This week has been my first back at work since having our son, August Henry.

Motherhood has been a beautiful and crazy ride so far. Postpartum recovery has been slower and harder than I was fully prepared for, and the love I feel for my son and my gratitude for his safe arrival into this world is deeper than I can truly put into words.

I am now in awe of every parent I know, of how they are able to balance the responsibilities and joys of parenthood alongside being a fully functioning human too, and I am slowly but surely figuring out this new chapter of my life with as much patience and grace as I can give myself.

I’ve been gently easing back into business this week, diving deep with my wonderful clients and slowly finding my feet as a working parent.

I’ve never been more grateful for having a slow, simple, spacious business, that I can steer this ship by only needing to work 10-15 hours each week.

But returning to work while I’m still very much adjusting to this new chapter is without a doubt a little daunting.

I knew as soon as the second line turned pink that I’d be taking a somewhat short maternity leave, something I’m sure many of us who are self employed choose (or have) to do. As I had a full client schedule carrying over (and as the breadwinner in my marriage too) signing off for months on end just wasn’t an option for me, so being as intentional as I can as I ease back into work has been one of my biggest priorities this week.

Something I’ve been coming back to is what I like to call the slow lane productivity dial.

What exactly is the slow lane, you may be wondering?

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I had one more goal on my to-do list before I sign off for my maternity leave at the end of next week: launch season one of my new podcast.

And it’s here! I’ll be honest, I’m still a little surprised that I actually managed to get it done so late into my pregnancy but I’m so so happy that I did.

Let me introduce you to Dive Deeper.

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Whenever my clients are battling between what they want and what they think they’re allowed to actually give themselves I always ask:

If you could give yourself a permission slip right now, what would it say?

Whether it’s allowing themselves to slow down and rest, or perhaps opt-out of advice that isn’t serving them, or maybe be brave enough to pursue the goals that truly matter to them, what we always discover is that deep down they almost always know exactly what they need - it’s just so damn scary to give it to ourselves sometimes.

Everything joyful and meaningful in my business has come from being brave enough to actually give myself permission to do it.

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Do you ever find yourself comparing yourself to everyone else in your industry?

Worrying that they have more experience than you, that they’re saying everything you want to say but better than you ever could?

It’s a-okay if you’re nodding along to this.

I’ve found so many of my clients and creative business friends can struggle with this at times too - and I’ve without a doubt found myself spiralling into this mindset before too.

It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others, and when we’re doing the vulnerable work of putting ourselves out there and working towards big goals it’s so easy for our insecurity to find an outlet by looking at what everyone else is doing instead of focusing on our own path.

But the trick is to not spend too much time in this place, to recognise when those thoughts come in but not to pay them too much attention as all they can ever do is distract us from where our real work is happening.

I always tell my clients when they’re battling with this comparison and self-doubt: it’s time to put your business blinkers on.

The magic happens when we get lost in our own rabbit holes, when we root for ourselves instead of believing the lie that there’s no space for us and our work.

Because here’s the beautiful truth: no one else can do your work in the way you do it.

There may be crossovers with others in your industry, shared perspectives and approaches to your craft, but your work is uniquely shaped by your own story, message, and point of view.

The energy that you bring to the table cannot be replicated by anyone else, and it’s when we dive deeper into the specifics of our own work that we can build something truly singular and magical along the way.

Here are the things I’ve found helpful for both myself and my clients in putting our business blinkers on:

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Like most of us, I’ve been spending even more time than ever at home this year during this global pandemic that we’ve all been living through.

I’ve been running my own business from home for six years now, so thankfully it hasn’t been all that different for me to navigate a daily life mostly spent sheltering in place at home - my husband and I have joked to each other many times that our extremely introverted natures have been training us for this all of our lives.

But spending even more time at home than usual has taught me two things:

1: For the work/life blend of running my own business from home to truly work best for me I need a whole lot of intention and boundaries in my days

2: It’s so easy for me to get stuck in mindless, unintentional daily habits that don’t best serve me, my wellbeing, and my work

And it’s not like I don’t know what I need to thrive in my own work/life blend - the past six years have taught me so many lessons about what works best for me and what doesn’t.

The trick, for me, is to commit to making intentional, grounded, meaningful choices each day when it comes to how I spend my life minutes and navigate my days - but this can feel so much easier said than done when binge-watching five more episodes on Netflix, mindlessly scrolling through my phone, or staying in my pyjamas all day just feels like the easier route to take (and sometimes those things are exactly what I need to recharge too!)

So I wrote for myself a list of the twelve simple habits that support me to feel grounded and intentional in my blend of work and life as a business owner and human in the world, and I’m sharing them with you today in the hope that some of this list may be helpful for you too.

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One of my core business mantras is this:

My business orbits my life, not the other way around.

This mindset and approach is at the very heart of how I’ve built a business that is rooted in the life I want to live and the way I want to work, instead of it feeling like a machine outside of my control and at war with my own desires and needs.

It doesn’t mean that my business feels like a walk in the park every single day: steering this ship takes devotion, focus and energy each week.

But it does mean that my business doesn’t ask of me anything that I’m not willing to give, and that its foundations are rooted in how I want to live and work so that the entire enterprise feels rooted and aligned with my core vision for my work and my life.

This mantra has been at the heart of my business for years now, and the more I’ve thought about the ways I want my business to orbit my life the more the more I’ve realised that really what I’m working with here is a metaphor of an entire solar system.

We all have so many layers to our lives - business, family, friends, self-care, health-care and creativity just to name a few.

And the more intention we bring to these layers, and the ways they orbit and interact with each other, the more we make it possible to live a life that feels rooted and grounded in what matters most to us each day.

It’s when we show up on autopilot and make choices on what we think is expected of us instead of how we want to truly live and work that we can start to find ourselves feeling a little disconnected and unfulfilled.

And I think that a great way to ground and root ourselves into how we want to be living and working is to visualise how we want our own solar system to function and flow, to bear witness to how we truly want to be prioritising and spending our life minutes each day.

So you might now be thinking: what the hell is this solar system you’re talking about, Jen?

Let’s break it down:

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What a rollercoaster this year has been so far, eh?

As we make our way through this second half of the year, we may find ourselves feeling a little untethered and unsettled as we process what’s come so far and find our focus in our work and our lives for these next months ahead to come.

Whenever I feel like this I try and carve out some space to ask myself:

How can I start to feel grounded in this season?

How can I find a sense of steadiness and alignment, even if the world around me is feeling wildly out of my control?

And finding the answers I crave usually starts with sitting in the discomfort and gently just finding my way through until I get to the heart of what’s true.

If you’re aching to feel a little more grounded and a little more present in whatever kind of season you’re navigating right now, I have eight writing prompts for you to dive into in the hope that they can hold some space for you to uncover whatever is waiting to come to the surface for you.

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Can I tell you something that I’m sometimes a little afraid to admit?

I think I care less about my business than I ever have before.

Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I care less about my clients or the words I write in these letters and the conversations I share in my podcast - I’d say I’ve never felt more deeply connected to why I do this work in the world.

But what I do care less about are the pieces of being a business owner that I think we’re sometimes taught are necessary in this journey.

The never mentally switching off, the always chasing new goals and milestones, the finding all of my identity and self worth in my work.

Those are the pieces I have absolutely no interest in anymore.

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For today’s letter I want to share with you something I explored with one of my wonderful clients in a recent call together.

She was sharing with me that she’s struggling with having a lower capacity in this season, in the ways it’s affecting how she’s able to show up for herself, her business, and the intentions and goals that matter to her right now.

We talked about how frustrating it can feel to see the weeks and months go by and feeling unsure of what we actually did with them, and how easy it is to start to feel a little disconnected along the way.

I’m a big believer in the work I do with my clients that there are no universal answers, just discoveries and experiments to help you find your way home to whatever is true for you.

I suggested to my wonderful client, if it resonated with her, that she might like to experiment with a weekly check-in with herself, a small but meaningful ritual to hold space for her to stay connected to her work and what matters most to her in this season, no matter what her capacity looks like each week.

It’s so easy to believe that our creative journey’s are all or nothing. That if we can’t tick off all of those to-dos on our list we’ll never make any progress at all.

But in walking with hundreds of creative humans in their business journey’s these past six years I’ve learned that true progress is built step by step, piece by piece, moment by moment. And none of that is possible without giving our minds and bodies whatever they need to thrive along the way.

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