Episode 19: The Four Pillars of Gentle Business
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
Running a gentle business is a brave decision. It requires vulnerability, self-connection and leadership. But it is the kindest way. Because it cares deeply about your wellbeing at its very core.
Welcome to episode ninteen of the podcast where I explore the four pillars of gentle business, including two new ones that I’ve discovered are incredibly important.
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Read the Transcript:
Welcome to episode 18 of the Gentle Business Sessions. A podcast hosted by me, Ashley Beaudin. And powered by Marvelous and WillowSpace. It’s so good to have you here.
I hope that wherever you are and whatever you're doing that have something cozy in hand. Or around you that you can soften into you. And feel held by.
A lot of my work with gentle business up to this point has been a lot about safety and a lot about care. And in essence, I think that those things are foundational. And so very important.
They are like the starting point to gentle business.
Do you feel safe and do you feel cared for? In your business in your work? And how can you create that? How can you make that a priority for you so that you can see movement and growth in this work? That's very important to you.
As I've been sitting with folks and in my own personal reflections, I'm realizing that two other really important things come up when we're thinking about gentle business.
And one of them is the concept of agency.
The idea that you have power and you have choices and you have autonomy. They, you get to decide what this looks like. You get to decide how to move forward. You get to decide what this means for you.
That when we have safety and care without agency, it can feel really difficult to move forward and lead ourselves and other people.
The other thing that has been striking me that’s incredibly important is the concept of desire. This prompt or idea of - what do you want? What do you yearn for here? What do you hope for? What do you want to do?
All of those four things - safety, care, agency and desire. They require a level of self connection. They require a little bit of turning inwards. And noticing and paying attention.
I also believe that they need to come in that order. Safety care agency desire.
Here's why. If you ask someone, what do you want? When they don't feel safe in their work, however they respond will not be about actual desire, it'll be about survival. Safety has to come first. And it has to come before desire.
Even if you ask someone who's not feeling safe in their business what they feel like their choices are. How do they want to lead themselves? How do they feel about their own sense of power? None of those things will be very accessible to them. Because they don't feel safe.
And so I want to take us through these four things and kind of just offer a couple of ideas and prompts. Of ways to move within these kind of, to use them as check-in points. To see where you're at and see what most might be most important for you.
Okay. So number one safety. Noticing. How safe do you feel right now in your business? How safe do you actually feel? Not that heady answer, but that almost an embodied response. How safe do you actually feel in your business right now?
A great question or thought, we can think in this is, when you think about your work, when you think about your business -
Do you feel creative?
Do you have compassion?
Do you feel powerful?
Do you feel capable?
Do you feel courageous?
All of those things are the results of safety. So we don't feel those, it can also let us know that there's not an embodied sense of safety.
Maybe you can also notice, what could help me feel safe? What could make me feel 1% safer? Notice that.
Number two with care, do you feel cared for in your work? Do you feel cared for in your business? As you go about the tasks of your business, does there feel like an emanating sense of care?
Do you trust that your business can care well for you? In the day-to-day experience of your work, do you have a felt sense of care? Noticing that and paying attention to that.
And what could it look like for care to you? Have a bigger presence in your work? What could it look like for your business? To me with care? What could it look like for your business to be a place that you feel cared for?
Like, what if you didn't have to bear it and get through it, but you could actually enjoy it? That even if you didn't like what you were doing, like even if there were tasks that you don't love doing, you could still feel an emanating sorts of care in the overall function of your business.
With agency. How connected to your own power do you feel? How available. Or accessible does it feel to you to make choices? How strong is your sense of autonomy? How aware are you of your own strength, your own leadership, your own gumption?
Because we pay attention to this, you know, there is. There is so many different layers. That can be held in experiences and in stories. Of why it might be hard to access agency. Or power, even when we have it.
And sometimes it can be a bit of a deeper process. To really step into it. And own it and feel it. And embody it.
And so to remember that this is for paying attention, identifying where we're at. And seeing how we can be intentionally supporting ourselves in the process of cultivating a gentler business.
And this is where I think we can think of something. What is something that does feel in our control. In our power and in our choice. What is something we can do today that reminds us of the power that we hold? Even the power that we hold in our work, in our bodies?
Sometimes this can be really simple things. And can actually be quite accessible. If we really just like bring it down to the simplest of ideas. You know, we could. Cancel over a recurring payment that we don't use. We could sign up for something that we need. We could do something in our basis, we've been avoiding. We could remember that the fact that we have a business is proof of our own sense of agency and power.
And then the last one desire. Noticing. What do we want? Noticing have there been things that we wanted that are reflected in all that we do right now.
Like, are you living something that you previously wanted that you previously dreamt about? What do you want now? What does your soul want to express? What do you want to receive? What do you want to be here for? What's important to you? Where is the desire and all of this?
It really like giving time in space to sit with it.
One of my favorite things is the idea of saying to someone, asking someone, what do you want? And they give an answer. And continuing to, to just sort of peel back the layers. What's like under that. And what's under that. And what's under that.
What do you actually want? Can you say those things out loud?
Safety care agency and desire. Uh, where do you find yourself in the midst of these? Sometimes it won't always be linear. You might be here one day, somewhere, the next. But I think that they can be these beautiful checkpoints. Of noticing.
Gentle business that is supportive, profitable and sustainable has to have all of these four things. And they become invitations for us. To reflect on where we're at. And what we're needing and what we could be invited into next. I hope that somewhere in this, you’ve been able to identify. Well, yeah, like this is where I think I'm at. And this is what I want to sit with a little bit deeper. And this is what I think my invitation is right now.
Running a gentle business is a very brave. Very brave decision and way of partnering with your work. It requires vulnerability. Self-connection. Leadership. But it is the kindest way. Because they cares deeply. About your wellbeing. At its very core.
I'd love for you to share with me. If anything came up for you in this episode. Feel free to send me an email. Or DM on Instagram. It would be a joy to hear from you.
I want to feature and highlight one of our incredible partners for this podcast - WillowSpace. It's an incredible client management software. Where you can have it really partner with you and your work to do things like invoicing and contracts. Proposals, forms. Anything to do with client management.
One of the things I want to highlight about it is - proposals. One of the things about WillowSpace is that WillowSpace does everything in a way that is beautiful. There's a builder within Willow space to build out proposals for when you want to propose a project, et cetera, to a client. Beautiful design in mind and incredible functionality.
So if you haven't checked out WillowSpace, you'll want to do that. You can use the code GENTLE for $20 off and test it out and see how it feels. I know that it can meet you with a lot of support.
I hope that wherever you are today, whatever you find yourself doing. Whatever life looks like. That you remember, to be gentle with you. Because you are so very deserving of care.