In this episode of the Marketing in Yoga Pants Podcast, Brit hangs out solo and talks about her month-long sabbatical. Brit gives us the low down on why she decided to take a month off, how she did it, what went down during her time away, the takeaways from her experience, and what it was like to get back to work after it was over.
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Topics:
PREPARING FOR THE SABBATICAL
- Deciding in late 2017 to take the month of October 2018 off to enjoy her wedding, honeymoon, and to really enjoy living life with her new husband
- Dealing with limiting beliefs and worries about what taking a month off would mean for her clients
- Getting involved in a mastermind and helping her bust through those thoughts and commit to truly stepping away for an entire month
- Realizing that being able to take a month off could actually show her clients that they could take time away too, which felt really empowering
- Putting her head down and working through the first half of 2018 coaching and creating Marketing Personalities
- Realizing during a vacation in July 2018 that her business wasn’t ready for her to take a month off
- Trying to plan everything out so it would be like she wasn’t even gone while she was away
- Working really hard to try and get everything done, but losing steam in August.
- Channeling Sarah Peck from episode when she said that the answer is not to cram everything in in order to take time off, and the answer is to make only do what really matters and not worry about the rest
- Triaging and setting boundaries in September to help her prepare for her time off
- Getting ruthless about what truly needed to get done BEFORE her sabbatical, and what could actually wait until her return
- Coaching herself through the uncomfortableness of not implementing her visions for a couple of months
- Forwarding all of her emails to her assistant to help put out fires, but spoiler alert: there were no fires!
DURING THE SABBATICAL
- October 1 was the first day of her sabbatical and she found that she wasn’t freaking out like she thought she would
- Her wedding was perfect and she was able to really fully enjoy her day
- Enjoying her honeymoon in Scottsdale, Sedona, Antelope Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, and Vegas and she was able to just be in the moment and soak it all in
- At their last destination on Lake Las Vegas, everything slowed down for the first time in weeks and it felt so uncomfortable to not be distracted
- Journaling and coaching herself through feelings of FOMO, opportunities passing her by, not making money, ego and realizing the core was feeling unproductive and all the things that meant for her
- Realizing that being unproductive in the moment wasn’t actually a problem, but an opportunity to practice being instead of doing
- Letting the pressure off herself to be productive opened up the floodgates of creativity which led her to writing down all of the ideas she wanted to come back to after she came back from her time away
- Expecting the fourth week of her sabbatical to be the hardest for her, being home and in her normal working environment
- Finding that she wasn’t pulled toward working which surprised her but felt SO good
- Cooking good food, taking a creative writing masterclass taught by Judy Blume, catching up on TV shows, and just living slowly
- Her mind was being pulled back to business at a CEO level (big picture), but was not being pulled back to work (day to day)
- Recognizing her inner critic on days when she just wanted to rest and realizing that if she needed to rest still after 25 days of rest that she definitely needed to incorporate more rest into her lifestyle upon her return
- Going into an inner critic spiral about her self worth and whether her business would hold up, but getting some reassurance from her inner circle to help her face what would happen after October
AFTER THE SABBATICAL
- Working on incorporating elements of her sabbatical into her normal working life
- Looking ahead to take some intentional time off around the holidays
- Thinking about another sabbatical without a reason again in the future
- Being completely unplugged during her sabbatical helped her realize her social media attachment
- Slipping back into old habits and thought patterns made her start to re-evaluate boundaries with her phone
- Upcoming changes to her business with her sabbatical in mind
Quote:
“I didn’t want to come back more productive, I wanted to come back more intentional”
