My biggest challenge has been honouring my cycle in business.
I am a driven creative that has been running my own business (and other ventures) for almost 5 years now. I am a gentle unfolder of ideas and achieve the goals I set in front of me solidly in my own time.
But my biggest challenge is the expectation of myself to keep steamrolling throughout the entire month, working, working, working. Consistently. But this pressure doesn’t just come from inside, it’s also a general expectation of people to be a little robotic when it comes to work, and we really hide our lows and down time in fear of being negatively labelled.
I am really hard on myself when it comes to my own expectations of success and I struggle with the constant hustle of being completely self reliant in business ALL OF THE TIME. Every week is different, some weeks I want to pack it all in surrender to my partner to be my provider, have babies and just do gardening without the pressure of constantly having to work for the money. Other weeks I feel I could conquer the world alone with my whiz bang ideas and multiple projects running at once – super charged and completely independent. I can plan like crazy in one week and I’m a creative genius in another. What I have struggled with is how to keep it all flowing when I’ve taken a shitload of work on.
The expectation of consistency of one state is where I trip up time and time again. Pre and during menstruation, I just don’t want to keep steam rolling through my work. I have already set myself up to fail by trying to continue on as what is perceived as ’NORMAL’. We can be so stubborn trying to be superwomen all of the time. And pressure from an often masculine driven business world of what is thought to be normal, impedes on our ability to completely surrender to doing nothing. It is also normal to rest and lie about for days on end – yes to that. There is always going to be a deadline, a to do list and a million other reasons we create in bus-i-ness. It’s just a matter of how to structure these things and create a system that works in harmony with your own flow.
I know the phases of my cycle inside out and use these to my advantage in life, but only recently I have started REALLY implementing them in a broader business sense. Every month, around the same time, I discovered I wanted to quit most of my projects, shut up shop and hide away in the country until people have forgotten I exist, only to emerge a week later wondering where everyone had got to, ready with new ideas. This obviously doesn’t work in business. And it’s because I had not been FULLY honouring my own cycle in my business. Heres a bit of what I discovered…
THE REFLECTIVE PHASE IN BUSINESS:
Sit back, relax and do some planning.
In the Reflective Phase you can see the full scope of your life more clearly. This also applies to business. This is the perfect time to take a little step back, prepare for a few days of down time and lots self care, but also to plan. Plan like crazy. Write it out. Stop worrying about doing. Reflection is a beautiful place to see where things are working and where they might need some adjustments. Reflect on the previous month, plan for the month ahead, plan for projects, get out new ideas in writing. Plan whatever you feel like planning. This is the perfect time to do it! And to not worry about executing anything. I get so wound up sometimes because I wonder ‘where will I get the energy to do all of the things I plan to do?’. But the energy will always come for it later In the next phase – Dynamic, where you can put your Executor hat on and become somewhat of a superwoman and get shit done. And because of all your brilliant insights and planning, you have created channels to put all of your dynamic energy into, and a structure to refer to if you get a bit off track. All that being said, not everything goes to plan or has to go to plan, but its nice to have an outline and goals in place if you need reference points, otherwise you could just end up fluffing about for weeks on end.
Each month has a flavour and your intuition guides you to what needs to be done, follow it. You can’t do everything in just a month, some things that you have planned may be better for the next month, but the important part is time and space to nurture and look after yourself, overview your previous month and plan for the next, your cycle is built for it. Each of the phases have major advantages when when applied to business. I am currently working on a Love Your Cycle business framework with lots of tips and a system to follow!
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