Christy Tending is back for her sixth visit, and this time we’re talking about how our lives and businesses have recently evolved. It’s a living discussion, and one that started when we met to co-work at a cafe this summer and found ourselves diving into a conversation about how we’d recently had a very mindful and impactful experience of making decisions that have intrinsically changed who we are, and how we approach things.
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In this episode, Christy Tending and I talk about:
- How things can reach a point where it’s no longer possible for you to continue doing what once worked for you
- How Christy quit drinking and the reasons why she chose to make that change
- The intrinsic connection between making decisions as a consumer, capitalism, and politics
- How I called bullshit on the idea that “the other shoe was about to drop” in my personal life and marriage
- How nagging is a choice, and how to stop nagging (zen moment: just stop)
- How you can create a business or an offering, or a podcast, by focusing on the things that seem easy to you
- What’s easy for you is not necessarily easy for anyone else (and how that leads you to discount the power of what comes easily)
- Why it’s important to talk about the role of racism, alcoholism, climate, and other pieces of our heritage that we don’t find acceptable with our children
- Why and how stating what your business stands for, and how it has evolved helps you find your true audience (and why that’s OK)
- How we evolve and become more comfortable with stating what words fit us (anarchist, Buddhist, etc)
- The roles of studentship and conversely, being a “guru”
- Studentship: What it looks like to be a student of your own process, and of learning new things as you go
- The possible role of self doubt and the inner critic when you complicate things
- The balance of really not knowing the outcome of any situation, and finding our way to be confident and share our expertise around something
- The wisdom of leaning on others in your community for knowledge and leadership, instead of acting like one person knows everything (which they don’t)
- The importance of having community in business
- We all have access to the divine any time we want it, and we all have access to politics and power whenever we want it
- That capitalism tells us that if we are good at something and it is lucrative: we’re supposed to do that thing until we drop
Resources
Christy Tending’s beautiful new website
Christy Tending’s podcast: Tending Your Life