Episode 124 How to live life unapologetically 

Show Notes:

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Show Transcription: 

Sorry, is a word that most of us as women get very used to saying a lot, probably too much. So today I am talking all about the seven things that I no longer apologise for. And it was really polarising to me, when I talk to my girlfriends, especially my friends that are in business, in how much guilt we all carry around and how we feel like, we need to somehow be apologetic about following our dreams in life. And so today, I'm going to debunk that for you.

Let's go.

Hello,I'm Tina Tower, and you're listening to her Empire Builder. For my first decade of business, I thought grinding and hustling and working harder than everyone else was my path to success. It was pretty successful by a lot of measures, but it led to burnout and adrenal fatigue. Then when I travelled around the world, on my family gap year, I discovered the simplicity and the reach of online business. And I completely fell in love. You have so much knowledge and expertise that's within, and I want to help you to package that. So you can also help to lift others up. So how do you build a thriving million dollar business based on everything that's in your mind, this is her Empire Builder, the podcast.

Hello, and welcome to Episode 124 of the her Empire Builder podcast. Today, I want to talk about things that I no longer apologise for. And I say I no longer apologise for but in all honesty, it's a constant work in progress. It's something that I want to no longer apologise for. And when we're talking about, you know what we're apologetic about, when you become conscious of it, it's amazing how many times you'll pick up in the day, you either saying verbally to someone sorry, when you're actually not. Or when you're feeling like somehow you should be apologising for following your own heart or following your own dreams or choosing yourself. So I want to touch on those different things today. Because these are the biggest mindset shifts that I've been working on, and how I'm able to show up in my life. And for others as well. A big thing for me has been boundaries, that's one of the biggest ones. So I'll touch on that. And that's how the idea for this episode came about is that you can't be all things to all people all the time. And so if you're trying to serve your customers at the 100% level, and you're trying to be a great partner, and you're trying to be a great parent, and you're trying to be a great friend, and you're trying to get to the gym, and you're trying to do all of the things that we're trying to do, often, you know, when you say yes to something, you're going to have to say no to something else. And so whatever you're saying no to you, like I'm so sorry, but I just can't. And the thing is, let's let go of the apologising, because it's a completely unrealistic expectation to carry around. And I think the way that we can really step into our power and be more productive and feel great, because the thing is like, I know, when you feel like you're in flow, and everything's going like, you know, you have those days, and you're like, Oh my God, this girl is on fire is like I am smashing it today, you'll notice the absence of guilt. So you won't feel apologetic about how how you're doing all the things that you want to do. That's what gives us the flow. When we're like, oh my gosh, I really should be doing this over here. I'm so sorry, I can't make it here. Or I'm so sorry, I can't let you pick my brain for a coffee because I've got all of these things that I need to complete. Or I'm so sorry, honey, I can't watch you play basketball this afternoon because I've got to finish my work or I'm so whatever it is, if you're in that state of mind, you can't perform as well when you're doing it. And so the way that we can really show up and shine for ourselves and others is to be present. And go You know what, when I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing, whether it's family, whether it's personal, whether it's health, whether it's work, whatever area we're doing it in, if we're there, and we're like, you know what, this is where I am, I'm not sorry, this is what I'm doing. Then you'll find your show up in such a lighter way and you will be enjoying everything so much more and as a result you will get better results in all areas of your life. So here's the seven things that I really wrote down in going. These are the things that I've really been working on for the last kind of two to three years, mainly in consciously in the last two to three years because I used to find myself all the time saying sorry. And I would get to the stage where, rather than let people down, I would just ended up working to the bone. So at the end of the day, I would feel so inadequate and drained that I'd let people down. And I'd be in tears, because people always wanted more. And I know that you've been in that situation, too. I know, you've been in the situation where you're like, well, I've got nothing else to give to the world. I'm out, I'm depleted, I'm exhausted, I can't do it.  And we need to have these boundaries in place, so that we can do better. And so that we can live a more joyful life.

So the number one thing is switching off on the weekends to rest my mind and my body. One of the best things that I did that I only did at the beginning of this year was I bought a second phone. And when I did it, I was like, Oh, my gosh, it feels a little over the top. But it has been one of the best, most practical things that I have done. So what I have on that phone is a different phone number. So I don't get any text messages. I don't get any calls, there is about 20 people that have that phone number. And so you know, my friends want to be able to do it. So what I started doing was switching off on the weekends. But I found that, you know, one of the kids friends would have messaged and asked if they wanted to come around for a play. And I would have missed it or one of my girlfriends and say, Hey, we're going down to the beach to have some afternoon drinks at sunset, do you want to come and I'd see it on the Monday and go, Oh, no. So I got myself a second phone so that I could still have that switch off and not see anything work related, but still stay connected to social things on the weekend. And so on that phone, I have like phone and messages with a different number. I keep Instagram on there, because I like to post on Instagram. And I actually do enjoy. I'm pretty good with boundaries on Instagram. I don't, I don't endlessly scroll. So I quite like though, because the week is so busy having you know a 30 minute session on the weekend where I just mindlessly scroll and check out what everyone's doing. And be able to do that. But I don't have Facebook on there. Because my my Facebook groups are extremely active and people will message me on facebook a lot. And so I found that on the weekends, even if I was like, You know what, I'm just not going to look at it on the weekend, I would see the activity and be like, I should respond, I should I should get back to them. Like I could see a person stuck on something that I could unstick them if I just responded, but I was like, You know what, I need time off, I need to be able to rest a little bit. Otherwise, you're on call all day every day. And so switching off on the weekends. And for me, that's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I have a three day weekend really allows me to rest and rejuvenate so that then when the new week comes around, I'm like firing I am ready to go, I'm ready to serve and ready to show up and, and it just works really, really well.

The second one is not responding to messages straight away. So one of the biggest things you know, when I first started my business, you're desperate for any sort of interaction, you get a message and you're like, Yes, okay, we're in business, someone wants to talk to me, this is fabulous. I love a friend. And you know, you're you're responding immediately. But what you find is as you grow, you get hit up on everything. So there's so many different avenues. And I found that, you know, through messages on Instagram and Facebook and email and text message and all of the other avenues that people can find you on. I was getting messages everywhere. And so I was trying to respond to straight away because you know customer services and massive priority of mine for obvious reasons. and wanted to do that. But what I found was if I saw those messages, and I was kind of like halfway in something else, so I was doing something else or I was, you know, focused on your writing a presentation or whatever it was that I was in, I would see the message and then not respond to it straight away and go, Okay, I'll get to that. I'll get to that and leave it. But then because so many messages are coming in, like I'd miss all of those notifications. And then people would come back and go, you never got back to my message and oh, it's this big thing. And of course, what we're talking about today apologising, I felt awful. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Like you, everybody is so important to me, especially my customers that I want to be able to get back to them. And so one of the best things that I did was not respond to messages straightaway, in going, I'm going to have set times in the day and for me that's twice a day where I sit down and I open all of it. I open Facebook, Instagram, email, and I go on Alright, I'm going to clear the decks. And so I go through and I respond to everyone and I get all that done, I respond to all the tags on Facebook and Instagram and the DMS and everything everywhere. And then I can clear it and make sure I haven't missed anything. And sometimes, you know, there's people that will message me on one avenue, and then message me on another avenue saying, I don't know if you got my message over here, but so I'm sending it over here. And so it's really helpful to have everything open at the one time so that you can kind of go, alright, and make sure it's all there? And I'm not sorry about that. You know, if people want to get an answer from me, like right there, and then in the hourly, their private clients, otherwise, you know, wait. And that's okay. Because otherwise, we literally spend all day just responding to messages. So you need to have those kind of switch on and switch off, or you're just been spending your life responding and reacting to other people, instead of being able to do the things that you want to do.

Number three, was sticking to my boundaries with that, and it is hard, because one of the things, you know, if you if you give too much, people will come to expect that. And you have to maintain that. And you can't be all things to all people all the time. So one of my biggest things was not letting anyone call to pick my brain, like anyone, whether they're friends, whether they're friends of friends, whether I've worked with them before, anything like that, because we would, my days would literally just be spent answering people's questions, which you know, is something that is not lost on me how lucky I am to be in that situation. Because you're at the beginning of business, you work so hard to try and get to the situation where people want your advice. But you There comes a time where you go, Okay, I've got to swing the other way. Because otherwise, I'm just going to spend all day working on other people's things and never get time to develop your own things or to serve your paying customers is the biggest thing. So for me, I'm going you know what, I have got a lot of people that pay me a lot of money to work with me. It's not fair to be able to give free unsolicited advice to people. So I direct everyone to a paid coaching session with me if someone emails and they're like, I've got a question, I want to be able to ask this or I'm not sure what to do with this, or I'm not sure what to do with that. That's totally fine. There's an avenue for that. So my advice would be if people are ringing too much and going, Hey, can I pick your brain? Or can I have a quick session and our says, create a product for it? Whether it's, you know, a quick 30 minute Spotfire call to go Okay, here we go. And we're going to put this in the sidebar of your course so that if someone wants to ask your question, they can just go through, they can purchase that they can go straight to your calendar, booking a session with you, and it's all done and you're being paid for your time. What that will do is it increases the quality of the question as well. So people won't use you for little things that they could just Google anyway. It's amazing how many questions I get asked that I'm like, you can just google this and have the answer in five seconds. Why? So what you want to be able to do is put a price on it so that people are like, Oh, do I really need this. And then a lot of people do, which is great, because then you're working in your genius zone and you're going okay, these are quality questions, I can answer them and they valuing your time and you're valuing their time, and it's just this beautiful exchange. So if you're finding that you running out of time, because so many people are taking your time, put some boundaries in place.

I'm up to number four. I will not apologise for not fitting the traditional mould of what I should be. Now I know it's highly likely if you're listening to her Empire Builder podcast right now that you don't fit the traditional mould of maybe what society feels you should be and that used to be something I would apologise for. I would sometimes go to like kids soccer games and different things. And I talk about I love and people would look at me and I'd feel like I had to apologise for being happy. Like, I'm really like, it just it sounds really ridiculous when I say it out loud, but it's something that I catch myself doing is minimising what I do or how I feel or how I live my life, because I don't want to upset others. And one of the things that I decided a couple of years ago was I was going to unapologetically live my life in all its beautiful glory with the ups and downs and everything in between. And I don't fit the traditional mould of of what I should be. I mean I don't do laundry. I cook only once a week, I, you know, spend a lot of time on my own in my garden playing piano, I spend all of my free time if I'm not doing that with my kids, I don't, I don't like doing I don't want to clean. Like that's, you know, people ask how you get so much time. And if you look at how much time you spend doing household maintenance and chores and different things, it's usually like somewhere around 16 to 25 hours a week, it's a lot of time. And I have that time back to spend how I like and I don't apologise for that. So I get women all the time ask, you know, do you feel guilty about that, or getting help and doing that. And you know, I was talking to a girlfriend about this a few weeks ago. And she was saying was, it's your lucky for you because your husband does the cooking. And I am very lucky that my husband does does the cooking. But if he didn't, I still wouldn't do it, I would either get someone to do it or there was so many different services to do it. Like there's places up just up the road from me that do beautiful family meals that you cook and you pay for and you just chuck them in the oven. And that's it. And they're all balanced. And they're all macrobiotic and all the different things that I go you, it's up to you to identify what's important to you and your version of the ideal life. And whatever that is one of the best things about living in the world that we live in today is there's so many variations, we don't have to do the things that we've been traditionally expected to do, we can live life on our terms, and whatever that is for you. Do it and don't apologise for it. Like you're a good human, you're doing good things live how you like and just make it happen. It really is that simple.

When we take everything else away.

You know, you’ve obviously got to go to work up to I couldn't always do. Like I couldn't send out my laundry and have cleaners and all of that sort of thing with the gardener and, and the people because I couldn't afford it. I was flat broke. I was I was lucky if we ate meat, because it was so damn expensive. But with that, you know, as soon as I started earning money, I started like farming out the things that I didn't want to do anymore until I got to the stage where I was like, Okay, this is it. This is my life, this is where I want to be. So you work towards that.

Number five is I won't say sorry for saying no to an opportunity that I don't want. And this is a thing that we you will find yourself saying yes to things all the time. Because you don't want to disappoint the other person, you don't want to let them down. You don't want to seem ungrateful. And so you end up saying yes to things and like going to events or speaking at things or doing something that you go,

Why am I here?

Why did I do this, and there's no one to blame but yourself. You know, and that is not always easy. There was like the the most recent example of this was, I was interviewed on somebodies podcast. And then the deal was they would be interviewed on I would be interviewed on theirs, and they will be interviewed on mine. And then I like met them on the podcast, I was like, You know what, this just isn't the right fit for us. And I didn't want her on my podcast, I was like, it's not the right vibe for the audience that I have. And it's just not going to work. And it started this big, hoo ha. But I was like, I know that if I say yes, to not rock the boat, and to be polite, I'll have them on, I'll put it out, I won't feel proud of it. I'll feel ashamed that I did that when I didn't want to. And that's worse, because I don't want to let myself down. Because it's me that has to live inside my brain all day. And ladies, that's a lot of work. As it is for all of us, you know, we're accountable to ourselves. And for a lot of high achieving women, we hold ourselves to a really high expectation. And so saying no to an opportunity that you don't want is something that takes practice. And it's something that, you know, can sound so ridiculous and going well if you don't want to do something, say no. But I bet you you have a few things that can come to mind straight away that you've said yes to doing that you really wish you hadn't. Oh, and so my advice would be stop saying no to opportunities that you don't want. Because what that will do is give you the time and the freedom to be able to say yes to the things that you do want and creating the space for the things that you do want and the things that are going to serve the world and the things that are going to bring you a lot of joy.

Number six is prioritising health and happiness. Now this is a hard thing. Because we work a lot. And for a lot of us, we love our work. And if something stays on the to do list because we go, you know what I got to call time I've got to go because I've got to go to the gym or I got to go for a run, or I've got to go and meditate or I've got to go and do whatever it is. You'll feel apologetic for that you'd be like, I'm so sorry, I don't want to let you down. But I have to do that. And what my pattern has been traditionally in my life is I will never let people down. Like that is like my worst.

Or the feel the feeling of letting someone down, I think and someone being disappointed in me is like my kryptonite. You know, if people say, you know, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. No one's ever actually said that to me. But that like vibe. Oh, horrifying. So what I've like done in my years and years of business running is, I've said no to health, because I wanted to be able to serve people more. And one of the things that I've really been working on lately is going okay, I can say no to things and go and do what I have previously viewed as unproductive and work on my health. Because I know that if I'm not healthy, I'm good for nobody, I can't show up and serve anyone. And so that's something I'm no longer apologising for.

And then the final one, number seven is getting eight hours of sleep a night so that I can serve the world better. Now I have ADD and it's known that people with ADD you know, have to sleep more. But a lot of people need to sleep more than they actually do. And I talked to people that go, you know what, I work till midnight, or one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning because I have to get all the work done after the kids go to bed. No, you don't, you can go to sleep and do it tomorrow. Because we don't function well, when we don't get a lot of sleep. For me, I am a nightmare. I am a lovely human, I am not, I am not sorry for saying that I am a nice person, I'm very generous, I am lovely. Except when I'm tired. When I'm tired, oh my gosh, get out of my way. There are two days a month you want to avoid me in my cycle. And if I don't get enough sleep. But when I sleep, I can serve the world better. And you need to be able to call time on that and go to bed and get some sleep and let it all wait until tomorrow. Because I do think that, you know, we we need to be able to rest and recover and when you're tired. So a lot of people will survive on you know, six hours sleep or whatever it is and think that they're functioning fine, because you've forgotten how you function with a full night's sleep. And it's amazing. You know, if you want to bring big energy and I bring big energy in my day, you know, I'm here there and everywhere i'm doing i mean even today, I'm doing this podcast, it's seven o'clock in the morning right now that I'm jumping on to a coaching call at eight o'clock. I'm teaching a master class at nine o'clock, another coaching call at 10 o'clock. And then Then what am I doing, I'm filming a couple of segments for a new course that I'm creating limited Launch Formula. Then I'm going to get my eyebrows waxed my eyelashes tinted and a blow dry so that tomorrow I'm doing all the basic camera filming stuff. Like there's a lot in the day. And that's every day, every day there is a lot of things. And the way that I do that is by going to bed so that you can rest and recover. And if if you want to show up and do like big energy, if you want to do big things. If you want your brain to function on this beautiful high level, then you need to let it rest. And so yeah, that's the final one. All right, let me let me wrap it up. Number one, switching off on the weekend. Number two, not responding to messages number three sticking to boundaries number four don't apologise for not feeling a traditional mode you do you number five saying no to an opportunity that you don't want number six prioritising health and happiness and number seven going to sleep. So let me know jump on the Instagram. Let me know where you're listening to this from and what you're going to stop apologising. For if there was something in today that you're like, you know what, I know if I adopted this into my life, that I could get a new level of joy. And that is really what we're all about because they're happier you are, the happier everyone else's around you and the better you're going to be able to perform at work. have the best day. Thank you for listening to this episode of her Empire Builder. If you loved it, please share it on Instagram and Facebook for your friends and if you really want to deliver me While you can pop a review on iTunes, I'd love to hear from you. So if you have any questions, email me at [email protected]  And if you want to know more about what we do, head over to tinatower.com Now I truly hope this podcast gives you so much value and you can use it to dream big, plan well, and take massive action in building your very own Empire. That's perfect. Just for you.