Are you needy? The correct answer is yes. We all have needs. Of course we have our basic needs to survive but as humans we have a lot more that we need to live our best life.
But what about in business? We have needs there too: we need to make money, we need to NOT work 14 hours a day, we need to not have too much on our plates.
This week on the podcast, Mara Glatzel shares more about what neediness looks like, why we need to be in daily connection with our needs, and why we should do away with the idea that what’s right and good is always the same no matter what season we’re in.
If you’ve been feeling a little “off” lately like I have, this is the episode you need. Mara shares that getting closer to our needs feels good, and we need to be seen, heard, and to matter.
And yes, we get into business and what it looks like for our human systems to fit into our business.
Mentioned in This Episode Podcast
- What do you need right now?
- Follow Mara on Instagram
- Get Mara’s Book
- Schedule a call with me
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on Instagram
About Mara Glatzel
Mara Glatzel, MSW (she/her) is an author, intuitive coach, and podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy rhythms. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Find out more at MaraGlatzel.com.
Transcript
Abby Herman 0:08
Hey there, and welcome to episode 243 of The Content Experiment Podcast, a podcast for service driven business owners who know that content is important, but that there is also so much more to marketing and business growth. Here we talk about showing up for your audience in a way that they want to hear and in a way that’s sustainable for you. This might mean publishing a weekly podcast or blog. But it also means paying attention to your email list, leveraging other people’s audiences, building relationships, and getting over the limiting mindsets that often hit what we’re reaching for the next level in our business.
Abby Herman 0:43
I’m Abby Herman, fractional Marketing Officer, content strategist and podcast manager for business owners who want to make their marketing feel easier and more streamlined, so they can get back to serving their clients and to making those sales. I’ll show you how, or I’ll do it for you while you do business in a way that works for you. I can help by supporting you through building and implementing a content marketing strategy, taking care of the podcast management for you, or giving you the tools and resources to take this on yourself. I think that personal development and learning more about yourself is probably one of the best things that you can do. It helps you personally, but it also helps you in your business, being really in tune with yourself and your own needs can help you to be more productive, and just generally happier with where you are. And it can help you get your needs met. This is something that I have worked on a lot in my personal life, acknowledging my own needs, sharing them with others, and allowing what will happen to just happen. Business is another story.
Abby Herman 1:50
This week on the podcast, I’m talking with Mara Glatzel, about her new book, needy, and what getting to know ourselves and our own rhythms can do for our business. She shares her ideas around seasons and how she works with business owners to identify their own seasons, so that they can structure their businesses around them. My favorite part of the conversation is near the end, where we talk about how content fits into all of this, particularly when we just don’t want to create at all. It’s so good. And if you struggle with doing the hard things when you’re just not feeling it, listen to the end. But before we dive in, let me share a little bit more about Mara.
Abby Herman 2:34
Mara Glatzel is an author, intuitive coach and podcast host who helps humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy rhythms. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it. And she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Listen to our conversation. Mara, thank you so much for joining me today. I’m really excited to chat.
Mara Glatzel 3:06
Oh, thanks for having me. I am yeah, very excited to be here.
Abby Herman 3:10
Yes. Awesome. Well, so can you share with listeners, what you do and who you do it for?
Mara Glatzel 3:16
Yeah, I help needy humans. And I consider myself a needy human as well. Figure out what they need and how to ask for it. And I specialize in working with a perfectionist and people pleasers and those of us who carry a heavy responsibility of who and how we think we should be in order to keep our lives on track in order to take care of the people around us in order to run our businesses. And to bring those those rules into question and redefine them in such a way that allows for us to have more care and more kindness of kindness and a greater sense of working with ourselves instead of working on ourselves.
Abby Herman 4:02
Hmm, interesting. I hear a lot of like working in your business versus on your business. So maybe we’ll get get into that a little bit as it relates to us as humans. Can you talk a little bit about how you work with clients? And how does the way you work with your clients and structure your business? How does that help you to live the lifestyle that you want?
Mara Glatzel 4:25
Yeah, so my business shifted. I’ll go back just a teeny bit. My business shifted. I had my first child, seven years ago. And now just about and at that time, I had been doing the classic kind of launch, run a thing, launch run a thing. And when I was just me and I didn’t have any children, I didn’t have anything that was pulling me in any different direction other than myself. It was easier to do that. But once my kids were born, I realized that I needed a greater sense of have consistency for myself and content creation and also a greater sense of being able to forecast my income being able to launch less, and to work with people over a longer period of time, which really has served the work. So at that time, I was running two programs, one was nine months one was a year long program. And now I primarily run a year long program. And so the way that I work with my clients within that context is that they, the program is called roost and we work on building self trust. And we approach that from a multitude of need based experiential and experimental approaches and ways to talk to ourselves differently to plan our calendar differently, to set boundaries with others differently to relate to our businesses, to ourselves to the world around us in a way that is rooted from that space of self trust. And that is supportive for me from an entrepreneurial perspective, because I have a steady group of people I work with over the course of the year, a steady income over the course of the year. But it serves the work too, because self trust is rebuilt slowly. And so I’m able to be with this one group over the course of a year, some people then repeat. And it serves the work to be done in that that slow kind of consistent pacing. So really, that’s the way I work with people now. And I do some retreats and I do some private work. And I do some pop up workshops. But that’s my primary, my primary role within my my business. I’m a writer as well. But my primary role is to run roost. And it’s been beautiful. And it really, you know, I hope you can hear and how I told that, that it’s thoughtful to what is what is the work need from me? What do my clients need from me? And also, what do I need to be able to do my best work?
Abby Herman 7:05
I love that so much. Yeah, like the building the self trust. And I would imagine that that is an ongoing process that probably never ends, because we end up with new experiences and new things that show up in our lives that we need to, you know, do some work around.
Mara Glatzel 7:23
Yeah, there’s a lot of unlearning when it comes to self trust, because we have been conditioned to relate to ourselves in a multitude of ways that doesn’t serve us. And so the work is this tandem process of unlearning the things that we carry, that are impairing our self trust, and learning the skills and the tools so that it’s less of a thing and more of an approach. So when new things do happen, you have those tools to stay by your own side, facilitate difficult conversations with yourself, figure out what you need and what you want and how to ask for it. Right. So I really focus on the tools and the skills that are needed to bring consistency into your relationship with yourself, whatever it is that shows up, because of course, things do show up.
Abby Herman 8:13
Yes, absolutely. So I think that that is a good segue into your book, he was mentioned that you were a writer, and you have a book called needy. And, yeah, I would love to hear of course, I have thoughts and ideas around it. And I did a little bit of perusing around it but can you share where it came from? And yeah, like, why did you? Why did you write it? Why? Why do we have permission to be needy.
Mara Glatzel 8:42
So part of what I did with the book was to reclaim the word needy, which brings up so much for so many of us. And increasingly, I’m aware that if you hear the title of this book, and it makes you feel something, it’s a sure sign that the book has something in it for you. Because it really addresses that understanding of what does it mean to be needy? What are the stories that I’m telling myself about what it means to have needs? And it also answers this question of what am I even allowed to need? Because I found that in many of the conversations I had with myself, certainly at first and with my clients, they didn’t even know what was on the table. We were familiar maybe with the physical needs of our bodies because they’re ever present, right? Our need for sustenance, our need for rest, our need for movement for physical touch or connection, the things that we physically hunger for, but in and around and beyond that, we weren’t sure what are you allowed to need and yet, we have this feeling of maybe my life isn’t as satisfying as I want it to be, but I don’t really know why or what to do differently. or maybe my relationships lack what I thought a relationship would feel like. And again, the answers to all of these questions that we’re asking and not really knowing the answers to is your needs, right? It’s how you particularly experience your life. And what you require, you know, a need is what you require. And a want is what you desire. And I see these things working in concert with one another where the need is the thing. And the one is the how, right, so I need food, I need to eat breakfast. And what I want is scrambled eggs with sourdough toast and a sprinkle of salt. So the more that you’re able to understand I’m a person who has needs, and that those needs, show themselves to me through my desire through what I want through how I want that need to be met. And all of that gives you a lot of data so that that feeling of I’m just kind of going through the motions, or I’m doing what I thought I should do, or what everyone says to do. But it doesn’t feel great. It doesn’t feel like me. And that’s where I that’s where I like to play in that zone right there.
Abby Herman 11:18
Yeah, well, and I think too, when I hear the word need, you said, the physical needs of the body, which we need water, we need shelter, we need all of the things that you listed. However, the word needy, needy has more of a negative connotation to it. So can you, like decipher between those between those two? Or? Or maybe how do you talk about the word needy with with clients or in the book, because it does have a negative connotation. And there’s nothing wrong with having needs outside of the physical body as well?
Mara Glatzel 11:59
Yeah, so the typical neediness, that we can all conjure an image of you know, that kind of hungry ghosts that lives in our imagination. I see as what happens when your needs are routinely diminished, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise put on the backburner? Because what happens within us, and it’s similar to a binge purge cycle, or a binge restrict cycle, if you’re thinking about an eating where we deprive ourselves of what we require, in this case, sustenance, until there gets to a point where we are so hungry, and it feels out of control, it feels overwhelming, it feels bigger than us, it feels scary. And this happens with needs to we can pretend that we don’t need what we need for a period of time. And we do because by and large, we’re socialized not to have needs, and to diminish our needs. And to put our needs aside after work to the end, don’t you know, the needs are the thing that come between you and the belonging that you seek, you think maybe I can’t have needs and have the kind of successful relationship that I want to have, or whatever that might be, we are given so many messages about needs. And so we try and pretend we don’t have needs, or, you know, we learned at such an early age that having needs wasn’t useful for us or was dangerous for us. And so we cut ourselves off from our needs to begin with. But that doesn’t make your needs go away. And so then you have this kind of pot boiling over thing that happens where your needs will be met in some way. You know, and I saw this so often in my early relational patterns where I wanted to be cool, I wanted to be chill, I wanted to be feminine, I wanted to be all of these different things, which I was socialized to believe meant not having needs not being a handful not being too much. And so I would buy that, quote unquote, not have needs and then all of a sudden, over something seemingly inane, I will be having way too many needs. And so it was it fed this belief of there’s this voracious part of me, that must be tamed or must be restricted must be kept out of view, in order for me to be successful, to belong, and that neediness doesn’t really exist. If you are in daily connection with your needs, right? If your needs are, you know, people always say to me, I assume you have all of your needs met all of the time, which I’m here to tell you. I do not I am the mother of a three year old and a six year old. This is like a phase of life where many of my needs don’t get met and that’s just life. So being in relationship with your needs doesn’t mean it’s perfect doesn’t mean every need is being met. But it does mean that you’re living in such a way that you have an awareness, you know, of what I require, what’s the kind of bare minimum that I can get by with and still feel good? What’s the above the bare minimum, you know, you start to live into the nuance of how you can get your needs met. And this kind of creative way maybe do making what you have with, you know, making good with what you have, we saw this during the pandemic, a lot of what we needed wasn’t accessible to us. So we found online zoom dance parties, and we got together outside in the winter, with our hats and gloves and these heaters, right? Thinking about creative ways to get your needs met, and in different circumstances. So it’s not perfect, but it’s intentional, it’s done in partnership with yourself. And most importantly, it’s done without that this fear of, there’s something in me that I have to do away with, or distance myself from, that it’s dangerous for me, and instead welcomes that dangerous thing in the room and just sees, for most of us, this really young version of us that just wants to be to matter, to be seen, to be heard, to be tucked in to really to receive our care. And it becomes really rowdy when we ignore it. But really, when we get closer, you know, I think we want to distance ourselves when something feels scary. But when we get closer, we see that it’s not that scary, right? It’s just this human, we’re hyper social species is this human need, and desire to be known to be seen to be heard to matter to somebody?
Abby Herman 16:49
Yes, absolutely. And one of the things that you talk about is, like human systems and rhythms and I would imagine that, that plays into how you are allowing your own needs to be met in the process of all of this, can you talk a little bit about that, and how that might fit into running a business? Online, whether it I mean, I can, I can totally relate to when you were talking about children, I have, you know, I’m a parent, and even though she’s an adult, now, I find that sometimes I put my own needs on hold to help her with something. And I definitely found that when she was younger, and at the same time, I’m running a business and you know, trying to maintain the client work, and all of that, and my own work inside of my own business. So how does all of that fit together when we have a limited amount of time and every day and every week? What does that look like?
Mara Glatzel 17:50
So the first thing, I think that it looks like is doing away with this idea. That’s what what is right and good is to be the same all the time, 365 days a year, and instead to really surrender to and open up to the idea that we are much more aligned with the natural world around us than we are with our devices, which means we to have seasons, we to cycle we to ebb and flow and expand and contract and no longer holding ourselves to this 365 24/7 high vibe productivity. Culture allows us to get curious about okay, well, what then. So in the book, and in navy, I go through this exercise that I do with all of my business clients, I do this my own business as well, where we look at the 12 months of the year, we think about them in terms of seasons, you know, spring, summer, winter, fall. So in the book needy, something, I run through an exercise that I like to do with my clients. And I also do this with myself in my own business, which is to create a Wheel of the Year. And I break that up into 12 months and you know, four seasons and start to be more intentional about two things. The first is what is my energy doing over the course of the year. And this takes a little bit of attention. You may not know this right now, but starting to pay attention is how you gather the data. So for me, for example, I experience a lot of action. In the spring season. I do probably 65% of my annual labor and my business during the spring season. I have more energy, I have more tolerance for visibility. I have a decrease in self doubt all of those things that get in my way as an entrepreneur, I it’s sort of during the spring all it’s like nothing but green lights. And then as we come through the summer, my energy is pretty good, but my kids are home for most of them. So things slow down a little, then we come into the fall, I usually get a pretty solid bump in energy, because I love that back to school feeling September and October. Once we get to Thanksgiving, it is downhill energetically for me emotionally, I come through the holiday season into January and January, I used to really call this this season of self doubt, which was a way that I thought about for my business don’t launch in January, it’s hard to be visible, you just don’t have it in you, you have to dig really deep, it comes at a greater cost. I no longer think about it that way. Because the more well rested I am, it’s less of a season of self doubt and more of a season of doing whatever I want, which is not being online or not being on Instagram or not selling something. So thinking about the way my energy and then my energy kind of expands from there until the spring season. So once I know what my energy looks like, over the course of the year, if I’m thinking about how I’m showing up my business, I’m gonna want to put my biggest launches my biggest visibility opportunities in the in the times of the year where I have more energy for it, where I feel more genuinely like showing up on Instagram, where I just noticed it comes a little bit more easily. Now, not wholly possible. I launched the book in February of this year smack dab in the season of self doubt. And so it’s not that you don’t do things I was I had to launch my book at that time, that was the time for it. But my understanding going into it was Wow. Okay, I know in advance. And this is a rough time for me to be really visible. So what do I need, in order to rock up to that challenge in a way that’s as sustainable and supportive for me as possible, which is different than you know, if it were coming out in April, I could kind of say, well, I can pretty much assure it’s going to be alright. So I think about my smile, my own energy over the course of the year, I think about what kinds of things I have going on in my family. You know, today as we’re recording, this is my niece’s birthday. And then it’s both of my kids birthdays, and then my partner’s birthday, it kind of starts on this birthday season that there’s a lot of shenanigans going on. So knowing that kind of thing keeps me from being surprised, oh, wow, okay, I’m launching this big program, all of these birthdays are happening. I’m pulled really thin. Having this overarching understanding of what my life genuinely looks like, my life, right? My family, they love Easter, when there’s going to be a whole thing on Easter, I can guarantee, you know, we’re gonna do a whole like long Christmas thing, my kids are little they’re out of school, you know. So I can, I can see that in advance. And I can begin to plan for my business accordingly. And the last thing I look at from a business perspective is where my clients at. So, you know, it was so many years in a row, where I would try to launch things in August, and my clients are not trying to hear from me in August. They’re busy. They’re just like, tuned out. And every August I will be trying to start a program launched a thing, it will be just not happening. And I would wonder what I was doing wrong. Until I realized, wow, okay, there’s this third ingredient, which is, you know, my clients, of course, are not a monolith. But generally speaking, I have clients who have young kids, I have clients who take August off, I have European clients who are on vacation for six weeks during this time. And so I can make it easier on myself again, to take that into consideration. And so when I’m thinking about how do I create this human system for my business, it’s bringing in differing data points, and being considerate of my humanity when I’m making my plans, instead of saying, which is what I used to do when I started being an entrepreneur. Here’s my shiny plan. Humanity be dammed, right? I won’t have any feelings, I won’t have any. I’ll never get sick. They’re always really tight, you know, deadlines, turnaround times, and there wasn’t space for life. So now I try and create as much space for life as possible and I try and take myself into consideration it helps me to work in concert with myself instead of extracting from or exploiting myself unnecessarily. And it’s not perfect, sometimes. You just You need to make some money, you need to, you know, it’s the best time for something and it’s not the best time for you. Yeah, book coming out, things happen. But again, if you know already, that’s not my best time of year energetically, then you’re able to approach it from a different perspective.
Abby Herman 25:16
I love that so much. And as you were talking, and you were talking through your own seasons, I was like, oh, yeah, that’s not for me. Like, there because I can see outside your window and it looks green. I’m imagining you live someplace north and cool, because you’re also wearing a sweatshirt. I live in Phoenix, I’m wearing a tank top and shorts, I’m hot. I’m grumpy because I have to close all of my windows because it’s already too hot out. And I am like over it already. And it’s the end, it’s middle of May. That’s what recording those smells like I am over summer already. So I know like for me, winter is the time when I have the most energy, I can open up all my windows, I can spend time outside, I can take walks in the middle of the day to take breaks and all of that. So I I appreciate like the how nuanced it is and how individualized the whole process is. And thinking about, like, you know, we’ve talked about our children, you have young children, I have an adult child, I definitely saw changes in from the time when she was in school until like when she graduated from high school she lived was, you know, 2020. So she lived with me her first year of college. And like, I saw a difference in a difference in my own energy just with that, and then her moving out of the house after that. So I think I love that idea. And the that it can change over time, based on where we are in life and where we are in business. And you talked a little bit about, like your family, the family, knowing what’s on the calendar for your family, and making sure that you, you know, hold some energy for your business during those business times. Or you just like you said, like, just log off for a while and, and enjoy that time. So I love that concept so much. What does that look like for So you talked a little bit about like the energy in your business and and adjusting for that and adjusting, you know, for your own energy. So you know, I’m all about content, creating content for your business, the promotion piece, the marketing? How can we use what we know about human systems and our own needs to show up in the right way, or to show up can write I should say, right when air quotes, the right the way for us the right way for us. And creating content being consistent, you know, you know, because I’m big on consistency. So I try to find ways to batch so that so that I can be consistent when I’m traveling or just don’t feel like doing the thing. Can you share, you know what that looks like? And how we can start to kind of merge the two. Is that possible? What are your thoughts around that?
Mara Glatzel 28:14
Yeah, so. So I have a just as a human being the both real need to have things be sustainable. And also the real need to provide consistency for my clients. Because I am an anxiously attached person. And I love consistency. I love to know how it’s going to be and it’s delivered exactly that way. So I’m pretty intentional about how I set expectations. And I try to set expectations that I know no matter what happens, I’m going to be able to me. So for example, with roost by year long program, I endeavor to have all of the content for the month ahead done by the first of the month. So if life happens, so recently, I got sick for a week and a half. It was terrible. But I finally was feeling better. And my whole family got a stomach bug and everything just got turned upside down. Everyone was home from school, I was doing a million loads of laundry. And if I hadn’t had all of the content for a roost done ahead of time, I would have been performing under great stress and strain, which I try. I mean, look, I do it if I have to we all do. But if I don’t have to, I don’t. So I try and get everything done for that month or sometimes even two months depending on if it’s a busy season, done ahead of time, so that there’s that space to reduce the amount of moments where I have to write this thing because it’s got to go live tomorrow. I have to do this thing I love to have have, you know a cache of Instagram posts that I can use and pluck that at times, but they’re prepared ahead of time. With Instagram, I like it to be relatively organic, because I like to create content on the cusp of where I am in that moment. So I do it both ways, I have a handful of posts that are prepared in advance that hang out in Planoly, for me ready to go. And I do some things on the fly. So I give myself both those kind of that backstop, and also that ability to create in the moment. And I think that works for me. But when it looks, you know, over the course of the year, for example, when I wrote my book, I wrote it during the spring season, the first draft, because I knew that that was what was best for my brain, that was what would most easily let me get out of my own way. So if I’m thinking about, I’m going to launch a big thing, or I’m going to launch, or I’m going to do something that feels really hard or outside of my like level of my comfort zone. I’m going to consider doing that in a space where there’s all green lights, to the extent that there’s possible. So I think that’s the difference. Like when when I look at the daily kind of execution, I love to batch I love to have things done in advance. And when I think about what are my plans for the year for my business, I’m really thoughtful about putting things in places where it’s going to be the easiest for me, I have the most childcare, for example. I mean, that’s, that’s a game changer. So, you know, I’m not going to put a huge project in August when I have no childcare to speak of, because it’s going to be really challenging. So the things that I can control on that kind of larger year long scale, which I set my business up like that in advance. Intentionally, I didn’t always do that. But I realized that at the time, you know, coming through COVID was so stressful, that it made me want to think out onto the horizon, you know, in further ways in my business so that I could bring even more stability, more consistency, and, frankly, less labor. I think this is the piece that’s so important to keep in mind as I am a really ambitious person. And when I do this, the reason I do it is so that I can be as ambitious as I am with as few negative consequences as possible. Because I like to do a lot. And being really intentional about how I do those things, and always asking this question of is it sustainable? Is it consistent? Is it kind to me as a content creator, because that’s going to be my best content? And I know that and so I’m going to try to reduce any of the amounts of times where I’m under pressure to perform, because sometimes that goes well. And sometimes it doesn’t, as we all know.
Abby Herman 33:10
Yes, you were so speaking my language when you talk about batching. And the way you do it and why? Because yes, I feel exactly the same way. One of the things that I usually put off, and I’m saying this right now in front of you that I’m not going to put this part off, but one of the things I put off is, when I do an interview, sometimes I often I don’t record the intro and outro or do the show notes for weeks at a time. And I come back to it. And even though like as we’re recording this, I’m going to have about 30 minutes in between this recording and the next podcast that I’m recording. And by God, I am going to get that intro and outro at least written and get the shownotes started before the next one before I have the next interview. Because I know if I do that at mediately after this conversation, it’s going to be so much better than if I wait for three weeks and then I’m bitter that I have to do it three weeks from now or, or five or six weeks from now, because we’ve got a couple of months before this episode goes live. So I love the idea of kind of pushing through. Even though the schedule is tight, I’m going to push through I’m going to get it done versus waiting and then being angry at myself for not doing the work that I’m supposed to do. And at the same time to like you know we’re recording this in May. I am getting ready to leave town for almost two months straight and I was committed to getting all of my episodes recorded and done before I go the interviews will be done. The jury’s still out if the solo episodes are going to be done but like I’m committed to doing that so that exactly what you said like I have space to be ambitious around The other thing is I’ll still be working while I’m away. But I can do other things because this part is done. And I don’t have to think about it or worry about it. So I’m also an I’m curious what you think about this. And it’s okay, if we disagree. I’m always curious. I’m a big believer in, I know, the thing has to be done. I don’t want to do it. I’m going to do it anyway, I’m going to at least start, maybe I don’t finish. But at least I get started on the thing that I don’t want to do. And for me right now, that’s probably going to be recording solo episodes this week. I really don’t want to do it. But I’ve started outlining them, because I know that it has to get done. What are your thoughts about about that?
Speaker 2 35:44
I agree. And I am always asking this question of, I mean, the way well, how can I make this more fun? How can I make this more enjoyable. So when there is something that I’m avoiding, for example, right now, I have to do something for my partner. and I both run our own businesses. And for some reason, I run the back end of their business, whatever, inexplicably. So I have to do something fairly annoying for the back end of their business. And I am annoyed to do it, because it takes me out of the rhythm of my own business, but I do need to do it. And so my question to myself is, how can I make this feel more fun? And fun, isn’t accessible? How can I make this feel like tolerable or enjoyable? And so I’m always getting curious. And my partner thinks this is hilarious of me, because, and I quote, not everything needs to be a celebration. But why? The why, you know, I’m gonna take this, like a tax form, I’m going to take this tax form up to our accountant, and it’s right next door to my favorite coffee shop. And the whole way there instead of I’m so frustrated that I have to do this thing in the middle of my workday, and yada yada, yada. I’m gonna be thinking about the cup of coffee and delicious lunch that I’m gonna get myself at my favorite place after I turn it in. So, you know, if there’s something that I’m avoiding if there’s something that I don’t want to do, I’m always curious about how can I get this done in a way that feels as sustainable and enjoyable as possible? You know, sometimes this is doing zoom co working sessions with a friend of mine, they’re,
Abby Herman 37:29
I love doing that, yeah,
Mara Glatzel 37:30
it’s so great. It’s so great, because we’re by ourselves, you know, working. And sometimes you just need the accountability of another person in the room doing their own thing. And so, you know, sometimes this is bribing myself with there’s a lot of coffee. I love coffee. So Delicious coffees are high on my list of what makes this moment better. But yeah, thinking about, you know, I am committed to doing this. But I’m also committed to my own felt experience of it. So how can I do this in a way that’s not just muscling down and getting the thing done, but doing an annoying thing that I don’t want to do in a way that brings as much of me to it as possible. And sometimes this is, Hey, okay, you have a day of work that you’re not going to enjoy. But at 5pm on the dot, you are released, you are done. And you’re going to have takeout from your favorite place and watch your favorite TV show or, you know, go out with friends or go outside, whatever the thing is. So I can tell myself, I’m going to work as hard as I can between now and then. But at that point, I’m going to be free. Because sometimes we get in the place of Oh, I did the thing. And now here I’m quote unquote rewarding myself with more work to do. So I try not to do that these days and try to say, Okay, there’s one thing you really don’t want to do. Can you put something really fun on the other side of it, so at least something joyful is awaiting you when you get to you know, being done with that? Some?
Abby Herman 39:11
I love that. Yes. I love crossing things off of, oh, yeah, I find I find that like, I mean, I love like food related rewards, but I find myself like, well, I can just have it now. You know, like I can do the thing now, but I love like crossing things off my list. I have a long list sitting here next to me on my desk, because I’m taking a long weekend coming up and I don’t want to have to think about work. So my reward is having everything checked off the list and I can’t wait to do that. Which is why I’m going to record the intro outro to this episode immediately after this call because then I can cross it off the list.
Speaker 2 39:51
I’m gonna come to you right now. Abby to I have a monthly list and a weekly list and a daily list in front of me right now. So When I get to cross something off, I get to cross it off three times. Oh. Oh, the pleasure.
Abby Herman 40:10
Yeah. checking it off the project management system is just like it is not the same kind of satisfaction as like, literally physically caught crossing off a written list. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. Maura, this has been super fun. I want you to if you could share, where people can find you where people can get your book. I know I am going to be ordering it. It’s on Audible. Is it? Is there an audio version? There is I’ve got a long car ride coming. I’m gonna listen. I think this is the sounds exactly like what I need.
Mara Glatzel 40:45
Yeah, so you can find me at MaraGlatzel.com. You can find my book wherever books are sold. The audio book, which I read and I love is on Audible. And yeah, you can find me on Instagram at Mara Glatzel. I’m hanging out there as well.
Abby Herman 41:01
Fantastic. Thank you so much. I’ll make sure to include links to all of that in the show notes. So thank you, Mara so much for being here and for talking with me today.
Mara Glatzel 41:11
Oh, thanks for having me, this was great.
Abby Herman 41:14
What Mara said about creating consistency is so good. And I love the idea of finding ways to make it more fun or at least more tolerable. For me as I prepare for some time off, it is about checking things off the list. And looking ahead, looking forward to time away from my computer minus the stress or at the very least less stress. What about you what helps you make creating more fun? If you found value in what you learned here today? Be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it on Instagram stories. You can tag me at the content experiment and tag Mara @MaraGlatzel. Or you can head over to LinkedIn and connect with us there. Be sure to tell us that you found us on the podcast when you send a connection invite. The more you share this podcast with others, the more we can get it into the hands and earbuds of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time. Take care.
