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Hi everyone! Welcome to The Oh Shit Kit Podcast! Guess what, even though we give our “oh shit” moment of the week every week, we always forget to prepare something. Well we have some major problems this week because we’re addicted to Perrier sparkling water. Send us your positive healing vibes, hopefully we can make it through.
Leora also went to a super creepy place called House on the Rock, and saw some highly unsettling dolls like this lil gal below:
Today we have a fun and lighthearted episode for you. We’re going to tell you the top three things we’ve learned since starting the podcast!
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
First, we had to learn how to have a new work-life balance. Which is ironic when we are doing a podcast about self-care, don’t ya think?? Anyway, Leora had been used to having really good boundaries between her work and home life and only working during her set work hours with plenty of down time to spend with her family and friends. Jumping into the podcast was a shock to the system for Leora, because starting the podcast was A LOT of work...way more than we spend on the podcast each week now, which is still pretty significant! For Maddie, having no work-life balance was pretty much par for the course. So, when she added the podcast, she was all of a sudden doing one more thing when she was already doing too much. It was an exciting yet stressful AF time for us. Luckily, Maddie has tons of experience with running her own businesses, and was able to come up with a plan to help us feel less like our heads are going to explode.
https://www.ted.com/talks/olivia_remes_how_to_cope_with_anxiety/transcript?language=en
DONE OVER PERFECT
The second thing we learned was that sometimes, you just need to do the thing, and not ruminate over it being perfect. Leora watched a TedTalk about how being willing to “do it badly” can help people with anxiety because sometimes we tend to get so caught up in the details that we don’t actually get the thing done. There was a big learning curve for us starting this podcast, so we had to be willing to put out some things that weren’t absolutely perfect...we still put a lot of energy into them and think they have value. Hearing from people who have been positively impacted by the podcast has meant the world to us, and shown us that even though we may not be doing everything perfectly, we are having the impact we’ve intended, however small. We’ve at least helped a few people feel less alone and less stigmatized for having mental health challenges, and that alone makes the work we’ve put in 100% worth it.
MANAGING OUR WORK STYLES
Did you guys notice that we’re a bit different when it comes to our work styles? Maddie is more thorough and thoughtful, whereas Leora likes to jump in and just start talking. Seriously, she loves to talk. Balancing these different styles was a challenge at first, and an unexpected one, since we are pretty similar outside of work! At the beginning, Leora would text Maddie anytime she thought of something related to the podcast. She soon realized that this is a good way to make someone hate your guts, so we developed a flow and a system so that Leora no longer feels the need to drive Maddie nuts. Yay, we can still be friends! We are also both very independent workers, and our day jobs are almost completely independent. We had to learn to work in partnership, and file our taxes together and shit! It was nuts. But, when you find the right business partner, it can be a wonderful thing to take some of the workload off of yourself. We’ve also rubbed off on each other a bit, the proof is in the fact that Leora and Maddie spent several hours vision boarding the other day (something Leora would have NEVER pictured herself doing before!). One of the things on our business vision board is “learn from your opposite”...and that is exactly what we are trying to do here!
Our biggest takeaway is this: talking about mental health matters. Being open about mental health has an impact, and that is why all the challenges and work that has gone into the podcast thus far has been worth it for us.
We’re doing a little giveaway to try and get you guys some free t-shirts and boost the number of ratings and reviews we have on iTunes so more people can find us. We are doing this until November 17. Rate us on iTunes, and be sure to write a review (it doesn’t have to be long, but please write something). Send us a screenshot of your rating and review (over email or Facebook messenger), and we will pick a name out of those who participated to get a free t-shirt in the mail! Thank you so much to those of you who already wrote us ratings and reviews, it helps us so much.
Until next time...you know the drill. Xx Leora and Maddie
TOOLS
Be aware of your work-life balance and find a system that works for you.
Learn about your work style and be aware of your strengths.
Learn from your opposite...we can learn a lot from people who are different from us, and we can even balance one another out!
In any partnership, including a business: communication is key.
REFERENCES
DoesTheDogDie.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.doesthedogdie.com/.
Remes, O. (2017, March). How To Cope with Anxiety (TEDTalk). Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/olivia_remes_how_to_cope_with_anxiety?language=en.
The Kolbe A™ Index. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.kolbe.com/.