Episode 207 - Navigating WTF Weeks & My No Panic Policy
What are the best ways to navigate weeks in your life and biz when it feels like EVERYTHING is hitting the fan all at once?!
Well I've got some tips for you. In today's episode we'll be covering 5 areas of frustration and best practices for handling them. These include:
Where to aim your fan when shit gets frustrating
Navigating Tech Issues & my NO PANIC Policy
Navigating Conflict & examples of how I provide support for unhappy students (it happens to everyone)
Navigating Boundaries
Navigating Emotional Overwhelm with the state of the world at any given time
Listen to the podcast below or on your favorite platform here —->
Transcript:
Welcome back to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. You were listening to episode 207, and I'm your host, Sarah Steckler. Hey, it's been a minute. I'm really excited to be back on the podcast. Shit's been hitting the fan. And so I thought I'd do an episode on how to navigate a what the F week. We are all collectively going to have moments, weeks, days where things hit the fan and it's like, what in the actual F is happening? How do we navigate this? What are some things to do? How are you going to handle all these things? In today's podcast, I wanted to share a little bit about some of the things that have been happening in my life in business and how I'm handling them. How the hell are you supposed to navigate all of this when you have your own stuff going on in your life in business and there's stuff going on in the world and maybe you feel pressure to behave or be a certain way online? I'm going to talk about some of the things that maybe some people aren't always saying online. Hopefully, this is just a great episode where you can feel validated and we can just all cozy up and be like, Seriously, what are we going to do about this?
Let's keep on listening and we'll get into this week's episode. Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler, and this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now. All right, here we are. We're back on the podcast. I'm so glad you're listening. Excited to jump into this topic today and talk about everything real quick. I try not to swear a ton on the podcast because I know some people haveittles around and stuff, but this might be an episode where I happen to drop the F-bomb here and there, so if that's a problem, throw in your earbuds. You have now been warned. What do you do if you're having a what the fuck moment or day or week? How do you navigate these things? Especially when the world is heavy and it's really hard to contemplate, how do we navigate all that's going on in the world while also realizing and understanding that we're also still humans?
We have businesses to run, we have dogs to feed, kids to feed, we have things to enjoy. All that doesn't change because of things that are happening. Every day life continues to go on. It's the duality of human existence. It's weird and it makes us feel guilty and uncomfortable and it's unsettling. But that's literally what it is. That is our reality. But what do you do when you're having a time where shit is hitting the fan everywhere? These are some of the things that I've been navigating lately and some of the tips that I thought I'd share. Sometimes also talking this out on this podcast format helps me process stuff too. Cool. Anywho, if you're having a moment where shit is hitting the fan, these are the questions that you can ask yourself. Lately, if I've been having a tough time and I'm like, There's no way I can do all of this stuff anymore. My capacity is shot. But there's just too much going on. Something's going to have to give. I ask myself the question, if shit is hitting the fan, where are you going to aim the fan? What are the things that you're literally going to let get...
Well, not literally, that you're going to let get covered and shit. Where are those exceptions? For example, for me, this is often the kitchen. If stuff is happening in my business and I got to work and do stuff and for context, my husband's in the military and he's deploying and leaving all the time right now. We're in one of those phases of his career. It's a pain in the ass and it throws our entire routine constantly. He's coming and going all the time and it's chaos. It's chaos and I hate it. Can't wait for him to retire. We will be living in a cabin in the woods somewhere, I promise you. That's one thing. Then if I have stuff going on in my business or other things that happen, I have to choose, you have to choose what is going to be the exception. For me, sometimes this is the kitchen. I will be like, You know what? This week, I don't have the capacity to stay on top of the dishes. Last week, the dishes literally got piled up on the kitchen. If you saw a photo of it, you'd probably be like, Oh, my gosh, this is crazy.
But I don't live a Pinterest life. I'm not a Pinterest business owner. I do things. Things get messy. I make mistakes. I do pivots, whatever. My job showing up online is not to be the perfect version of something that other people adhere to like, No, my life is messy. I am a human being. But in this thought process, in this mindset shift, consider what things you can actually let go of during a given week. Is it a big pain in the ass to clean up a kitchen that has been just dumped on for an entire week? Yeah. But you know what? It only took me 30 minutes to clean it up after a week of destruction. Granted, I'm one person and my husband is not always home every night. It might be worse with a family. But I was surprised that taking that mental load off of my plate out of my brain allowed me to get stuff done in my business and manage the emotional roller coaster of my husband coming and going because that sucks. And also give myself some time to unplug at the end of the night and not be like, Oh, I have to spend this time cleaning the kitchen.
There's also things in my business that also take that. For instance, the podcast. The podcast has not been consistent this year. It has not happened every single week. Am I proud of it? No, it sucks. I love showing up here. I love having conversations with you guys and getting feedback on what you think about things I'm talking about, it's cool. But it's also something that doesn't have to happen. My business is not going to come to a screeching halt if I don't record a podcast episode one week and no one's yelling at me. I love the messages from you guys being like, Hey, are you okay? Is everything all right? I haven't heard a podcast episode in a while. I always love those. But no one's coming after me if I don't do a podcast episode one week. So long story short, think about where you're going to aim the fan when you have a what the f week or day and let some stuff go. If you need to stop at Taco Bell on the way home and get dinner and it's not the healthiest choice, whatever, it's one of those days, you'll be fine.
Things are going to be okay. The other thing I wanted to talk about is navigating tech issues as a business owner, specifically if you run an online business. Then also wanted to tell you a little bit about my no panic policy that I have in place for my own business and that I also have in place for my students. Real quick, this past week, I had one of the most horrific tech issues ever happen in my business. And luckily, it only took up two hours of my time because there was a fix. Basically, the course platform that I use, there has been some issues with links being taken down on Facebook from bots. And so they made an option where you can now have a new link for your website. You just had to be like, Yes, let's do it. Everything redirects, it's fine. But what ended up happening was that all of my video permissions, I use Vimeo for all my videos, all of those stopped working because I had new links. Students were now accessing the course from a new link, technically. A new sub-URL or whatever, URL slug. I was like, Oh, my God, I have hundreds of videos throughout all the different courses I've ever created since 2016.
I'm like, Are you kidding me right now? Now, students are not able to view any of my videos behind my paywall in my course, bright and early on I think it was a Sunday or Saturday, and I'm going, I was going to go to the park with Bella and finally stop working today, and now I can't. It's just me. I don't have a team. I was like, Crap, what am I going to do? I'm thinking in my head you have the moment of panic, but then you also have the moment of awareness and acceptance. Okay, this is the issue, and it's not going to fix itself. What am I going to do about it? I gave myself 10 minutes to panic and be like, I don't like this. But then after that, it's like, cool, what are we going to do? And here comes with where comes the no panic policy mindset, which I'll literally share that with you in a second. So in doing that, in calming down, I was able to say, well, there's the first solution I know of is to literally go into every single video in Vimeo and change the permissions so that that video shows up where it needs to show up.
And there's hundreds of videos. So I could literally go in. I keep saying literally today, I need it to stop. I could go in and change all those links by hand manually. It would probably take me a good long time. But I could probably get it done today if I just caffeine it up and throw on some EDM music and just go hard. But I was like, But that's not ideal. I started doing some Googling. I reached out to Vimeo Support. I did all the things I could think of to find a workaround. Lo and behold, because I was in a calm, relaxed state and I wasn't panicking and freaking out about how frustrating it was, I was able to find out that there is a setting in the parent Vimeo settings of this video hosting platform where you can change that one specific thing I needed to change for all of your videos. It took about 10 minutes for it to take effect, but boom, my problem was solved. I was like, Yes, this is great. I then had another issue come up with a code that I have to insert in all of my lessons of my courses.
That's a whole other story that you don't need to hear about. I'm still dealing with that. But having a no panic policy is what allowed me to find that solution. Let's talk about what that looks like. I've been running my courses with my students since 2016, I think, is when I launched my first course. What I try to do in my business is give students lifetime access to courses. Meaning, once you buy something from me, you're always going to get access. Things are going to get updated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I love that. It's fun. It means that students get to return when I host live rounds for things. I have never found it to be a problem. I think it's awesome. I wish more people would do it, quite honestly, because it's a great experience on the student end, too. But over the years, as things grow, you find that there's specific issues that come up within specific parts of a course. For example, inside of my course published with Purpose, where you learn how to create a journal or planner and put it on Amazon, the formatting and text stuff when it comes to Canva and some of the parts where you upload stuff to KDP, if you're not a tech-savvy person, those things can be really frustrating.
Even though my directions are really simple and streamlined and step by step, it doesn't mean that they're foolproof. It doesn't mean that you may still have a glitch or something that happens. What do I do? In the beginning of certain modules of my courses, I have a quick conversation with students like, Hey, just so you know, this course is really tech heavy. If you're not a tech person, you may find that you're frustrated. Here's how we can navigate that. Here are some resources for you. Likewise, I have a no panic policy, first and foremost, in my own business with myself, my soulpriner self, that if something bad happens, we really adhere to them. We, me, I adhere to the motto, if there is a problem, there is absolutely a solution. And I carry over this no panic policy to my students, too. So when you enroll in published with purpose, for example, this is outlined in one of the first lessons, but I thought I'd take time to read it to you today. If you want to use something similar in your business, go ahead. You're free to mention me if you want. But if this is something that you think would be helpful in your course or in your business, please use it because I feel like it really gives us permission to acknowledge that something is difficult, but also make sure that we're moving towards a solution.
Let me just read you literally the section I have of my no panic policy inside of my course. This is among other policies and guidelines I have when you first enter into the course, but it says no panic policy. I say, Tech issues are bound to happen when you're working with technology. Acknowledging this is half the battle. In other words, if you don't set yourself up with the expectation that everything should run perfectly smoothly, you'll avoid feeling as frustrated when and if something does happen. My motto when it comes to just about anything in business is if there is a problem, there absolutely is a solution. I also have a no panic policy, which means that when tech issues arise, the best thing to do is to breathe and calmly work out a solution. There are many times in my business where a solution can't be found right away. And the best thing to do is to step away from the computer and calm down. Getting angry, expecting things immediately from tech support teams or me, etc, will only make it worse and will block you from finding the solution. While I do everything I can to ensure a smooth as possible process with all we do in this course, you are bound to run into glitches here and there from software that we use.
Then I give them a breakdown of steps to take when they do run into a tech issue. This is also just nice because when you're in that heightened response phase of feeling urgency and frustration with something you're trying to do and you can't do it, it's nice to have a quick little workflow, right? This is a five-step process and it says steps to take when you run into a tech issue. One, document the issue. Take a screenshot or record a loom video to show exactly what is happening and where you are getting stuck. Step two, reach out to the correct support resource. If you were having a Canva issue, reach out to Canva. Don't reach out to me. I can't help you with that. Reach out to the correct support resource. Three, consult the FAQ database... This, often time tech issues solutions can be found with a quick search here. Just as a side note, inside of publish with Purpose, I have a giant FAQ database that's hosted on the course... Not a course platform. It's an app I got off of AppSummo years ago called Malcolm. And if you want to check it out, it's like Malcolm.
App. Anyway, I got a lifetime license. Thing is awesome. Basically, there are all these questions that students ask and I throw them in there. You can do tags and stuff. So anytime students have questions, I'm like, go there first. And most of the time they find those answers. I have things in there like, where's the affiliate program sign up? When are our live calls? I can't seem to format this thing in Canva. What can I do? Or how long does it take for KVP to get back to me and support? All those questions are in there. This basically creates an assistant version of me. It's like a duplicate person like myself that's going to help them answer those questions. Alternatively, if you don't want to pay for something like that, you could absolutely set up an FAQ database in something like Notion. I thought about playing around with that as well. Step four, be respectful of timelines. Tech issues suck and can often feel like the end of the world. While you may want immediate help, be mindful of support timelines, and that you may not hear back from a given support team or person, including myself, immediately.
I think this is really important to hit home because when we're frustrated, we want support right away. But we have to understand that that's not always possible. I do my best to show up when students tag me in the Facebook group. But if it's happening on a Saturday and I'm out the picking apples with my husband, you're going to have to wait. Step five, tag me in the Facebook group. So as an entrepreneur, as things grow, it's so important to establish boundaries about how and when and where people communicate with you. I'm not always 100 % firm on this. But as I get more students, it's something I need to be more aware of. So I say, if you need support with your journal or planner, please use our Facebook community. I will not respond to requests via other messaging platforms and will always direct you back to our group. Chances are if you have a specific question, someone else does, too. It's absolutely okay to set boundaries within your business about how people can communicate with you and how people can get the best support. I wanted to share that no panic policy with you and how I navigate tech issues.
Sometimes things are going to happen and you don't have as much control as you want. The other thing I wanted to talk about today was navigating conflict in your business. As a business owner, I've talked with so many other business owners, there's always going to be times where no matter how much you put in place or how organized you think you are, there's going to be times when you let a student down or something isn't available or there's a tech issue, or no matter how much you've communicated, something doesn't get across to a student or they miss something and they're frustrated, this happens. What I always like to remind myself of is the first time if I ever hear students mad or frustrated, I want to know exactly what their experience was. Listen to your students and your clients. I see this trend happening. I don't know if it's a trend, but over the years, I've seen this thing happening where business owners will make posts or have these conversations online about how sometimes you have nightmare students or nightmare clients or whatever. I would say more so that you're having a nightmare experience with a student or client, but it doesn't mean that that person as an individual is a nightmare.
It's just they're having a bad day. We have to understand that that happens. It's frustrating when people act out like that or take something out on you. But at the same time, I know that I'm not always a perfect person. So unless it's something critical, like it's hate speech or it's something like that where I have no tolerance for, I will kick you right out of my entire life. No refunds. Get out of here. Unless it's something like that, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Are they having the worst day of their life? And one thing I've noticed is this, you want to be firm in your boundaries as a business owner, but I'm not afraid to make exceptions if it means that it's going to make my student have a really good experience. So typically in my programs, for example, it's very specific, the scope of the support I'm offering. We have live calls. We do this. We do that. Does that mean that because I have that in place that I'm never going to go above and beyond and help a student? No. So, for example, I'll give you two, three...
Well, we'll see how much time I end up having here. I'll give you a couple of examples of things that have happened in my business. So a couple of years ago, I ran a promo and I offered published with purpose as a self-paced option within my course. The way I had it on the website, on my sales page, I thought it was really clear. We overlook things as business owners. It was like basically you could get published with purpose for half the price. You would get access to the course, everything, but you wouldn't get access to our live calls, the VA license, the Facebook group, any of the support stuff. But you would get access to the course. I had a student enroll in the self-paced version and there's questions I ask throughout the course in the shell just to get feedback and to help them process stuff. I don't respond to those things. Those aren't things that you get feedback from. It's just more of a like, Hey, how's it going? What have you been doing? Accountability. I got an email from this student saying, Hey, I thought I was going to get support for this.
She was really mad. I was like, Ma'am, what did I do wrong on the sales page? What didn't I communicate? That was my first question. That's always my first question to myself. It's not, Damn, the student sucks. What the hell? Like, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you're allowed to get frustrated, but it's more so, What can I do? Where did I miss the mark? I decided to have a conversation with her. You know what? She was totally right. It made it sound like it was self paced, but it wasn't self paced to her, meant something different. So what did I do? I changed the wording on the website, so on the sales page. So it said solo learning. And then I created a blurb underneath it, really explicitly stating what that meant down to this is exactly what you get and what you don't get. And even though I had that outlined originally, I could see how someone could miss it. And so, again, itIt's not taking this defensive stance and being like, Well, it was on there. Why didn't you see it? Just understanding that people are human and people are going to miss things.
It sucks to enroll in something and think you're getting something and then not. What did I do? I offered her, I think at the time it was like I did a week or a day or something of boxer support because I didn't have the capacity to get on Zoom. That's what we did. She got additional help and support with her planner, and she was really happy about that additional support. She left feeling better about that experience. That's what it's all about. When I have students that it doesn't happen all the time, honestly, it's rare. It's rare that you're going to get someone that is frustrated or someone that is difficult, but it can happen. Sometimes there might be instances where navigating that with them is maybe it is impossible. Maybe you have someone that's not willing to go halfway or hold themselves accountable for their part of that experience. That sucks. But most of the time, I think there really is an opportunity for connection and collaboration in that, and it's worth doing. What I always tell myself is if I ever feel like that emotion of like, Oh, my God, fuck this person. What the hell is happening?
I take that and I switch it to saying basically like, Fuck you. You are going to have an awesome experience. You paid for this program or this course. You don't get to be upset. We are going to find a way to find a solution for this. Whether that means me getting on a Zoom call with you, me having a conversation with you on Boxer, or me providing some additional support for where I might have missed the mark, cool. Let's do it. I'm not about putting that back on students and just not having any leeway. I just think that there are times for boundaries and then there's times to understand the nuance of a situation. I see a lot of posts and stuff online where people are like, I joined a program, and then I got really effing sick and I wasn't able to join this program that had six months access or a month access. I asked them, Can I get an extended access? They were basically like, No, hard no. This is exactly what it is. Is that business owner allowed to have that boundary? Yeah. But think about the impact of that. Now that student is leaving with a sour taste in their mouth and they have nothing good to say about your program.
They feel crappy and they didn't get the results or the experience that they originally paid for all around. It's like if you had the experience of a kid of getting an ice cream cone and then dropping it right away, is that person that just made you that ice cream responsible to replace it? No, you dropped it. You're a kid. Tough love, right? But most of the time they're going to be like, oh, man, that sucks. Here's another one on the house. Not because they have to, but because it's just the right thing to do. Then you're going to leave that experience being like, hey, I remember one time I lost my cone and bro, hooked me up. That's just something I wanted to bring to the table in terms of how I do stuff in business. I always come into that mindset like, no, you don't get out of this this easy. It's not going to be that easy for you to be mad. I'm going to do everything I can to try to find a solution. I do have my limits. I'm not going to drop my whole life for somebody, but I always want to provide as much support as I can to take someone and make sure that they have a better experience.
I think that's part of accessibility, too, is that whether you run group programs or courses or you're a coach or something, you're going to have people that have different needs and different experiences and different... Everyone's brain works so differently. It's important to acknowledge that the way you run your course is not necessarily going to work for everyone. Be flexible. That might mean that you have to provide additional support for some people or navigate some tough situations. It doesn't mean that you're a bad business owner or that you're weak or your boundaries are super weak or anything. It just means that you're trying to adapt and do what you can. Lastly, as we wrap up today's podcast episode, I want to talk about navigating emotional overwhelm. Today, just to recap, we've talked about when shit hits the fan. We talked about tech issues and what I do, navigating conflict, boundaries, and then there's emotional overwhelm. I feel like these are the main pivotal things that can create those like, what the F, moments in our life, in our week. But navigating emotional overwhelmed, the world is heavy. I don't need to repeat anything that's going on, you know.
There's not only that, but then there's where we all fall into the experience of it, how we're all affected or not affected. There's societal pressure now in this new realm of online social media to have to respond or be on or do certain things or have an opinion on everything. What I will tell you right now is that in any given circumstance of anything that happens in the world, there are going to be people that are privileged to not have to experience something and that have the ability to not be impacted in it, and then there's going to be the people that are. That does not mean that any one person needs to do any one particular thing. I'm not talking about you see a car crash and you walk away and you don't help somebody. I'm talking about you're literally working your life day to day and you hear stuff on the news that's heartening, disparaging, and there's not much you can do about it. There's this pressure now for so many people, especially business owners, to make a statement or to have an opinion on every political thing that happens in the world.
I'm just going to tell you right now, I'm no longer participating in it. One, because most of the time, I don't have enough fucking information to make an opinion or to have an opinion or to make a statement that I should try to impose on everyone else in my community. Have I been guilty of that in the past? Yes. Do I still have a page where I make it clear where I stand on social justice and different human rights issues? Yeah, I think that's great. However, that doesn't mean that every time something happens in the world, I'm going to make a post with a black, square, and white text about what I think and what everyone else's thoughts should be in my opinion. I'm just no longer participating in it. We also have to protect our own emotional capacity. You have to understand that if we were to take a break, and I think this is just lived experience, and it's different now. We have so much more access to everything that's going on in the world at a given time. But I think it's also just lived experience. For example, and no example I provide here is going to be the perfect parallel.
There's little holes in my argument you could totally make. That's fine. I'm not trying to make a perfect argument here. I'm just trying to speak from what I have experienced. When I lost my dad, for example, it changed my life. My whole life stopped. I was 23, lost my dad. My dad is dead. What in the hell is happening? This is insane. I will never forget the feeling of my whole life is in shambles right now and I can't function. I could not understand how I could still see people going to McDonald's, getting a milk shake and having a great afternoon. I could not understand how people in my life were still having good days knowing that I was having the worst days. I could not understand how some people couldn't handle my grief and didn't show up for me. Those things sucked. But I'll tell you one thing. I also don't blame those people, and I also don't and didn't expect people having a good day to have a bad day because I was having a bad day and having a struggling, grief-filled experience. There were people in my life that were able to show up for me, and then there were people that weren't.
While that's not the same thing, anything that happens in the world, there are people that are going to be able to make a difference, and then there are millions of people that aren't. So many times we feel pressure to do something or we're made to feel like we have a ton of control in something when we actually don't. It's more of a systemic issue. It's a bigger issue, and it's something that do we to vote on? Yeah. Do we need to talk to people about? Yes. But don't feel that pressure of you, individual, soul person being responsible for everything. Great example is when Oprah came on relatively recently with The Rock and they were like talking about Maui and they were like, Hey, guys, we need to donate. You guys all need to donate. It's like, Are you fucking serious? You guys have more money than the majority of all the people you're speaking to, right? Yet there was that pressure. Here's what you need to do. Every time there's a terrorist attack or some horrible event that happens, it's here's how what you need to do and here's how you need to donate. I personally just think that that is relatively insane considering there are billionaires out there that could solve so many of our problems.
I'm not trying to make this a big political episode. I keep telling myself, don't say so much shit on your podcast that people are going to get mad about. But I just wanted to share that in case that resonates with you, in case that gives you a permission slip, just because you don't post something on every event doesn't mean you're part of the problem. I just don't buy that narrative anymore. I really don't, because there's things that happen behind the scenes. When you're not, quote-unquote, virtue signaling online, you could be doing so many other things in your life. Let's reach out to the things that we can impact. Community matters. Our scope of control is a big deal. What you do in your neighborhood and in your local community can have far-reaching impacts. It's like trying to reach across the world to make an impact. You're going to have less ability to do something compared to how you treat your family, compared to how you treat people in community when you go to the grocery store, how you interact with people, how inclusive you are, all those things. There's always going to be people that have privilege within a situation.
The world is still going to turn no matter what we do. That's the end of my little rant and my thoughts today. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, cool, you can always reach out to me on Instagram. I'm @SarahSteckler if you want to continue to have a conversation about it. But that's where I'm going to wrap things up. Hopefully, I didn't make too many people mad. But also, if you're going to exist in this world, you're going to make people upset. We have to continue having nuanced conversations. I just really think that we just need to open the door to have more of those conversations in general. That's it. Thank you for listening. Hoping to come back soon with some more podcast episodes, getting back into productivity and organization, really feeling that this season. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead and thanks for being here. Peace out.
