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When my massage therapist and intuitive healer, Thea, said ONE sentence to me, my jaw almost hit the floor. 🤯
She was in the middle of my massage, and said a profound, powerful statement… and it’s now become my mantra as I work through these next years of my life and business, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
But before I dive into the phrase that changed my business and my life, let me provide a little bit of backstory and context!
Who’s Thea?
If you have read my book called, How Are You Really?, you might recognize Thea’s name. I first met Thea when I booked massages for mine and Drew’s anniversary in a tiny town in northern Minnesota when we were trying to celebrate during the pandemic.
Thea is a naturally intuitive person who has the most beautiful, unique energy about her. I booked our massage having no idea who Thea was and having no idea how the trajectory of my life would change after that one hour massage, but it did. I tell the full story of how she inspired my book in one of the chapters, so be sure to grab your copy!
Thea has stayed in our lives for the past few years as a friend, an advisor, and as someone who has really gotten to know the depths of who we are. So this summer when we were up at the lake, I decided to make an appointment. I feel like when I’m with her, she just affirms the things that I already know to be true and it is such a beautiful experience!
My Struggle: Envisioning The Future
While I’m sitting on a porch overlooking Lake Superior before my appointment with Thea she says, “There’s a reason why you’re here today. What is it?”
I say to her, “I’m just having trouble envisioning the future. My kids are growing so fast, I don’t want to have any regrets about the time I spend with them. My business is at this beautiful place where we are crushing our numbers, but we’re also in this rinse-and-repeat style of business, which is beautiful and can also be boring. Meanwhile, my marriage is good, I feel like our family is complete, and I feel like I have an inability to think forward because everything is ‘good’ as it is right now.”
Hearing this, she begins to ask me questions, like:
- What are your favorite days of work?
- How often do you reserve sacred days, with nothing on your calendar?
- Why don’t you help in your home to allow more time for self-care for both you and Drew?
I loved answering these hard questions, because it causes me to reflect on the 3 “hats” I wear in my life: CEO, wife, mother. As we’re chatting, she invites me in for a massage where she touches pressure points to help me come to the conclusions I need to.
The Hierarchy: Me, Marriage, Motherhood
During the massage, Thea starts touching pressure points on head and keeps saying, “me, marriage, motherhood.” She explains this should be the hierarchy I operate out of – me, then marriage, then motherhood… and as she tells me this, I realize I’ve been operating in the opposite order, prioritizing motherhood over myself and my marriage.
We’ve all heard “secure your own oxygen mask before helping others,” but how many of us actually do this in practice?
In that moment, I realized that if I follow this hierarchy of my priorities, everyone in my family will thrive on a whole new level! To this day, when I find myself flipping my priorities upside down and helping everyone else before myself, I repeat “me, marriage, motherhood” to remind myself what I need to do.
Putting The Hierarchy Into Practice
This conversation then led me to consider the idea of a sacred day of the week to invite more rest, joy, and passion into my life. While lying on the massage table, it was at that moment that I decided to tell my team we will test out going down to a 4-day work week for the next 90 days. Listen to my podcast episode about this decision here!
Next, we talk about this idea of what getting help in our lives would look like. She knows how hard it is for me to outsource, so she gave me a challenge: “I want you to go home, you and Drew sit down together, and dream up what type of role would support you the best at this stage of life with what your greatest needs are.” She told us to discuss what things in our lives we don’t enjoy, what things we dread, what we wish we could get done but don’t have time to… and Drew and I did just that.
After dreaming up what kind of role would support us the most, we landed on a hybrid between someone to help us around the house AND someone to watch the kids. So if we want to be with the kids, they can help around the house. And if we want to work around the house, then they can help with the kids! We’re so excited to give this a try to allow more time for self-care in mine and Drew’s lives.
Finally, Thea advised that I should get more conscious of my communication around what I personally need and how my needs can be met in a way that will support both my marriage and motherhood. I think a lot of times I just push things under the rug or I don’t necessarily deal with them because life is good and I should be grateful. But I am someone who needs alone time, I need time to feel like a human outside of being a CEO, wife, and mom. I am someone who needs to find joy in things other than my work. So we talked a little bit about just that communication and what that looks like, and how to advocate for myself (which I’ve been working on!)
“Let It Be Easy”
The final thing that Thea said is the thing that totally changed my perspective on business and the season of life, is these four words: “Let it be easy.”
She explained that the rinse-and- repeat of my business is a blessing, not a burden. My marriage being good, my family being complete, my children being happy and healthy are all blessings, and it’s okay to let it be easy!
I loved this perspective because I think that we as entrepreneurs often have a constant need for more, more, more… and our drive and ability to outwork anyone can easily become our “autopilot.” We have to consciously rest and find ease in our lives, and we have to let it be easy. Easy isn’t bad, it isn’t boring, it isn’t basic… It’s good.
So, I want you to reflect on your answers to these questions:
- How quick are you to overcomplicate things?
- Are you someone who craves and brings chaos into your life because that’s how you function?
- Are you someone where the minute you find stillness or ease, you simply add more to your plate?
This has now become my mantra: Let it be easy.
When things now get complicated or hard, I now ask myself: what would this look like if it were easy? And the answer usually helps me cut the fluff and get to the real need. It helps me remove this desire to be perfect because I’m procrastinating, and remove the unnecessary filler or fluff from my life so that I can get back to the ease.
Do not be someone that lets your blessings become your burdens, friend. Let the work that you’re doing today help you afford a brighter and better and more peaceful tomorrow. And if you have been working so hard and you are finally in a place to reap the rewards, allow yourself to feel that ease.
Journal Prompts to Invite More Ease Into Your Life
As we close out this conversation, here are some things you can consider, perhaps in a journal or with a trusted advisor:
- What is the hierarchy of your life right now, and does it need adjusting?
- How can you invite more sacred time into your life?
- Where can you simplify your life, business, or relationships to invite in more ease?
- How can you create more rinse and repeat in your business so that you can reap the benefits of your hard work?
As you consider these questions, just know that both peace and hard work can coexist– you do not need to give up one for the other. I hope that this episode inspired you with a little dose of Thea’s magic, Goal Digger!
