Episode 373: The one thing all small business owners need to know before they start the New Year
In this episode, Fiona reflects on the challenges of the past year. She also discussed how we respond to external forces. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Exploring the idea of choice
Applying the concept of choice
The visual representation of the tattoo
Reflection on privilege and recognizing one's own power
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 373 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today it is the very first podcast for 2024. I just want to say a huge happy New Year to every single person who's reading. Even if you're reading this later on or two years from now, I hope that 2024 was an amazing year for you. If you're reading in the present, then I hope that this year and just the start of this year is bringing in freshness and excitement. I know that we were in such a horrific time of the world in terms of our history and wars and many other things that are happening, but I hope that this start of the new year can give you some peace and inject you with a sense of hope that things will get better. Before we get stuck in, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land on which I record this podcast and where I am sharing my new year. That is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
As I said at the start, if you're reading in real-time, this is the very start of January 2024. But today's quick tip is really helpful at this time of year, I think. I also think that it is helpful, literally any time of year. Helpful in fact that I have it tattooed on my body. If you've never met me, you may not know. But I have numerous tattoos. Each of them has a lot of meaning, a lot of story behind it. Even with my kids, whenever they're like, “We might get tattoos,” I'm like, “ Just make sure that it actually means something to you.” Every single one of mine, even the very first one that I got when I think I was 17 or 18, even though it's very dated, like the late nineties, it still is special to me.
I actually got that particular tattoo with my best friend at the time, who is still a long time later, one of my best friends. We still laugh about that tattoo and how we went into this really dodgy tattoo studio and people were getting these gigantic tattoos, and we were getting these tiny little ones on our hips, and we were like, “Can we have numbing cream, please?” We made this whole deal. I mean the tattoo was maybe $20. This is way back in the day when really you were going to these kinds of divey places to get them as opposed to now. They're fancy, and they charge you $300 to do anything. But back to today's quick tip episode. The tattoo that I'm talking about today is one that I actually have on my hand. It came from a book that I read many years ago called Unstuck by James S. Gordon.
Now, at the time, this was well before I started my business. I was really having a difficult time at the place that I was employed at. I mean, no one maybe knew that, but I personally didn't feel very aligned in terms of my values. I didn't feel like I was really showing up in life the way that I wanted to. A large part of that was because I was putting this job as a priority above other things that were more important to me. Somebody gave me a copy of this book, I started reading it, and it really hit home. Now the book is concerned more with depression. I've never been formally diagnosed with depression, but I definitely feel like I've had episodes of situational depression where the situation has caused the feelings of despair and flatness and feeling like it's not going to get better.
Somebody gave me this book Unstuck, and I went through the book and I remember there was a passage in the book, and I can't seem to find the exact passage now. I've lent this book to many people. I've probably not read it in like 5 or 10 years even. I should probably reread it. But today's episode and the tattoo that I actually have comes from this book. I remember reading this passage and it said something along the lines of we all have a choice. Even when our external forces seem so great, we have a choice of how we choose to live and how we choose to act. Now, I've talked before about Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, which everybody should be reading if you haven't already. But in that Viktor Frankl says this famous statement, which is between stimulus and response, there is always a chance to pause or something like that, I'm paraphrasing.
This same sort of passage in Unstuck was very much of a similar idea that things can happen to you, but you don't always have to react in a certain way. Actually, you can take a minute and choose how you react. From that passage, I then designed a little tattoo, which is basically, if you imagine a circle and then from the circle you've got two arms coming out. People have often said, “Is that a rabbit? Is that a person?” I know what it means because I got it done for myself. The reason that I got it done was because there's this circle which really represents experiences, moments in life situations. Then there are two arms or two lines coming out of it. One represents the kind of path of impulse, but also the path that maybe doesn't necessarily align with my values and the way that I want to live.
The other path is the one that does align with my values and the way that I want to live. If you imagine you've got this circle and then you've got these sort of two sticks, or two paths or two little arms coming out of it. I have looked at this tattoo obviously a million times because it's on my body and it's on my hand. I see it all the time. But it represents to me that I have a choice that things can happen and things have happened and many times these things are happening that are outside of our control and they cause huge amounts of grief and loss and stress and overwhelm. It might be to do with your business, it might be in life, it might be globally, it might be very locally, very intimate in your personal situation, or it could be something massive that's happening and you're feeling that energy on a global scale.
But we do have a choice a lot of the time. I'm not saying all of the time, but sometimes we have that choice of, “Which path am I going to go down right now?” I see it all the time. I see it myself as well. I'm only human when something happens in business, for example, and somebody says something, it could be a customer, it could be a client, it could be a stockist. You want to just retaliate. You want to just be like, “Well let me tell you what I'm going through.” Or you see somebody has written a nasty comment or nasty feedback or a survey and you are like, “Well,” and you go into this defense mode, or I've seen it in situations. You just have to look at social media to see this just outpouring of anger and hatred towards people that don't even know.
Strangers get into these gigantic fights on social media and you're sometimes thinking for what? For what purpose? Can we just sort of stand back a minute and think about our response and think, is this helping the situation or is this just adding fuel to the fire? Or is it just my ego talking? I think this tattoo for me has really led to many instances in which it has just prompted me to think and to take that step. Like Viktor Frankl says, that moment between stimulus and response. I wanted to share it today because we are in the start of a new year, and sometimes we can forget that we have an agency. If you are reading this and you are in a situation where you have your own business and you're in control to some degree of your time and how you make money, I mean, you have so much agency and so much privilege that people around the world would just absolutely love to have.
Sometimes we can forget that and we can get complacent or think things are all happening to us as opposed to thinking, “Actually, I have the agency right now to stop,” take a pause, think about my next step, or think about my next response, or think about my next action, and then align that with how I want to show up in the world, how I want to show up in my business, how you want to show up in your family to your friends, and all sorts of other things. As we start this new year, I guess that's the biggest tip, is that you have agency and you have power, and you forget that sometimes. Now that can be directed in all sorts of ways, and we can only look around the world and see different causes that businesses are getting behind and how much impact and power that can have, but it can also have power and impact on a much smaller scale.
For example, I've talked about this at length every time that I choose to go for a walk. Part of that is not choice. I have two dogs that have to go out for a walk, but every time that I go for a walk, I am choosing to walk that path that aligns with me being healthier, me being mentally healthier, as well as physically me looking after my back, me looking after my dogs. All of that is a choice to get up and do that. I know that not everybody has that privilege and not everyone has this situation in which they can go for a walk, but I'm just trying to say that many times we kind of bow down to everything external and forget our own power. That tattoo that I'm talking about today has just been a massive reminder to me, like literally in my face, reminder, tattooed, can't really get much more permanent than that to remind me like, you have a choice here.
That could be a choice in conversations that I bring up, or conversations I don't bring up. It can have a choice in the different people that I asked to come onto this podcast, the different people we say yes to who have pitched themselves on this podcast, it can show up in the revenue streams and the different offers that we have. It can show up in what I say no to as well as what I say yes to all sorts of things. We have that choice and often we forget it. I hope that as you go into this new year or whenever you are reading this, that you remember that, that you have agency, you have power, and you have choice. That is it for the very first quick tip episode of 2024.
Thank you again. If you are coming back for another year of the My Daily Business podcast, we have many amazing interviews that some I've already done, some lined up and just brilliant people coming on from TikTok experts through to psychologists, through to amazing First Nations business owners through to people who have taken on idea and just gone with it.
Some of the conversations I've had recently and that will come out soon in this podcast are just absolutely incredible and have made me reevaluate things, rethink things, get inspired, get excited, and I hope that it does the same for you too. That is it for today's Quick tip episode. You'll be able to find the link to the book Unstuck and anything else that I mentioned in the show notes for today, which you'll be able to find at my daily business.com/podcast/373. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
