e198 What Happens When Your Soul Outgrows Your Strategy
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[00:00:00] Welcome, welcome to ReWild Your Business. I'm your host, Gill Moakes.. Thank you so much for joining me again this week, and if you are new here, welcome. You are stepping in at a, Ooh, what's that word? Not pivotal. What's the word I'm trying to think of? That's gone. Oh, well you can tell these are unscripted. This feels like an important episode.
My wonderful, wonderful listeners. I have been really quiet lately. If you follow me on Instagram or on LinkedIn, which is where I tend to show up online, you'll notice there hasn't been much going on. Emails. My emails have been pretty to the point. You know, I've been sharing my podcast episodes like I always do, and, but I think I've been quite quiet.
Now this podcast, this is my non-negotiable. You're always getting one of these, right? But for me, it's not been like polite sort of version of choir as in the, you know, or I've been very [00:01:00] busy, or I've been taking a strategic break. I wanna tell you the truth. About why I have not been creating content as prolifically as I often have in the past.
Albeit I've never been a slave to consistency in terms of like the cadence of putting out content, but I have always been pretty prolific and I haven't been recently. And I now know why, and I'm the other side of it. So of course like, you know, I don't tend to share things that I'm right in the middle of.
But once I'm through the other side and the message has come through loud and clear to me, then it always feels like the right time to share with you what's been going on. So I've been going through my own identity evolution and it's been so profound that I think it almost. [00:02:00] Paralyzed me from producing anything that didn't, you know, really feel aligned with what's actually going on with me.
And honestly, what has been moving through me over really the last year has just felt too big, too spiritual, too mystical. It's just been too much really to share. So. I chose silence over diluting that experience. I chose to not talk about that part of what's going on with me, at least not very much.
'cause it felt too big and it, I felt too in it. There was so much that wasn't clear to me. There were so many big question marks hanging over me about what. This, I'm really loathed to use awakening [00:03:00] because that is one of those really overused words like empowerment, like authenticity, like all of those other words.
The only thing is like, it is the best word to describe what the last year has felt like for me. It has felt like an awakening. So, I dunno if you've ever felt this, I dunno if you've ever been in a place where almost like creating the right content or showing up the right way just feels impossible because you are in the process of becoming someone different.
If you can relate to that, you are gonna love this episode because that's what I'm gonna be talking about. Okay. Let's go. Welcome to Rewild Your Business, the podcast for women doing the work, their soul intended. I'm Gill Moakes. I'm an international business coach, and I'm a guide for women doing the work that matters.
Rewilding your business means cutting away what doesn't belong to allow, what does to thrive. [00:04:00] Finding simplicity in your work, and it's about bringing the whole of who you are to the table. Whether you are building something new or finding your way back to what really matters to you. I'm so glad you're here.
So here is what has been happening for me. My mind has been just so full of the spiritual, of the mystical. I know exactly when it started, to be honest. Well, no, that's not true. It started a couple of years ago, so until a couple of years ago, I was your absolute to the bone skeptic. You know, I almost started a podcast with my business bestie Rebecca called the Anti Manifestation Show.
Right? That is the kind of skeptical bucket that I put myself in and was comfortable in. I'm a bit [00:05:00] embarrassed about it now because I think it's quite insulting, but I was very unapologetically anti woo. I really hate saying that, but I have to be honest. That is how I describe myself. So anything about the spiritual and the mystical and the unexplained and the great mysteries, those were all things that I would've just rolled my eyes at a couple of years ago.
And then I met the wonderful Deb D. She's been on the podcast, I've been on her podcast. We are now really close friends, and she introduced me to my own intuition. So the work I did with her was really the start of this journey. I think that's brought me to where I am now and it's kind of winded its own way.
Since then, she's been my client, I've been her client. We've got a really tight bond between us and it took up pace with me after that, [00:06:00] but really only I would say in the last year, I dunno if you remember. Me talking about a really special event that I went to in Glastonbury, which was called Unbound. It was hosted by Rebecca Campbell, and that was another really pivotal thing for me.
I'd already been doing some nature-based work, so I've actually have. Completed a forest bathing, uh, guide certification. So I was really, I've always been interested in nature. That isn't a new thing, so I've always been interested in that and I felt drawn to go to this event in Glastonbury. It wasn't a nature-based particularly event.
I'm making reference to that because Rebecca Campbell's teachings are very nature based and they are absolutely. The way that I work in my business has always been quite seasonal and you know, so there's always been this element of nature [00:07:00] coming into my business. You know, this podcast is called Rewild Your Business.
There's something very important to me about. The balance of nature. But after the event I went to in Glastonbury, two things, that event and also my uncle dying, being there with him at the time of his passing, which was a really incredible special experience that did change me for sure. Absolutely changed me last year.
All of these things have been going on, me deepening my own spiritual journey, my own understanding, me exploring the things I believe in, the things that mean something to me, the things that matter to me. All of that work that I coach others around all the time I've been doing for myself over the last year.
So I've been in it and I haven't always shared every detail of what's been going on. You [00:08:00] know that about me. You know that I prefer to wait until I've got all of the lessons from it. I don't share scabs. I only share scars. And I want to, to get to a point where I was able to make sense of everything, where I was able to understand.
What role? All of this work I've been doing on myself comes to play in my business. How does it fit? And for a long time I couldn't work out where it fitted in my business. It was like on the left hand, like imagine like a wrestling ring and in one corner you've got strategy, and in the other corner you've got sort of soul led spiritual work.
Mystical work, and it was almost like they were coming into battle and it was like who was gonna win? And on some days the spiritual side of me won and I would, you know, feel incredibly creative and I would be writing and things would flow from me. And then [00:09:00] the next day. Strategy would come in hard into the ring and strategy would win, and I would feel all of that feminine energy recede and the upsurge come back of the masculine energy of the planning, the setting, the goals, the, you know, let's do this.
Action. Action. Action. So can you see how when you've got that kind of internal battle going on of the draw of what you're being called to do, the draw of going deeper into your work, into the meaning of your work, into the why behind everything, the much more thoughtful, expansive part of the work I do.
That identity piece. And then you've got this other piece, the strategic piece, that felt so disconnected that the two just weren't sitting alongside each other, and I didn't know how to bring them together. So it was [00:10:00] almost like I had my business, which was demanding the strategic. Spot in the ring, and then I had all of this other identity evolution of who I truly am that was going on at the same time, and it just felt like the two of them were enemies that they couldn't be around each other.
I had to keep choosing. I dunno if I've shared this before. I feel like I might have shared this before about the row of books that I have on my desk where depending on whether I was having a spiritual day or a strategic day, I would have books on my desk that reflected that. If I came the next day I would suddenly, you know, take away, I'm looking at my books that I've got here at the moment with things Lie.
Uh, where are we? The solstice yearbook, earth wisdom, wild Walking, [00:11:00] the language of trees, wild preneurs. I've got a lot of books here at the moment, which actually feel like quite a mixture, and that's really for the first time. That I've bought in this mixture of books. At one point it was just literally hardcore spiritual, you know, way of the world, soul Woman, you know, and those kind of books.
Or it was full of, you know, Brendan Burchard or High Performance Habits, you know, and things like that. So just no meeting of minds between the two, and that started to get so freaking uncomfortable. I felt like I couldn't push forward through it, so I was living this. I can imagine that's what it feels like to live a double life.
If I'm this, I can't be that, and if I'm that I can't be this. I wonder how many of you listening can relate to this, this duality that we kind of force on [00:12:00] ourselves because of an identity that we've told ourselves is ours. And so when we start to evolve and quite naturally, this has been a natural progression for me.
You know, I'm making it sound as if it is only the last couple of years, but I've always been curious, you know, about. Alternative ways of thinking, philosophies. I studied philosophy at a level. I spent a lot of time as part of a Buddhist group. You know, there are lots of experiments and explorations I've done, but only really in the last couple of years have I allowed myself to get more immersed into this part of who I am.
And because of that, my identity has evolved. So what happened was every time I was sitting down to write, or particularly to create content about business, so every time I was sitting down trying to write for LinkedIn, for example, it felt so [00:13:00] heavy. I felt so disconnected from it. Like I was trying to speak a language that I'd kind of forgotten, you know?
And I know. What I am supposed to do, I'm doing podcast air quotes, which are so pointless, but you know what I mean, you know, I know what best practice strategies are for LinkedIn. I know what best practice strategies are for content marketing in general. For email marketing, for relationship marketing. I know all of the strategies like the back of my hand.
But I couldn't do it for a while, and it wasn't because I'm lazy and it wasn't because I was self-sabotaging. It was actually because my own integrity just wouldn't let me. It wouldn't let me create anything that felt disingenuous. And this is really the work that I teach. This is [00:14:00] the work I coach around with my clients.
It's identity transformation. It's building a business from who you actually are, not who you think you should be. And so really over the last year, I've been living that at a really deep level. You know, for so many of us, this gap appears. This gap between who we're becoming and how we've been showing up in our work.
So for me, I thought for a long time that I had to choose. I had to choose between my own spiritual awakening, my own deepening of spiritual practice, or being a business coach. I had to choose between having these mystical experiences and following my kind of soul, calling to Glastonbury, to Tintagel, which I did last year as well, and I had an amazing transformational experience there too.
I thought I had to choose between those things [00:15:00] and being a credible entrepreneur. So can you see how difficult it was to create or to talk about deeply about what was going on in either of those camps? For me, I was fine talking about theory and coaching other people around these things, but talking about my own experience was actually really difficult because I was too in it.
So this thinking, we have to be one thing, thinking that we have to keep parts of ourselves separate so that we're not judged and this was it. For me, the big fears thing for me were mostly around being judged, and it felt like going back to the beginning of when I started my business, honestly. I had all these fears around people saying, have you seen what Gill's been talking about?
Who the hell does she think she's, she doesn't belong in this spiritual club. Why does she think she can talk about [00:16:00] this kind of thing with any level of authority? Good lord. You know, so that really visceral imposter syndrome, the fear of being judged or being laughed at, of, of just not being taken seriously.
And what sits under that, and I think this is really important and it's why I'm feeling so called to share this now, is the fear that sits under all of that. And I think this is true for all of us who are scared to follow the path that we are truly drawn to. Is the thought that if I am honest and open up around who I really am in my wholeness, I'll lose everything.
That's the fear. And that's when the little voices come. The little voices that say. You know, Gill, you know, you've built this audience, you've got this following, and they don't wanna hear about anything like [00:17:00] this from you. They only want from you strategy. They want the tactics, they want you to give them the seven steps to whatever.
And that was a story that I kept playing, and it fed the fear. It really fed the fear of if you are as radically and authentically honest as you claim. To be, you're going to lose everything. And of course that was a story. It was a story and, and there's a big, and here, yes, it was a story. And even if it was a true story, what would I be fighting to keep?
So I think the lesson in this for me has been that the importance and the way that I value showing up authentically and the depth in which I believe in identity [00:18:00] work in. Being who we really are here to be. It means so much to me. It matters so much to me that I can't sacrifice that for any reason. I believe that none of us, and honestly, if you are listening to this podcast, if you've been listening for a while, you know enough about me to know that I've always believed that we have to go deeper, not wider.
You know that, and this is my version of that. This is part of my story of doing that. But also, and this is relevant for all of us, I genuinely believe that we cannot build wildly successful businesses from a diminished version of ourselves. And that is the truth. So however scary it is to step into the fullest version of who you are becoming.
It is still always going to [00:19:00] be the path that leads you to the most fulfillment, the path that leads you to the best results, the most money, the most fulfillment in what you do. So when we choose this level of authenticity over strategy, we do the very thing that for me, rewilding your business is all about.
It's about letting the success and the money be the side effect of doing what matters to you. And like I say, we cannot do that if we're building from a diminished version of us. This is the Rewilding work that I talk about all the time. It's cutting away all of the beliefs, all of the limiting beliefs that have forced you to think that you had to build your business in a certain way, or that had you believe you had to be a certain way to have the business results that you want.
We all need to completely rewild our entire relationship with our [00:20:00] work. We've got to strip away that kind of performative piece, that bit that. So that it's acceptable, so that it's doing what is expected so that it's doing the best practice of building a business, right? We've got to shovel all of that out the way to get to the more untamed version underneath that allows us to hear what our own intuition is telling us to do, even when it's frightening.
Because for me, this is about friction. There was so much friction for me between listening to my intuition, my soul, and strategy. They were so detached from each other. They were almost shouting at each other and disagreeing with each other. Right? And that friction isn't a problem to solve for ages. I was stuck in thinking that that disjointedness, that separation was a problem I had to solve.
But it isn't a problem. The [00:21:00] friction, it's information. It's basically your system telling you that something has been outgrown. And it's telling you that you get to choose, you get to honor the evolution of who you've becoming. So it was really important for me to share this episode, and I really hope that I've managed to get across the point I'm trying to make.
I appreciate that. This is not an easy thing for me to talk about. In fact, I think that anything that is incredibly important to you becomes less easy to talk about. I find it really easy to talk about strategy and process and, uh, the things that I know, like the back of my hand, the fact stuff that's so easy to talk about a spiritual awakening and what that has looked like for me, and I'm, I'm sure I will share more about it moving forward.
It's [00:22:00] not everything you know. I still believe that there is this perfect middle ground where strategy and soul can get together, where they can get on, where they're not in the wrestling ring. Where they're absolutely working together to get the best results for you, the best results for the clients that you serve.
And that's the outcome we want, isn't it? I wanna be able to show up in my business as my whole full, unapologetic self and get the best results for my clients, and only work with people that I absolutely adore and only do the work that I absolutely love to do. I'll tell you something else really interesting.
Actually, I'll share this with you now. I'm only a handful of people I've shared this with so far. Since this has been happening for me, because it's happening for me, and now I'm on the other side of it, and I'm [00:23:00] so comfortable with where I've landed. I'm so comfortable with the whole of who I am. My writing is now flowing out of me.
I'm working on my book and it's not, I'm not feeling that resistance now, you know? So I am on the other side of this and what is also happening. Other doors are opening, other opportunities are coming that I wasn't expecting, and it feels so good. That's what I want for you. I want you to know that if you choose the scary thing.
If you choose the thing that demands of you to be the most courageous version of yourself, to do the thing that other people don't expect you to do, to do the thing that makes other people say, are you crazy? Are you, why are you doing that? That's not gonna work. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? If you choose to be someone who listens to and trusts themselves more than you listen and trust other people.
[00:24:00] That's really what we have to do to evolve. Doors will open, and so one that is unexpectedly open for me is that I'm going to be speaking at the ICF Converge Summit in Paris in May, as one of I think, 24 workshop leaders. How bloody exciting is that? And it's not something that came as a result of me forcing my strategy down anyone's throat.
It's not come as a result of me strategically chasing it. It's come as a result of me being open to whatever is coming. So I just wanted to share that because I think it's something I'm noticing. I'm noticing many, many more opportunities and things that feel very aligned for me presenting [00:25:00] themselves, and that feels really, really good.
So what I wanna leave you with is, you know, if you are someone who's been feeling resistance, showing up, if things heavy and stuff isn't. You know, you're just kind of, you know really what you want, but for some reason you just can't seem to show up in that way or do the things your air quote supposed to do.
You know, just be open to the fact that it might not be resistance at all. It could just simply be integrity. Maybe your soul has kind of outgrown your strategy and it's time to let your work catch up to who you are becoming. That's exactly what's happened for me. So I love that I get to share this. I love that I have this platform and that I get to share that with you because this work is freaking important when you are someone like us [00:26:00] whose work matters to them so much and whose calling is to serve their clients in the best way they possibly can.
It really matters that. We are showing up in the wholeness of who we are. And I'll tell you one thing for sure. You know what? The people who are meant to work with you, the people who are meant to find you, it's not the polished version of you they're looking for. They're looking for the fullest, most real version.
So they need you to not dilute your truth. They need you to show up in the fullness. So if that is a process for you, if that's something that you need to step back and think about and maybe question, you know, where in my life and where in my business am I showing up as a diminished version of myself?
Where am I diluting my truth? I'd [00:27:00] love you to have a think about those and maybe have a little journal around those. As always, I'll pop a link into the show notes so that if you would like to have a conversation with me, have a next best move call with me. These calls are wonderful for just trying to get some clarity on.
What's next? What's the next thing you need to be focusing on? And that can be in any context. So I'm not gonna qualify any more than that. What is the next thing that you need to be focusing on? Then? Head to the show notes and book a call. Okay. That's it for this one. A really deep one this week. Oh, I wonder if I'm gonna have one of those, um, vulnerability hangovers.
I dunno. I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I think for me, that only happens when you share things when you're in the middle of going through them and then you're [00:28:00] like, oh shit, why did I open up about that already? Because I'm not ready. I don't feel like that at all. I feel like I'm, I have landed somewhere so beautiful.
I'm sure there'll be more to come as more of this weaves into my work into what I do. Feels good, feels very complete. And as coaches, you know, we are the luckiest people in the world, right? We get to do this work that matters to us so much. Mm. Okay. Well listen, have a fantastic week and I will see you back here.
Same time, same place next week. Bye for now.
