I got a reminder of my Values in the most surprising way.
I was emailing a past mentor of mine, and she reminded me of an experiment we did back in 2019. Back then, we called it the “Josephine Experiment.” So I went searching through my Archives and found an old blog post I had written. Within the lines, I read the exact same values I stand for today, I guess it is a reminder that I am on the right track… Below is that post.
Creating a community where I belong
I couldn't sleep a few months ago. This one phrase was running around wearing out the carpet in my mind: “I don't want to be in a business where I can't be myself.” This expanded into “I don't want to create a space where I feel like I don't belong.” And so the journey of unravelling Consciousness Co began.
I started Consciousness Co. in 2019. Physically and mentally, I opened it a long time ago. I have felt since I was very young that this was my life's work—to support women in moving through their lives with less suffering and more love and joy. So, after training at the School of Hard Knocks and completing my CONSCIOUSNESS COACHING™ course, I was amped up and ready to go! But when you start something new with the looming pressure of it being your life's work you are setting yourself up for a shitstorm. I had no idea about business, I just knew I wanted to serve so I started googling frantically, I attended seminars and did short courses, I kid you not I reckon I showed up on everyone's marketing funnel at some point because I was deep diving into learning how to market and sell my services.
If I am honest though I would have given everything away for free because I didn’t really care about the money I just wanted to share. But everything I was reading was about goals, hustling and that income/followers were the key metrics for success - to me, it was never and still isn't about that. For me, the reason I charge for my work is that I see it as an energy exchange and for our energy to be balanced, our exchange needs to be even - as a client, you need to feel you have invested in your own growth and success this allows you to take ownership and feel empowered, for me it means I am compensated for my time, effort, energy and expertise, and it allows me to keep growing and creating. This is the law of the universe: money is paper/currency/data. It is worldly, but energy is universal, and it is limitless - it is fair to say that financial goals will never be a driver for me.
So, as I set goals for Consciousness Co nothing really felt right, I felt myself getting increasingly frustrated, I started to get resentful and the ‘fun’ and spark kind of left me… so there was this push and pull within me at a soul level I was getting an aching pull to follow my path, but on the surface level, I just wanted to run and fast! I hated trying to condense my message into 200 characters for a post or spending an hour searching for an image and making sure things were “on brand” for # that!
What kept me going, though, was that I was running workshops once a month, so each time, I would get a glimpse of what it felt like to be in the right place. In those workshops, I felt so connected and so alive; I loved it, but everything else felt like a struggle.
This showed me two things:
The work was right - I was on purpose and doing the right thing
The way I was playing and the rules I was following were not for me
So, I started pulling right back, I needed some space to figure out what was right for me. I am a soul having a human experience and I believe that above all else, so building a business on the foundations of someone else's experience and ideas of success made zero sense to me. As I began to get some distance, I realised the places I had boxed myself in. For example, I had created two meetup groups. I met some amazing people, and I really enjoyed my workshops, but I felt I had created a precedent. I didn’t feel I had the space to explore and try new things, so I closed them down. This would have made every list-builder cringe.
I had about 900 people in those two groups; my “list” outside of that has around 50 people, hehe! I don't really care, I don't want to be for everybody, I want my people so we can love and care for each other and build a community together… not thousands of nameless people where the energy exchange is unbalanced and one of us is feeling depleted.
Once I closed those groups, I took a deep breath and then came phase two: figuring out which other practices I was doing that I didn't enjoy and then stopping them, too. So, I started paying attention to my body, my mind, and everything in between… what feels good, what gets me excited, and what makes me cringe. So I stripped right back, and then I rested.
This leaves me here, ready to start phase three. We rebuild with joy! My mentor, @Danigardner, set me a challenge for the next three months and aptly coined the “Josephine experiment.” This involves me doing whatever the heck I want for the next three months. If something comes to mind, and I want to write it, record it, or create it… JUST DO IT! So, let's call this post 3.1.
I am so excited about my new meetup group, which is for women and more about connection. I don’t believe in manipulation tactics, so I just laid it all out for them. I have started moving away from social media pages, thinking of them as more of a business card than my connection platform. I have started recording short courses and writing more log posts… I am having fun again, getting excited and inspired.
Since letting go of the rules I have begun to feel this lightness and the freedom, all of the things I work with women to achieve in their own lives and the things I had worked so hard for in my own life, I am coming back to the spirit I was when I began and I am so excited to see what is to come.
Josephine x
