So for weeks now, I have been so
looking forward to doing this episode
to update you on everything that was
going on behind the scenes, and I'm
sitting here literally with a giant
knot clench in my stomach because
I've had such an unexpected emotional.
Eruption, for lack of a better word,
about this whole thing this morning.
I'm still feeling pretty raw about it,
but we have deadlines, so we have to
record this episode today and make sure
it gets ready for launching on Tuesday.
But I just wanna let you know,
this is one of the most difficult
weeks I've had to show up here.
Every journey starts with
a choice and mine is a bet.
For one year, I'm gambling
on energy over strategy.
No more forcing and no pushing.
Just the courage to show up.
And see what happens when
reality becomes my playground.
This isn't a podcast.
It's a real time experiment
in the lab of my life.
Welcome to the bet.
I wanna say something before I get
into any of this, because I know
myself and I know that by the time
this episode actually comes out.
In a few days on Tuesday, there is a
chance, not a small chance, that I'm
going to feel completely different about
everything that I'm gonna say right now.
There's a very weird thing, I guess,
about recording something when you're raw.
I haven't fully processed where all these
emotions are coming from or what they
mean, but I'm still like capturing it.
In the truth of the moment, and I very
well recognize that that truth and
the meaning I give to it is probably
gonna shift before anyone hears it.
So there's a part of me that's
like, don't put this out there.
People are gonna think you're
stuck in some kind of loop
when they hear the episode.
And maybe that's not actually true.
Maybe I'm just processing it.
But that's also the entire
point of this podcast.
I have committed.
To documenting the real
actual journey that I'm on.
And the real thing right now is
the knot in my stomach and some
stuff that I need to work out.
And part of that's gonna be out
loud, I guess, 'cause just the
timing of how all of this lands.
So here we are.
I'm gonna give you some context
first because there's something
that happened in March.
That I never really
talked about on the show.
I teased about it a little bit, but last
month I mentioned that I had something
big coming, or had a project that had
been kind of in the works, and I knew
I was planning to launch it in March.
It wasn't really ready to talk
about it because it hadn't been
fully birthed out into the world.
I don't like to leak my energy on
something until the baby is born.
That, that's kind of how I direct things.
I don't like to put something out
there until it is actually out there
able to stand on its own and be a
physical thing that we can point to.
So for seven months, I
have kept it mostly quiet.
Maybe like dropping an occasional hint,
but never saying anything specific.
And today I'm gonna tell you it's.
A second podcast.
An actual podcast.
Podcast, and it's called Useful Thinking.
Useful Thinking.
Launched last week, and I have been
building toward this podcast for over
two years, working on it, refining
it, sitting with the structure of
how I want it to be, the purpose, the
intention, knowing that I had a lot of
the ingredients, but the full recipe.
For what I wanted to create
hadn't quite come together yet.
It was like I knew that I needed to
really do all of the internal work,
enough of the internal work to know
exactly what I wanted it to be.
I needed to ground and root myself
into this so deeply because my
vision for useful thinking is big.
It is really my life's work and
my life's mission to help people.
Learn the operating system of
the mind so that they are able to
entertain only thoughts that are
useful for what it is that they're
trying to create in this world.
So my two things that are getting my full
focus are my substack and useful thinking.
There are the things I am most clear
about in terms of what I'm here to create.
My work in terms of my coaching
and teaching at the university
is separate from that.
Of course, that's getting my
attention and energy as well.
But in terms of creation,
those are my babies.
So I knew since.
Probably last November or December that
I was going to launch this in March.
That was the date that really
felt alive for me and I ended
up launching it on March 31st.
Waited till the last day of the
month, even though I had the, the
episodes recorded, I put it off.
I'm gonna tell you what happened when I
did, because it's the reason I think I
have a knot in my stomach this morning.
I posted the launch on my Instagram and I
sent the promo episode out into the world,
and then episode one dropped the following
day and no one in my immediate circle of
friends, like my close little girl gang,
said anything, not a word to be fair.
It's not like I had texted them directly
and said, Hey, I did a thing and
I'm launching this and sat down with
anyone and said, Hey, this is happening
and this is what it means to me.
I just posted it the way you post things
when you're building something in public.
Right, and some part of me though,
expected the people who know me
and know what I've been working on
and know where my energy is going,
especially the last few years.
I think a part of me expected that they
would notice this, and then something else
happened to kinda layer on top of this.
Someone in my circle had a
really big win this week as well.
They shared it with our little group
and everyone was celebrating them
enthusiastically and rightfully so.
I was right in there celebrating too.
The whole time this other layer was
sitting underneath it and I went
to Mike and I said to him, do you
understand what this actually is?
Do you get that?
This is the week I launched.
Useful thinking like this is the
culmination of everything I have
been building toward for years,
and it has been something that I
have just worked on deliberately.
Until I had put in enough time and enough
focus and attention to know exactly what
I wanted it to be, and now it exists.
I did it.
I've been wanting to do this for years.
It's one of those things I've been wanting
to do and I've been wanting to do it in
a way that feels meaningful, that could
help as many people as possible, and
I did it, and he just didn't get that.
He was like, oh yeah, I guess I didn't
realize it was such a big deal to you.
I was like, how is this
not landing with people?
Like I don't get it?
And I realized, I thought I had healed
that part of myself, that part of
myself that expects the people closest
to me to witness the things I'm doing.
And I realized we never heal these parts.
We just reach deeper
layers of the tenderness.
And this layer really caught me
off guard because I really did
believe, and I do believe that I
have done so much work on this.
I have programmed myself.
Over a very long time, a sustained
amount of time to love the
journey more than the destination.
And thank God I have done that 'cause I
truly have fallen in love with the journey
of becoming the kind of person it takes to
do something that is far more satisfying
to me than the actual thing itself.
I have found such a reward in
the building versus the arriving.
What I had to do in order to arrive that
is the work I celebrate, really not the
creation of the thing, but how I've had to
create myself in order to do that thing.
And so this week when I finally
got to this destination that I have
been focused on, I actually launched
Useful Thinking and I saw all the
closest people around me just continue
to move throughout their days.
Like no big deal.
And I told myself logically, I'm like,
huh, maybe people are just so used to
me creating things that this doesn't
seem like anything unusual to anyone.
I don't know.
I don't know why it hit me like that,
but thankfully I have built all of
the internal reward into the doing,
which means like there shouldn't
be that much left in the arriving.
So the milestone didn't deliver like
what milestones are supposed to deliver
when we think about them, because I had
already metabolized my growth along the
way, and I've got to experience what
living in that growth actually feels like.
I've got to experience what.
Three years of showing up and building and
refining and growing what that looks like.
And by the time it went live, I
actually launched the podcast.
I realized I've already
lived that I am that.
So on one level, that is the
epitome of all my work succeeding.
But on another level, this is
where I'm gonna get emotional.
It's very strange kind of loneliness.
It feels lonely to reach something you've
been moving yourself toward for years and
feel like there's no one to share it with.
That feels lonely to me.
You know that absence of
fanfare and comradery and.
Things I didn't realize.
I was still waiting for some,
the little girl inside of me was
probably waiting to be recognized.
So I've been sitting
with that this morning.
I did not expect that
to come up, but it did.
Uh, and I just have to
let it be what it is.
I took a long walk to really
process this and, um, this is
the part no one talks about.
This is the part no one talks about.
The people who are out there building
things in public and they share
all the wins or they share after
it has worked out, they share their
lessons after they've learned them.
It feels very clean and very
neat and very inspiring, and
it makes you wanna take action.
But here I am sharing it while
it's kind of a cock off feeling
and we don't have a resolution.
But that is what I committed to
doing here, and this is one of
those times where that commitment
is gonna be what carries me through.
So that's where I'm at right now.
Moving on from that,
let's get into the stats.
Hopefully this will help.
Anytime I feel emotional, I try
to go do something like that.
Engages the logical
part of my brain, right?
So my limbic system is in high
gear right now as I got it.
Activate my prefrontal cortex.
Let's look at some stats or I go like
organize a dresser drawer, something.
Okay, let's talk about my VA Instagram.
We had 3,512 views for the month
of March, and I only made 14 pieces
of content, which is less than
last month, which was already low.
Yeah, I don't know.
Even if I wanna talk about Instagram
anymore, I'll come back to it 'cause.
I do have a couple things
to think about that.
I got 31 new followers somehow,
I don't know how that even works.
Okay.
The bet, this podcast that you're
listening to, we had 137 downloads in
March for a total of 828, really steady.
It's basically the same amount that we
had in February, so no growth holding
steady Substack, Substack baby number two.
Counting my babies as Useful Thinking
podcast and Substack like in terms
of what I'm creating this world,
the things I really am nurturing.
This is where the month
really had some movement.
This is where earlier in the month,
I was like, how is this happening?
I had a huge energetic shift.
I think I've talked about this
in previous episodes about.
Making Substack a weekly
deliberate thinking practice.
Like this is one space you can go
to where, you know, if you read
the article every week, you are
going to be developing your ability
to focus and direct your mind.
Okay?
So since I made that energetic
shift, something has happened in the
real world, it's crazy because my
followers went from 43 to 79 and I
gained like 20 or 23 new subscribers.
After three months of nothing,
maybe three new subscribers
over a period of three months.
I'd have to go back and look
at the stats from the previous
month, but it was frustrating.
I know I did an episode on
why is my substack not growing
when this is so important.
This work is so important to me.
I'm putting so much effort into it.
It's not growing at all.
All of a sudden it I, I'm getting
like subscribers almost every day.
So that feels really exciting.
And then my total views.
We're up as well.
And what's interesting is I think
that the number of views I had in
March were like 670 something views.
Normally.
All my views are the articles
that I wrote that month.
Okay?
So I went and looked and of the 671 views,
about 500 of those 499 of those views.
Were of my current March articles, which
means the remaining 170 are people who
are going back to read my older articles.
And that was a detail that I wanted
to point out because something I
really like about Substack is you
truly do build a growing library
of very valuable, useful content.
So that's the first month I've seen that.
Almost all of my views just go to
the current articles each month.
So to see that I felt like that was
really worth noting in my statistics.
Okay.
Coming back to Instagram, I continue
to watch my own resistance increase
month after month, and I have been
looking for some gear that I can shift.
Some way that I can shift my thinking
or shift my framework for what Instagram
is, so that it fully activates me
into being consistent and creating
content on there every single day.
I know all about how to do that.
I am a master at shifting
thoughts and shifting.
My beliefs about something in
order to drive action, and what I
realized is that it's layered for me.
There's not one gear to shift,
there's not one change that
I can make to get me moving.
Again, it's not, it's not binary, right?
Cars have very definite gears.
Humans don't always work that way.
There's never just one thing.
We might have to shift
a gear here and then.
Adjust our bearing over here and
then change the, the, the temperature
control so that we're, the thermostat
is set at a different level and then
maybe we put on a specific song, like
there's all these different variables to
adjust in the way humans are motivated.
The one thing I can really point to
is I think I feel out of integrity
and not because I'm not posting.
When I said I was gonna post, I
feel out of integrity because my
work, the stuff that I get lit up
about is all about teaching people
how to direct their own attention.
And Instagram is specifically
engineered to hijack our attention.
Every time I sit down to write a post
and create a hook that is designed.
To catch someone in the scroll,
to have them stop and read
what it is that I have to say.
I feel like I'm doing exactly what
I teach people to interrupt, and it
creates this inner attention in me.
I can see why that's important.
It's like, yeah, but I wanna get
their attention because I'm gonna
help them with their attention.
I, it feels manipulative.
I feel manipulative.
I heard Gary v.
Gary Vaynerchuk, if you've heard of him
talk recently, and he's just like planting
his flag on this belief that anyone
building a business right now should
think of themselves as a media company.
You are a media company first and
foremost before you're anything else.
You're a media company first who also
happens to provide X, Y, Z service.
I heard that in my whole like being
kind of pushed back against it.
'cause I am not trying
to build a media company.
I mean, I love creating useful content,
but my focus is on connecting with
the people of this world who are
trying to do something significant
so that I can help them build.
The mental architecture, the
mental structure to support
whatever they're trying to create.
And I don't think those people are
waiting to be caught by some hook.
He was talking about how you
should be posting on every single
platform multiple times a day.
So here I sit, I've got
no clean answer still.
It's one of those things, it's
like, when am I gonna make
myself sick enough to either.
Change something radically about
it or like commit fully to it.
I don't know yet.
This is me, like I, I get sick
of talking about it, but I'm
also here to tell the truth.
So that's where I'm at with it right now.
There we are people seven months
in and I've got such big, oh,
another big win I had this month.
I did two.
Different group talks, which I loved.
I love, I don't really
even talk about those.
Those are kind of word of mouth situations
that pop up when I get invited to, to
craft a presentation for groups, and
I found that so amazing this month.
I really, really lit up by doing
that because I designed a couple of
custom talks for different groups.
So, yeah, that was another thing I
should have included in my monthly sta.
I almost forgot it.
So there we are.
We're seven months in.
I continue to do the work.
I feel I can't help but feeling like
this is one of those moments that are
where you can't see what lies ahead,
but you're so, so close to something.
Because I am having such emotional
reactions about things and
I'm feeling such resistance.
It has to be an indication.
Biologically that I am right
there at my next level.
Otherwise, my brain would not be
responding this way if I were not in
some kind of new territory that felt
either unsafe, unfamiliar, or like it
was gonna cost too much energy to do.
My brain would be fully supporting this.
And I find so much pleasure
already in my work that I know.
It's not that I teach this after all
of the emotionality of this morning.
I had to physically
remind myself to smile.
I did that right before
I picked up the mic.
I did that and I picked up my
little black onyx tower crystal to
ground into what I know to be true.
Told myself smile.
Give myself a specific,
deliberate instruction to my body.
'cause I know when that
resistance gets loud.
When your ego is working that
hard to make you feel like you
are behind or like you missed
something, or maybe you were fooling
yourself, maybe you got this wrong.
Nobody else can see what you're doing.
Everything feels like it's too
much to manage for me right
now, that's usually a signal.
That means the proximity
to that new level.
Getting closer and closer,
something that must be close, and
that helps me move myself forward.
So sitting with that, and now I
gotta go find a dress for a wedding
that I'm gonna be at in less than
two weeks and finish my taxes.
But month seven is done.
So I got that off the checklist.
So I hope you're all just
doing fabulous out there.
And.
This was a real check-in 100%.
Sending you all love
and go bet on yourself.