Your Online Business Should Support Your Offline Life
As clinicians and natural helpers, we’ve all had our own experience of burnout.
The one thing I DON’T want is to see you replicate that in your online business. Your side hustle is supposed to be an opportunity to put your lifestyle values first.
It’s time to step away from the idea that work needs to be the priority and begin putting your needs and desires first.
If you want to learn how to prioritize your full wellness this year, this latest podcast episode is for you.
Tune in and discover how and why your online business should support your offline life.
CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!
Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to Episode 143 of Empathy Rising. I am trying to mix it up this year and sprinkle in some shorter episodes. I know I have an affinity for long-form content, and sometimes I sit behind this mic for an hour. Plus, sometimes, especially if I'm having Biz Bestie Chats, they tend to go long.
I think there's still going to be long-form content in my library, but I'd also love to get out some shorter episodes for you guys that you can probably listen to easier in one sitting or one session of washing the dishes or one session of walking on the treadmill or whatever.
So, I'm trying out some of these shorter-form episodes. If you love them, let me know. Either leave some ratings and reviews on the show in Apple Podcasts or hit up the Facebook group, our Empathy Rising Community. Let me know if you like the shorter form content or want me to keep them longer and more depth and that's what you're used to and that's what you love.
I can certainly do that too, but today we're going to try something a little shorter and we're going to be talking about something that I'm super passionate about. It's been an undercurrent in my brand for a long time, but it's something that I am really bringing to the forefront this year, I'm even offering a new offer around, and that's the fact that your online business should support your offline life.
Now you guys have always heard me talking about your side hustle being 'lifestyle first and side hustle second'. In fact, the Side Hustle Schedule offer, Make Room for Things that Matter Most, is really about finding time in your schedule, sure, but we talked about our non-negotiables and our priorities, and our lifestyle wants and needs first and then filling in the time for your side hustle and your obligations after that.
So that's always been my outlook on that, but even as you build your online business, and you're stepping out of the therapy room altogether or scaling down your caseload, you still want to make sure that this is always with the lifestyle goal in mind, whether that's time freedom, energy freedom, travel freedom, financial freedom, any of those, we need to understand that's the ultimate goal here.
Something that I see happens in Side Hustle a lot, (and it's happened with me too so I feel very confident commenting on this) is we build these new businesses, and we become a little obsessed with them like they're new and they're exciting, and they're rewarding because we can see the fruits of our labor really easily and then we just end up filling all of our time with our business building. But I think that I could say, and I'd feel confident speaking for all of us listening, me included, is that none of us wants to live to work anymore—even if that work is exciting and it's new and it's "oh, look at that. I posted on social and got 12 followers. What a dopamine hit. I'm going to do it again and again".
Even if we have the reward centers of our brains triggered from this or tripped from this, we still want to make sure that we are not living to work just in another capacity. We know what that's like with our practice, and we know that's like when we've got 32 clients, and we're just dying inside and burning out, and so we don't want to replicate that with our online business.
I think simply venturing into entrepreneurship, we've started to claim work on our own terms, but if the last two years have really taught us anything, it's that we want to operate autonomously in the current systems and structures in our society. And some of you listening to me included wanting to sometimes step out of or beyond some of these systems and structures in our society.
That's another thing that I've started bringing a voice to on the show recently is earning money in late-stage capitalism, and what the hell does that even mean, and look and all of that? So there's a lot that many of us are probably unpacking right now, but entrepreneurship has given us a means and a method to operate autonomously within this, and hopefully if that's our goal to step out of it or step beyond it.
But I do know how tough this can be. One of my students has a program on faith deconstruction, and I almost see this as like systemic deconstruction, stepping outside of these systems. But that journey, whatever it looks like for you and to whatever degree you're taking it, can be super tough when things like revenue, being a high earner, making a lot of money, and productivity and what we label ourselves as what we do for a living are such high priorities in this culture and they've received such high praise.
Now, I want to separate out a moment because there is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money. I just had a couple of episodes about pursuing wealth and what my money goals are, and things like that, so I have nothing wrong with that. However, I do notice that there is a tendency to define ourselves by that and a tendency to define our worth by that and that's what I want to call out. How can we make money and have money goals without being attached to those money goals? That is more where I'm speaking to here.
Of course, we have to talk about other systems. We have to talk about oppression and patriarchy and racism and other systems and forms of oppression that are marginalizing groups of people, so there's all of that as well. We need to ensure that not only are we working towards the lifestyle that we dream of, but I think it's really important that we are thinking about bettering the lifestyles of all, for all, and I want to make sure that I highlight that point. But because we continue to currently operate in a capitalistic and patriarchal society, it's no wonder why we start to incorporate our professional identities as our entire identity.
The first question we ask when we meet somebody new at a party, or if we're socializing is, "oh, so what do you do?" It's not "who are you?" or "who do you be? What do you embody?" We don't ask any of those questions, we ask, "Oh, so what do you do?" "Oh, I'm a therapist or whatever" and "Well, I'm a banker, I work in whatever". That's the way that we define ourselves and I think with therapists, there's even more tied up into our professional identities because we have things like vicarious trauma.
We have elements of our profession that we can't even talk about with other people, and we have the helper identity which can lead us to some self-sacrificing and potentially martyr syndrome of not charging fees that are worth our time, effort, energy experience, and so on. So this professional identity is a big deal for clinicians and we tend to emphasize, prioritize, what have you, that professional side of our lives and the personal side of our lives can go by the wayside a bit.
Even when we try to rest, (I talked about this a couple of episodes ago with my best biz bestie for 2022 with Lee Chaix McDonough) the difference between rest and restoration. Rest is the root word of restoration, but a lot of our rest looks like scrolling or streaming. A lot of our rest is not actually restorative. So we just end up with white space that we fill with either more work or with mind-numbing because it's what we know how to do. It's what activates those reward centers of our brain.
Or, if we're trying to step away from that, we have no concept of what we want to do or how we want to do it and so that's what we're going to talk about in this episode a little bit more is; how can we take a look at the offline side of things? How can making money online support an offline life?
Because if we don't start building a life beyond our professional identities, we know what happens. We've all been there. Many of us are still there. It's burnout, right? That's the thing that happens in our industry at alarmingly high rates. But it's happening across the world right now. We're three years into a pandemic now, or going into the third year of a pandemic, I should say.
If you haven't been burnt out yet, then you're like you found the holy grail, and you need to share some with all of us, but even more so than burnout and occupational burnout and things that we're more probably familiar with and might recognize the science of there's just an overall disenchantment with life.
We're just all dysthymic because we don't have things beyond our work that light us up that fill us up. So we're just disenchanted. The way that I've experienced this in the past is, the statement of "something's off, I can't put my finger on it, but there's just something that's off, something doesn't feel right". It's because there are these areas of our lives (that are going to get into in a moment) that we're completely neglecting. We've entirely either consciously neglected things, or we've just forgotten all about them.
We really need to make sure that we don't just focus out on our professional identities and our professional lives because we start to miss out on things that really matter things like relationships, things like our soul or our spiritual existence, just things that actually have substance in the world, things that live in our bodies and not on spreadsheets.
So, that's what I want us to think about is: How is our online business, how is the side hustle that we're contemplating building, how are we ensuring that we're building that for the sake of our offline life?
Once we have a way of identifying values beyond work and get dopamine hits outside of our profession and outside of earning money, this is where we start to expand beyond that professional identity and this is where we have a richer, more full life. This is where we have a more dynamic life where things are interesting and full. I said that word already, but dynamic and interesting. Not the same, not monotonous things. Things feel...there may be spontaneity. There's just a joie de vivre. A zest.
When we know what we want to do and where we want to focus beyond our business or beyond our professional identity, we can start making plans that feel exciting and feel expansive and I think we get to start showing up in the world, feeling more fully embodied.
Now I want to make a note on this, because again, we have to look back on the last two years, and some of this comes from external sources. Going places, traveling, socializing, being with others, but we know there are chances of that being restricted or rescinded or whatever, especially depending on where you live.
Some of my listeners outside of the states have faced that more often than some of us in the states have here. So some of you, especially if you're extroverted, you might be hearing what I'm saying, and you might be imagining like, lavish, or you might even be imagining travel and I think there's a time and place for all of that, but I think it's important that we think about how could this happen not only in our microenvironments, in our homes, but even in ourselves, within.
How could we have this so that if those things are shut down again, if travel bans are put in place or if whatever, something else goes fricking crazy in the world that we can feel dynamic, excited, expansive even in our own selves, sitting in our closet, recording a podcast? So that's what I want to explore a little bit about today.
Now, some of this that I'm going to share, it's not new information for us. This is stuff we probably learned in grad school or whatever, but the thing that I have recently started calling into question when I come across people who say, "oh yeah, I know all that, I know all that" I really like to come and say "well that's great; how has implementation going?" and that usually gets those know-it-alls to be like, "oh, yeah, you're right". They start backpedaling a little bit because it's one thing to know something, and it's another thing to implement it.
I think it's even another thing to embody it. So there are levels of this. There's the knowledge, there's the doing, and then there's the integrating, and it's just so much a part of you that it's natural and innate. I don't know yet if those are linear or if they go back and forth or if they're cyclical or what. I imagine it more cyclical because we're always going to be learning more about ourselves and learning more about where we're at in the world and things like that. So I imagine it's cyclical, but I definitely know that there is very different energy behind learning and knowledge-based things, doing an implementation based and feeling and embodying based.
So what I'm going to dive into are the eight dimensions of wellness. Many of you might have a workbook with this in there. Again, it's not new information. Some of them are depicted on the wellness wheel. Sometimes it's seven categories, sometimes it's eight. I like the one with eight a little bit better, but none of this is going to sound brand new to you as far as knowledge.
If we look at these eight dimensions of wellness or the eight sections of the wellness wheel, we know there's financial, and that is the amount of money you make. What is your financial wellness, but not only the amount of money you make, but your debt to income ratio, where you spend, are you overspending in categories? Are you underspending in categories? Are you not treating yourself? Are you holding on with a death grip on your money and not enjoying it? There are lots of elements that go into financial wellness.
Then there's occupational wellness. I like to separate out from financial wellness. All of us know how to make money at a job where we're miserable. All of us have had way too full a caseload. All of us have had where we're crossing our fingers for a no-show or crossing our fingers for a cancellation just for an hour to breathe.
It may be that we're very financially stable, and we've got great money boundaries and a great money mindset but it doesn't mean that we're occupationally well. Occupational wellness is what I call your capital W work—and I borrowed this from Leslie Tagorda of The Savvy Luminary podcast, so I'm not making that up—but your capital W work, your soul's work, your Dharma. You can call it a lot of different things, but what is yours? Are you occupationally well? Are you purposefully pursuing a passion? You could definitely make money from that.
That's what this show is all about. That's what Empathy Rising is all about: figuring out your capital W work and learning how to monetize it. So it feels like we talk a lot about financial wellness and occupational wellness on this show in particular, and those are the two that I think line up most with your professional identity. Those are the two that were probably most, not necessarily most familiar with, but paying the most attention to, but there are six other categories.
The six other categories that I have listed—and in my vernacular, again, sometimes these are labeled different things—but the other six I'm going to be talking about are physical wellness, social wellness, emotional wellness. I think those, we think about, okay am I moving my body? Am I being a couch potato? Or am I moving my body? Do I feel like I'm getting some (I don't like to use the word exercise per se, because I think it has connotations of diet culture in it), but like just moving your body, am I healthfully getting out there and being more active than I am being sedentary?
Then emotional wellness. We're in the business of emotional wellness. Mental health. How are you doing emotionally? So I think a lot of us are probably checking in with that and if we're not checking in with that, it means we're not walking our talk because we certainly tell our clients and support our clients to check in with their emotional wellness. It doesn't necessarily mean we're doing it for ourselves. But we're definitely familiar with the emotional wellness category.
Then social wellness, that has been the category that the pandemic has brought to light, I feel in my personal life more than any others because all of a sudden it was taken away, and we might not have been socially well before. We might've been too busy to call that friend or busy to make that lunch date or too busy to schedule a family reunion, to see the grandma who might not be here for much longer or whatever, but as soon as it was taken away from us, we really started to realize how much we need and crave and desire social connection. I feel like this is a category that we might've been taking for granted pre-pandemic and now I think it's on everybody's radar about how to do it, and how to make sure it's a priority.
So financial, occupational, very front, front and center, top of mind. Physical, emotional, social. Things that we are very familiar with or thinking about, even if we're not necessarily pouring into those buckets, we understand that those buckets are there and we're like, "ah, I should do better at that".
The last three are three that I think get the least amount of attention, and I think that they're really important, and those are your intellectual wellness, your spiritual wellness, and your environmental wellness. Now, spiritual wellness, if you follow an organized religion, it could be that, or it could be meditation or crystals or chakras, or anything that I believe has you contemplating beyond the day-to-day, anything that has you expanding your mind beyond some of this systemic rat race, call it a matrix, call it whatever, the structures we live in on a day to day basis.
When I think about spirituality, I think about expanding your mind beyond that, seeing something bigger and that can be in whatever means that speaks to you. I think the pandemic had a lot of people returning to their faith, reaching out to faith, solidifying their faith, and/or pursuing more secular or non-organized religion, spiritual paths. I do think that's another thing that has been highlighted through the last two years.
Intellectual wellness is something that is: Are you feeding your brain? Are you learning something new? Are you trying to learn how to make sourdough bread? Are you trying to learn how to master a new skill? Are you just reading books that help stimulate your brain?" They don't have to necessarily be nonfiction.
This doesn't have to be traditional learning, but this is something that's stimulating your mind. It could be playing games like chess or checkers, or we recently, my family, in generations past has been really into the game cribbage. So for Christmas, I asked for a really nice cribbage board and so we've been playing that around here. Mostly Josh and I, the girls are a little young.
If you're familiar with the game, it's got a lot of rules, so the girls are a little young for it, but it's something that I have to think about. I have to do math, I have to add things up and look for patterns and stuff. So it's intellectually stimulating and keeping my intellectual wellness.
Then environmental wellness is your.. I like to break it down into your macro-environment. So the planet, your country, depending on your outlook, you probably don't think either of those things are too well right now. But we also need to think about our microenvironments. This could be your community, your nuclear family, your neighborhood, even your home. Some things that we did recently over winter break is had our ducts in our house cleaned and put new filters in with the air conditioner in the heating.
How many of us are neglecting those types of things? We swapped out the water filter in our fridge that I think was supposed to be done every six months and we hadn't done it in like over a year. So even like your microenvironment, how do you walk into your house and just see a bunch of clutter? Do you have this old ugly sofa that you hate? That was like a gift from your mother-in-law and you just hate it? If your microenvironment, if these things are not making you happy then you're not having environmental wellness either. Just because we're aware of these wellness categories doesn't mean we're actually filling these wellness cups.
When we're looking at the difference between rest and restoration, here's what I think. This is how we get restorative: Rest could be streaming seven episodes of a show on Netflix, that could technically be resting, but is it physically, intellectually, spiritually, environmentally, socially, emotionally supportive? Maybe not. That's why sometimes we feel worse when we've rested. It's because it wasn't actually restorative. It was boring. It was mind-numbing. It was escapism, rather than being actual restoration.
Here's a chance for us to walk our talk and literally go and print out your wellness wheel or write down these categories that I've listed here and give yourself a rating. Are you a hundred percent full in that category or are you 0% full in that category? 10, 20, 30, give yourself a spectrum, and then next time you have some time off instead of resting in the escapism way, take a look at one of your categories that feels less full and say, "what is something intellectual I could do right now? Could I get this bucket a little fuller? What's something spiritual I could do right now that could get this bucket a little fuller?" And that's the way that I believe that rest can be restorative.
The ultimate goal is to have to be doing the capital W work, right? The side hustle or this work that you're wanting to do beyond the therapy room that feels purposeful. That feels dharmic, having the financial security you need, and then we can pour into these other six categories when you've given yourself time freedom, when you've given yourself energy, freedom, then we can look at these other places and say, oh, I'm low here, let me fill this up, and that's how we get to that dynamic life.
I feel like this is a really cool system to explore. That gives us some structure around this because sometimes when we have white space or we have extra free time call it, that's why we ended up scrolling, and that's why we ended up streaming is because we don't know what else to do. We're so out of touch with what we need, that we don't know what else to do and so these eight categories, and really the six that are not professional identity-focused, these other six categories, can give us a springboard of what we could do in our rest periods so it does feel restorative.
The last thing I want us to do is to ignore these dimensions of wellness and then we end up just, like, checking boxes. If we don't show up intentionally, if we're just checking boxes, if we're just escaping.
Now you've heard me mention my new lifestyle offer. If what I'm talking about sounds fun, make sure to join our little circle, our little community over at marissalawton.com/legacy, because I'm going to be talking a lot more about the lifestyle side of things, business with lifestyle in mind, how do we do this lifestyle thing? That is going to happen over at marissalawton.com/legacy - you can go over and sign up for free for our little community over there, but for today, where I want you to stay focused is take a look at your current practice.
So, your therapy practice, as it's set up now with the amount of clients that you have, with the amount of work that you're working, how is it keeping you from feeling fulfilled in the six non-work categories? So break out a piece of paper, hit pause with me if you're not driving, and I want you to answer these last few questions here at the end. How has my current practice structure been keeping me from feeling fulfilled in the six non-work categories?
The next question is: How will a side hustle that gives me more time, energy, and financial freedom help me pour into the six non-working categories? How will a side hustle that gives me more time, energy, and financial freedom help me pour into the six non-working categories?
Then I want you to go ahead and give yourself a score on the six categories. So you can see between physical, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, social, and emotional, you can say, "ah, I'm getting a B plus in this one. Alright, cool. I'll just stay the course" or "oh, solid D minus in this one. How can I revisit here? How can I fill this cup a little bit more? How can I have a little bit more wellness around this category?" So go ahead and give yourself a grade on each of these categories, and then you can start brainstorming activities for each one.
You can start doing these now, even as you're in the process of adding your side hustle and restructuring the two work categories. You can do a little bit like a tiny bit in each category, or you can pick one to be your primary focus and start beefing that up, but the ultimate goal is to remember to be doing your capital W work and having the financial security that you'd need from that. So as you're building this side hustle, make sure that you're keeping these other six categories in mind.
If all this lifestyle stuff sounds amazing, but you feel overwhelmed thinking of where you'd even start, this is where I would suggest grabbing my mini-course Side Hustle Schedule. It's designed to help you find that existing space to build your online business. It's really helped to find the time for your side hustle, but one of the added benefits is it helps you prioritize where you need to spend time throughout your life in general. You'll learn to identify these non-negotiables and make the time for the things that matter, and it will strengthen your obligation so that your time commitments are manageable again.
So when you're looking at these non-negotiables, you can put one from each of the six categories, and then you can make sure that you are prioritizing well-rounded wellness instead of lopsided wellness. Then, of course, you'll find how much time you have to put into the side hustle so you can start doing your capital W work.
You'll find that link over at marissalawton.com/schedule. And I'm loving these lifestyle episodes. If you're loving them, let me know, leave a rating and review here on iTunes for me or Apple podcasts now for me, or head on over to the Empathy Rising Facebook Group and let me know what you think about these lifestyle-focused episodes and also the shorter episodes, and then we will keep going from there. Alright guys, I will talk to you next week and until then, keep on rising.
