Episode 7- Finding Flow: Balancing Passion and Boundaries
Welcome back to
Rebecca:the Evolve Stylist podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Rebecca Taylor.
sarai:And I'm the other one, Sarai Sphere.
Rebecca:The other one. How are
sarai:you? I'm good. How are you?
Rebecca:I'm fantastic. I just I look forward to the days that we, record because I I love it. It feels good to chitchat with you even if we talk about hard stuff or what's been going on, it's great and just whatever. It's fun. So I'm in a especially good mood today.
sarai:I think that that might be part of it, but I'm pretty sure you're getting ready to go on vacation, and that's probably why you're in a good mood.
Rebecca:Okay. Fine. I mean, I love you. I love our conversations. Goes without saying, but I'm fucking I already got my brain on the plane, man.
sarai:I'm on the plane.
Rebecca:I am about to be out. You know what? This is kinda what I wanted to talk about. Those of you who are listening, Sarai has no idea what I'm about to say. I she really doesn't.
sarai:No. Not at all.
Rebecca:We're just we're just taking this, we're take we're going somewhere with it. We're just going on a ride. So I wrote down these notes before we started today, and it's nothing crazy. It's nothing big. But I'm curious, I guess, it's because already what mindset or head headspace I'm in.
Rebecca:But I wanted to ask you, being self employed, being an entrepreneur, do you ever call yourself a soulpreneur?
sarai:Do I personally? No.
Rebecca:Yeah. I don't think
sarai:think I've ever called myself a solopreneur.
Rebecca:No. I hear that a lot, and I'm like, uh-huh. I'm just gonna stick with self employed entrepreneur, you know, jack of Jill of many trades, whatever. But we are truly both self employed. So as a self employed individual, how do you take time, truly time away from work, or do you?
Rebecca:And we're just gonna get into it. She has no her eyes are widening. She's got some tension. How did you leave your work at work?
sarai:Fuck me.
Rebecca:Oh, did I get you? Serious.
sarai:Are we really gonna have this conversation? Boxed?
Rebecca:I struggle with it too. I know you do. I know most of us do because when you're self employed, it's like you gotta strike when the iron's hot. And how do you know when it's hot? And how do you cool it off?
Rebecca:And how do you differentiate? And, this is a little bit different than our work life harmony balance conversation because this is how do you disconnect? How are you not a lot of questions. We'll just start there. How do you leave work at work, Sarai?
sarai:It's real hard. Can I just be really honest? I've had to I've had to put things into place, and sometimes my husband has to remind me if I'm being completely fucking honest. So I'm at a point in my career where I work behind the chair maybe once every couple weeks. I am down in my fancy dungeon.
sarai:As I call it, it's my office. I'm recording podcasts and creating content for Balanced Stylus Society. My new community, I'm answering messages. So I'm doing a lot of, like, basically, at home shit. So it was a bit easier when I could leave the salon and get in my car and then come in.
sarai:Now not to say that I still didn't answer answer emails and post on Instagram and and all that, but there's the lines become very blurred in the last little bit for me. And and I'm so glad you said, like, the work life harmony because I I believe in it. I really do. However, there are periods of flow. There are gonna be periods where you've got ideas coming.
sarai:You're creative. You're fucking inventing new techniques. You're creating a course. You're, like, figuring out marketing, and you're in flow. And so I've learned that when I'm in flow, that it's okay if I work 12 hours and I go upstairs, which is home.
sarai:You know? My office is my office down on the 2nd floor. But when I go home, I try to detach. I'll put my phones on do not disturb. I put them in the cradle on the the kitchen island.
sarai:They don't come in the bedroom with me, and I try to not check them. I try to be present. Am I always successful? Fuck. No.
sarai:Absolutely not. So it's hard to detach. It can be done. And then there are some days where I'm like, well, fuck. I worked 4 hours.
sarai:My eyes are fucking hurting. Nothing's flowing. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna detach.
sarai:I'm gonna go home, and then I'll fucking doom scroll on social media or, you know, get ideas to fucking create content or something. But separating is when you're an entrepreneur, when you're a whatever you wanna call it solopreneur, boss motherfucker, it's hard. It's not a 9 to 5. You're gonna constantly have things that need to get done. So creating task lists for me has been a lifesaver knowing that, like, okay.
sarai:I've got 10 things I've got to get done today. If I don't, then I have I they they have to get done. I have to stay working until I do, and then I can go home. You know? So I'm not, like, thinking about it all night, carrying it with me, so to wrap it all up with a nice little bow.
sarai:It's fucking hard, dude.
Rebecca:It is hard. Like, do you take any I'm gonna tell you about my upcoming experience that I have trying to truly disconnect and why it's about to bring me anxiety and already has been. We'll get to that. That's another ball of wax. But so do you have days off, like, dedicated off days at this point?
Rebecca:And if so, what do they look like? And what's your mind like if you're physically not working? What are you thinking about? What are you yeah. I wish we could see faces on this.
sarai:I do. I wish you could see my face. Okay. Complete transparency. I am getting ready to launch tomorrow.
sarai:I'm opening the doors. So the last month, I think I have worked every single day. I do not think I've taken a day off. Now I will tell you, I'm I took a bubble bath at 9:30 on a fucking Friday morning. Okay?
sarai:I went to fucking yoga this morning. I'm doing my card pulls, my journaling, my meditation. So even though I haven't had a normal day off in probably since I went to Montana in December. I feel good about it. It feels like it feels like a balance to me.
sarai:It feels like a harmony, I will say. It feels like a flow. So I used to take, Saturdays Sundays off, and then I would fill those with, like, yoga teacher training or, you know, just shit. And so I was starting to get to the point where I was always working. So right now, I do not have regular days off.
sarai:Once launch is done, absolutely. And I think it's gonna be like a Friday, Saturday situation.
Rebecca:Yes.
sarai:You know? Yeah. So what about you?
Rebecca:Well, I just wanna say, like, your passion shows. It doesn't look like you're like, oh, this again. It's like you're stoked to be there, and that might wane. You know? Some days, it might be like oh, fuck.
Rebecca:But you know what I mean? Like, it I just see your passion, and and when you're driven, you're driven. And I get that and that's saying. You know? Like, you don't want to take days off when you're passionate.
sarai:No. I don't I really don't. I'm like I mean, I created a fucking it started off as a challenge, and I ended up creating a 30 day client growth blueprint that's fucking insane. It's got a 32 page workbook and fucking PDFs and templates, and I was like, bitch, I'm on it. I created 30 videos in 5 days for it.
sarai:Like, that to me, I'm loving it.
Rebecca:Okay. This is gonna go perfectly with what you just said and are kind of, like, talking about you gotta strike when the iron's hot. And, like, when creativity strikes, you have to be on top of it. So I'm listening to this book right now. I'll have to send it to you or put it in the notes or whatever, but it's from the I think her name is Elizabeth Gilbert, and it's about creativity and overcoming fear.
Rebecca:But she was talking today, so I just toggling back and forth. On the way to lashes, it was her. And on the way home, it was the monk fucking book
sarai:where
Rebecca:I wasn't doing enough. Yeah. Exactly. But on the way there, it was a good listen. And she was talking about you have to you know, your relationship with your creativity and, like, your passion and the thing that you're all in about, which is you and your work and me and my you know?
Rebecca:It's the thing we're passionate about, but you have to treat it almost like you're having an affair. And if you think about let's say you were having just the traditional sense of, like, an extramarital affair, you'll find time. You'll find 15 minutes to make out in the stairwell. You will risk it all. You will fucking find the time.
Rebecca:You will sneak away. You will do it because the fire is there. Right? And so alright. Now let's back away from the extramarital affair part.
Rebecca:But, you know, that paints a picture. But let's say you're having a love affair with the thing you do for work. Like, you will find you will sneak away. It's, like, what keeps you up at night. It's the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning.
Rebecca:So it's like, if the fire's there, you fucking find a way to make out with your creativity. You know? Yes. Isn't it cool? Isn't that a cool analogy and just a metaphor
sarai:it was a weird but fantastic analogy because you do you do find time for that thing that is so important to you, and you make the fucking time.
Rebecca:Exactly.
sarai:Now You just fucking do.
Rebecca:You do, and you want to. And that's the thing. But the the I think the issue is and I've been in the spot, and you were talking about flow. It's like, do you keep pushing, and do you see keep staying connected when it's not in a flow? And you feel like you're beating your head up against the wall and there's a lot of resistance and, like, maybe that's when you truly need to disconnect from your work for a minute and take the time and take the space and and, like, mentally disconnect too.
Rebecca:Not only have that boundary with yourself and your work, because who the hell else are you talking to when you're working from home and you're creating a business and, you know, you know how that feels right now. Not like you're dealing with clients and you have to have a boundary with the client. It is you versus you. So you have to have a boundary with yourself. And then, like, I'll give you an example.
Rebecca:I said I talk about this. We're not gonna just rip you apart and how it's difficult for you. It's fucking difficult for me too. So with me going on this trip for 10 days, a portion of this yoga retreat in Thailand is silent, and it's strongly encouraged that it's a digital detox. Meaning, I don't look at my phone for 3.
Rebecca:It's technically 4 days, but in my head, I can only prepare myself to not fuck with my phone for 3 days. I have anxiety around this because being a person that needs content to market my business, I'm I'm like, oh my god. What beautiful content this will be at. What a shit opportunity to miss, you know, like, taking videos or getting stuff from my coaching and and all this other stuff and and all the work I could do because I have all this downtime because I'm over there. I'm like, I'm not real it's not really downtime.
Rebecca:You know what I mean? But I'm like, I wrestle with that too. I'm like, am I in flow? Am I passionate about it, or is this a FOMO situation where I'm like, oh, content, content, content. My whole life revolves around content.
Rebecca:And I'm like, am I heart am I harming myself, or am I helping myself? And I don't know sometimes how to leave work truly at work mentally. And, you know, like, I went on a vacation last year also to Thailand, was very disconnected, truly. Like I set all this shit up in place, like, auto replies for emails, text messages, told everybody I'm AWOL, I'm off the grid, and I really was. But this trip feels different.
Rebecca:I feel like there's more of a fiery energy of my work. I wanna show up, but, like, I'm I'm negotiating. I'm wrestling. Like, do I truly disconnect, or do I sneak? Do I do I fucking sneak my phone?
Rebecca:Because I know I'm gonna have Wi Fi, or do I actually adhere to the challenge, which is total digital detox for 4 days? I don't know, ma'am. What would you do?
sarai:I don't know. I I I don't know. You know, I had a I had a forced digital detox.
Rebecca:Yeah. I know where. Me too.
sarai:I yeah. In in treatment.
Rebecca:Yeah.
sarai:And I, I I was so scared like you. Like, I was like, I'm gonna lose all my followers. I'm gonna lose my community. I literally run an online education company. So how the fuck am I gonna do this if I need access to my phone?
sarai:And what if people have problems? And, you know, my brain started going to all the places, like, all the dark places. What if? What if? What if?
sarai:And, you know, I was forced to, like, give up my phone, which was a really beautiful thing, and it took me a while to get into it. So I don't know that there's a right or a wrong answer here. I think what I would encourage you to do is to just feel it out. I think if you're mindful, if you're present, if you're aware about, like, hey. I wanna pick up my phone.
sarai:I I don't even have top on Instagram. I wanna take some video because this is so beautiful, and I'm gonna wanna share this later. Like, I did a fuck ton of that when I was in Montana. I went out to the river and just took a bunch of fucking videos, and now I wasn't thinking at the moment, oh my god. I have to use this for content.
sarai:I was like, I wanna remember this. So I think just go and feel it out. And I think that if you're honest with yourself, you'll figure it out. You know? You'll know what your intentions are, and I I think once you get past this sort of anxiety of, you know, the the quiet, the digital deeds talks, the, oh my god, the FOMO, I think the answer will come to you.
Rebecca:I think you're right. I think I'm like I think sometimes I make I make I challenge myself more than I need to. And I know that's just the age old you know, we've talked about this before. We're very hard on ourselves. Ourselves.
Rebecca:We have these certain standards, like, internal standards. Like, I got to. I think that's very rigid for me to be like, I challenge myself to 4 days with no fucking But I will say there have been times where I needed to be that disciplined. You know? And it's really good things have come out of it.
Rebecca:So, you know, I know I'm kinda swirling the drain with this, but, like, that's what we do. Right? But I'm like, maybe I gotta go in hard to discover, you know, like, what it takes to be that disciplined. You know? And and because I will like, we all do.
Rebecca:I think this is just humanity now with the, you know, this age of digital accessibility. You don't even know why you're picking up your phone, and it's a moth to a flame. And here I am again. Oh, I meant to check my email. Oh, I'm fucking on Instagram again.
Rebecca:I feel like being that disciplined and diligent and really intentional of, like, what are these triggers when I can't use my phone? Why am I, like, sweating and scratching them like a crackhead? Why? Why? Why?
Rebecca:I need to know why. So, you know, that's I think that's what it is. Like, if I'm gonna do this, I don't wanna do it half assed. But then, you know, there's just that that whole shift of, like, having grace with yourself too. It ain't that a hard thing?
Rebecca:You know? You want to be disciplined, but also you're like, when do I have grace? When do I show myself, like, softness and compassion? But but sometimes I need to be really fucking disciplined. I don't know.
Rebecca:That's something I struggle with for sure. Clearly, I probably sound like a psycho.
sarai:No. Not at all. I I think it's like doing a tight rope walk. We're on this you know, we're self employed. We we own businesses.
sarai:We're responsible to ourselves and, you know, maybe other people. But, like, there's this tight rope walk of how much do you work, how much do you take off, how much do you obsess about it? And obsessing isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like, when you're obsessed about something that you love and, like, you're good at, like, okay. Dive in.
sarai:But then having that grace with yourself when you do fall, having that kindness and that compassion to say, okay. So what? I picked up my fucking phone. I promised myself I wouldn't. Does that mean I get to spiral into I'm a piece of shit worthless garbage fuck bag?
sarai:No. It does not. It just means you hop back on, you get back on, and you fucking go again.
Rebecca:Well, I feel like that was a hell of a pep talk. Thank you. And I agree. It's true for it's true for all of us. People listening, me, you, everybody.
Rebecca:I wonder what Amazon guy is bringing. Sorry. I am very distracted. My window overlooks my front yard. I saw the Amazon man coming up.
Rebecca:But, yeah. Anyway, I am gonna explore this. There is something I wanna write something, like, really thoughtful and deep about distractions and why we're to use our phone. And is it really numbing? And is it really, like, oh, I know I'm here to numb and doom scroll for no good reason, or is it subconsciously just overstimulating you and has an adverse effect anyway?
Rebecca:Like, the I'm going down the rabbit hole this, and I'm using myself as a test subject. No. Not in a bad way. Like, I wanna explore the triggers. My triggers and maybe me sharing my my truths or what I find and how I go through this experience.
Rebecca:Yeah. I'm I'm making myself a case study on this because we are tied to our phones. Yeah. I don't want to mindlessly pick up my shit, and I especially don't want to use it. I mean, no.
Rebecca:Yeah. I'm actually better with the using it to numb because sometimes we just need a reprieve from fucking whatever. And you and I are limited with our reprieves. Right? Yep.
Rebecca:Yep. Exactly. So, like, I'm not gonna take that away from me, but if it's having this crazy adverse effect where I'm overstimulated and it's giving me anxiety and all this subconscious shit, comparisons, feeling bad about myself. I do not wanna use it for that. Numbing, sure.
Rebecca:Yeah. If it's working, but not the other. And so I'm just gonna really explore this and why explore why I've got so much anxiety around the fact that I don't have my phone. When we were in treatment, same thing with me. I couldn't have it for, like, 15, 20 days.
Rebecca:And And I was like, well, it makes it easier because they've taken it from me. Yeah. They've signed up for this treatment. It's just part of it, and it's life. I'll fucking get it back when I get it back.
Rebecca:But this, it says it's, it's optional, but I'm making it not optional. So I'm like, ah, I gotta save myself from myself. But, yeah, I've got all kinds of notes. I'm gonna be jotting them down, not in my phone, not in my notes. I'm gonna be writing, like, old school.
Rebecca:And I wanna I wanna see how this goes because, we all get distracted. We all get distracted with our phones and the things we need to do and staying on task and, letting it fuck with us because the metrics you know, we're not getting the likes that we wanted or thought or this or that. Like, that can fuck with us. That does fuck with us, and I'm just, I don't know. We'll see what happens.
sarai:That's where I'm at. I love that you're doing this. I think it's really important. I think it's important to understand why we're doing these things and why we're numbing out or why we're doomscrolling or I'm just being mindful. Like, being mindful because we don't realize how many times a day we pick up our phone.
sarai:You know, when I talked about this in my master class, like, immediately, you get up, you pick up your phone, and and you're just your brain is going blah blah blah blah blah. And it's like, why do we do this? And so taking these breaks, these detoxes from whatever, whether it's social media, your phone, or who fucking knows, I think they're really necessary. You know? I normally, except during launch week, make myself take a solid 24 hours off of of social every fucking week.
sarai:I just get the fuck off. I don't need to be on there all the time. And as you were talking, it made me think of there's there's a retreat that I wanna go to this year. It's not really a retreat, if I'm being honest. It's called Vipassana meditation.
sarai:It's a 10 day silent meditation.
Rebecca:Oh, silent the whole time?
sarai:Yes, ma'am. Silent meditation. You meditate for 10 to 12 hours a day. There are no phones. You cannot write letters.
sarai:You cannot journal. You do nothing but drink tea, eat your fruits, and meditate.
Rebecca:That gives me a palpitation of anxiety. Like, it's one thing to have a tiny portion of the day sitting and chilling, and having, you know, certain things optional or whatever, that's intense. That's you with you for that many hours a day.
sarai:And I think that's why we pick up our phones. I think that's why we distract ourselves with so many things because we're so afraid to be alone with us for long periods of time. What's gonna come up? What do I not wanna feel? How do I push it back down if I'm just sitting here with myself?
sarai:So I learned about this, this meditation retreat and yoga teacher training. And when I first heard about it, I was like, oh, that'd be super cool. And then as we got into meditation and we ended up doing our day of meditation, which was, like, 4 hours, At the end, I was like, man, fuck that. Fuck that. No fucking way.
sarai:That was hard. And then the next day, I was like, actually, I think I really wanted to do that because when I sit with myself, I'm so fucking uncomfortable at first. But the more I sit, the longer I sit without the distractions, I actually hear myself. Not 5 year old Sarai voice, not my dad's, my teachers, my husband, not anybody but mine. And that's really how you get to know yourself is by sitting, just sitting with yourself and being quiet.
sarai:And for decades, I ran from myself. And now I'm like, bitch, I think it's time to hit it head on. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, but this will probably be one of the most challenging things I ever do in my life. But I feel in my fucking soul that it's necessary, dude.
Rebecca:I love that. Where is that retreat?
sarai:They literally have them all over, and it's, I believe it's oh, shit. I should get it and put it in the show notes. I believe it's dama.netor.orgorsomething, but they're free retreats. Okay? And they are all over the world, like, literally all over the world.
sarai:You go. You have to apply. You go for 10 days. The first 3 days, they lead you in one type of meditation, and then the next, they lead you deeper and deeper. But you basically share a room with a person.
sarai:You do not make eye contact with anybody the entire time you're there because it's supposed to be solitude. You cannot journal. You cannot be on your phone. And if you leave early, you don't get to, like, come back. So you've got, like, one chance.
sarai:And if you complete the Vipassana meditation, the meditation, you can then go back and be of service at any of the locations. So I'll, I'll send you the info, and then we'll put it in the show notes when I figure out what the fuck it's called because it's escaping my brain right now.
Rebecca:That's interesting. Part of me is like, yeah. Let's challenge myself and do that. And then part of me is like
sarai:Fuck no.
Rebecca:That. Yeah. Like, I don't like the authority of, like, you can't do this and you can't do I always have had a problem with authority. When you were talking about being silent and not doing shit, I'm like, I could kinda do that. I go out in the woods for, like, hours now and just lay in the sunshine.
Rebecca:I don't listen to music. I just listen to the birds and whatever. And I'm like, oh, yeah. That'd be cool. But the difference is nobody's telling me I can do something or I can't do something, so I'm like, I fucking love this.
Rebecca:It's quiet nature. But I'm like, the second someone says, don't look at somebody, don't say something, like, I'll show you. I think that got a lot to explore with that statement there.
sarai:Maybe you could explore that in your 4 days without a phone.
Rebecca:Oh, god. Oh, god. I'm like I'm I'm messing with my hair, like, compulsively right now because of the anxiety. Anyhow, yeah, I we went down a path I wasn't expecting, you know, taking time off of work and you know, because work is, like, work keeps us busy. Work keeps us, you know, not with ourselves fully, fully.
Rebecca:You know what I mean? Work is just another one of those things. So, yeah, it's something that I've, like, consciously had to work on, and it's, like, knowing when I'm wanting to go hard with work and what that means and, like, sitting with myself when I don't know. It's a it's a loaded one. I appreciate you going there like you did because I know when I just I gave you this topic, you did not know.
Rebecca:And I know it's something that, like, ruffles a feather. It does for me too. And you went there, and we talked about it. Well, I don't think either of us know the hell we're doing half the time, a 100% when it comes to work and time off and whatever, but we're just I think we're doing pretty alright if you ask me.
sarai:I think we are. You know? And I think that, for both of us, and I I know we're not the only people that can relate to this. We have workaholic tendencies. I mean, we've talked about this in in previous episodes, and so I think this is a tricky conversation.
sarai:I think it can be triggering. And I think it's a beautiful conversation that we just had that, you know, yes, you can have work life flow or harmony, but you can also work your fucking dick off 12 hours a day at doing something you love for 6 days straight, and that's still okay. You know? Coming I think the difference is when it comes from a place of I'm working because I wanna distract, because I wanna, you know, do things in vain versus I love creating, and I fucking love doing this, and I wanna help people. That for me was, like, the big differentiator.
sarai:When I wanted to become famous or I wanted to be fucking well known as a hairstylist and I would work all the time and create all this shit, it was because of, like, I wanted to do it for me. And now I'm like, I wanna create for other people. I wanna help other people. So for me, I can still get drawn into that workaholic tendency. I'm just a lot fucking quicker to recognize it now.
Rebecca:Mhmm. Absolutely. And it's the self awareness part, and it's the doing so many, like, healing and self discovery modalities. It's like you know yourself way better than I mean, I'll speak this is for me, and I'm sure resonates with you or means something similar. It's like when we were in full workaholic mode, we didn't know ourselves enough to know what the fuck we were doing and how to even stop or why we were doing it, the root causes of why we were workaholics or anyaholic for that matter.
Rebecca:And then you start learning yourself better and start seeing the root of things. And you're like, oh, yeah. Okay. It's fine. I still have that tendency, but I know what it is, where it's coming from, and what I need to do to counter it.
Rebecca:And that is growth, my friends. That's fucking growth.
sarai:Fuck. Yes. It is.
Rebecca:Exactly. Okay. Before I forget, and we can put it in the show notes, that book that I was talking about, to do with creativity and having a love affair with your passion and that whole just analogy that makes sense, like, of course, you're gonna sneak away and suck face with the thing you do. It's called big magic, creative living beyond fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's the shit, and we are creatives.
Rebecca:We're makers. We're we are. We we just are artists. No matter if we are doing the business side of things, we're producing things. We're creating things.
Rebecca:It's content. It's curriculum. Blah blah blah. And when you love the thing you're doing, you keep showing up because you love the thing you're doing. So that book keeps you on the path of, like, being really stoked to do the thing.
sarai:I love it. I'm gonna dive into that. I've been really enjoying Spotify for having books on there now. I didn't even know they did. So I am definitely getting this book on some sort of Audible, and I'm gonna fucking go to town on it.
Rebecca:You'll love it because it's one part, like, Brene Brown vibes. Like, okay. Here's how you work through your shit. And then one part, she's the author of e, pray, love. So, like, the spiritual pilgrimage type, like, I just love it.
Rebecca:Her language is so great. I'm I'm into it for sure. Anyway, what do we do? I feel like this is a good time to end, but what the hell do we even do at the end of our podcast?
sarai:We this is your line. We circle jerk it and put a pin in it. I don't I don't know. It's
Rebecca:for sure what we do. Alright, guys. We'll catch you next time.