Hey Reader,
Happy Monday!
This is the last essay version of Sunday Sessions, the”Prep for a Better Year” live event series I hosted in the hopes of starting you off on well, a better year 🙂
You can find all previous recordings here and the accompanying slides here. You can also read all previous editions of RGWA here – look for the lock icon – you have to log in once with the email you used to subscribe.
Are you free on Sunday, February 2nd at 5p ET?
I’m hosting our first subscriber-only meetup and I’d love to connect! Normally these are the last Sunday of the month but I’ll be on a plane then 🙂
Please come prepared with two things:
- Your major goal for the month: “If you can do/have/feel [THIS], it will make a meaningful impact on the quality of your work-life.”
- The biggest obstacle currently in your way of reaching this goal
Together, we’ll come up with a realistic action plan to tackle it so that at next month’s meetup, you can report back with all the great progress you’ve made 🎉
Now go get paid!
x Claire
Shit hits the fan
Life was easier – for a little while anyway. But starting at age nine when my parents split the family up and I was living with friends for a few months, I quickly realized that you better learn to swim if you don’t want to sink. I learned it fast.
Life kept throwing curveballs at me, each one a sucker punch harder than the last. A divorce. A lawsuit. Business on the brink of bankruptcy. Burnout. Massive debt. Medical crisis. Existential crisis. The list goes on.
And yet, when I was flat on my bank or curled up in a fetal position, each time little Claire inside me would whisper, “Don’t just take it. Don’t let them win.” I had to somehow, someway, transform the shit into gold. And I did.
💫 A divorce led me to come out and meet the love of my life.
💫 A lawsuit led me to a book deal.
💫 Burnout led to sustainable work habits.
💫 Being broke made me heal my relationship with money.
💫 Watching my son endure two open heart surgeries made me open my own heart.
I want to call myself out for a second, however. “Led to” sounds too passive and “made me” isn’t quite right either. I believe this is what happened:
I hit rock bottom so hard, I simply didn’t have enough energy to indulge what wasn’t working.
With my son’s surgeries, I was like a friggin’ nub: a raw bundle of nerves, exposed, electric, vulnerable AF. I frankly didn’t have the capacity to overthink or overanalyze, it was simply one foot in front of the other, in the direction of the next best thing that would heal my son – and myself. Creating a parent support group, writing a memoir, giving speeches at medical conferences…it didn’t require energy because it was actually GIVING me energy.
I’m aware that that’s not “normal” for everyone. My sister-in-law texted me, “I don’t think I could’ve done it” which got me thinking: I’m not special. I’m just intentional.
And so I reviewed all of my life’s obstacles and was able to chart a direct path to all of my life’s most amazing experiences. It became clear that the ups cannot happen without the downs. So I asked myself:
Is it possible to create a process of healing that leverages suffering for something better? Someone better? That someone being us.
This edition of RGWA will go through a six-phase process (plus three critical questions) I identified to help you transform obstacles into opportunities, or as I like to say, shit into gold.
But first, let’s define shit. It’s anything that disrupts your life with a negative impact. Not getting the job you wanted, losing a loved one, a breakup, a breakdown. It’s an experience that destabilizes you. It’s scary and you hate it. So you resist.
You resist by avoiding your feelings, avoiding difficult conversations (with others and yourself). You rationalize, react impulsively, over-analyze and over-indulge.
In short, you make things worse.
We compound the chaos, internalizing the external disruption, and in that, we literally embody pain. That’s why our bodies carry so much tension – it’s all that energy, inside us. No amount of massages or “self-care” is going to help. At least not in the long-term.
That’s why you have to go through each of these six phases before you can leverage them to your advantage. If you skip any of the phases, it’s an in-the-moment shortcut that feels better but won’t yield the lasting change you want and deserve. It also veers into toxic positivity which is like a bandaid on a deeper wound.
To facilitate this process, I recommend:
✅ Get a special journal and pen
✅ Create an “alter to you” with talismans and childhood photo(s)
✅ Carve out specific times during your day – setting an alarm helps) to reflect on whatever phase you’re in
✅ Connect with at least one other person who has experienced this – you don’t have to know them, it could be a book you’re reading or a person you’re following on social
The Process: Phase One
Get just a tad bit excited. Or at least intrigued.
My own challenges showed me that when your status quo gets destroyed or destabilized you have the opportunity to reevaluate, to redefine what you want and who you are. That destabilization is like the world tilting, offering just the right amount of a different perspective you can see things differently. More clearly. And with clarity, you will see things you’ve never seen before. You might not be there yet (you won’t be), so this is your invitation to remain open-minded and open-hearted to what – and who – may come.
🏋️ Exercise
🗣️ Stay Open
Repeat this every day: “How can I make this work for me?” You won’t have answers yet – you shouldn’t – but it primes you to stay open.
The Process: Phase Two
Really fucking feel your emotions.
But first, you have to stop gaslighting yourself – which you do all. the. time. without even noticing it. So your homework in this phase is to notice it. Get good at catching all the ways you tend to resist your emotions and see if you can extend the length and depth just a bit longer.
Challenge yourself to find the nuances and contradictions of all the emotions you’re feeling. This will show you that you can carry way more than you may have realized and in that, you’re a lot wiser.
Note: I didn’t say stronger. I don’t subscribe to “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”; instead, I think it makes us softer. In that softness, we absorb shocks and wisdom. You’re not gaining strength, you’re gaining wisdom. Hold on to that.
🏋️ Exercise
🙅♀️ “Bad” Habits
You’ve probably developed a lot of “bad” habits (we all do!) as coping mechanisms whenever you’re feeling emotionally uncomfortable. For example, doomscrolling. Use this phase to develop a plan to cut back or better yet, replace it with something that’s healthier for your brain and body like reading a book or going for a walk.
➕ Add the “And”
Whatever you’re feeling, add the “and”; for example: “I’m feeling overwhelmed AND excited.” See if you can challenge yourself to add as many as possible, identifying how many contradictions you can find.
The Process: Phase Three
Turn off the soundtrack.
This is going to be a tricky one since that voice has been with you since you were around six years old, narrating everything about you to you. But as you learned in our last newsletter, our inner voices try to protect us with short-term shortcuts at the expense of long-term healthiness. Like telling you to drink an entire bottle of wine when you’re upset. (A glass? Go for it!)
This may sound odd but go with me for a minute: in order to trust yourself, you have to stop trusting yourself for a little. At least until your nervous system calms down. Because when you’re in the throes of a disruption, you’re in fight-flight-freeze, a state of contraction, which obfuscates your ability to see clearly.
Be aware that feeling your emotions more deeply without your soundtrack, you may feel – at least for a little while – like you’re even more destabilized. Just remember that destabilized equals an opportunity for perspective. So ride it like a wave, trusting that you will not drown.
🏋️ Exercise
🎵 Sing Outloud
Since turning off your inner chatter is almost impossible, start by singing them out loud. Seriously, it works! It stimulates the vagus nerve which moves you from fight-flight state of contract into a more relaxed, expansive way of being.
The Process: Phase Four
Check in with yourself all day, every day.
Get into a practice of tuning into your energy your number one priority. This begins a compassionate relationship with yourself that will relax you further, opening up even more possibilities for what might be possible. It’s like you’re a baby. And in a way you are. You’re being reborn. That’s why this experience has been so scary – it’s an identity shift. A before and after: who you were can no longer be who you are.
You are now stepping into the role of parenting yourself – and as someone who is the mother to baby twins – let me tell you, that ain’t easy. Being born and giving birth aren’t for the weak.
🏋️ Exercise
🐣 Baby Steps
Ask yourself these two questions every day, all day:
- What do I need?
- How can I make it as easy as possible to get that?
The Process: Phase Five
Go down rabbit holes. Follow trailheads.
This phase is a more active one in that I want you to take action on anything you’re curious about. What is this experience sparking for you? What can you learn? This is the opposite of resistance in that you welcome the abundance of all that the experience has to offer, even if you don’t know quite yet what that is.
🏋️ Exercise
🕵️ Follow the thread
View whatever you’re going through as fodder for learning and so if there’s any part of it that intrigues any part of you, google it. Read books. Follow interesting people. Growth can only happen when you plant the seed of curiosity.
The Process: Phase Six
Look for ways that you can help others.
Using this experience as a means to connect with others moves us from feeling isolated (which often a destabilizing experience can do), to fulfill our deepest fear: rejection. According to the looking glass theory of self, we best understand ourselves in relation to others and so in this new chapter of your life, the one in which you may be questioning who you are, you must find those who can help you write whatever comes next.
Moving into this stage means you hopefully are feeling love and other kinds of energies from people. That in turn ups your light which becomes like a little magnet; all of a sudden you may find yourself in the right place at the right time…
You’re starting to generate momentum. You’re starting to transform. Which means you’re ready to begin the leveraging process.
🏋️ Exercise
👯 Connect
- How can this experience become a means to connect? To serve?
- How can I make helping others something I sustainably integrate?
The Questions
Now that you’ve gone through much of the processing process (funny thing to write, less funny to experience); you’re primed to squeeze that carbon into a diamond. In my experience, here are three questions that will give you the plan plus the first action steps to do just that.
Question #1: What does the universe want me to learn?
This can be a huge thing to ask yourself. So start by listing all the ways you’re suffering and then find the super positive flipside. This will provide you with an agenda of things to choose from to build a roadmap towards a better work-life. I bet they’re all things you’ve been craving (at least subconsciously) and so this is your sign to finally do something about it.
Here’s an example of how this can work:
“S” is a member of Ladies Get Paid who has been in recovery from cancer for the past few years. Some of her suffering includes feeling sick, scared, isolated, and not being able to work.
Now for the positive flipside:
Sick ➡️ Amazing
Scared ➡️ Fearless
Isolated ➡️ Deeply connected
Not working ➡️ Working at something she loves
It turns out that she’d been feeling all of these things (sick, scared, isolated, unenthused about work) BEFORE cancer. Cancer was the destabilizing wake-up call that put her everything in perspective. The urgency to take command has never felt greater and “S” is now focusing on those four things to create the work-life she deserves.
Question #2: How can this experience benefit me?
This question can sound like we’re veering into toxic positivity but remember, you’ve already done the good work of feeling your feelings during the processing phase so you’re ready to tackle this now.
Identify all the ways this could help you (do, feel, have); and all the ways you might already be benefiting you that you’re not even aware of. Another way to put it:
👉 What is this situation GIVING to me?
It’s easy to see all the things it’s taking from you, and a little trickier to see its benefit. So perhaps start by asking yourself, what am I looking for? And then see how you can use this experience to provide it for yourself.
I did this with the Ladies Get Sued campaign and wow, it worked. When mens rights activists (yes, they exist and no, it’s not a joke) sued me for gender discrimination, I leveraged it for press and to crowdfund; every time some troll would post a comment about me, I would include it in my newsletter and raise thousands of dollars off of it ($116,000 to be exact.)
I even got a book deal because of the attention I rallied due to the lawsuit. So thank you, trolls! 😈
Question #3: If I were a character in a movie, what would I do next?
This is where you channel your highest self, the part of you that makes you proud. Watching your life like a movie, it’s another way of maintaining that perspective, that distance so that you can spot opportunities. Every movie (or every good movie at least) the main character follows the Hero’s Journey… and you’re that hero.
Signs to watch for
But none of this works unless you do and progress is not always linear, in fact it never is. Expect the unexpected, the hiccups, the waves of grief, the confusion. That’s why you need signals to look for. Signs that reassure you that despite the pain, you’re making progress.
🏳️ How long you are paralyzed for, how long it takes you to recover
🏳️ Things and people that used to bother you, no longer do
🏳️ Ah-ha moments, goosebumps, things just start “clicking”
🏳️ Odd (good) coincidences
This is the summoning of your intuition, that inner essence, the core of who you were at birth, waving a little flag saying, keep going! You got this!
In conclusion
Women don’t like to be messy.
We are raised to not be messy and a disruption to the status quo is inherently a messiness. We don’t have it figured out we don’t have ourselves figured out, so how can we present ourselves to the world, this paralyzes us from taking any action or putting ourselves out there, for fear of judgment…
When we actually need to do the EXACT thing that we are afraid of which is to put ourselves out there. Start helping. Start asking questions. Complement somebody. Connect somebody. You don’t need to share your deepest, most vulnerable self or trauma, but you must use this moment of challenge to activate you, not arrest you.
In that activation, you will step into a new way of being. Wiser. Deeper. More alive.
How amazing is that? Or rather, are you? 🥰
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