Latest / Many Things with Steph Libby / It’s OK to Quit

Transcript

It’s OK to Quit · Many Things with Steph Libby

• 0:05
  Here's something probably almost no one is telling you.
• 0:07
  It's okay to give up there.
• 0:10
  I said it.
• 0:11
  It's okay to give up.
• 0:12
  It's okay to say, I don't think this is for me.
• 0:15
  It's to say, I don't like this.
• 0:17
  It's even okay sometimes to say, I'm not ready for this.
• 0:21
  If I don't give myself permission to quit, if I don't like something, then I never start anything.
• 0:28
  Here's a very small example.
• 0:30
  I started taking up paint by numbers this summer to help give me a creative outlet that wasn't writing.
• 0:36
  I'm not good at drawing, but I wanted to create something beautiful.
• 0:40
  I wanted to make something with my hands.
• 0:41
  So I bought a cheap kit and it's fine, but I don't love it.
• 0:46
  It's just not a hobby for me.
• 0:48
  So.
• 0:49
  I kind gave up.
• 0:50
  I still go back to it from time to time, but it's not the first hobby I reached for when I am looking for something to do Now, old me would've been wracked with guilt.
• 1:01
  I would've beaten myself up about spending the money on this kit that was now.
• 1:05
  Going unused, which would probably remind me of the time I had my parents buy me a really expensive art kit for Christmas, which I never ended up using.
• 1:16
  I would've let it remind me of all the other times I started something and gave up.
• 1:21
  I'd called myself a quitter.
• 1:23
  I beat myself up about it, punish myself, be reluctant to allow myself to try the next new thing that I wanna try, because I gave this one thing up.
• 1:33
  The trick is knowing when and why you're giving up.
• 1:36
  And if the reasons you're giving up are really valid enough to give up because you can't put everything.
• 1:41
  But playing devil's advocate with yourself about giving up and arriving to that conversation with yourself in an honest, transparent, forthcoming way is really difficult.
• 1:53
  And it takes practice because it's really easy to lie to ourselves.
• 1:57
  We can convince ourselves of anything.
• 2:00
  We know ourselves far too well.
• 2:02
  If the reason you're giving up on something is out of fear or trepidation or because you feel too uncomfortable, that's not when you give up it's the start of the new year, and I bet all of us are trying something new as part of our resolutions.
• 2:18
  Maybe it's going to the gym, maybe it's taking some kind of class of a college course, a community college class.
• 2:24
  Maybe you're taking a pottery class or an art class, or joining a book group.
• 2:29
  Whatever your resolution is, you're probably at the point where the excitement and newness is wearing off, and you're left facing all the hard work you've committed to by taking this thing on.
• 2:41
  And I'm telling you, if something genuinely doesn't feel right, it's okay to look at it closely and potentially quit.
• 2:49
  There is power in quitting.
• 2:51
  Let me give you an example.
• 2:53
  Many, many moons ago, back in the early 2000 tens, I tried starting a blog.
• 3:00
  It was the thing to do back then.
• 3:01
  In the same way that we have so many people making money and a living being content creators, there were a lot of people making money blogging, and I wanted to be one of them.
• 3:11
  I really, really did.
• 3:13
  I was in my early twenties.
• 3:15
  I was working overnights at a gas station.
• 3:17
  I was going to school during the day.
• 3:20
  I was getting my MFA.
• 3:22
  I was working on a novel and I wanted to get paid for writing.
• 3:25
  That's what I went to college for.
• 3:28
  At worst, I thought blogging my open doors to freelancing, to freelance writing for blogs or other magazines.
• 3:36
  I thought a blog about writing would help me find and build an audience for when I eventually published a book.
• 3:42
  So it made like a practical sense Beyond the monetary, and at best, I'd make enough revenue on my site to quit my job, my day job.
• 3:49
  So I had more time to write.
• 3:51
  That of course, didn't happen.
• 3:54
  It probably could have if I kept my head down, but I could tell the whole time that something just didn't feel right.
• 4:01
  It didn't, I didn't feel pulled to the work.
• 4:03
  I didn't necessarily, at that time wanna share my life.
• 4:07
  Um.
• 4:09
  It was kind of depressing to be writing about writing when I was kind of struggling with writing at the time and finishing my thesis.
• 4:16
  I couldn't keep up with the speed at which you needed to post to be successful story of my life, honestly.
• 4:22
  I just wasn't feeling inspired to write, or at least not that kind of writing.
• 4:27
  I was spending more time writing about writing and learning to code so I could manage a website than actually writing my book.
• 4:36
  It felt like a big distraction taking me away from all the other things I actually wanted to be doing, like writing fiction.
• 4:42
  So what did I do? Um, I, I decided to double down so hard that I spent the next year completely miserable and burnt out.
• 4:53
  I started following a small website for millennial women in their twenties, um, think Elite Daily and the every girl in their Prime.
• 5:02
  And this website was looking for writers, and I thought writing for someone else might solve my consistency problem.
• 5:09
  Someone else is gonna give me deadlines and I'm gonna have to stick to them.
• 5:13
  They're gonna have topics that they want me to write on, and that'll help alleviate the strain of constantly coming up with new ideas.
• 5:19
  And I'll get readers and followers in the meantime and, and then maybe I'll get some momentum and I can focus back on my own blog.
• 5:26
  I wrote a lot about movies and TV and struggling to find myself in my twenties.
• 5:31
  I wanted to be more like a Gawker or Jezebel writer where I could write long earnest personal essays about millennial and post-grad life, where writing a recap about the latest episode of girls was more of an exploration of self and the disappointment of young adulthood and the struggles of learning to adult.
• 5:52
  But this website didn't want that.
• 5:54
  I thought they did.
• 5:55
  It seemed like they did, and that was kind of what they were, I think, aiming for originally.
• 6:01
  But now they wanted short quippy writing.
• 6:06
  They wanted a gif after every paragraph.
• 6:08
  They wanted listicles and humor like buzzfeed.
• 6:11
  They didn't want essays.
• 6:13
  They didn't want earnestness.
• 6:15
  The editors would compliment me on my writing and point of view and tell me.
• 6:20
  To completely rewrite it and go in a completely different direction.
• 6:24
  It was really disheartening.
• 6:26
  I kept trying and slugging along and no writing I've ever done has ever felt more like work more than when I was writing for that website.
• 6:37
  And worse.
• 6:37
  It was unpaid.
• 6:39
  I wasn't making a penny.
• 6:42
  There was no incentive for being a popular writer or having the most viewed article that week or getting traffic, um, to your article from social, even though they were running ads on the site.
• 6:56
  And I knew that they were making some sort of money, not maybe not crazy money, but they were making something, but the writers weren't seeing any of it.
• 7:05
  I convinced myself, like many young digital writers at the time that I was just paying my dues.
• 7:11
  That's what happens.
• 7:12
  You, you had to work for free to build up a portfolio and a big enough fan base to get hired.
• 7:17
  Someplace where I could write the things I wanted to write and get paid to do it, you had to prove yourself.
• 7:23
  And so I was trying to prove myself because if I didn't, there were dozens, if not hundreds of other people who would have killed to get this chance to write unpaid for these kinds of websites.
• 7:36
  And then came the last series of articles I wrote for this website.
• 7:41
  I landed the coveted role of Girls Recap, or everyone wanted to write about girls.
• 7:47
  It was the show.
• 7:50
  What I didn't realize when I took the role was that I was committing to watching the episode at 9:00 PM on Sunday, I think it was Sundays, and then furiously spending the next two, three hours writing, editing, and researching GIF so that I could submit an article overnight to be reviewed and published the next morning.
• 8:07
  It was daunting and unnecessary, and it wore me out.
• 8:10
  I was full of anxiety all week, worried about that.
• 8:16
  Nine to midnight, chaos and worse.
• 8:20
  It made me doubt myself.
• 8:21
  The writing wasn't great because it wasn't my style, and because I don't write well under that much pressure with that tight of a deadline, it's hard to be funny at 11:00 PM.
• 8:33
  When you didn't even have a concept for an article until an hour ago.
• 8:37
  Plus, I was becoming so resentful that I didn't wanna write anything else during the week, so I was also becoming bored and the editors were becoming frustrated and because the writing really wasn't that great, it wasn't helping me get that following that I was after.
• 8:52
  It was a poor representation of my writing.
• 8:54
  It just felt bad all the way around.
• 8:59
  And then on top of these ridiculous deadlines, they wanted us to also write and design social posts.
• 9:04
  And I thought, isn't that someone else's job? I'm already writing for free.
• 9:09
  And now I had to pay for a design program subscription so I could make social media graphics to post.
• 9:16
  We started giving angry weekly emails about how not enough of us were posting or tagging each other or submitting enough articles and that we needed to commit to at least three articles a week from now on.
• 9:29
  The culture within the writing team felt overly competitive, and we didn't wanna shout out each other because we wanted all the glory for ourselves, even though there was really not a ton of glory to be shared.
• 9:41
  Meanwhile, some of the writers were getting promoted to editors and branching out to other websites to do more free writing because a lot of them were still in school and didn't have jobs yet, so they had all day to write.
• 9:54
  I had heard a.
• 9:55
  That the editors were making a very small wage for taking on those roles, and I was so jealous.
• 10:00
  I'd been busting my butt and getting nowhere, and then I found out the founder of the website landed a fancy sounding title at a big media conglomerate.
• 10:10
  I realized this person was building a career off my back while I voluntarily tanked my own.
• 10:16
  I didn't have the energy to look for a better job, to stay connected to my own blog, to stay focused on my MFA thesis.
• 10:24
  I was floundering while someone else was flourishing.
• 10:27
  She clearly used being the founder of this website, which had gained some mild popularity at that point to build a, to build a successful digital marketing career.
• 10:36
  So after that season of girls was done, I quit.
• 10:41
  Even though everything was telling me that this was a bad fit, it was still a really, really, really difficult decision to make.
• 10:50
  I lost a lot of sleep over that decision.
• 10:53
  It turned out I just didn't like blog writing.
• 10:56
  At least not like that.
• 10:57
  Not in that environment.
• 10:59
  A couple years after I quit the website, the founder was in the process of publishing a self-help book and was going to go on a small press tour, and her job titles just kept getting fancier and fancier.
• 11:12
  It took a long time to move past the resentment and sadness of all that wasted effort, but it was a good lesson.
• 11:20
  I learned it was okay to quit.
• Probably a couple years after that, the blogging craze was kind of dying off, and so I didn't renew my website.
• I quit on that too, and that was really hard because that did feel like admitting defeat.
• But you know what happened? Instead of writing blog articles that I didn't even care about, I found a call for submissions to a literary anthology, drafted a new story and got it published, and I even got paid.
• It was the most satisfying $200 I've ever made, which was way better than slogging through some listicle.
• So when I say it's okay to quit, I don't mean quit everything and let fear dictate your life.
• If you hate the gym and wanna quit the gym, that's totally fine as long as you're just quitting the gym and working out at home instead, or, or maybe you prefer getting your exercise in the fresh air.
• And just because you quit something doesn't mean you can't change your mind later.
• Maybe the gym isn't right for you right now, and that's okay, but that door doesn't have to stay closed forever.
• Maybe joining a book group in person is too much pressure for you.
• You don't like that public speaking aspect of it.
• Maybe finding an online book group or a Reddit thread or, following your favorite books to grammar and, and making sure you're contributing to the comments.
• Maybe that's a better first step for you and, and you consider the in-person book group later.
• Do you see what I mean? Like, you can, like soft quit some things.
• I am here making a podcast about my life and the journey I'm on.
• I've spent a lot of time talking about my creativity and my writing, and so it's really not that different from blogging, but I love it more than blogging and it doesn't feel like work.
• I truly enjoy the time I get to spend talking into this microphone, preparing what I'm gonna talk about, finding topics, reading the books that help.
• Keep me on this journey listening to other podcasts that motivate me.
• I love all of that.
• That does not feel like work.
• Chewing up here, editing, learning new skills, learning new software that doesn't feel like work, but blogging felt like work.
• Sometimes it's just simply not the right time.
• Like I've told myself many times that like maybe eventually I will start blogging again.
• Maybe I'll do it as an extension of this podcast.
• Maybe I'll create a substack, a newsletter or something.
• As much as you try to force it, it still won't be right.
• Sometimes it's just simply not the right time.
• As a people pleaser, it's really easy to find myself sticking with things even when I don't want to.
• Growing up, my parents were adamant that you have to finish everything.
• You start, and I get that they were trying to raise a winner.
• They, they didn't want their kid quitting everything.
• They wanted their kid to know the value of commitment.
• Teamwork and hard work and sacrifice and that you have to move through to get to the next thing.
• But it also meant that I spent a lot of time feeling like I had no control over my own life and feeling bad at everything and, and feeling like a disappointment.
• Every season they'd make me try a different sport and I'd have to stick with it.
• I remember trying out for basketball and being so awful that even as a little kid, the coach didn't let me play.
• I felt horrible.
• Even worse were sports like softball, where I was somehow worse than basketball.
• But that coach had a rule that everybody played regardless, which I fucking hated because I always seemed to go up to the plate when bases were loaded and the game was on the line, and I could feel the collective sigh of disappointment as I stood up from the bench and grabbed the bat.
• It felt so.
• Awful to know that I was bad at something that I didn't even like and was also ruining everyone else's good time just because my parents didn't want me to quit.
• I didn't learn about commitment that day.
• I didn't gain a better perspective.
• I just felt horrible.
• It felt even worse when I would put in the time to get better and practice and throw the ball around with my friends and my dad and practice batting.
• But I wasn't getting any better.
• I was just not good at it, and my self-esteem was crumbling.
• It became ingrained in me that I can't quit.
• So.
• When I became an adult, my form of rebellion it seemed was to quit and procrastinate as much as possible.
• I was always giving up on things, mostly myself because I couldn't tell the difference between sticking with something because it's truly good for me versus sticking with something because of some childhood rule my parents had.
• At the same time, I felt like I find myself sticking with all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons, like that website.
• Now, there have been things in my life that I've quit and regretted that's a fact, like not doing my student teaching or finishing my nonprofit management course.
• I never finished it.
• I got about halfway through and I didn't.
• Those were fear-based decisions.
• I shouldn't have quit those.
• I should have kept going.
• I'm still learning how to evaluate a good quit versus a bad quit, but it is okay to quit.
• It's okay to say you don't like something or it's not for me.
• You just have to be really clear on the why and the how, and the what's next.
• You have to ask yourself what quitting is going to gain you.
• In the case of the block scenario, I gained self-respect.
• It's that simple.
• I gained self-respect.
• I gained back time and energy to focus on other things.
• It wasn't quit and never write again.
• It was quit so I can spend more time writing the things I enjoy and the things that feel authentic.
• It's a lot about trusting yourself and believing that you're capable of making good decisions that won't shortchange you because you're being too narrow sighted or you're not willing to grind if you really want something.
• But we shouldn't grind just to say we're grinding.
• What's the point of that? What do you get from that? if you're happy, you can choose to quit being unhappy too.
• Quitting doesn't have to mean giving up.
• It doesn't have to mean you fail.
• It doesn't have to mean something bad.
• When done well and thoughtfully quitting can give yourself a new opportunity.
• It can be freeing yourself.
• It can be giving back to yourself.
• It can be a way that you're showing yourself kindness and grace.
• It's an opportunity for you to understand yourself better.
• oftentimes when you quit something, when that thing really doesn't align to your values or make you happy, you're opening up space in your life for the things that do make you happy, things that you are in better alignment with.
• Who you are and what you want.
• That's what happened with my blogging.
• I gave up on something that wasn't working, and I ended up getting the thing that I ultimately really wanted, which was getting fiction published.
• One another example, quitting my PMP certification.
• It was painful to make myself study for this thing and I love homework, but first I told myself that it was difficult because there was so much material and it was new to me, but the more time I spent on it, the more disinterested I became, the harder it was to show up and study.
• I wasn't retaining any information because I didn't care about the information at a certain point.
• I needed to either admit to myself that this is not what I wanted and stop, or I needed to go ahead and fork over the hundreds of dollars to take the test.
• Sure.
• I didn't wanna spend the money.
• That's true.
• And yes, I was afraid of failing and embarrassing myself, but when I really pushed myself on what I was feeling and what I wanted, the answer was really clear.
• Not the certification.
• That has freed up a lot of time to work on my writing and this podcast, and learning new skills in areas that I'm actually interested in, but I also got to release myself of all the weekly guilt and anxiety about studying or feeling like I'm not studying enough.
• I'm happier not pursuing that course, even though it doesn't make sense to my family and even some of my friends.
• Why I wouldn't just do it.
• I thought about that blog though, and how good it felt to quit, how relieved I felt afterwards, and that was how I knew I had made a good decision and I felt that same relief when I decided to not go after the certification anymore.
• Anymore.
• I kept pursuing the certification for a long time because I had created this narrative in my head that I wouldn't be able to find a higher paying job Without it, I would never get anywhere and make the money I wanted to make and have the financial freedom that I want without it.
• That's just not true.
• So instead of trying to put a bandaid over those fears and worries, which is how I think of that certification now I've started really looking at why I created that narrative around money and success in the first place.
• I've started asking myself what it is that I really want and how would I like to spend my days, and what things I would enjoy doing to make money, and how I could address those fears in a productive way to change that narrative in my head.
• We give quitting a really bad rap.
• We tell ourselves that quitting is the easy way out, but I argue that getting a certification and staying in a field that I don't enjoy.
• Would've been the easy way out, giving up the stability and security that a certification would provide, and instead learning to rely and trust myself and take a gamble on myself to try something new, to really pursue my creativity and hobbies as something more is choosing the hard path.
• And frankly, I've known all along.
• What I really want is to be a storyteller and get paid for it.
• I've known that since I was a kid and all these side certifications and winding career paths and going back to school and have all just been desperate ways to avoid the truth that I've known all along because I didn't wanna face the difficulty of pursuing something I really love because it probably won't be an easy path.
• It is probably the most difficult path I could choose.
• It's going to be filled with disappointment.
• It's going to be filled with ups and downs.
• It's going to be filled with really emotional days, and those are the times when you shouldn't quit.
• Like everything in life is a delicate balance between understanding, fear-based quitting and quitting because you genuinely don't like it, but it takes practice to separate the two.
• At least that's what I found.
• I struggle with this mindset every day.
• Am I quitting because it's hard or am I quitting because it doesn't feel right because I genuinely don't enjoy it, or it's not what I expected or signed up for? I'm not getting out of it what I thought I'd be getting out of it.
• And in many cases, quitting isn't actually the answer.
• What you maybe need is grace and a pivot.
• Sometimes you just need to lighten up on the pressure you're putting on yourself, and that's enough to make that thing feel better to you and alleviate that panic response to quit because something's a little difficult.
• Make no mistake.
• I'm not saying be a quitter.
• Everybody give up on anything that pushes you.
• No.
• Absolutely not, because you can't grow if you don't make yourself uncomfortable sometimes.
• You can't get to the next level in your job, in your healing, in your career, in your relationships.
• If you're not stepping out of your comfort zone.
• I'm not saying quit anything that's hard, so you never have to feel uncomfortable or awkward or feel pressure.
• What I'm saying is learn to really listen to your heart and challenge that knee jerk reaction to quit, and if it still doesn't feel right.
• Then maybe it isn't, and you need to learn to trust yourself and listen to what you're telling yourself, because for a long time I didn't know how to listen to myself.
• I didn't know how to tell the difference between those two things.
• I had convinced myself that I was simply a loser who didn't try, who would always leave things half finished, that I would never commit to anything, and I was both right and wrong.
• There are lots of things I regret quitting where I wish I'd stuck with it, but I quit those things because I wasn't asking myself the right questions.
• I quit those things outta fear.
• But there are also a lot of things I've quit in my life that I'm glad I quit despite the consequences.
• If you're stumped on how to do that, on how to evaluate a good quit and a bad quit, here are some questions I've started asking myself that have helped me get clear on why I want to give something up, and whether that is the right choice or not.
• The first question I ask myself.
• Would I wanna do this if the uncomfortable parts were removed? Or would I feel meh about it regardless? Am I avoiding a specific challenging moment or do I genuinely not want the end result either? When I imagine my life in five years, does this fit into the picture I'm excited about? Does dropping this move me closer or further from who I wanna be? Will I wonder what if about this, or will I feel relieved? Am I afraid of the discomfort? Or am I afraid of wasting time on something that doesn't matter to me? Am I saying no to the specific path or am I saying no to what it represents? Growth challenge, a certain kind of life.
• Those are questions I ask.
• So if you are on the fence about something, if there's something in your life that doesn't feel quite right, give these questions a go and see where you land.
• And maybe the best path is gritting your teeth and pushing through.
• And in some cases it might just be time to quit.
• One thing I am not quitting on.
• Is my recommendations for this week.
• I'm once again, as I always do, making a hard left into recommendation corner.
• So first up, good.
• Hang with Amy Poer.
• Such a good podcast.
• I love the Good Vibes.
• I am not a fan of, I'm not a fan of a lot of the other one-on-one interview style podcasts.
• I used to love WTF with Mark Marin.
• In the beginning, I'm not a fan of, of call her daddy or armchair expert or some of the other really popular ones.
• They're just like, not my thing.
• I do love an author interview podcast, but often those get really pretentious.
• So it's not a great everyday kind of listen after being in like a really certain mood for those or as be an author I really, really care about.
• Um, so Gooding is great.
• Amy is hilarious and the interviews are so casual and she does a great job of humanizing the celebrities that she interviews.
• And she also, interviews People that run the whole gamut of, of Hollywood.
• So she's like interviewed everyone from like Maya Hawk, from Stranger Things to um, June Squibb to Maya Rudolph I was just listening to her episode with Gwyneth Paltrow.
• Who I usually find her so mind numbing and irritating.
• And I think Goop is a bunch of highly overrated hoohaw that takes advantage of women's insecurities by making them feel like they need severely overpriced trinkets and candles and treatments to be happy.
• But I actually really warmed to Gwyneth in this interview.
• She, she always comes off as like very stoic to me and cold.
• In this interview, she seemed really relaxed and, and actually very warm.
• Amy's joy is just infectious.
• It's, it's hard not to have a good rest of your day after listening.
• And I also love that, um, she does talk a lot with these different people about the, some of their creative processes, what are some of the favorite projects they've worked on.
• So I love it from that kind of creative aspect that like it, listening to people talk about their work often gets me very excited to like work on my own thing.
• So.
• If you haven't listened, give it a listen.
• I really love it so much.
• Another great podcast I listened to is, um, Beth Dead.
• I loved it.
• It's a podcast series that centers around this podcasting couple, Elizabeth and Andy.
• Monica from Armchair Expert is also, she's sort of like, I guess I would say she's not necessarily the host, but she's sort of helping them guide through and analyze the, the situation that they found themselves in.
• So anyways, at one point, um, Elizabeth and Andy had this podcast and they took listeners, emailed in questions and gave advice.
• As part of their podcast.
• So one day a listener named Beth writes in about her fiance's family's reaction to her having taken naked photos in the past when she needed money and podcast hosts.
• Elizabeth starts emailing with this woman, which starts a crazy tale of twists and turns as these two women form a bond with each other.
• And I will say.
• It takes an episode or two to like really get going.
• and there's a lot of reading, old email chains and stuff like that that kind of takes a minute to get used to.
• And, and they're very long-winded.
• But with purpose, like it, it, that's part of the whole story.
• 'cause their whole interaction was through email.
• But, um, it looks at parasocial relationships and boundaries in a really interesting way.
• I found it because Elizabeth is a contributor to one of the podcasts I listened to.
• Bitch sesh.
• Which is about Bravo and reality tv.
• And then she comes on for special episodes about sister wives that they do.
• So that's how I heard about Elizabeth and this podcast.
• Um, anyways, it was really interesting and it gave me that true crime feeling without it actually being about murder, which I wasn't in the mood for at the start of the year.
• So that was a nice change of pace for me.
• 'cause usually a lot of my days is spent listening to murder podcasts and watching true crime.
• And, um, I just needed a break for the start of the new year.
• Another thing I'm obsessed with is my soda stream.
• This is not an ad, just genuine enthusiasm.
• I.
• I feel so stupid saying this, but I love seltzer so, so much.
• It makes me so happy too much, honestly.
• Um, I had a soda stream way back when they first came out, and it was so expensive and the machine wasn't great and I, I think we weren't using it properly.
• But anyway, this week I bought a soda stream and I am back with my boyfriend, which I'll probably get into some other time, and he's sober, and so I'm not really drinking anymore either.
• Um.
• So we'll also get into that into, um, another episode sometime, but I miss that after work cocktail.
• So, and I missed festive, fizzy drinks over the holidays.
• I, I love a cocktail in my backyard in the summer, and since I'm not really interested in drinking alcohol anymore, I've gotten to the habit of having like a diet Coke just cracking open a diet Coke most days after work and.
• Let me tell you, I love it, but it's expensive.
• Um, so even though a so stream isn't quite the same taste, it's like close enough, it like gets the job done.
• Um, and it doesn't mean I can't have my Diet Coke when I want one, but now I can make, tonic for a fraction of the price and I'm gonna create some simple syrups with lavender and hibiscus and, and make fun fizzy, mocktails, anytime I want.
• So I've loved it so far and I am drinking so much more water.
• Um, obviously I don't count the, like when I add like the, do the, the soda style or whatever, but when I'm just drinking like fizzy water, I'm drinking so much more water.
• like I love a glass of.
• still ice water, but I love a glass of cold seltzer more.
• It makes something so mundane, feel so fancy and it just sparks a little fun in my day.
• And maybe that sounds stupid, but to this indoor cat over here doesn't get out much.
• It's a big deal.
• Okay.
• So I am, my soda stream has really perked me up this past week.
• One last thing that I'm loving is MyFitnessPal.
• Um, again, not an ad I wish someone would pay me, but I've been trying to be more mindful about what I'm eating and what I could adjust to hit my fitness and health goals, and I don't know.
• Uh, and I don't know, my Ven pal is just like an app I've used off and on for over a decade and the past few weeks I have been killing it.
• I've been diligent in recording what I'm eating.
• I'm not tracking calories right now.
• Um, I'm just trying to build the habit of tracking first and be more aware of my water and protein and sugar intake so I'm not having midday crashes and energy slumps and, um, trying to make sure like my hormones are like leveled out throughout the day.
• And also, so I'm not eating everything inside at night because I didn't eat anything during the day.
• So I'm loving it.
• It's really helping me be like more mindful.
• I feel like my energy is more balanced because of it, and therefore my mood is a bit more balanced because I'm getting like, consistent protein throughout the day and I am, uh, meal prepping and, and all of that stuff to make it easier for me to eat while during the day.
• So, um, lots of little steps and, and that's what I am taking a lot of pride in so far this year.
• So it's been exciting and I have lost, um, a few pounds, which is also really exciting.
• Just appreciating and recognizing the little bits of work I'm doing, the small bits of improvement and accountability.
• So I feel motivated to keep going.
• I don't know, like, I don't know why quitting was on my mind so much this week, but it, it was, and I think I was just doing like a lot of, I was just doing a lot of reflection on where I am and how I've gotten here and where I wanna go.
• And I have been surprised at how much I have been focused on creativity.
• How, like when I took.
• When I took the pressure off of my p and p certification, when I have given myself like the permission to just explore and have fun, how? Much more.
• That mind shift has actually created more output than I probably had in the last year.
• Like I am doing this podcast.
• I'm, I'm really heads down on my novel and making really good progress with it, and I'm reading a lot more.
• It's just, it really just feels like a lot of things are really clicking into place And it just feels really good.
• I, I, so often when I start a new year, I make all these big goals and they don't, I'll be lucky if I, I do any of them at any point during the year and, and I don't know it, it is just the way I've approached it has been very different.
• And I don't know if that's because of the life audit I did, if it's just because I've gotten older and I'm just.
• Feeling a little bit freer if it's because I've loosened the grip on myself and just said like, it's okay to maybe just like flounder for a year and figure out what you wanna do and, and figure out where you're going and play and explore and like, because that's been my purpose.
• Instead of like, make this amount of money by the end of the year.
• Make sure you get this by the end of the year.
• Make sure you've hit this goal by the end of the year.
• Just, just my goal being just see what happens has been.
• Immensely helpful.
• And I know we talk a lot about mindset shifts in the zeitgeist and just like out in the world and especially on this podcast, and if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably enveloped in a lot of other like self-help things in your day-to-day life.
• And.
• Those we always hear about like shifting your mindset, shift your mindset, and I've never been able to make that shift and I wish I was able to articulate exactly why.
• Now I'm able to make the shift in my mind, but I do think quitting and letting go of some things has freed up time and mental energy for me to really.
• Focus in on the things that matter the most to me, and the things that I hadn't been making time for and the things I had been putting on the back burner.
• And I think there's something really invigorating about me deciding that I'm just gonna bet on my fucking self for once.
• And then I'm gonna say, we're gonna figure this out, Steph.
• Like, we're just gonna, we're the best way to figure it out is just to keep going with this thing.
• Like I love it and it's challenging certainly, but.
• I am the difference between this and my certification, this and my blogging and, and some of the other things that I'm doing right now, the difference between what I'm doing now and what I've done before is that I actually really enjoy all the things that I am making myself focus on.
• that enjoyment is, magnetic.
• I just feel like I'm going into this year with, despite all the chaos of everything that is around me, I am trying to stay positive.
• I am trying to have a good outlook.
• I am trying to move myself forward, which I hope moves me and this community forward and the bigger community at large Ford and.
• I'm hoping that I'm able to make an impact on people and in their lives in a time that feels really chaotic and crazy.
• Um, so despite all the chaos outside of this little podcast nook that I'm recording in.
• I feel good right now about what I'm doing, like for myself to keep myself on track, to give myself a good future and to create a good future for the world and the people around me.
• I'm starting to run a little long, so I've gotta wrap this episode up, but thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week.
• All right, thanks.
• Bye.