This year, I plan to connect more with you on a personal level.
I plan to connect more with you through a number of different ways.
It’s true. That connection and connecting with others can be a difficult thing for some people. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all know exactly what the other person was thinking?
I feel like if I could sync my own brain with everyone who’s yearning for the info I give or who is needing help for me, my work and my life would grow so much more efficiently. There’s usually something I’m not quite getting or not quite seeing clearly during my visioning or right smack in the moment. This lines up tremendously as the beginning of 2020 approaches.
In this post, I’ll share:
– Several ways I plan to connect more with you this year,
– 5 Things I plan to do more of and less of in 2020,
– A few ways you can help me help you more this year.
The most basic and peaceful way to connect to others as to listen. Just Listen.
Albert Einstein
~ Listen to the Podcast ~
What Does it Mean to Connect?
I have discovered my word for 2020 I want it to be connect. I want to connect more on a personal level to everyone that I meet. Everyone that I come in contact and 2020.
Brene Brown, one of my favorite people in the whole world defines connection as the energy that exists between people and three different ways:
1. Feeling seen, heard and valued,
2. Giving and receiving without judgment,
3. Receiving strength from one another.
As I pull back the curtain to myself and my own life, I admit the connection is has become difficult for me as I’ve gotten older.
My Story
Each rejection, each failed relationship that I have passed through has kind of opened up a shield, you know like Elsa in Frozen when she just kind of puts up a shield around herself. She makes ice blocks around herself so people will leave her alone and just let her be in her own little world.
That is kind of what I have done over the years. I don’t let everybody in and I have a very hard time holding on. I just kind of slip away if I feel like I’m getting too close to somebody.
For one thing, I’m an introvert so I need my space anyway. And the second thing about me that you need to know is that I have a very stubborn ego, which means I am afraid of failing. I believe that I can do anything, but I am afraid to fail. That is one of my biggest fears, so I have to get past the ego in order to make something happen.
And I recently read the book, the Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, and it really opened up my heart and my mind to a lot of different things that I knew I didn’t really know about myself, but when I heard it I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s totally me.”
You see, the reason it’s so challenging to get past our ego is because this challenge is full of fear. You know, you can have an ego about just about anything. You can have an ego about money, how you spend your time, how you live any aspect of your life.
You can have an ego that holds you back from something, but if you can learn how to open it up, then you can live your life a lot differently. And that’s what I discovered after reading the book with all the different scenarios Ryan Holiday shared, it’s completely clear that this can be done.
The Challenge of This
You see, opening up your heart is difficult. Closing it up like Frozen Elsa did is the easy part, and I have found that to be true. It’s definitely easy to close up a barrier around yourself as a protection, but opening up your heart is the more sustainable way to go.
Opening up your heart is the most necessary path that you can uncover to essentially live that life that you want to live. It’s the most difficult path, but it is the best path.
You see, my heart is in the right place. I truly want to help others, but my own self stands in my way. The feel of fear, the fear of failure and rejection is standing right there and I have to fight my way through. It’s rejection and fear that ultimately takes control of me and keeps me from being the person, the mentor, the leader that I want to be in life.
And just like with any goal you set out to do, if it feels difficult, there’s always going to be fear and there’s always going to be that feeling of I don’t think I want to do that. I have a whole new perspective on this ego thing and how it can be pushed over. I am completely pushing myself and to this challenge of being completely of connecting more and being more calm, more open and subjected to rejection, name calling, bullying risk.
3 Ways I Plan to Connect With You This Year
I’m going to show up this year and connects with everyone, anyone and everyone that I can. And here are the three ways that I’m going to do that:
1. Help make you (and everyone) feel seen, heard and valued. We all want to feel seen, heard and valued. We all want to feel like we mean something to someone else that we matter. There’s a few ways that I’m going to do that.
I want to use surveys and polls to have a feel about what your interests are and what’s what is going through your head, something that you want to have.
I’m also going to use emails and messages, messaging, Facebook messaging to do be available for questions and anything that you want to basically get a hold of me for.
Go Here to Tell Me What You Want Me To Really Know! (Survey takes less than 5 minutes).
2. I am to Give my knowledge and resources that I create for you and also receive feedback from you without judgment. Farm Fit Living is a judgment free zone. Only God can judge us. So if you’re feeling like you’re being judged in my zone give me a shout out.
Also, give me some feedback or ask me a question. Let me know what you want to see. Judgment free.
3. Receive strength from one another. And that kinda goes along with the first one feeling seen, heard and valued. We can all use that to our advantage and hold each other up.
The thing that I see the most and our community of rural people is that a lot of times we feel like we don’t have the strength to go on. And this is happening a lot more lately where we all feel like we’ve been thrown a lot of things and we can’t really keep going on. Well, I’ve definitely taken notice of this and I think that we do need to to band together and give each other strength through a community.
Join the Facebook Community
Facebook groups have they’ve improved over the years. I think the comments that are being left, the monitoring of all of that has improved. Now people are actually really good about giving each other strength and positivity. And that’s what I like to see.
I have started a Facebook group for you and others in our community. You can join right here. Within that Facebook group I’m going to be doing some giveaways and all kinds of fun things week by week as time allows. I also want to show up via live video for you.
All right, so from feeling seen, heard and valued to giving and receiving what we can without judgment and lifting each other up. That is how I plan to show up and connect with you and 2020 from there. Now, I’m going to talk about five things I plan to focus more on in 2020.
5 Things I will Focus On This Year
1. The Email List. If you’re on my email list, you get an email once a week on Wednesdays. You also have the option to join my daily email list where you get valuable contents every week day. Don’t worry – I don’t overload you on email. You can always unsubscribe if it gets to be too much.
I already give away a lot to everyone on my email list. Every new product that I create is given away for free. No matter what the cost is whether it’s a course, a printable, an eBook, whatever it is, you get it for free for a limited time.
This year, I want to do some more product giveaways through sponsorship. I also want to have more special deals for you for just being on my list because it is a huge thing for you to give your email address away to me. I truly appreciate you being on my list and being an active participant, opening up my emails and giving me feedback when I ask for it. I really love that about you, so thank you so much for that.
2. Online Learning Courses. I have a special friend named Sarah Titus. She told me yesterday that I need to focus more on the learning courses because that’s where my expertise lies. She is right.
If you listen to some other past episodes or go to my blog, you’ll see that I do teach a lot on end a lot of my contents. Teaching others is my happy place.
I do feel like that’s where my talent lies, where my best piece of of me should be held. And so what I’m interested in doing with what these online courses basically building online courses for you to enroll through me.
Now these courses, most of them will be paid. However, if you’re on my email list, you have the opportunity to join a beta course. What is beta?
Beta is, is the art of trying out a course for a limited time to kind of work out all the kinks. So basically when I introduce a new course, I have pop-up Facebook group for students and I to communicate about the content as I build and create new modules and new lessons and bonuses.
My students can give me feedback, tell me what works, what doesn’t, what I need to know to make the course complete and fabulous. Basically, if you’re in my beta course, you are essentially helping me build the course.
Online learning courses will help you transform your problem into a solution. Make sure to join the email list so you can get access to new BETA courses.
3. The Facebook community. I have already told you about the Facebook group a little bit ago. I’m hoping to get a better understanding of the content you want to see for me so that I can fully commit to creating the things that you want to see from me.
4. Face to face connection. It’s been a number of years that I’ve had this goal of being present and and putting the phone and the computer down and being totally and a hundred percent present with my kids and my husband and other family members also. So I’ve done pretty well with that with my family.
I need to do a better with friends, friendships and also my offline customers. I tend to like being an introvert, I tend to like to hide behind the computer screen and or behind my phone and that’s not always the best way people like to be again, seen, heard and valued. And I want everyone who I come in contact with to feel that way because that’s the way that I want to feel.
5. Embrace each challenge that is thrown at me as a gift from God. So I am a Christian. I attend church regularly because I believe that God has called me to do good work. But more importantly than that, going back to the very, very beginning.
God saved me from, from potentially going deeper into depression. So going to church each Sunday and praying and being there, listening to the preacher who pretty much bumped into me a few years ago and invited me to church. That preacher speaks to me every week and tells me exactly what I need to hear and I know that it’s God talking to me.
Every week there is something I am hearing a message from God that just speaks to me and tells me how I should be living, what I should be doing, how should I, how I should be showing up. That has greatly changed my life, our marriage, our family and our farm and how I run my businesses also.
And that is why I talk openly about my faith and my Christianity because I believe in it so much. I’ve been really taking each challenge that comes to us as a gift because I believe now fully that everything does happen for a reason and God is in control.
God is the one pulling the strings and he loves us. I fully trust that he has my best interest at heart. Any disaster we are faced with, I just have to move on from it. And that’s what I want to hopefully inspire you to do as well. I know it’s, it’s hard but it gets easier.
It’s hard to get past that and it’s also an ego thing that you have to let go of. It can be done with a little practice and a lot of faith, a lot of understanding. Pick up the Bible and read it or go and talk to your pastor. It’s just a simple way of connecting with God as well.
Faith is another connection that, that I’ve made this year and it’s completely changed everything for me. Faith is truly important to all of us especially in the rural life that we live.
5 Things I Will Be Doing Less in 2020
I now want to share with Hugh quickly five things I will be doing less of this year.
1. I will be posting less new content. My content load will look like this:
– 1 Podcast/Show Notes per week
– No more than 3 blog posts per week.
I will be focusing more on my course creation so that will give me less time for blogging. I still have over 400 blog posts and if there is something that you really, really want me to create, please tell me and I will create it for you.
2. Except for the Facebook Community, I will be showing up less on Social Media.
3. Wasting Less precious time. I’m going to be using my time block sheet to play track out my time. Using my time better to show up more for you.
4. Procrastinating Less. I admit I’ve been procrastinating through the holidays and adding new continent to the BETA courses. I apologize right now to all of my BETA students. I have till the 1st of February. I know I have a little over 30 days to get it done. But still, I know that’s a valuable time. That’s a valuable content that you’re not getting. That’s me not showing up for you in a valuable way.
So I need, I know I need to show up. I know that that you’ve put, you’ve invested in me and so now I need to give back to you and I understand that. So I am going to stop procrastinating immediately. Immediately. All right.
5. Getting Some Help in my Businesses – Outsourcing so that I don’t get run down. I’m hoping maybe maybe this year I can find somebody who would be willing to do that for me and my budget. So those are five things that I want to do less so that I can connect more to you.
Stepping Out in 2020
Last year my word was create. I was able to hide behind my little computer and I was able to play. I learned Photoshop, Adobe, and Shopify, getting my shop set up and also getting ideas.
In 2020, my word is Connect. I plan to connect with you this year. So I want to kind of expand on what I’ve learned this past year with creating. I want to create more value, more valuable things like more pasture contract things and more high dollar items also to help me to help you better. So, but they are going to be so good. You are not going to want to miss out so stay tuned for that.
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I will listen to your needs, but ultimately there is a reason your finding me. There’s a reason you’re listening to this podcast today. A reason you’re reading my blog posts. Finding me on Google.
Those are the only places I’m sharing my content. I really don’t share on social media that much. You’re finding me via Google or Pinterest and I think that’s awesome, but I really want to know why.
I value your time and so it’s going to be real short, but really to the points that can help me start planning out for 2020 okay. I hope this was as detailed as I could get it for this end of the year podcast episode for the Rural Women Inspired Podcast.
Resources & Wrapping up 2019
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