7. P———emic.
It’s been quite a time, am I right? This post will NOT turn into a post about me explaining why I didn’t make a post last weekend. I pinkie promise.
What wants to be written is a post about upper limiting. It’s what happens when you find yourself actually succeeding at doing the thing you’ve been telling yourself you couldn’t do. For whatever reason, you listened to that voice in your head…you know, the quite one that you don’t normally hear over the voice that’s always screaming about how much danger you’re in? For some reason you paid attention to that whisper, took its advice, and BOOM. You didn’t die. Not only did you not die, but you surpassed some kind of “upper limit” that you have consciously or subconsciously been placing on yourself. And you are absolutely not okay.
I’m using the second person here even though I’m talking about me, because what’s most personal is most universal, but also because I’m finding that every time I give advice I’m just talking to myself in one way or another. But that’s for another day. Today, let’s talk about my current experience with upper limiting and how I’m dealing.
In the first ten days of April, Kasai Thrive has done nearly three times the amount of revenue it did in all of March. Granted none of these are huge amounts of money, but still, this feels very big and new. In this feeling of big and new, thoughts have managed to worm their way into my mind. Thoughts like “maybe one month soon this will, I don’t know, pay a bill or two,” are my version of “yaaaassss” because I haven’t let myself get there yet. I’m working on celebrating incremental progress and that’s also another post for another time. Anyway, these thoughts about this business one day pulling its weight (anyone else traumatized by their childhood money stories?) are always met with reminders that this is probably all about to go up in flames any second now. It’s been a fun time in my brain.
What’s MOST fun about all of this is that imagining your very very tiny business going up in flames somehow becomes imagining a forest fire. It honestly doesn’t add up. But here I am, stopping, dropping, and rolling over in bed at night wondering if tomorrow is the day I’ll wake up and have to stop kidding myself. So far, that day hasn’t come. I’m still very much kidding myself. And kidding myself is the only way I’ve been able to deal with this. I tell myself that this is a game, one where no one loses and everyone wins. Kind of like that board game thats name starts with “P” and ends with that thing we’re all going through right now. I tell myself it’s about remembering that I’m not doing this all alone, that I have one special skill and everyone else has their special skills and we’re all working together to beat this bug called unconsciousness. Sometimes there are scary outbreaks, and sometimes we find a cure. Things ebb and flow, but if everyone does their part we will get through it.
Now that I’ve warmed us up to talking about the unspeakable…
let’s talk about COVID-19. COVID-19 is stressful, y’all! The amount of mass anxiety in the world right now is palpable. I can feel it even though my entire world is the space between my home and Trader Joe’s. I can circumnavigate in about 40 minutes, and I guess that’s just life right now. But anyways, a large piece of my heart lives in New York and this has been a very confusing time of feeling privileged and concerned and thinking that I have the virus because I have a headache and my manager in the Bronx says it’s best to just assume I have it. So last week I was assuming I had the virus and imagining my business in flames. And here I am explaining why I didn’t write a blog post last weekend. The people pleasing is so hard to shake off!!
Ok, now that I’ve justified that, let’s get back on track. So I’m playing this game to eradicate unconsciousness form the planet. That’s what I tell myself to deal with the fact that I am absolutely NOT okay with my business trying to become a real thing. In this game, all I have to do is pull cards and make moves. I pull cards literally every day, so I can do this. I make moves, even small moves, most days. Okay, probably all the days. So I play this game just by doing things I already know how to do, and I don’t need to do anything else. If I’m the medic, I’m not meant to be playing researcher or dispatcher or any other role. I just have to be the medic. And I’ve been helping people heal for awhile now. I got this. And on, and on, and on.
I know there will come a time for me to step into new roles, do things I don’t do every day, and maybe even stop playing a game and start seeing this as real life. But for now, every time I read another article or listen to almost anything, I’m certain to get a reminder that this is all just an opportunity for everyone to do what they do best. In this reminder that it’s okay to play, to feel part of something, and to be appreciated, I remember that leveling up is alright sometimes too.