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You? How do you discern if it's time to dig deep and go for the big promotion? Or if it's time for you to take time off to maybe raise the kids or take care of aging parents, or maybe just take off on that dream vacation traveling across the country, you know, in a world that's shouting to us to, you know, do X, Y and Z and make your first seven figures? Maybe instead, it's time for you to be okay with making enough and keeping your priorities in order, even if your priorities look different than what the world says they should look like. So after a few sleepless nights and much thought, I've decided to put things on hold and take a six month, give or take, sailing sabbatical with my husband.
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And today I'm going to share with you why I made that decision, the process I went through, which was very challenging, to get to this place and to feel really good about that decision. And I'd like to take you on this journey with me so that you know if it's time for you to make some big decisions in your life or in the future, you can tuck this away to have to refer to. Plus, at the end, I'm going to share with you what's ahead for me in my business and even this podcast. So let's jump into it. All right?
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Starlin, put the regular intro here.
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Okay, so I want to preface this entire podcast by saying I know that not everyone listening is at a place where you can decide to step away or cut back on work normally due to financial obligations. I mean, let's get real. Bills got to get paid, right? And I totally get that. And I want you to know I have been there.
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I have been in those places where we had to dig deep in work because we had bills that had to be paid. But there have been other times in my life that we cut back. We made tough decisions, and we balanced things out to keep our priorities the way we wanted to keep them, primarily when our kids were little. And today, we're at the other end of life. My husband's officially retired, and because of the sacrifices we made during our working years or his working years, I should say, we are at a place where we can make some decisions based on what really feels great to us and not necessarily on the financial piece of it.
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But I totally get it if you are at that place that like, I would love to make these decisions, but I can't because of that. And I want you to still listen to this, no matter where you're at in life and take what works for you and leave the rest behind or take and adjust it based on your circumstances because we're all at a different place. And if you take nothing away from this whole podcast today is I want you to know that you have to trust your gut and you have to figure out what's important to you at any given moment, no matter what the rest of the world is saying. And as I shared in the intro, it's so easy, especially if you're an entrepreneur today or you're thinking about starting a business, it is so easy to get caught up in the whole make your first six figures, make your first seven figures now is the big buzz thing. And if that's what you want right now and you're at a place in your life where you can just work full blast, then go for it.
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Go for it. It's your time to do that and don't feel bad about that, but maybe you're at another place in life where, again, maybe it's the kids are little, maybe you have aging parents, or maybe you just are ready to enjoy life. That's where I'm at right now. And you're saying, you know what? Six figures, seven figures, that's not important to me right now.
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This other thing is, and it's being okay with enough. There's so much excess out there in the world, and we've gotten in the habit of counting on excess, and sometimes we don't need that. And that's kind of where we've gotten my husband and I in life, and a lot of that has happened by living in a sailboat, and I'm jumping ahead of myself because that's going to be the subjects for what's next for me, and I'm going to share more about that at the end of this podcast. So let me jump into this before I get totally sidetracked. Let me go back to what I want to talk to you about today, because making the decision that I did to take a six month sailing sabbatical with my husband has been really hard to get to this decision.
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And I had a lot of doubt because kind of like when I was ready to step away from my direct sales days, things were starting to move and groove in my business recently, and it felt really good. Like I love my discovering your calling program. I love the clients I get to work with and I've been working with, and I do hate to step away from that. I hate to pause that right now. But I also know my husband and I have been planning this adventure for over eight years.
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We have been setting things up in our life to get here. And I did a podcast a while back about that. I'll try to share that in the show notes.
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So it's been this process, and I started thinking about it. It's like, why would I not why would I not pause work right now to enjoy the next six months of our lives together? Because we've been planning this for so long. So why would I not just fully embrace it, fully lean into this experience that we are about to do. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, my husband and I just moved on to our 42 foot New to US sailboat.
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It's a 1990 Hunter Passage if you're into boats. And we moved in on August, well, technically July 31. August 1 was our date and we've been living here and we are about in a couple of days we're going to set sail and we're just going to travel down the east coast. And part of that is we want to see what's out there. We want to see the country from a new perspective.
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We want to visit little towns, we want to kind of look to see where do we want to live. When we're done with the sailing adventure, hopefully we'll make some new friends. I know we will. We've already made new friends in the boating community and just enjoy this time together to push ourselves to learn this new skill, to push ourselves to do something we've never done before. And it's scary and challenging.
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Fixing up this boat has been challenging and I have found it really challenging. Talk about challenging to try to work and do all the things we want to do for the boat. And I felt myself pulled in these totally different directions and that was really a struggle for me in the month of August because I wanted to do boat projects. I wanted to just embrace all these things that we're doing. I wanted to learn how to do all the things that we need to know how to do in order to do this trip.
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I know that totally was like grammar, not great, but whatever, but yet I felt obligated to do work. I felt obligated that I should be recording podcasts, that I should be doing this, that I should be doing that. And what's the old saying is we shouldn't should on ourselves, right? And that I think is the first clue that we need to pause and rethink what we're doing when we catch ourselves thinking or saying out loud, I should be doing this, I should be doing that, then it's time to reevaluate. What is it you want to do and do you need to do that or is somebody else saying that you should do it or you should do something that way?
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I just found myself in this place of just not feeling good about anything because I wasn't able to fully lean into the boating experience and I wasn't able to fully lean into my work. And that's where I knew I needed to make some tough decisions. So I took myself through basically the five things that I looked at and I want to share these five questions, basically that I asked myself that you can take and use to discern where you're at in life of whether or not it's time for you to maybe take a pause for whatever reason, or if it's time to maybe lean in and work a little harder. Hey, go for that six figure and seven figure income. You can buy a bigger boat with that.
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So these are the things that I took myself through. So number one is, are you feeling like you are forcing things to happen? So, for instance, I was starting to think about one of the things I should do is I had planned on running a fall cohort of the Discovering Your Calling Academy. I thought, oh, I could do that from the boat, I could run that from the boat. But the thing was, yes, I could have.
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Totally could have. No doubt I could have. But I would have had to promote it, right? I would have had to make sure I had the right number of students. There were a lot of things I would have had to have done to get it set up.
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And I started to feel like I was forcing things to happen in order to do that, that I was going to force things that just didn't kind of felt icky or just felt like, I don't really want to do that that way. And that's one of the first clues, is if you're finding yourself kind of forcing something to happen. And this is especially true for those of us that are entrepreneurs, if you're feeling like, but I got to make this happen. And it's like, I talk a lot about putting the puzzle together, and it feels like you're taking a puzzle piece and trying to jam it in a place that it doesn't even fit, then it's time to reevaluate. What are you trying to do?
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So if you find yourself doing that and you're forcing things and you're trying to jam things together, just take a pause and think about where you're at, because we shouldn't have to force things if we're doing the right stuff. The next thing I did is I realized that I was really distracted. I shared about this earlier. So the second thing to look at is, are you so distracted by the thing that you really want to do that you're not doing any great service to the thing you feel like you have to do? And that's where I got I realized that if I tried to do all the things but yet I really wanted to devote my time to this boating experience, this sailing experience, again, we've been planning for so long.
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I wasn't putting my heart and soul into my business. I wasn't really putting it into my podcast. I wasn't putting it into really making the most of who was going to be in the next cohort. And I realized, like, I can't continue to work this way. I wasn't serving anyone.
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I wasn't there for my husband, I wasn't there for myself, and I wasn't there for the potential new students I could have had. So if you find yourself very distracted by that thing, you really want to do again, maybe that's a sign that you need to evaluate how you're running your life and your work right now. The third thing I would say is trust your gut. That was the next thing is I really just had to silence the rest of the world's opinions, except for a select few who mattered most primarily. My husband really was the big.
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He was really the only decision maker in the process because it affected him. It affected him by a little less money coming in and or money coming in but me not being fully invested into this experience. So I had to really just spend time listening to what was my gut telling me to do. And I don't think we do that enough. Our gut, your intuition, it's telling you what to do.
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We just have to pause long enough to be quiet and let it speak and to listen to what your own gut is telling you to do. It's there to guide you. And, yes, listen to the people who matter most, or maybe listen to the people that have gone before you who you admire because they've had a similar path that you want in the world. Listen to their opinions. And here's what happened.
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Once I kind of leaned into this decision that, yes, I want to take a sailing. Sabbatical I was affirmed by so many people. Everybody I talked to, from my podcast editor thank you, starlin to other coaches I know, to some of my clients, they're all like, yes, that's so sherry like, that's so aligned with what you speak about. They weren't surprised, and they were so supportive of the decision. Which leads me to the next thing.
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The fourth thing to look at and think about or do is just make a decision. Sometimes we just have one of the shit or get off the pot. Just make a decision one way or the other and be okay with it because you've made the decision based on not forcing things, based on that you were feeling distracted based on what your gut is telling you to do. So make that decision and then be at peace with it. And once you make a decision, you will have peace and you will get a full night's sleep again.
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Because you finally made a decision. Because sitting on the fence and thinking, should I go this way or this way or this way or this is very uncomfortable. So get off the fence, get off the pot and make a decision and just be okay with it. The last thing that I would say, and you've probably heard this before, and I call this the deathbed question is ask yourself, what would I regret not doing? If you're on your deathbed or if, God forbid, something happened in a year from now and you or your significant other or your kids, something happens that somebody's very ill and you're laying there in bed, if it's you or taking care of them?
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What would be that thing going on through your mind? What would you be saying? Like, oh, I'm so glad I took time to do X, Y and Z? Or would you be saying, oh, I should have taken the time to do X, Y and Z? There's a Zillion country songs that talk all about that.
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So ask yourself, what would you regret not doing? And for me, when I really posed that question to myself, there was no doubt, no doubt in my mind. I would so regret not being fully present for this experience that we are about to embark on. Because again, we have been planning this for eight years, so why would I not be fully into this experience with my husband and traveling and taking care of our boat and doing all of these things? Work is going to be there for me when I'm done.
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It's not going anywhere. The Discovering Your Calling program will start one in the spring or the summer or next fall. It'll be okay.
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So those five things were what I went through to make this decision. So again, what decision has been weighing on your heart that you're trying to figure out which way to go, which path to take? Do you feel like you're forcing things to happen? Are you so distracted by what you want to do that you're not serving anybody by doing what you feel like you have to do? What's your gut telling you to do?
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What's the decision that you feel like you just need to make? And what's the deathbed question? What would you regret not doing? So, my friends, what's ahead for me? What's going to happen over the next six months?
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I already shared a little bit about what we're doing, but I want to share with you what I've decided I will do and what I won't do, because I also know me and if I'm not doing some work, I would get very antsy. I have to learn, like, I have my books with me on the boat, not all of them, but I had to bring books with me. I have to be reading something, I have to be learning something. So I knew for me, I had to keep my hand on something work wise, that's mine, and helping others, something strength based. So I did decide to do some things and a lot of things.
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I am going to just put on pause for a while as we're enjoying this time of discovery and adventures down the East Coast. So I am going to be putting this podcast on pause for at least six months. So no new podcasts. I have one more that's coming out next week and I'll tell you about that in a minute, but otherwise we're going to put it on the back burner for a while. Now, I've been doing this for three years now, so there are a lot of podcasts to go back and listen to I actually recommend go back to season one.
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When we were at the Uncharted, entrepreneurs was the name of the podcast and I talked a lot about strengths before I was even a strengths coach. A lot about life. If you're a leader, then listen to season the next year when we did Navigating Your Leadership. We've morphed a lot in this podcast. So go back and listen to some of the old podcasts.
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That's the cool thing about podcasting. They're there forever for you to listen to and new people to find. So no new podcasts for at least the next six months. I'm going to put that on the back burner and instead I'm going to spend my time focusing on a blog about our sailing journeys and about savoring life. A lot of what I just shared, we are basically living in a tiny home and I want to share how we did that because I have people asking me questions all the time about just that.
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So it's going to be sailing and savoring life with a little strength stuff thrown in there. My husband and I will eventually have a YouTube channel where we'll be visually sharing our experiences and coffee shops we find breweries, we find little towns you have to go see. And of course, our sailing adventures all about what it's like to live on a boat, the glamorous stuff and the not so glamorous stuff on Living on a boat. I'm going to hold off I already shared this of starting any new group or extended coaching programs like the Discovering Your Calling Academy. All of that will be put on pause for at least six months.
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But I am going to keep my hands in a few things like I shared. I have my creating your Calling community for discovering your calling alumni. That's going to stay going. I have a few strengths based things still going. One, I know I'm going to be participating in a workshop retreat, happens to be on the East Coast, perfectly in alignment with what I wanted to do, working with some entrepreneurs in December.
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So I'm open for any workshop retreat possibility, things that come up if they align. I'm also going to still be offering the Navigating Your Strengths 90 minutes coaching sessions. I do it's like an analysis reading, which actually that's what I'm going to share about on the last podcast next week on how it helps you navigate just like we learned how to navigate a boat. I'm going to teach you why strengths is really your compass rose for everything you want to do in life. So catch that as the next podcast.
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Yeah, so that's what I'm doing and not doing. And I hope that you'll follow the new blog or in our journey on YouTube or find me on social media, hang out on Facebook mostly and see what's in store for the next six months for me. But most importantly, here's. What I would really love for you to do right now is think about what's the decision you've been wanting to make about how you're running your life. And will these five steps I shared help you and share with me?
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Did this podcast today, this podcast episode, inspire you to maybe revisit a big dream you've had in your heart? Or maybe these steps, how did they help you make a decision that more aligns with what you really want and how you really want to show up in the world? And I'll be looking forward to hearing from you. We're still going to have access to Internet, email, all the things we're not going off across the ocean, not never to be heard from again. I'm around.
00:22:47
I want to hear from you. Stay connected. So let me know how this message spoke to you. And again, follow. I hope you'll follow our new journey.
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If you're not on the email list, make sure you get on my email list or follow me on Facebook to learn more about when the blog goes live. Hopefully next week and or the YouTube channel does. In the meanwhile, catch next week's episode on navigating your strengths. And thank you for being listener of the Discovering Your Calling podcast. I really appreciate you being here.