balance – The Dream Magazine

What I Learned From Surrendering Into My Sensitivity

Alana — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 13:46:35 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I declared that I thought I was ‘too sensitive for this shit’. This shit being business.

A series of unfortunate events tested me, stretched me, and made me more uncomfortable than I have ever felt. But, it turns out it’s a little something called growth, and hey, if the universe is planning a breakthrough for me, at least I can see the path that I needed to walk to get there.

So yes, I am sensitive, but I am choosing to surrender into it.

I’ve been told over the years that I am too loud, too emotional, too much, so too sensitive is just another to add to the list. But, the truth is, I am not too much of anything, and neither are you. So, if this resonates then this piece is for you, and, not as though you need one, but it is also your permission slip to do business exactly how you want to.

It has become the social norm that to succeed, we need to have a thick skin and to toughen up, to be hardy and able to withstand these gusts of wind that come our way. I get it, I do, but there is room for both, the duality of being soft and sensitive while being someone in business who knows what they want.

You can be both.

But, you don’t get told this, and working in spaces and places with strong masculine energies – think sales and media, fast-paced and ever-changing environments – leads you to believe that you have to hide those sensitivities, and become a version of yourself that is tougher, bolder, bigger, and sturdier.

I believed this for such a long time, ten years in fact, and it wasn’t until I got more curious about who I was and how I worked as a person that I realised that I could decide. There is so much power in that. And, the sad thing is that it takes so long to undo those thoughts and those feelings – shout out to two weeks ago and my business wobbles.

There is another thing I want to mention; about 18 months ago, someone told me about Human Design. A theory and a methodology rooted in astrology and the type of person we are and the traits that we hold. I started to learn more about it – I am a 5/1 Generator if you’re interested – and I began to write my own rules. Rules about how I operated, the processes in my business, how I interacted with clients, and the pace at which this all happens.

Setting up my own company gave me the autonomy I needed to work with my energy, my sensitivity, and use it to my advantage. I truly believe it is just that, an advantage.

My business is built around comms and copy, and developing this business has been a journey. Effable started as me freelancing alongside a job, getting clients and building up a portfolio outside of the worlds I had worked in. When I finally took the plunge to take it full time, it was exhilarating, but it was easy to fall into those hard- skinned habits.

It’s a work in progress, and it is something I have to make a conscious effort to change and choose every single day. Being sensitive allows me to connect with my clients on a deeper level, it means I get to feel into their brand and how they operate, and it means I get to choose. I choose who I work with based on energy and alignment. Instead of working with outdated agency models and impossible deadlines, I set the pace, and I get to use my emotions and my intuition to work with brands that care and understand the importance of emotion and depth and feeling.

I am still working on it, but what a wonder and what a privilege.

My sensitivity is no longer something I have to hide or mask; it is something that I can surrender into, and that I can use within the work I do and the things I create. Don’t get me wrong; I am still learning, or rather, unlearning, and changing the habits of a lifetime isn’t something that can be done overnight, but I am enjoying leaning into the softer sides and creating a business that goes against the grain of the
industry.

Alongside that, it’s things like crafting my own schedule, taking time out to go for a walk instead of working solidly for eight hours in a room with no windows, and allowing myself time for reading, for self-development, for moving my body.

The clients I work with are impact-driven, and I think that helps. I work with people who value people and the planet over profit, which facilitates a more human approach.

Surrendering into sensitivity looks like slowness, softness, and holding space for clients. It is a relationship and a partnership, rather than me working for them, and this is something I have craved for so long.

I will always be sensitive, and I will always be soft, but I am also loud and bold, I am creative, and I can be impulsive.

There are so many sides to me and my business, and I am unapologetic.

Check out Effable’s Instagram here and head to their website at https://www.itiseffable.com/

What I Learned From: Becoming Addicted To Work and Toxic Productivity During The Pandemic

Lucy — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 11:22:18 +0000

Daisy Morris, founder of The Selfhood shares her story. With nothing else to do during the pandemic and the boundaries between work and life blurred, many of us turned to working longer hours than we should, as social media glamourised hustle culture, and made celebrities out of online biz success stories. As we slowly adjust back to normality, a generation of entrepreneurs are redefining what 'success' means to them.

The word ‘success’ historically made me feel a bit uneasy. When I used to hear or say the word out loud I’d have this visual connotation of material objects that would flash to my mind: a really expensive watch, someone holding a briefcase, a slick suit and really swanky office buildings. Essentially, anything related to corporate ‘work’. Interestingly, when you type ‘success’ into google the two below descriptions appear:

“the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”
“the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status.”

Even more interesting, when you take a peep and browse google images the majority of the image feature clip arts made up of white men carrying brief cases, some even running up stairs that seem to depict some kind of ‘heaven’ (some may argue an escape route from corporate world but I’m not an art critic so I’ll leave that for another day)

For a long time I believed that the clip arts were a visual manifestation of future of success, I genuinely believed that to be a respected and accomplished person I needed to work my fucking arse off day and night. I’m a bit embarrassed to say this now but I aspired to have material objects that would one day act as my museum of achievements. I often had thoughts that went a bit like this: ‘I’ll be successful when… I own the massive house in London, when… my business is turning over 7 figures, when… I can buy a holiday home in the bahamas and drink pina coladas for breakfast”.

That all changed when I started finding clumps of my own hair in the shower and started having stress related heart palpitations. Like many of us the pandemic blurred my lines between 9-5 and I found myself working 8am-10pm sometimes later and without coming up for air because, really, there was nothing else to do. I became addicted to the adrenaline of working on multiple projects, I subconsciously attached my own worth and validation to being ‘needed’ aka ‘booked and busy’. I became so dissociated from my own self that I allowed myself to become really, really sick.

It was until a Doctor told me I needed to slow down that I realized the damage I had done. I walked home from the hospital feeling numb, disappointed and so confused. How had this happened? (I knew, but I couldn’t quite face that I’d done it to myself) I spent the rest of the day feeling so angry at myself. I realised that for the last 6 months I had been an anxious, emotional, easily triggered, irritated, tired and lifeless little soul. I had poured all my energy in to my work and appearing ‘together’ for my clients that there was no more juice left in the tank and my poor body had taken a battering.

So I decided to step back, I cut my work load down by a significant amount, and paused or cancelled upcoming projects that I couldn’t fulfill in the state I was in. I spent the month of August working enough to cover my bills and cost of living and spent the rest of the time doing the things that bring me back to me. I had genuinely become so disillusioned by the destination of a clip art ladder that I forgot to even take a moment to enjoy the process, let alone evaluate what wasn’t working.

The trouble with burn out (and I do believe burn out to be a problematic concept in our modern society) is that it’s become a bit of a buzzword. A badge of honour some might say. Nowadays it’s really not uncommon to hear people say ‘I’m feeling burned out’ and not feel alarmed because it’s become such a common theme throughout our work life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’re being more open and honest about our physical and mental health but we shouldn’t be normalising exhaustion and poor health in the name of ‘success’.

The problem is, we live in a hamster wheel of announcement culture where we’re constantly inundated by updates from others sharing their accomplishments, promotions, pay rises, new houses, new partners, screen shots of long haul flights with a countdown timer, and everything else that accelerates the speed in which we get to the top of that imaginary clip art ladder. So we keep pushing, and pushing until we reach clip art ‘success’.

I’ll be honest I’ve had to work through some deep conditioning, I still have those pangs of guilt and thoughts, ‘I need to be doing more’. It’s taken me a long time to understand that rest is productive and my friends, family, partner and business get the best of me when I’m well rested.

Success for me is happiness. It’s starting work at 11am because I went to my favourite gym class, it’s clocking off at 6pm to play netball with my mates, it’s meeting friends for lunch on a Wednesday afternoon because why not? It’s impromptu Fridays off, It’s spending my weekends with the people I love rather than chained to my desk, it’s creativity for fun and not monetisation, it’s taking time for myself without feeling like a lazy slob. We get so brainwashed in to believing that we’ve ‘made it’ when we’ve got the objects to show it, the accolades to announce and yes, those things are still great to aspire to. I’m not saying we need to bin our shoes and head for the hills and start living off of organic tomatoes and sleeping in hammocks. What I am saying is that we need to make space for those things and work towards them at a rate that works for us and not against us.

We need to evaluate if those things are even important to us in the first place, or if we aspire to them because we’re told we should. My advice to anyone working towards any dream is this: nothing is worth sacrificing your mental or physical health for, time is the most valuable commodity.

Connect with Daisy https://www.theselfhood.com/