Why Doing Less Is Actually the Strategy

  Sam Vander Wielen: So you’re busy, you’re building, you are making decisions constantly. What to post, what to buy, what to eat, which workout to do, what to prioritize, what to cut, and somewhere along the way, all of that choosing started to feel like its own full-time job. What you actually want is just to feel settled. More in your body, more in your life, like yourself, like the version of you who knows what she likes and doesn’t spend 45 minutes researching the best tea on the internet at 10:00 PM like me.

But the problem is that we’ve been sold this idea that more optimization equals more freedom. That if you just found the perfect system, the perfect routine, the perfect answer, hell, the perfect shower, you’ll finally be able to relax. So you keep researching and refining and second guessing, and then the relaxing never actually comes.

So today I wanna share something that’s been shifting for me quietly, unexpectedly, and honestly a little bit because of grief and why I think the path to feeling like yourself again, might actually start with deciding that good enough is not a consolation prize. It’s the entire point.

This episode is all about de optimizing your life and freeing yourself to actually live it.

If you’re new here, welcome to On Your Terms® or Welcome Back, On Your Terms®, is a podcast for online entrepreneurs who want to be as present in their lives as profitable in their businesses. Because yes, I think you can actually do both as long as you decide what that actually means to you and being present in your life, a lot of being present in your life has really started for me by starting to de optimize my life because I kind of, by accident took over a lot of the optimization strategies that I learned in my business into my life. And I think whenever you spend a lot of time on social media, that’s also an easy thing to do ’cause you start seeing the perfect morning routine and the perfect night routine and the perfect, like whatever routine. And it’s, uh, kind of hard to not start adopting those things. So today’s episode is really all about what happens when we start letting go of it a bit.

So for the first time in my life I’ve started to have this funny relationship with time. In fact, I would just say that before recently, I just never really thought about time, like, like all big time as a concept, right? Unless probably when I was watching Lost, and I think maybe it was season four, five when we started getting into time hopping and my brain starts skitz-ing, and I, I don’t know, they lost me at that point.

I’m a hardcore dedicated fan, but like time-hopping, I can’t deal with it.

So like a lot of things, this probably started with grief for me, or at least when I was losing my parents or after I did. I think, I mean obviously watching two people that you’ve spent your entire life with lose their lives, like, I don’t know how that doesn’t change you, let alone have you start to question time.

I think more than anything, when my dad got sick, uh, he had leukemia. When I, when he was sick, I was like really questioning like more about what it’s worth my time, how do I prioritize my time? Like letting go of a lot of things because I really had to go into like hunker down mode and be like, I have to take care of him.

I have to run this business because I rely on it financially. Okay. Like other than that, what else can go, you know, and I let a lot of things go. Uh, some things that weren’t great to let go, like my health, for example. Um, other things were good. Like I didn’t watch a lot of TV during that time. I, not that I remember, so, you know, it’s, it’s a bit of both, but that’s, that’s kind of, that was my relationship with time.

But I feel like after they passed it then started to get a little bit more existential for me of just like, I don’t know, for the first time in my life, like feeling like I. I don’t wanna say like, I feel like I’m running out of time, so I’m not dying. As far as I know, I just had very extensive blood work done with Function Labs and I’m a okay, so like, I think I’m fine, but like obviously we also just don’t, we all don’t know, right?

And, and I’ve joked about it several times before about how like, after losing both of my parents, after losing my mom, uh, second I went through this phase where I was just like, I think I’m just gonna go crack up for a while because like, I don’t know how else somebody. functions through all of this.

And, and I did start to go down this path of being like, what is time? Like, how much time do I have? And it varied just like kind of questioning everything. Like, I mean this, these, the experiences that I’ve been through, uh, and then unfortunately I know some of you have been through too, really crack you open and like a little egg and you’re, you’re splattered all over the place.

And it’s like, it’s, it’s a very transformative experience. Now, recently I turned 38 and as Ryan, my husband tells me, I say, I recently turned 38 until about a month before. I’m supposed to turn 39. So he, he noticed this when we were away and people were asking me how old I was. I was like, oh, I just turned 38. My birthday is November 12th, so it’s a fun fact about me. It’s really funny that we’re having a conversation about time and I’m saying this, but okay.

Anyway, I recently turned 38 and. I started realizing that for one, I’m close to my mom’s age when she had me ’cause my mom was about 40 when she had me. Uh, and long story short, my mom had me really late, my parents had me and then got divorced like a month and a half later, which I actually didn’t learn until my dad died and I was going through his desk and I found his papers and I found that out and I did not know. Uh, so that was a, that was a real shocker to me. I, I knew that I was very young because obviously I’m not an idiot. I didn’t, I they never lived together. So like I knew something happened, but the way, like my parents always talked about, it was like, oh, it was a couple years, like after you were a couple of years old.

Also my parents were BFFs and they were inseparable. So like in a little baby’s mind, like 3-year-old me, it’s a little hard for me to understand like, were they together? I don’t really know. They were always together, apparently not legally, for many years. So anyway, my parents got divorced, so I was a month old. Not sure why they had me, and my mom ran right off to med school as soon as she had me.

So as you now know, I was born in November, the following August. My mom started medical school as a single woman with two kids. So she had me, , as like nine months old at that point. And my sister was seven.

And so,, I’m starting to realize like this was this point in her life, right? Where she was like, if I don’t do this now, I’m never going to do it. So it was like this really pivotal moment in her life and, and I feel like that pivotal moment in her life became a very pivotal one in like our family, our family story, because my mom took so much pride in the fact that she chose late in life, not only to have kids, but also to then bet on herself and go to medical school.

And she was very, very, very, very honest, uh, with everyone who would ask, uh, that literally the only reason she could do it’s ’cause my dad, because my dad basically stepped in and became the mom. And so my dad took care of us. And so. I have kind of that whole like family story of just thinking about this time period.

Obviously I have my own like kid clock clocking down, ticking down, whatever. And so I have that hole in my mind and I go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth about what I wanna do. And then I have my husband, Ryan, who he feels like he’s not that far from the age his dad was when his dad passed away from lung cancer.

A totally bizarre situation, and I know in the grief world, there’s a lot around this. When people start to become the age or close to the age of the person they lost, there’s a lot around that. Because first of all, now hopefully you’re going to outlive that person, and that’s a whole weird thing. But it also starts to maybe make you have like a weird, I don’t know, understanding relationship with like, oh, he was about this age.

Like, wait, I still feel young. That means he probably felt really young. Like it’s a, it’s a really, really bizarre feeling.

I think because of all this, because of my grief, everybody’s grief around me, it became a really big reorganization of my priorities. Like it just feels like the world took like a hammer to all my priorities. It shattered into a million pieces and it was an opportunity to pick up the pieces I wanted and put them back together the way I wanted to, right? Like I am completely different person I feel like, than when the before times, as I call it.

I would say especially now, one of the biggest, you know, impacts or changes is that I, I would, I would say I de prioritize my business, and I don’t mean that in like my day to day, like my business kind of remains the same, but my priorities as it relates to like how big that business has to be and how much like pride I take and how big it is and the numbers and the vanity and the growth and the constant obsession with optimization and growth, right?

I used to, I’ve said this several times, have the, the very specific smart goal of creating the biggest business ever, right? That was what I always said. Like I wanted to start out, I wanted to do this, build this kind of like legal zoom size business for what I do.

I actually hope, and I feel like I’m really proud to say that I’m making my business the a less and less interesting thing about me meaning that I hopefully have lots of other things that I can do and talk about with people or my community or my friends than like my email list or the stupid Instagram or anything else. Right? Like that. That just to me feels like work.

I don’t know why it’s such a radical thing. Like I say this in my book and I say this all the time here on the podcast, I don’t know why it’s such a radical thing that as online business owners, that when I say that, it’s okay if your business feels like work.

I think for one, ’cause we have like this weird connotation with like, work has to be bad and so there’s that. But I don’t think your business has to be your hobby or your obsession. I think we go through phases. Like I’ve gone through phases where I’m like, I love my business and like I, I went through my Girl Boss era, right?

Like, I went through the beginning, I had a femmepire mug and a femmepire t-shirt, and like I was really into it and I, it really was me like becoming this and like shedding the i, the corporate identity and like getting out there and doing my own thing and owning my schedule. It really was me. And like, that’s great.

I’m not ashamed of that, period. I’m glad I did it, but this isn’t me anymore, right?

I’m sure a lot of you can relate, because I imagine that for a lot of my listeners who have children or who are taking care of a parent like I was years ago or have some other thing in your life where it’s like, yeah, the business can’t be my priority.

Right? But it almost like there’s like this shame around it that it should be, and I just don’t understand why an online business like I’m like do you think that the Target CEO like, I mean he probably does ’cause he has to like live and breathe Target because you know they’re pretty busy but you know what I’m saying?

It’s not his like I hope it’s not their life passion, right? Then like so you’d hope they go out and play pickleball or something like that. I don’t know. So anyway, I just think that I started to like deprioritize in a good way. A lot of this stuff.

Because of all of that, the next phase that happened was that I started spending a lot less time on screens. And so when I did, I noticed this crazy thing happened. Everything in general, all around me started to slow down. Like it just felt like everything slowed down because if I wasn’t aware of all the people’s perfect morning routines, or the perfect workout split, or the product that I was missing out on buying, or the strategy that this person’s doing, or how this person had their millionth download, or how this person just hit a million people on YouTube, it just made my life be like, whoosh, like in a really good whoosh way, right?

I think it gave me time to think, right, to actually breathe, to like figure out what I wanted to do and to realize that if I wasn’t all wrapped up in what so and so was doing, or how many books they were selling, or how big their launch was, or how big their podcast had gotten, what would I do? With my life, what would I do with my time?

Hell, what would I do with my business, right? Like, if I wasn’t so wrapped up in what everybody else is supposed to be doing, um, or supposedly doing and, and how well they’re supposedly doing, what would I do? Would I want to have a podcast or do I only wanna have a podcast? ’cause I heard so and so say that that’s the way you get to do X, Y, and Z, right?

It really invites you to slow down, but also to have enough like white space in your head to actually hear the things that you want to do.

And more than anything, just recently I’ve started to have this like weird sense of relief. What I would call confidence and assuredness. ’cause I honestly don’t know what else to call these three things, but I’m gonna break all three of these things down. But I have felt a very big noticeable shift lately, in how different I feel from de-optimizing my life and starting to let go of having to do things in the best, the fastest, the cheapest, easiest, whatever way, right?

Of just like constantly taking in everybody else’s opinion how everybody else is doing it, um, et cetera.

So I’ll start with confidence first. Confidence wise, I am noticing that maybe this is my old age, you know, since I just turned 38, I am noticing that I’m more and more like a, this is just like who I am and what I like and what I don’t like, and I’m just like, I’m honestly just tired of apologizing for it and I’m just not gonna do it anymore.

I don’t mean it in the way that it’s like, this is how I am and everybody deal with it. Like a bad girl on the Bachelor or something like that. That’s not what I mean. But I mean more like, I used to get fussed about, for example, like we went last year, we went to Patagonia for about a month and we went hiking.

It was so hard. So, so hard. It was day in, day out. Relentless, relentless hikes. Right? And they were so difficult. My poor little feet, they, I thought they were gonna fall off. The thing is, every single day we would hike like. 12 kilometers, 20 kilometers, 30 kilometers. I mean, it’s insane number of kilometers, right?

I didn’t even know people did this. You would go, you would literally hike all freaking day in the, in the sun, not have like any meals, uh, peeing in the woods, right? All this stuff. And then you come back, you’d ha you’d like shove some food in your mouth, go to sleep ’cause you were so tired. And you would get up and they, or call time would be like 6:00 AM the next day because you have to be up and hiking out the door.

And I’m like, who the hell am I doing this for? Because it’s not me. It’s not me. It is not what I wanna do. Not because I’m not athletic and I don’t love athletic things. That is not how I vacation. Okay.

As a woman on the Traitors said, yesterday I was watching, I was watching an episode of the Traitors and she said they, they were gonna go glamp or camping or whatever, and the lady said i’m not, I’m not into camping. I’m more like a glamping type, like glamping at the Four Seasons, and I was like, I have never felt more seen by one, a human in my life.

That’s kind of what I’m talking about. I’m done apologizing for it. I don’t really give a shit. I, that is how, what I like to do and like this is how it relates to time for me because I’m like, I only have so much time left.

Am I going to continue to spend this time? Apologizing or faking it or trying to be something I’m not? Or am I gonna start glamping at the Four Seasons? I think that’s what I’m gonna do, right? And so like when I just went to Peru for example, I was so much better this time. We used the same travel company ’cause they’re amazing Venture Experiences.

They planned trips to Patagonia and Peru and the Galapagos. And when we met with Carrie, the owner, I was like. Carrie, here’s the thing. I love hiking. I’m so glad you love hiking. I wanna hike a couple times right, in between the hikes. I need there to be days where we do nothing right, or we go and do something more fun.

On the hiking days, I am not starting any earlier than like 8,8:30. I, I am a morning person. I really like waking up, or I just naturally wake up early. I’ve been doing this my whole life, but I like to have my time in the morning. I always hate that when you say you’re a morning person, everybody assumes that that means you’re like ready to run out the door at 5:00 AM I’m like, no, I’m a morning person.

I just wanna sit and have my coffee. So. I’m a morning person. I wanna have the, I want to have a nice breakfast ’cause I want to and ’cause we’re gonna be at nice hotels, they’re gonna have nice breakfast and I wanna sit and I wanna have my coffee and then I’ll hike. But I wanna be back early enough that I can have like a nice dinner and I can relax and there’s time to do other stuff, right?

And what do you know? This is how our trip was planned, right? So like we had, we had hiking days, we had really, really hard hikes. And then we would have a day where we would go and visit a local community. We would take art classes in the afternoon. We were always able to have like a six o’clock dinner so that I could be in bed by like 8:30.

And so that’s what we wanted to do, right? And also like in, in Patagonia, for example. I pretended that I was the kind of person who could rough it, and we stayed at these places that I could not stay. I was like, I cannot do this. They were loud. They were gross. The showers were disgusting. I, I was like, I won’t touch any of this stuff.

You might be listening to this thinking I’m a snob. I honestly to God at this point, I really don’t care. I can’t stay at these. I could not stay there. I was like, I would’ve like hiked somewhere else to, or like driven somewhere else. I just, it doesn’t have to be the Four Seasons, i’m kidding. But it has to be, it has to be a decent place to, to lay your head, right?

So when we went to Peru this time, it was like we would do those hard, hard hikes. I can’t tell you how much of a difference it was to have somewhere to come back to, to lay my head that was nice, right? And I got a good night’s rest on a real bed. With a real mattress, with an actual shower that had no bugs in it, like all those things, right?

And I had food and I was properly hydrated and all of the things like, I’m just getting more and more comfortable being like, this is what I am and this is, it’s fine. It is like, how much time left do I have to really putz around with this? That’s, that’s how I’m starting to feel.

I think this is a real muscle, like it’s really uncomfortable. Even, it’s very uncomfortable for me to even talk about this because I’m like, oh God, I can already like hear the judgment come train coming, like choo chooing around. It’s, again, it’s like something I’m practicing just to be like, I’m more and more comfortable with this because it just is what it is and like, I don’t know who I’m helping by putting myself through this.

So I said that one of the other parts that I’m starting to notice getting more developed is this assuredness part of me. And assuredness wise, I would say that there’s just this, like I’m coming to decisions much faster. That’s kind of what I mean. And I’m like making decisions that are less than perfect and making them quicker.

So this all kind of started to, when I started pairing a lot of my stuff down, like even like my skincare routine, I. I only use Primally Pure, for example, ’cause it was like I, I don’t do anything fussy. It’s just this like, here’s a lotion, here’s a serum, here’s a wash. That’s it. I’m not doing all this stuff anymore.

I’m not doing all the creams and the lotions and the potions. This is it. And like I just like picked a little three step one and I was like, this is good enough. I’m going with this. Done buying other products.

Again, that relates back to like if I’m not on social so much, I don’t see everybody’s perfect skin routine, which then would run me off and make me feel like I had to buy 20 things at Sephora that I didn’t need, and that probably don’t work anyway.

Just kind of being more of this, like, I have this, I’m not looking for anything else. I’m just feeling assured in what I have and I’m pairing it down. I did the same thing with my little, like three step hair routine, my clothes, right? Like I have a pretty minimalist, uh, kind of stuff that I don’t try to, I try not to collect more and more unless it’s like a nice thing or whatever. And even my tchotchkes, I’m trying not to, like, trying to get rid of things and just like pair things down.

Honestly, more than anything, it’s making me feel like I have less choice. In a really good way, and I feel like it’s probably just helped me. I think a lot of what I’m feeling is that it’s helped me with my decision fatigue.

Um, I think that decision fatigue is a very real thing and I think. For you, you probably have a very busy life, whether you’re deciding on things for your kids, for your partner, for your business, for your nine to five job, like we all have 9 million decisions to make about things. We don’t need to make it any harder than it has to be.

So personally, I found it really helpful to just switch it. I don’t know what snapped in my brain. It was just like, I’m just gonna start doing this, like all these things I’m doing, I’m just starting making them very simple.

I’m also doing this like this is good enough thing more and more and more, which is also a very, very foreign concept for me because I was the person who, like if I wanna buy coffee beans for example, I will like look up who recently won the coffee roasting award. I will look up who’s organic, but where is it also Fair trade? The list is endless. Like it literally goes on and on and on.

I, I appreciate about myself that I care, and I, and I care very deeply about the environment. I care also about labor issues, which leads to a lot of decision fatigue because when, whether I’m literally shopping for a t-shirt, I kid you not, I will look at like where the cotton came from, who’s getting paid?

Is this made in America? What materials is it made with? But did they spray the thing? It, it’s exhausting. You multiply this over like your t-shirt, your groceries, your skincare, your vitamins, your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It’s, it’s exhausting. And I would always obsessively research to find the best thing, the best restaurant, right?

I would only go to restaurants that I had looked up ahead of time, or that I had read the Yelp reviews for or whatever. Now I’m just doing this thing where like, I need tea and I’m doing my normal grocery shopping anyway, and I’m at Sprouts and I’m like, this tea’s good. That’s good. It’s fine. It’s like Earl Gray.

I need Earl Gray. It says it’s organic, good to go. I, I can’t, I can’t make this level of like painstaking decisions for every single thing in my life, and I can’t tell you how much weight it’s taken off of my shoulders.

Now the irony is that we started off talking about time, and I can imagine, even as I’m saying this, I’m thinking, well, this stuff takes a lot of time. But I think that that’s kind of my point is like when you start to become more aware of how you want to spend your time, you then see like we, we all will say like, oh, we’re busy. We’re busy. I can’t do that. I can’t do this, I can’t do that. Well, I would’ve said that and I was also obsessively researching what was the best tea to buy online.

And so it’s like we all make choices about how we spend our time. It’s just that I kind of confronted, I guess, one big area of it.

Now, we’ve talked about confidence and assuredness. The third thing I mentioned is that I’ve been feeling a lot of relief. I think I’ve been feeling so much relief just from everything I just mentioned, like I’m just not agonizing over things so much. Whether it’s which coffee to buy or like what to order, or whether people are gonna judge me for the fact that I wanted to stay in nicer hotels or have a day off between hikes or whatever.

I’m sort of just practicing releasing it to be honest, and I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like it’s comfortable or easy or it happened automatically. It’s still very uncomfortable for me. And something that I’m just in general, I would say struggling with right now in, in my business or like how it’s trickled over into my life in general is that I am, I’ve kind of reached this point where I’m getting a lot of people’s perceptions all the time and like people’s feedback and what they think and you should have done that. You should be doing this. And I love the lady who told me when I posted a video of me cooking something, she was like, you shouldn’t be using a non-stick pan. And I was like, well, it’s uh, carbon steel, so you can shove it. Like, they like, and like people criticize me for stuff they don’t even understand. Like they don’t even know what they’re criticizing, you know?

But I get a lot of like, should, should, should, should shoulds. I get a lot of feedback. I also get a lot of other people’s stories, which. Is great, right? It’s this like blessing in terms of people feeling connected and they hear things and that’s wonderful.

It’s a weird situation to be in though, where you’re one person and you’re trying to speak to a lot of people and then you get that flood of people’s experiences and feedback and stories and pain, right? All directed at you. So it’s like I’m one little arrow and all these arrows are pointing back. It’s a lot. And I can’t pretend like it hasn’t infiltrated my brain, like it hasn’t infiltrated, uh, what I do and say, and second guess myself or edit myself.

You know, self edit and like, I’m worried about how every, I mean, even in this own episode, I’m thinking as I’m talking, I’m literally thinking, oh God, someone’s gonna think I’m a snob. ‘Cause I said that. Oh, I know. My friends think me, i’m a snob. They make fun of me. For being a a snob, I get it. So it’s just like, it’s a, you multiply that times however many on the internet. It’s a really, it leads to a lot of like decision fatigue in and of itself, of thinking how is this gonna be perceived? Is this okay?

Oh, but that this is gonna upset this person, right? I’m sure you can relate to this. If you’re someone who’s also very sensitive and like fortunately, or unfortunately, I was not born with, uh, some, some politician’s ability to just do things without any care in the world as to how it impacts other people.

Every single thing I do, I think about like, how is that impacting other people, right? I’m very nervous about how my, my actions impact others around me. And so it’s, uh, it’s a blessing on the one hand because I’m glad to be, uh, I see it as a strength and I see it as strength in other people that I, I am surrounded with who are like that. The downside, I think is like living in that person’s body, like living in that mind of the person. Um, yeah.

And so a lot of this was brought to a head for me because I’m reading this book, I’m almost done right now, but I’m reading this book called Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Berkman. The subtitle for the book is Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. It’s really funny because I didn’t read this book for a long time because I thought the book was about meditating and I love meditating and I meditate all the time, but I was like, I don’t need to read about it.

I meditate every single day. Um, so it’s, I don’t know why I just like came to that conclusion. It has nothing to do with meditating. It’s about time and making time for what counts as he, as he states right here on the cover.

So, the gist of this book, which I will highly recommend that you read, but the gist of this book is that it’s broken down into a little daily reading. So it’s a really great book. Also, I like to have a, I usually like to have a book in the rotation. Where there’s like something I can read with morning coffee or I read at night, or just read when I have five, 10 minutes, like it doesn’t have to be a big thing. So you’ll really like this one if that’s the case, because each little section is actually only meant to be read once per day because Oliver instructs you that he really wants you to read this one section. Really think about it and soak it in, and then go on to read the next day.

He is also very clear about the fact that he doesn’t want this book, this, because I, I think I have a feeling this book attracts a lot of perfectionists, probably like myself, but the, he’s very clear about the fact that he doesn’t, this book is not to like be mastered.

So I think that was the other reason, very smartly that he broke it up like this because he doesn’t want people reading it and being like, done, done, done. Like, I already did that thing. It’s like, you really haven’t, if you haven’t thought about it. So all that to say is that on day three. He talks about consequences. And honestly, every single day of this book so far has been like a lightning bolt for me, and I have really taken it to heart and spent the 24 hours at least, and, and multiple of them have carried over many days, but spent the 24 hours thinking about it, starting to see he, he invites you to kind of start looking for examples of what he is talking about.

And day three was one of them. And he talks about consequences and he says. You’re free to do whatever you want. The truth is that you really are free to do whatever you want. We kind of all act like, oh, I can’t do that and I can’t do this, and I can’t do that, right? It’s just that you have to face the consequences.

As he says directly in the book, you’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences, which is a better way of putting it.

And so Oliver says that the only two questions at any moment of choice in life is what the price is and then whether it’s worth paying. And what I started to realize was that like a lot of what I do and agonize over is just like, it’s just a choice. And there’s always going to be a downside. Like there’s always something essentially you’re not doing or you’re giving up when you decide to do or not do something else, right?

I think about this a lot when I think about going home to Philly, because since my parents died, I’ve had a hard time going home. I basically haven’t, and I, I just don’t wanna be there. There’s no, it feels like there’s nowhere to go, there’s nothing to see, like everything’s gone. Everybody’s dead. Right?

That’s how it feels to me. So I, I don’t go but my sister and my nephews are there and I’m obsessed with them, and I want to go play with the boys, and I wanna spend time with them and be in their life. So I also agonize, I realize over this decision and like have this constant tension but at the same time, the problem is that I really love where I live, right? And especially that, you know, since losing both of my parents where I live the community that I’ve built here has been a huge solace, right? It’s been a huge thing that I’ve turned to during this time. And, and the, also the physical location. I know I talk about this like a nauseam, but like where we live, long Island is so beautiful and where we live, there’s so much to explore and like it’s a very healing place to live. I mean, living on the beach is like, you know, if, if water and beach is your thing, this is the place to move.

So anyway, I, there’s this tension, right? And it’s so interesting ’cause like I realized when I read his book, I was like, oh, that’s exactly what happens to me in those moments where it’s like, I’m just, I’m doing the worst possible thing.

I’m doing what he recommends you not do, which is like, I sit in the middle and I’m like, I don’t know what to do. Instead of just acting like. I’m free to do whatever I want. I can go to Philly. I could go drive down there. I have a car, I have all the resources. I can go there. I can see, uh, the family that I have left, and I could go there.

And that means I’m just accepting the consequences of not being home for the weekend, not being in my routine, not seeing the people I love here, not getting to do the things that I love doing here. Right? And so by staying here. I’m choosing to be here and the consequence is that I don’t get to see my nephews and I’m choosing that consequence, but instead I’m acting like it’s this like big struggle in my head and all that stress and like time I spend going back and forth instead of just being like, I can do whatever I want.

Which one am I choosing and which consequence am I willing to choose over the other? Now within my own community, this topic of privilege comes up all the time to say like, well, that’s a very privileged position, right? Like to say that you’re free to do whatever you want. Most people aren’t free to do whatever they want.

Most people can’t, like, they have to choose the consequences, right? I’m saying this as, as someone who’s a member of the community that says this, the most often, we might be quick to say, right, that, that’s so privileged. Or we might say like, what about all the people who can’t do this?

Or what about all the people who can’t do that? And then we kind of use that as like a shield for why we can’t make a decision or why we can’t do something in our lives. Oliver addresses his head on. He talks about this in the book, and he says, if that’s not you, if you’re not part of the class that you’re talking about, right, of the people that you’re saying, what if, what if then that’s an alibi and not an argument.

And I think that, that’s so interesting that that’s something I personally can, can sit with. Like, I will be like, but that’s such a privileged thing that I’m, I don’t wanna do this thing in my business. But people would kill to do that. Like, who is that helping? It’s not helping anything. It’s an alibi. It’s not an argument. I think that we’re all faced with probably the situation day to day in general, but like as it as a, but as it relates to social media for sure. Like. I think about this, about the consequences of us all being on social media or the consequences of us all being on our phones. And we talk about this a lot where we’re like, oh, I hate being on social, but like I have to for my business.

And when you look at it through this framework, you’re like, well, actually you’re free to not be on social media and still have a business. You’re just deciding that the consequences of being on social media worth it or are you right? Or are you just kind of passively going through the middle? I certainly know I do that a lot where I’m like, Ugh, I hate social media, but I know I have to do it.

And it’s like I’m not really accepting my role in it to say like, I’m choosing to be here and therefore I’m choosing the consequences. Doesn’t mean you like the consequences. I think you’re just saying that you’re choosing the consequences of being there, for example, uh, are maybe more important to you, more palatable right now than the consequences of you not being there.

I thought about this the other day with regards to Instagram stories because at this point I, I am fortunate enough to have a social team who posts my content. So essentially the way that my, um, kind of process works is that I create the content, right?

Kind of, you know, on my own, in my office, whatever. And so I’ll do the voiceover. I do the video, I do whatever has to be done. I write something, whatever, and then send it off to them, and then weeks, months later, it boop pops up on social media without me knowing it. I don’t see it again, I don’t. Uh, need to second check it ’cause they’re, they’re very good at it, so they post it. Right?

And so the only real reason for me to be, like, physically on social media in, in terms of my like active day-to-day presence is being in the dms or being on Instagram stories, like posting on Instagram stories. And it’s really funny, like I’ve just recently had this moment and I think being in Peru helped me to think a lot about this, but where i, I definitely have this story that like, I have to be on Instagram stories and, and it takes me quite a bit of time when I really do it right. If I’m just like, messing around and sharing, uh, some like, fun pictures, it’s, it’s fine. But if I’m trying to make something more like, oh, come read my emails, or like, listen to my podcast, it takes more time.

And so I have this kind of whole story I’ll, like, needed, I have to do this. It’s such a big deal. Like it’s really important. And then you see the numbers. And then you’re like, oh, why am I doing this? What am I choosing to do this for? If I like it, okay, fine, then do it anyway. It does not, everything in life has to be done for the numbers.

The reason I bring up the numbers is because the numbers don’t match the story that I was bringing to myself, right? That I was saying this was so important. And then you look at and like for the business, and then you’re like looking at the numbers and you’re like, it’s not that important to the business.

It’s actually not true. What is true is that. There is a downside to not being on Instagram stories, right? Maybe. Maybe overall your Instagram, you know, doesn’t do as well. I don’t know. Who knows what’s true about that? Like there’s like the rumor that that could hurt your overall reach, right? Who knows there, even though the number’s not huge, I still reach a certain number of people on Instagram stories and there are people who engage and there are people who click, right?

So I would essentially have to choose the consequence of that not happening. In order to satisfy what I really want, which is to not be there because I know that I don’t wanna be there. I don’t like how it makes me feel. I don’t like what it does to my head. To me it’s not even like a negative.

We always talk about like not being on social media from this negative of like, oh, I don’t wanna be there ’cause I hate what I see there. It’s actually, for me, this different, it’s, it’s a bit different. Maybe this is like very nuanced, but it’s different. For me, it’s just like, I like what life feels like when I’m not there.

Just like I feel much better. I literally think my brain does like boop, boop, boop, like structural change. When I’m not on social media, it feels different. My thinking slows down in a, in a good way. Um, I feel like I have a lot more white space, negative space in my day to day. I. I feel like I reclaim a lot of time, right?

Of like, oh, I can, and then again, now I’m thinking about this with the book, like, well, what do I wanna do with that time? This is an example, like if, if posting on Instagram stories takes 30 minutes and I then have negative consequences of being there, are those the consequences I’m willing to accept?

Or are in exchange for that 30 minutes and maybe some perhaps negative consequences of not being there. Is that more how I wanna spend my time? I feel like that’s what this book really encourages you to do, is just start thinking about these little things like that. I think about it all the time. Like I wanted to, I wanted to write like a mean, mean email to somebody that did, ’cause someone did something really bad and I wanted to write to like the manager. And I was like, you know, I had a very Karen moment and no offense to any of the Karens out there. And I had a very Karen moment where I was like, I wanna write an email and let them know. Like that wasn’t okay. And I literally just stopped and was like, is that how I wanna spend my time? No, I really don’t wanna spend my time like that.

I don’t wanna spend my energy like that. I’ve decided my time. I wanna move on. Like that’s what I wanna do is just like, move on. And that’s what I’m talking about. Perhaps none of this makes any sense and it’s a bunch of gobbly gook, um, as it maybe feels in my head right now. But like that has been the relief that I felt.

I think it’s just like letting things go easier, coming to decisions quicker, starting to look at things on their face and just be like, because I don’t wanna spend my time. Nope. And then just move on. Like, no mental drama from it. Really allowing myself to kind of, I don’t know, de optimize, not have to be the best, not have to have the best, like whatever it is it can be, and that and whatever that is, is good.

I wanted to give you three quick examples of how this is like impacting my business or how I’m seeing this in my business. I’m seeing that one of the ways I think you can carry over a lot of what I’m saying into your business is that you can let everybody else do what they’re gonna do without feeling like you have to jump in.

If you see a bunch of people on social media, if you are getting emails in your inbox of like, there’s a conference that everybody’s going to, there’s like an, I don’t know, something on social media, like whatever everybody’s doing, you don’t have to do it, right. I think truly deciding what you want. And how you want to feel and not chasing other people’s goals or metrics is really, really easy because of the space that we’re in and like the literal visual nature of the space that we’re in, where you’re literally seeing in real time what everybody around you is doing or is saying that they’re going to do it.

It is just, it’s really, really hard not to get caught up in it. And especially when you’re having a day, you’re having a moment and you’re feeling like you’re not as far along as you should be. You’re not this, you’re not that. It’s easy to make whatever you’re seeing. The thing like, oh, if I just grab onto this, if I do this, then, then I’ll be good.

If I have, uh, this successful entrepreneur’s morning routine, then I’ll be good. Right? And so then you start doing that and it’s, it’s just not in alignment with what you want or how you want to feel. Maybe even your goals that you have in your business might not be actually in alignment with what you really want or how you wanna feel.

You might not even know that yet, but you’re grabbing onto somebody else’s vision and somebody else’s goal. I say this a lot when people say that they wanna do a lot of public speaking. I don’t know why. This is like one of the things I see most common, but people will be like, oh, I wanna speak, I wanna speak on a lot of stages and all this stuff.

And I’m like. What do you think? What do you think speaking is gonna bring you? Like that? I’m curious. Right? And sometimes it’s true. Sometimes that is a great thing to do. Other times people don’t realize that what that means. Is that you’re traveling a lot, that every time you speak, you don’t sleep great for the month before because you’re up every night thinking about, oh my God, I have to speak to a room full of 500 people and it ends up not being worth it.

Again, the consequences, right? That the consequence that maybe speaking would be great, maybe it would help grow your business, but that the consequences of not sleeping well for a month before are just not worth it. The consequences of being away from your family consistently, not worth it, having to stand in three hour TSA lines not worth it, right?

So just there could be these things that we like grab onto. We think other people are doing it and we think we want it, but we just don’t truly understand, uh, whether it’s in alignment with how you actually wanna feel and how you actually want to live your life.

The last thing I’ll say is that, I think what happens when we’re hyper optimizing our lives, our businesses, all of these things, is that we can get distracted by a lot of shiny strategies, new platforms, new tools, new ways.

You know, you gotta be on board with AI, you gotta do this, you gotta be on TikTok. Like it’s really easy to get distracted if you don’t have a very strong North Star to like what exactly you want to do and how you wanna live your life. And obviously it’s a lot of what I’m trying to do here on, On Your Terms®.

This is why I’ve started saying that this is a podcast about being as present in your life, as profitable in your business. Because I’ve realized over the years, and hopefully this is what I teach here, is that sure, we can talk strategies all day long and build a super profitable business and then you come to me and you tell me everything in your life is out of whack and you try to overcorrect.

And so I think what would probably be a better strategy along the way is like. How do we build a profitable business that allows you to be really present in your life? Right? So one of the ways that you’re doing that is by being really aware of time and how you’re spending your time facing the consequences of your decisions, owning that, right, and deciding that that’s how you want to spend your time, you’re willing to accept that consequence.

You’re not willing to accept that consequence. There’s not a right or wrong. I’m not here to tell you what it is. The point is you have to figure out what it is for you for probably each and every decision, honestly, that you have to make.

So with that, I really appreciate you listening to On Your Terms®.

I’m so appreciative that you’re here each week. I’ll chat with you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.