The hustle and bustle of entrepreneurship can be overwhelming (and for many reasons). No one has everything figured out, and that's okay! You just need the right tools to help you along the way. Making the best investments for you — particularly ones that aren’t financial — are key to battling the overwhelm. Create space for yourself, and invest in preventing burnout.
In this episode of The Pollen Podcast, Diana shares her reflections on living out of a suitcase and two backpacks. She gives her top three tips on how she deals with being overwhelmed: acknowledge, let go, and invest in space. Diana also shares why investing in space can be the best investment for yourself and your business.
Feeling overwhelmed? Listen to this episode to learn how you can regain control of your life.
Create your own creative entrepreneurship story of clarity, professional confidence, and profit. Join Diana’s 90-day group course Camp Clarity and learn everything you wish you already knew, like how to land dream clients, harness the power of social media, and make the money you deserve. Learn more here.
🔥Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode:
Learn how to manage and let go of overwhelming situations.
Find out why investing in space can be the best decision you make for yourself.
Learn what you can do to create space in your business and in life.
📘Resources
Achieve the life, career, and clients you’ve always wanted (and fully deserve!). Sign up for Diana’s Camp Clarity Course now!
Want your creative business to go even further? Sign up for Diana’s ASCEND four-month, immersive mastermind experience for elevated entrepreneurs who are ready to scale their next mountain. Join the waitlist here.
Diana’s Living Room Dance playlist
Access other courses from the Diana Davis Creative
🎧Episode Highlights
[01:30] Diana’s Plans
Diana is currently staying in a sublet in Chelsea, Manhattan.
She will be traveling to Paris, Australia, and New Zealand beginning next week until December.
The longest time Diana has stayed in one place lately was for 18 days in her friend's home in Fort Greene, New York.
She is also in the launch of Camp Clarity and is preparing for Ascend.
Diana sometimes feels overwhelmed thinking about her current nomadic lifestyle and schedule.
[04:05] Living Out of One Suitcase & Two Backpacks
Diana is currently living out of one suitcase and two backpacks.
[04:36] Diana: “I realized, ‘Holy shit, I'm living out of a suitcase and I'm doing this all on my own. And it felt like if I stopped rowing this boat, I'm going to drown,’ and I'm the only one rowing the boat.” - Click Here To Tweet This
Diana knows that she has so much to be grateful for, but the feeling of being overwhelmed still gets to her sometimes.
She began to understand that events in her life would go on whether or not she freaked out.
Life is not all sunshine and rainbows, but you are not alone in that.
Everyone is facing something difficult that triggers them or activates their nervous systems.
[06:13] Choosing To Let Go
Understand that you have a choice.
You can let go and say, “This is not what I am available for.”
[06:44] Diana: “I can either freak [out] and just be a mess, or I can straighten my backbone and breathe and work and move through it and choose to be grateful and excited for what is happening in my life.” - Click Here To Tweet This
Take it with a grain of salt.
In times of overwhelm, Diana takes walks and meditates.
Sometimes, she also dances to her Living Room Dance playlist. You can listen to Diana’s Living Room Dance playlist here.
[07:53] You Are Not Alone
Entrepreneurship, nomadic living, and life in general are activating.
The capitalist culture can make you feel like you are not doing enough.
Understand that these feelings and things happen.
Remember, you are not alone.
[08:27] Your Best Investment
Create space to invest in yourself (like coaching containers).
Allow yourself to drop into this space.
This space is the best investment you can make for yourself.
[09:54] Why You Need to Invest in and Create Space
Create space for you to think about things other than work.
This space will allow you to move away from your business and enjoy life for a time.
Investing in this time for yourself will help you think outside the box and have more creative ideas.
Create space for yourself. Make time, or else you will burn out.
[11:32] Final Takeaways
Permit yourself to invest in yourself.
Investing your time and energy into space is a purposeful, intentional, and smart move.
Becoming a couch potato and just relaxing isn't how to go about creating this intentional space, though sometimes this is what our bodies need.
Instead, it can be catching up with your family, taking time to sit and journal, or choosing to have a slow morning.
[12:57] Diana: "Get out of the muck when you're in the muck, like choosing to stand up in the water instead of flailing. A lot of times when we're flailing, we think we're drowning. I tell my clients to stand up." - Click Here To Tweet This
Enjoyed this Podcast on Why You Should Create Space?
Entrepreneurial life is not all sunshine and rainbows. The hustle culture can make you feel like you are not doing enough. That’s why it’s vital to create space for yourself — a space to heal, refresh, and recharge.
Pollen is a podcast for Creative Entrepreneurs — just like you! If you enjoyed this episode of Pollen Podcast, subscribe and help us spread the word by sharing it!
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Have any questions or want to leave a suggestion? Come say hi on the 'gram @dianadaviscreative! You can also subscribe to my newsletter for travel updates, learn about special projects, and get tips and tricks for the creative entrepreneur life!
Connect with me on Linkedin: Diana Davis Creative.
Thanks for listening! Stay tuned to my website for more episode updates, exciting programs, and valuable resources.
Transcript
Diana Davis: I realized, “Holy shit. I'm living out of a suitcase and I'm doing this all on my own.” And it really felt like if I stopped rowing this boat, I'm going to drown. And I'm the only one rowing the boat, you know, with the business, with keeping up to this lifestyle, with the next place, the next plane ticket, the next Airbnb, the next connection. All of it. It just was like, “Whoa.”
Welcome to Pollen, the podcast for creative entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Diana Davis, multi passionate creative, business coach, Gemini, manifesting generator, macha drinker, and travel junkie. I'm also the founder of Diana Davis Creative where I went from a six-figure photography business to coaching creative entrepreneurs like you. If you want to have a career and a life you love. You're in the right place.
On this show, I'll be coaching on all things creative entrepreneurship, and you'll hear stories from fellow creative entrepreneurs that will show you it is possible to do life the way you want to. They'll share the nitty gritty of their journeys, like the real shit, and how they are doing it differently. I'm stoked to have you along on this journey. Let's go. Hello from New York City. I am in Chelsea, Manhattan right now. If you're a New Yorker, you know where that is.
You might know where that is if you visited. I am literally a few blocks away from Chelsea Market High Line, which is such a fun place to be. I'm in a little sublet. So if you're wondering how I do this whole Nomad journey, I usually stay in Airbnbs. Airbnbs in New York City are a shitshow, and crazy expensive for little to nothing; basically like a creepy basement. So I found the sublet on Craigslist, and it wasn't exactly what I wanted.
It's definitely a very New York apartment where you could basically stretch your arms and be in the bathroom and the kitchen and the living room at the same time. But it's in a great location. It has some sunlight happening. And I'm able to sit here and record with you, which is really amazing. And what a privilege to be living this life. And yeah, so that's where I'm at now. There's some fun, love interest stuff happening behind the scenes. Maybe I'll tell you more about that someday.
But I'm going to Paris again in a couple of weeks, which may or may not have something to do with that. We'll leave that there for now. And then I head to Australia and New Zealand for the month of November and December. So super exciting things coming up. And I also have a lot of feelings around it all; I had to pack up from Fort Greene. I stayed at my friend's house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn for like 18 days, that's actually the longest I have stayed anywhere so far.
I packed up and taxied over to Manhattan and it really kind of shook me. I had this moment of just feeling like if I thought too hard about all of this, I could have a panic attack. And I am currently in launch for Camp Clarity. When you hear this Camp Clarity will already be started. But I'm currently in launch for Camp Clarity, planning on launching the waitlist for Ascend, which, please keep that in mind, that's going to be the mastermind. Waitlist is going to be live for this episode. It will be in the show notes.
But we are starting the second week of January. And I actually pushed that back. I was going to do it in November and just realized it would be better for everyone involved if it was the second week of January and just took some space. But it was very activating to me, I think, to move apartments because it's this realization that I am living out of one suitcase and two backpacks, and I have bought some things and they don't freaking fit, and my suitcase weighs too much.
I don't have the option to bring the things that I really want with me, which sounds like a very first world problem. I know. But it just was very activating in the way that I realized, “Holy shit. I'm living out of a suitcase and I'm doing this all on my own.” And it really felt like, if I stopped rowing this boat, I'm going to drown and I'm the only one rowing the boat. With the business, with keeping up this lifestyle, with the next place, the next plane ticket, the next Airbnb, the next connection. All of it.
It just was like, “Whoa.” And so the next day, I was super activated in my nervous system around all of this still. And I just kind of looked at myself in the mirror, and said, “You know, I'm just actually not available to be stressed around all this stuff. I'm living such an exquisite life. I have so much to be grateful for. And I could either freak out around what is happening around me right now. Or I could just not, and the stuff happening around me is going to keep going either way.”
I think that was a snap out of it moment. Because I get cold sores now, when I get this activated in my nervous system. And I just looked at myself in the mirror, and I'm like, “I'm not available to get a cold sore. I'm not available to be this stressed.” So I really wanted to share all of this, because I just want to let you know, it's not all sunshine and rainbows and that you're not alone, first of all.
I also wanted to talk about taking space and how space is an investment, right? And I want to talk about this idea that we can actually choose to be stressed or not. Things are going to trigger us. Things are going to activate our nervous systems. A lot of us have trauma that we are working through. I get it. But there's a moment in time where we can go, this is not what I'm available for.
All of this stuff is going to happen around me. And I can either freak, and just be a mess. Or I can like straighten my backbone and breathe, and work through it, and move through it, and choose to be grateful and excited for what is happening in my life, right? So my nervous system was still really funky like literally feeling the anxiety in my chest.
For all you somatic healers out there, you could explain this better than I can. But it was still in there, whether I chose to be stressed or not. So what did I do? I made sure I went for a walk on the beautiful High Line that is literally a couple blocks from my apartment in Chelsea right now. I meditated for the first time probably in six months. I danced in the living room to my living room dance playlist, which I'll drop in the show notes, actually. It's a really good one.
It's a very Diana playlist, so just, take it with a grain of salt. But those things really helped me move through that anxiety, and also just choosing not to be in the funk. So that's my first point. Like I said, my second point really just being that you're not alone; these things happen. Entrepreneurship is fucking activating. And so is just life and so is Nomad life for all my Nomad people out there.
Then just the idea that, for example, I'm pushing Ascend and tell January of 2023, which feels so spacious and amazing and so much more aligned, than pushing it literally in the next couple of weeks. And then people joining in, going through the holidays with it, and all of that, and it just being kind of disjointed.
I've been talking a lot to my clients in my coaching containers about space, because when we're in a zone of space, it really sometimes feels like we're just not doing enough because we have such a capitalist culture, especially here in America. That's like, make more money. Do. Do. Do. You have to keep going. Oh, my God. Especially in New York City. Y'all, the energy here is insane. So I just want to say like, actually, taking space is an investment, just like investing in a coaching container.
If you can hear the siren in the background, just New York is saying hello, and we're just gonna roll with it. But I've been talking a lot to my people in my containers around taking the space and just allowing ourselves to really drop in when we have space. I have clients who are going through IVF treatments. I have clients who are completely pivoting their businesses.
I have clients who are buying houses and getting married and moving across the country or going nomadic. And it's like, “Man, if you can take the space, if you have the privilege of having a little bit of money in your bank account to just actually take space, that's the best investment you could ever make on yourself.” Because what happens when we even just take space in a day for a half-hour walk in nature without our phones?
We start to have creative ideas. We start to think outside the box. We start to actually move away from being so in our business, and we can actually work on our business and on our lives. And also just like, “Enjoy life for a minute, right?” I just hosted a masterclass last week, which, like I said, you're gonna be hearing this episode later than this timing. But Portal was the masterclass and it was so epic. And it was probably my favorite masterclass I've ever done. It was very fiery.
I really like– I had to talk about space afterwards, because I gave everything I had to this masterclass. I needed a whole day to recover. That's the very introverted extrovert in me. But the Pollen masterclass was about getting away from the hustle and moving through the door, the portal, to actually having a life-centered business where you actually live life first. And I know a lot of us are thinking like, “Yeah, yeah. We live life. It's fine.”
But do you? Is there time when you're not thinking about your business? Is there a time when you're taking space, that you're not going, “Oh, my God, I should be working on X, Y, and Z?” We need space as humans or we're going to burn out.
I just want to also really drive home the concept that time and space is an investment, just like investing your money in the stock market and an ETF, investing your money in a coaching container, investing your time and energy into something. The goal is that you get something back, not that it's wasted, not that it's gone, a leaf, blowing in the wind, that you're actually making this purposeful, intentional investment, being smart about it.
What does being smart about investing in space mean? Well, maybe if you're taking a week off, you're not just sitting on the couch and watching Netflix the whole time. Maybe you are, if that's like really, truly what's lighting you up, but also not wasting that space. Like being really intentional about it.
Knowing that the things you're doing within that space are bringing you joy. Maybe you're like really catching up with your family members, or really just taking time to sit and journal, or have a slow morning. But taking space doesn't always need to mean we're like a couch potato. We can be intentional with that investment of space. So I would love to hear where you're taking space, what that investment for you looks like, where you're giving yourself permission to do this.
Also just choosing to get out of the muck when you're in the muck, like choosing to stand up in the water instead of flailing. A lot of times when we're flailing and think we think we're drowning, I tell my clients to stand up. The water is only two feet deep, right? It's not as crazy as you think it is. It's not an emergency like you think it is. So let me know where you're taking space. Let me know how you are choosing to stand up out of the muck. Let me know how you're doing.
Let me know where you're listening from. I love, love, love when you all share on social and tell me you're listening. Because I see the numbers on the back end. We're actually really doing amazing with this. The Pollen podcast is super popular and super downloaded and super listened to. But I would love to hear who it is, who you are, where you're listening from, and what you got out of it. And then such an easy thing, as you all know, is to rate this five stars would be great.
If you don't like it, let me know. Maybe have a conversation with me and give me some feedback. But five stars would be amazing and actually writing a review on Apple if you're listening there is just so, so helpful and it takes two seconds. Subscribing, Following, all the things. So I am about to go take some space.
It's a Friday when I'm recording this right now. I have a special guest with me that I'm not going to share about but I'm gonna go enjoy the weekend with that person and really just take space. So I hope you're able to do the same.
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