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Transcript:
You’re listening to The Write Mindset Podcast with Racquel Henry, this is episode three! This podcast is produced by my writing studio, Writer’s Atelier. I’m an author, editor, writing coach, and part-time professor who believes that mindset work is the cornerstone of writing success.
Hi, all. So, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve ghosted you over the last few weeks. In full transparency, my old friend fear came back. At the time that I am recording this, we are in the middle of a global pandemic. I’d be lying if I said that hasn’t gotten to me in the last few weeks. In my last episode, I talked about the huge news of Writer’s Atelier landing a new space. As you can imagine, we were definitely on a high. Now, because of social distancing and staying at home, we have no idea when we’ll get to open up the space. The realization of this was just plain sad. This not only comes with disappointment, but it also comes with a financial price.
It (yet again) dawned on me that the whole point of this podcast was also to help other writers with mindset work when things get rough. I had mentioned initially that I am not exempt from this. Mindset work has to be done daily. While I work through my own struggles, my goal was to share those experiences and possibly help others who may be feeling the same. That being said, I thought I would share my process for coping with all that’s going on in the world. Maybe it might help someone else.
So, the first thing I did (and full transparency here), was panic. Honestly, I believe panicking is a natural human reaction. It’s when you allow yourself to stay in a state of panic where it becomes a problem. So, that’s what I did. I was actually worried about my family, I have a niece and a nephew who are very young. I was also really worried about my parents. My mother is a director at a resort and they showed no signs of slowing down (and still don’t.) My father just had major surgery and is diabetic. Then there was the case of finances, of course.
But I let myself sit with the gravity of everything a bit. I allowed myself to be incredibly unproductive, and I didn’t push myself to keep doing, doing, doing. Instead, I allowed myself to slow down.
Then I reminded myself that panicking wasn’t going to keep me or my family healthy. In fact, if anything, that made me more susceptible to getting sick. I was wearing out both my mind and body by constantly worrying.
Step two was realizing that I needed to take some level of action. The most important thing was health. So I made arrangements to stop work on the studio (we were in the process of getting it ready to reopen after our big move) and started working on my supplies. And no, I was not one of those people who bought a million rolls of toilet paper. I took a couple of weeks to buy food and household items. I was also mindful of leaving things for others, so I bought my items slowly. And just know, for a germaphobe like myself, I find it incredibly anxiety-inducing that I can’t find sanitizer! Picture the “extra” precautions people are taking, well, that’s daily life for me—wiping down groceries and all. Still, getting supplies felt like an easy thing I could do to move myself forward. It was some small level of action I could take.
After a couple of weeks, I finished preparing to stay home for what I knew would be an indefinite amount of time. Now that the bare necessities were taken care of, I could concentrate on finances and how I would move the studio forward. We obviously have bills to pay since we have a brick and mortar space, but I also wanted to serve our community. There were going to be other writers who lost income as well. So, I brainstormed with our admin, Megan and we came up with a plan. Honestly, she has helped me keep my sanity by doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
After coming up with a plan to move all of our programming online, I started tackling what I could handle. This is step three, and this is the step that has really helped. I am by nature an anxious person. And often, I work myself so hard sometimes I end up getting to a point where I just feel paralyzed. I feel like I have so much to do that I don’t know where to start, despite having a plan. So step three was slowing down, but moving forward. If I was being hard on myself for not getting anything done, I reminded myself that we were in the middle of a global pandemic.
In the last few weeks, I’ve worked hard while slowing down. That sounds a little strange and possibly confusing to say. What I mean is that I have worked because I need to. Again, I still have bills, so, therefore, I still need to make a living. But I also allowed myself to take more days off and take breaks when I needed. I had to get extra honest with myself. Honestly, I’m not going to be performing at my absolute best during a pandemic, but pushing myself wasn’t doing me any good either. So, I needed to give myself a little grace. And I’ve found that long stretches of hard work need to be balanced with rest, relaxation, and reset. This is really a basic life principle, but here I am having no choice but to follow it.
This is how I shifted my mindset. I’ve always known I needed more balance, but now more than ever it feels urgent. For me, this is a benefit. I am working. I am somehow holding my business together, and I am taking the time to recharge. Staying at home has allowed me more time to visit with a lot of my writer friends—though we visit online.
So, the biggest takeaways from this episode on how to deal with a pandemic: It’s okay to panic, allow yourself to feel unproductive, try to come up with a plan and take small actions to move yourself forward, and last, remember to slow down while you move yourself forward. This is a difficult time and it’s important to take care of our minds and bodies.
During what I call these “slow down” days or periods, there are several things I’ve done that have helped me. And at one point I was sharing on social media in my Instagram stories. I would list all the things that calmed me down. I stopped sharing them and want to work on bringing them back. It helped me tremendously to write out what I was doing to take care of myself during a difficult period. I’ve decided to share what has helped me and what I’m doing in separate, shorter episodes. I’ve also made an IG story template if you’re interested in participating in this with me. I’m calling this My Calm Project, which will also be the hashtag as well. Again, writing out what I’m doing to keep myself calm during a global pandemic has helped me, and maybe it might help you too. If you want the IG template, I’m going to post the link in the show notes. But it will be at witersatelier.com/mycalmproject and it will also be in the blog post version of this podcast episode on the Writer’s Atelier website as well.
We also have a lineup of fantastic guests coming up over the next few weeks! I’m so excited for you to hear these episodes with other writers and how they do mindset work.
On the next episode, we are doing something that we hope will help writers. We launched a 21-day meditation for writers class last month. It’s called The Write Meditation with Rita Sotolongo, who is a registered yoga instructor and writer. We’re going to publish one of the meditations to the podcast for FREE! It will be something writers can use again and again to stay calm.
Last, one of our members, LE Perez, has launched a podcast called Legion of Writers. She has interviewed myself and other WA members, along with some other fantastic authors. Please check it out if you can!
Thanks, as always, for listening. If you’re enjoying The Write Mindset I encourage you to subscribe and leave us a review. You can also check out Writer’s Atelier at writersatelier.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. If you’re interested in joining our membership, you can do so through Patreon. Take care and Happy writing life!
