Episode #100 Baby It’s Hot Outside! Let’s Play Inside!!
How long have you had a dream but haven’t moved forward on it? Those dreams that you have been thinking about, planning for, and imagining for a long time… Your time is now! Your only limitations are the limits of your own creativity and big vision.
In today’s episode, Sharri Harmel shares what you can do inside your home or wherever you are to keep moving forward on your dreams. Get creative and imagine as many possibilities as you can think of. No idea is too big or too crazy. It’s time to make your dreams happen!
Extraordinary Women magazine is the “must-have” digital magazine for women looking for inspiration, tips, and support to create a fabulous business, or just the next chapter. In a nutshell, for women who are ready to make their dreams happen.
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Episode #100 Baby It’s Hot Outside! Let’s Play Inside!!
Phew…it’s been a hot summer! I just came in from a very early morning walk along the Boston Harbor and it’s already unbearable. I could just feel the humidity stick to my skin and there was not a breeze to be found- which is rare along the ocean.
I was going to talk about something serious today, but when I got back home, I ditched that idea. It’s just too darn hot. Excessive heat puts our bodies in stress mode and when we are stressed, we want popsicles not therapy sessions.
So today I’m going to talk about what you can do inside your home or wherever you are, to keep moving forward on your dreams. Hopefully, some of these ideas are super fun!
Those dreams that you have been thinking about, planning for, and imagining for a while now are what we are talking about. I have a quiz on the Extraordinary Women Magazine website and one of the questions asks how long have you had the dream? Almost 75% who take the quiz say, “as long as I can remember.” Wow! That means you can probably relate, so it’s time ladies. No more “one day I’ll do that” or “I’ll get to it when I get X done or my children raised, or my home organized” …. the time is now.
So let’s start with those dreams…. And begin by exploring how you can play with your dreams….
Sounds bizarre right? But it’s not. Remember when you were a little girl, you did this all the time! You probably played some of the same games over and over, but you stayed engaged because you imagined something different each and every time you played the game. If it was your easy bake oven, you just had to try baking different things. If you’re like me, and you started playing teacher at a really young age…your creativity created all kinds of different scenarios- from students to subjects. When you played hide and seek, you hid in a different place every time you played. As a child, pretend games are all about creativity and the crazier the better, right? My sister and I used to move the furniture in our little family home when we were babysitting. We even imagined that because our family spent much more time in the dining room than the living room, why not switch the rooms? That’s how kids play.
Well, what if you did this with your dreams? What if you played with your dreams by imagining all sorts of different variations?
Here are a couple of examples.
A clothing designer who switched up her dream when the couture industry didn’t align with her having children, saw herself pivoting into Interior Design. One naturally has synergy with the other, right? Color knowledge, shapes, and spaces, incorporating old with new, form with function. All different versions of the same game, right? Amanda Godfrey in our very first EW magazine issue did just that. Molly Wilkinson, a French pastry chef we highlighted in the most recent issue of the EW magazine, had taught in-person classes for a good while until covid hit. Suddenly she was doing online classes and created an online cooking school and she’s now making plans to start a cooking show. In both these examples, something external happened that forced both women to shift and expand the possibilities or what they saw as possible in their businesses.
But for your game, you’re going to go about it differently…. you’re going to play with different versions of your dreams without any external pressures. Your only limitations are the limits of your own creativity and big vison. So, connect to that little girl inside you and pretend…. What could your business be about, look like, focus on…. that might be different from what you have on your five-year plan??
Mind maps are great for exploring possibilities…. Google mind maps if that’s a new idea for you- but it basically is free writing/drawing that takes you from one idea to another and then another. It’s best to do this on paper rather than the computer because as you warm up your creative brain, the ideas will come pouring out and you need a pen and paper to capture them.
If you’re stuck- warm up your creative brain with a less stressful idea…. create a fantasy dinner party- and design the food, the theme, and the guests you want at the dinner party. That’s actually a really fun activity.
Now if the word business sort of freaks you out- call it something else. Your passion, your vocation, your mission. Put down every single crazy idea that comes to you…and remember, as a child you never criticized or filtered yourself by saying well that’s a stupid idea…. you just giggled and came up with another crazy idea…. Be that little girl. NO idea is too crazy. Play, get creative, imagine as many possibilities as you can think of.
Why are we doing this?
Because nothing EVER ends up exactly as we planned.
AND…some of our craziest ideas end up our best ideas.
This is true in the wider business world. We all know post-it notes, right? Well, this 3M chemist was trying to make a super strong adhesive and instead made the very temporary adhesive. The product sat on the shelf for years until he and another chemist got the idea to put it on paper for taking notes or marking pages in a book. Voila—post-it notes were born.
Similar amazing creations that came out of wild happening are the popsicle, penicillin, the microwave oven, X-rays…the list goes on!
So, we can accept that most things rarely end up exactly we planned…. not our love affairs, not our kids, not our government, not our jobs so why do we think if we create just the right business plan, just let it happen!
This podcast is another example. I started it because I was a little bored. I live alone and it was covid. I needed to connect with other people in any way I could, so I thought, why not start a podcast?? Nuts, right? I didn’t even have a microphone. I started with my phone! Not well thought out and nothing about it was perfect or even close to perfect. It started out just audio, then it was video, then it was back to audio…. I tried out all these different platforms…First it was Anchor, then it was Riverside and then…. I stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and went to one of the biggies- Buzz sprout. I wrote and recorded one podcast a week. I actually loved it! But I wanted to take it up a notch so to speak. So after 60+ solo episodes, I got confident enough to invite guests. That was a little bit scary because it wasn’t me talking into my phone, but when I had guests, I suddenly realized one day that I was actually a podcaster! Now I find I love interviewing women. Hearing all the different stories and journeys, is super interesting. I do it for the EW magazine articles but a podcast is one off- 45 minutes to share.
Now, I’m still not “professional.” The conversations are rather loose, can go just about anywhere as we talk…. I don’t yet have a set list of questions or process for a podcast guest to go through…. I share this because I want you to visualize all the baby steps, I took along the way. But what has been interesting is that I recently got invited to host someone else’s podcast. That’s in the works right now, but never in a million years did I think I’d be a podcast host, and certainly never think the EW podcast could be a leading marketer for the EW magazine.
Well, that’s exactly what I want you to do with your dreams…. only you are going to think big and crazy before rather than after you launch the next stage of your dream!
To do this you have to really step into how amazing you are….and how successful you could be!
This is not about the dream being interviewed by Oprah but being bigger than Oprah!
Next- you’re going to reverse engineer those huge maybe a tad audacious, but highly possible dreams you came up with!
Often, we start thinking big, but then we try to make everything perfect before we do something…. Before we launch. It’s like the BIG dream stops us- we get so hung up on trying to lay out the steps for the big dream happen, we get stuck.
We’ll sign up for things, join organizations, buy the equipment, think about hiring someone….
All in anticipation of that day when we are ready- to launch our big, huge, audacious dream!
This is usually when we get stuck…. It’s never perfect enough!!
- Technology- I hear people over and over try to find THE perfect technology for their podcast, YouTube channel etc. That’ll never happen…the options are endless. products.
- More content- We don’t launch our blog, our newsletter, our whatever, because we think we need more content!! We have to write more, film more, plan more before we can launch. Give that up…. you will create along the way because remember, everything is changing.
- And that leads to our target audience. We’re often just not sure who our target audience is, so we keep trying to figure that out before we do anything. Let that go. Start with who you think your peeps are and as time goes on, you’ll see a deeper focus.
Last, I don’t know about you, but I learn by doing. I can over-think just about anything and absolutely everything. As humans, we learn best by doing.
The Extraordinary Women Magazine was first launched as Be the Real You! Two issues in I realized the title wasn’t sitting well with many women. It made no sense to them.
So I changed it up. The EW podcast started as me, myself, and I – yapping about topics I thought women would be interested in. I began by recording the podcast on my phone! No editing, no microphone, no nothing. Then, when I decided, I was going to add video, yes, totally crazy. But I just did the video on Zoom and uploaded it to a YouTube account. Total newbie, yes maybe not the most professional, but I had to do it to learn if it was something I wanted to do.
Recently, I launched the EW Notebook, which is a weekly blog. I have no idea of whether it will fly…. I mean does anyone start a blog these days? But I’m trusting the process. It could morph into something I can’t even imagine right now. Also, this process works beautifully even if it’s not a business that is part of your dream.
When I was contemplating living half the year in Paris, I began by renting apartments. First it was two weeks, then four and then six. I wanted to know what it was like to actually live in Paris, not just visit. I went to the market, found my favorite cafes, did my work from my laptop in a different time zone. Yes, I was taking French lessons, but I had to know what it felt like to be somewhere by myself, for a long period of time, where I didn’t know the language.
Before I did anything as crazy as buying an apartment, I had to try in Paris.
So Ladies….my point to this week is to dream….and dream big. Really big.
And then…. get started. Don’t overthink, don’t over plan, just go for it and laugh along the way. What steps can you start taking today? Remember, you’ll learn best by doing.
I’m closing with a quote from Marie Forleo….” You wouldn’t have the dream in your heart if you didn’t already have what it takes to make it happen.” À bientôt.
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