109 | Show Up Anyway: Keeping Your Content Commitments
In the Clinic with Camille
109 | Show Up Anyway: Keeping Your Content Commitments

It's a beautiful day outside, your brain is blank, and you're supposed to write a newsletter (or record a podcast). So, do you give yourself a pass? In this episode, I make the case for showing up even when you have nothing to say.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why "I don't feel like it" is different from a real reason to skip your content commitment.

  • The distinction between a well-deserved day off and letting your marketing/promotion plans fall off the radar.

  • Why your "not my best" content sometimes lands better than the pieces you agonized over.

  • How to think about consistency as a skill.

  • When it is appropriate to revisit your content commitments.

  • A simple prompt to get unstuck: write about something that happened to you this week and connect it to your community.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 - Introduction

  • 0:14 - The summer content slump

  • 1:01 - When taking a day off is fine - and when it isn't

  • 1:57 - Why consistency is a practice, not a personality trait

  • 3:33 - Showing up for your community even on the hard days

  • 4:50 - When to actually re-evaluate your content strategy (hint: not today)

  • 6:35 - The easiest prompt for getting unstuck

Submit a Question Have a clinical or business question you'd like me to answer on a future episode? I'd love to answer it. Click on the "Submit a Question to Camille" button at intheclinic.com. Join the Practitioner Notes Newsletter Want more clinical tips and practice-building resources? Join my practitioner email list, sent out every Thursday with a short note and three specific recommendations to make running your practice a little easier. You can sign up at intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com.

 

Thanks for listening.

I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚

Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners

00:02 - Summer Motivation and Commitment

01:34 - Treat It Like Work

03:33 - The Practice of Showing Up

04:46 - Review Before You Quit

06:35 - Easy Ideas When You’re Stuck

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Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic. My name is Camille Freeman.

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I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast I share tips,

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tidbits, and resources that might be helpful for other practitioners.

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Today I want to talk about something that comes up a lot in the summer for many of us.

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We're now past Memorial Day here in the U.S., and summertime is upon us.

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And this is a phenomenon where you have said that you are going to send out

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a newsletter or record a podcast or post on social media,

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do the thing, every XYZ, every month, every week, every day,

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as part of your marketing and promotion plan.

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But when it's time to sit down and actually do it, you don't feel like it.

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Maybe, like today, it's a beautiful day outside. You'd rather be in the garden,

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taking a walk, doing something else.

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Maybe you are looking at a blank page and you feel that you have nothing to

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say, nothing's coming to you, you're stuck, and it just would be easier to maybe

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do it a different day or do something else altogether.

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What do you do at that time?

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Well, there's a couple things. Part of you may be remembering times when I've

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said to you, hey, one of the glorious things about running your own business

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is that you get to decide when to take a day off.

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And if it's a beautiful day and it's a Tuesday and it's a work day for you,

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sometimes it's okay to say, hey, I'm going to the park instead of updating my

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website or doing the thing.

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And I'm a huge fan of that. I think that there need to be perks.

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And one of the perks of doing this work is that you get to have unusual and

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maybe even unauthorized days and times off based on whatever is going on.

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However, I have a little bit of a different opinion when it comes to these types

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of things where you've made a commitment to yourself and potentially to other

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people who are part of your community that you are going to post or send or

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record or do whatever on a kind of regular schedule.

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Because the deal is that this is a job and not a hobby.

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So for some of you, and actually I'm going to do a separate podcast a little

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bit later about a hobby, how being a hobby herbalist or a hobby nutritionist,

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even if you have all that training, it's okay. And that's a whole separate thing.

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We'll talk about that later.

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But for most of us, if you are trying to make a living doing this work,

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there are going to be times when you need to do something such as write a newsletter

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or record a podcast when you don't feel like it and you don't think that you have anything to say.

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So what are you to do during those times?

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My suggestion is that you don't let yourself off the hook.

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You don't have to necessarily create the world's most beautiful newsletter,

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the world's most profound podcast, but I want you to be committed to doing something.

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If you're supposed to be publishing weekly, unless there is an actual emergency,

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you know, there's a major reason that you truly cannot do this.

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Otherwise, I want you to show up and do what you said you'd do.

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And it might mean that it's not your best effort, and that's all right.

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Sometimes you'll find that things that you thought were not your best effort

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are actually really moving and really important and land really well with the

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people who are on the other end.

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I've actually been surprised by that quite a lot over the years where,

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for me, my newsletter, I'm committed to sending it out every Thursday.

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And there are times when truly I have nothing to say.

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I don't think I have anything to say. And I just write something because I've

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said I would and it is my practice and it is part of what I do.

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And sometimes those are the best received ones. I get lots of comments on those sometimes.

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So you never know if somebody needs to hear what you have to say,

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even if to you it feels like a sort of fluffy, not very important,

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not very interesting thing.

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The other thing is, it is a practice. And part of the practice is showing up

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and doing the thing even when you don't feel like it.

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So if you have ever tried to learn a language, learn a new musical instrument,

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do any sort of thing, there are definitely times when you don't really want to.

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There are days when working out is really hard, or when you keep hitting the

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wrong note over and over and over again, whatever it is.

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There are days when it's just not going your way and it would be easier to stop.

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And remember, if we are advising a client or if you are a personal trainer,

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let's say, pushing through the times when you're like, I don't want to do this.

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It doesn't, you know, it's just not, I'm not feeling it right now.

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Sometimes that's your learning edge. That's your growing edge.

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That's where the change is happening.

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So I'm not saying we push through to the detriment of our physical or mental

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health or anything like that.

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But what I am saying is let's not let yourself off the hook.

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You need to sit down, you need to write something, you need to record something,

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you need to post something, as you said you would.

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That's part of showing up for your community and being a person that people can count on.

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Is that when you said you'd do something, then you're going to do it.

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Now, if you find it's not working, and the reason that you're not wanting to

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do it is because it feels stuck,

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it feels unimportant, it feels like nothing's really happening from it,

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you can evaluate that and I want you to evaluate that

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regularly at least once a season in my

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opinion I want you to think about all right I've been

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posting every week every day every month whatever it is for xyz amount of time

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is it helping is it moving my business forward in the way that I thought it

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would do I notice that that there's momentum that this is something I want to

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keep doing you can make that decision but I don't want you to make that decision

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day-to-day, week-to-week.

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I want you to make that decision at a scheduled time when you're doing a seasonal

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or quarterly or even annual review. That's when you make the decision.

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Okay, so I don't want to be somebody who's trying to force you into things,

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but I also want to let you know that sometimes going to work and doing things

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that you don't want to do is just part of the deal.

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If you had a job where somebody was paying you, you know, a salary or an hourly

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rate, you don't only get to show up and do the things that you want to do when you just feel like it.

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You still have to go and show up and do the things all the time.

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And when you run your own business, that is also true.

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Even though you could technically skip out on things and you could let it slide,

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if you really want to stay clear, if you want to move your business forward,

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We got to show up and we got to do the things both when we're really motivated

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and we have a lot to say and when we're stuck and we don't have much to say at all.

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So there you go. There's your little pep talk for even when things are hard

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in the summer and you don't feel like it.

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That's all the more reason to just sit down and do it as quickly as you can.

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You know, let it let it be as easy as it can be and still show up for your commitments.

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The other thing is, if you were stuck, just write about something that has happened

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to you recently and think about how it relates to the people that are listening.

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How does this relate to your potential clients? Or talk about it,

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read about it, whatever it is that you're doing.

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That's the easiest thing to do is like, what's something significant that's

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happened to you in the last week?

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Maybe a question a client asked, maybe something you noticed out and about.

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How is this relevant to other people in your practice? How might this make their

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day a little bit better? How might it change something for them?

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Just do that put it out there let go

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of the perfectionism but show up for yourself and show up for your community

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okay love to hear your thoughts on this if you

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would like to share with me you can go to intheclinic.com if you have a question

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a scenario something that you need help with you can also go to intheclinic.com

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and leave a question for me or a comment there lastly if you are not already

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signed up for my practitioner notes email newsletter i would love to send you

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a message next Thursday.

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I share practitioner notes every Thursday.

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We have a little note along with some resources, recommendations,

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things that I've found helpful along the way that week.

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I think you might enjoy them. You can sign up at intheclinic.com or camillefriedman.com.

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All right. I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you for the work you do,

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and I'll talk to you soon.