success. Success doesn't have to equal access. That's a line from a song that I love that has always stuck with me. When success is equated with access, that's when we run into problems. So, anyway, how you feel successful, that's a whole other episode, but it is one of the things to think about when you're sitting down and wondering what it is this making you so uncomfortable about what you're doing. The other thing that can make you uncomfortable Is Feeling less than confident with your skills. So perhaps Investing in your skills is a way that you would ease that discomfort.
Speaker 1:
I know for me, particularly with this podcast, as I've mentioned, one of the things that makes me Very nervous and very uncomfortable is Stumbling over my words and not being able to say what's in my head clearly To my guest or to my audience. I've already done it twice in this episode. You can probably hear it. One of the things I've had to remind myself is that there's an edit button. I can edit those things out. I can edit it so that I sound more coherent, but very often I don't, and people just have to listen to me Talking it out in the episode. But one of the things that I have realized I need to do is I need to do a lot of research. Research makes me feel more comfortable, so whenever I have a guest on the show, I try to learn as much about them as I possibly can so that if there is a wall in the conversation, I have something that I can go back to. So that if they are nervous and many of my guests who come on the show are nervous or or apprehensive, or just they've never done a podcast before and it's it's like public speaking for them and so by me doing my research, not only am I easing my own fears, but I'm also able to. Is there because I'm able to pull things out of them that they might not have been even thinking they were going to say? Just because I've done that extra amount of research? It makes me feel more secure in my ability to sound intelligent and to have my thoughts together. It's also one of the reasons I create a list of questions prior to an episode, and why I share with with the guest a few days beforehand Is so that both of us are feeling more comfortable. Just to lessen this, that discomfort.
Speaker 1:
I think being uncomfortable makes me a better podcaster, if that makes sense. I think being uncomfortable makes me a better illustrator. I, because I don't have formal training beyond a few high school art classes where I was told I was not very good. I tend to be very Proactive in Improving my skills, so I'm off. I'm always doing skill share classes and and things like that. I have a skill share membership. It's just part of my business expense every year. This is not sponsored by skill share, but there are other tools out there that can help you with that. There are classes, there are courses. Your library might offer things. I know my library has, like a free subscript access to Crafts, see, I think, where there's more classes on. So things like that I'm being uncomfortable Drives me to improve, drives me to make things easier, drives me to find better ways to do things, drives me to set up systems.
Speaker 1:
All of those things come out of discomfort and allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable. When you don't allow yourself to be uncomfortable and you just shut things down because you know it would make you very anxious or or Just freaks you out, you're, you're not even giving yourself a chance to see how it would make you feel, to see if it could lead to something. And, honestly, the things that have come out of doing this podcast, the positives that have come out of it, far away the negatives and there's a lot of negatives, there's a lot of negatives from doing this podcast. There are days where I absolutely feel like quitting. But then sitting down and having an amazing conversation with an amazing woman, like it's all worth it. All that discomfort is worth it. All that discomfort disappears and, to be really honest, the discomfort usually disappears within the first five minutes of recording.
Speaker 1:
And the same when I'm drawing, when I sit down to draw something that I don't necessarily know how to draw or I'm feeling Just like that's that I could never do that style, I could never create that kind of look it. It forces me or it drives me forces me is not the right word. It drives me to To try it like well, like, like, at least, let's at least just try it and see what happens. And very often, the thing that happens is not the thing that I was necessarily trying to achieve, but I wind up achieving something completely different. I wind up doing something I would never have done before. I wind up pushing myself further in a different direction. It very often results in something positive, and so this, I think, is why it's so important for us to just give ourselves some time. Give yourself some time.
Speaker 1:
The next time you're feeling resistance or discomfort to something that you're doing, sit with it for a few minutes. Pay attention to it. Ask yourself why am I feeling this way? What is it that I am afraid of? Because very often, discomfort is something that I'm afraid of, because very often discomfort, I think, is accompanied by fear. What is it that you're afraid of? Are you afraid that you'll fail? There's nothing wrong with failing if you're failing forward.
Speaker 1:
Trying something for the first time and not succeeding at it is not a failure. It's a win. You tried something you've never done before. That's a win. Maybe you didn't like it, maybe it didn't work out, but you still tried something you had never done before, and that is absolutely a win. Try to second time see if it goes better the next time. Maybe a little. Maybe I won't. And that's not to say that we, you know you should persevere through, through everything. The pros have to outweigh the cons, but you have to give yourself the opportunity to see the pros in the cons and the only way you'll see that is by Trying to do the thing, by sitting with the discomfort, by pushing through it at least once and seeing when it gets.
Speaker 1:
You know, it's like you know when people jump out of airplanes. This is not something I have any interest in doing, like I just don't. And that's okay. If you don't have any interest in something, don't do it. You don't have to do it. It life's too short to waste it on doing things that you have zero interest in.
Speaker 1:
But knowing the difference between Something you have zero interest in and saying no to something that you know you've always thought looks kind of cool but you couldn't do it, you're showing a little bit of interest there. You you at least, are interested enough to think that it's cool or that it might be fun, or You're seeing other people having fun and use your life that looks kind of neat, but I just couldn't do it. That's very different from having zero interest. I have zero interest in jumping out of a plane. Other people do, but you often hear from people that it was a hugely scary thing for them because obviously you're jumping out of a plane. That's terrifying. But it's also interesting how many of the people who do it talk about how utterly exhilarating it was and how the exhilaration and the rush far outweighed the discomfort that they had jumping out of that airplane. That's a very extreme example.
Speaker 1:
Most of us are not doing something that extreme, but for a lot of us, the things that we're afraid of trying are often I don't want to say very small, and I don't want to diminish them. I'm not sure what the right word to be to use here would be, but things that are maybe things that don't have life or death connotations. Most of the things that we do every day in our creative practices and in our businesses don't have life and death consequences. We're not neurosurgeons, we're not operating heavy equipment. For most of us it is sitting down with our creativity. It is talking to people who we wouldn't normally talk to. It's doing things that we've never done before.
Speaker 1:
There's always a little bit of fear and discomfort when you do something for the very first time. Think about when you learned how to drive. There was probably some fear and nervousness. You were probably very excited. Most of us are, because we know that if we learn how to drive, driving equals freedom. And when you're 16, that is huge. And so, as a frightened or as nervous as we might be, we know that learning to do this is going to open up so many doors for us. That's actually a good analogy. It's going to grant us freedom, is going to give us the ability to get a job, to earn money of our own, to be able to go see our friends without having to wait for our parents to drive us somewhere, to not be at the mercy of a bus schedule, to Be able to go on trips, road trips, camping vacations with friends. It might mean being able to live in a different city or to be able to live in a rural area where there is no transit. So we know all the freedoms that learning to drive can grant us, but we also know there's going to be a lot of discomfort in getting to that point where we actually have a driver's license. So it's not just learning to drive, it's actually taking the driver's test.
Speaker 1:
Those are things that make us nervous going on a first date. Why do we go in? First dates are always weird and awkward not always almost always weird and awkward. We do it because we're hoping to find a person to spend our time with, to. I think most humans want that. We want that companionship, we want that romantic partner, but in order to do it, we got to go on a lot of really weird, uncomfortable First dates. So why should it be any different in our business? Why should it be? You know, we have to do a lot of weird, uncomfortable things in order to be able to sell at a market, to have a solo exhibition, to create a podcast, to start a YouTube channel, to try a different style of, to try a different style in our artwork or whatever it is that we create, to start a product line. Starting a product line was extremely uncomfortable for me, but I pushed through that and so, yeah, it was a very interesting conversation and it really made me think about why sitting with discomfort and allowing ourselves to feel uncomfortable is so important.
Speaker 1:
Discomfort and feeling uncomfortable always lead to growth in some way, even if the growth is just learning that that is not something that you are interested in doing. That's growth. You've just eliminated something from all the things out there that there are for you to do. You have eliminated something. You've tried it. You know it's not for you. You can move on and stop having a fear of missing out because you're not doing that thing that everyone else is doing. Or you may discover that you love it, or you may discover that you're really good at something, or you may discover that this brings in sales, or you get to meet really cool people, or you grow your community by doing these things that make you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:
So I just want to encourage all of you to the next time you feel that discomfort or that resistance for something, sit with it. Take a moment, ask yourself what it is that's making you uncomfortable. The answer will come. You know deep down what's making you uncomfortable. You know what it is. You know that it's like I don't like talking to people. I don't know what if somebody laughs at me, what if what I make looks really ugly? We know the things. They're in our head. Sit down, but then sit and ask yourself, if I do this thing that makes me uncomfortable, what could happen? What could it mean for me. I make a list of those and look at the pros and cons and often the pros outweigh the cons. And so sit down and do the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Try it.
Speaker 1:
That's why I keep showing up with this podcast. It makes me uncomfortable every single week but I still show up because the benefits over the last three years I'm in my fourth year now have far outweighed the negatives. I've met really cool people. I've had some amazing conversations. I have learned lots of new skills. I have had the opportunity to meet people I would never get to meet. It has given me ideas for things that I can do within my own business. Listening to other people talk about what's worked in their businesses has given me ideas of ways that I can improve my own. All of those things have come out of me feeling uncomfortable and, as I said, that discomfort I've found ways to make it less uncomfortable by prepping, by doing research, by learning new skills, by practicing.
Speaker 1:
I practice before I record an episode, especially with a guest. I can't tell you, I probably spend a good 40 minutes walking around my laundry room practicing the opening for every new episode, especially when there's a guest and I have to introduce them just to make that discomfort less uncomfortable. So those are the things that you need to do. But, yes, sit with the discomfort and let it wash over you and figure out what it is that's making you uncomfortable. And then sit down and figure out what you can do to ease that discomfort so that you can get to the really good stuff that's on the other side.
Speaker 1:
That's it for this month. Once again, thank you all so much for supporting the show. It really truly means so much to me and it really does make me want to keep going and sit through the discomfort one more week. So thank you so much, everyone. I hope you have a very successful October. I hope that you sell lots. I hope that you sign up new people to your communities. I hope you grow your newsletter lists. I hope that you make money and I will talk to you all again in November. We'll have a pre-holiday check-in then. That's it for this month. Thanks everyone.