The Season to Create: How I Found My Voice Again (And How You Can Too) | EP 583

When you're consuming more than you're creating, the voice your audience came to hear gets crowded out by everyone else's.

This episode is about what comes through when you protect your own frequency and what it actually looks like to stay in your lane without falling behind.

Full show notes, transcript, and chapters at sheilabotelho.com/583

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Transcript

When Learning Becomes Exhausting

Sheila 0:02

There's the kind of exhaustion that comes from doing too much, and then there's the kind of exhaustion that comes from listening too much. If you've been consuming content on repeat and still feel like your own ideas aren't quite landing, this episode is going to hit close to home. I've spent years working with highly successful and ambitious leaders, and the ones whose work truly breaks through have one thing in common that people don't usually talk about. Today I'm sharing what I've been sitting with, what's shifted for me personally, and the one reframe that might just change how you approach your whole creative process. Stay with me to the end because the invitation I'm leaving you with is one I think you've been waiting for. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. Okay, so I want to have a conversation with you today. And I'm gonna be upfront about this. What I'm about to share isn't necessarily a popular take. It might even feel a little uncomfortable. If you're someone who prides yourself on being a constant learner, always reading, always listening, always in the loop, this is gonna be a thing for you. And I've been that person for a long time, but something shifted for me recently, and I can't stop thinking about it. And if I know my community at all, I know that some version of this is probably living just beneath the surface for you too. So we're gonna go there.

An Accidental Content Detox

Sheila 1:27

A little while back, I went through a season where I genuinely pulled back and it wasn't planned. Life kind of orchestrated it for me. I had a lot happening personally, a lot of change, a lot of things requiring my full presence. And what happened almost by accident was that I stopped consuming content at my usual pace. I wasn't scrolling the way I normally would. I wasn't loading up my podcast cue every Sunday night. I wasn't tracking what everyone else in my industry was talking about, what they were launching, what they were positioning, what they were growing and building. I just stopped for a bit. And at first, it truly felt uncomfortable, like I was behind, like I was missing something. That low-grade anxiety that I think a lot of us carry, this sense that if we're not plugged in, we're going to lose our edge somehow. But then something really interesting happened. Ideas started coming through, not borrowed ideas or ideas that I heard somewhere and wanted to expand on. My ideas, things I'd been wanting to say for years, but couldn't quite access because there was always so much noise around me. I'd go for a walk and I'd come back with three concepts I wanted to build episodes around. I'd wake up in the morning and have a clarity about my work that I hadn't felt in a while. I'd be talking to my husband and something would come up in conversation, and I'd think, oh, that's the thing. That's what I need to say. And here's what I realized: my voice didn't go anywhere. It was just waiting for enough space to come through. And that's what I want to talk about today. The season to create and why protecting that season might be one of the most strategic decisions that you can make, especially this year. I want to take you into some of the real stuff here. The questions I've been sitting with, the things I've noticed in myself and the people I work with, because I think the more specific I get, the more useful this is for you. So let's start at the beginning.

Finding Your Own Creative Voice

Sheila 3:29

When I think about a moment where my content started to look like everyone else's, I actually have to go back pretty far. We're talking 2015. That's when I got on Instagram. And I was doing what most people were doing at the time, you know, those little cubes of like memes and things, the same style of posting and content, motivational quotes, inspirational messages, how to live well. And I want to be clear, I loved that content genuinely. In fact, I couldn't get enough of it. It really lit me up. But what I realized pretty quickly was that even when I was seeing the same themes everywhere, what I was really doing was looking for my flavor. And I think that's actually a really healthy place to start. You have to take in a lot to figure out what resonates. And then you ask yourself what your unique take on it is. The trouble is that a lot of people never move out of that phase. They stay in the taking in mode and then they never quite make the turn into what this actually looks like for them personally. This is my version. I get it. It might be scary. And to say something that might not land with everyone isn't something we run to. We can maybe think we can hide behind what someone else has already said beautifully and start trusting that instead. But it took me some time to trust my own voice and I had to experiment. But eventually I found it. And I'll let you know this that when you land on your own voice, like really land on it, everything changes. The way you show up, the way people respond, the kinds of clients and conversations that come to you, everything shifts. And the way to get there isn't to consume more, it's to start listening to yourself as seriously as you listen to everyone else.

Overconsumption Causes Constant Pivoting

Sheila 5:10

Here's what I've been noticing in the leaders I work with. And I want to talk about this because it really does be need to be named. Overconsumption doesn't just show up in content, it shows up in decision making and in offers and in leadership. And here's what it looks like in practice. Someone has a great idea, they get guidance on it, they put together a plan, they start moving forward, and then almost immediately they start adding to it, layering more on, pivoting slightly because of something they heard, something they saw, someone else doing something that felt urgent in the moment. And understand why this happens. We're in a time where information is moving incredibly fast. In some businesses, you genuinely do need to adapt quickly. But there's a real difference between strategic adaptation and constant pivoting. And constant pivoting, I want to say this clearly, is a form of hypervigilance. And if you're in that state all the time, it cuts off your creativity, it pulls you away from the deep work you're actually meant to be doing. It also does something else though, it makes you compare constantly. Because when you're consuming at a high volume, you're always bumping up against what other people are doing, their launches, their frameworks, their positioning. And even if you're inspired by it, there's a shadow side to that, which is that you start measuring yourself against it. And the measuring can become exhausting. This is actually one of the core reasons people want to work with me because I keep redirecting them back to their North Star, not what's trending, not what someone else launched last week, but what they chose, what matters to them and what they committed to building and giving things enough time and space to actually breathe before making a call on whether it's working or not. We can tweak as we go, absolutely, but we have to give things room. And you can't give your work room if you're constantly filling that room with other people's voices. And now I want to share something that genuinely surprised me during this recent season of creating more space for myself.

Timeless Ideas And A Deep Exhale

Sheila 7:22

When I stopped taking in as much and really sat with my own thinking, one of the things that landed for me was this idea that what is old becomes new again, that there are timeless principles in life and in business. And they're timeless for a reason. Here's why that surprised me though. Because I think we're conditioned, especially in the online business space, to believe that we always need to be saying something new, something fresh, something nobody's said before. And when you're consuming a lot, that pressure intensifies because you're constantly seeing new ideas and new angles. And you think, well, I have to keep up with that. But when I got quiet, what I found was that the work I've been doing for years, the things I've been saying, the frameworks I've been building, they're not dated. They're foundational. And there's actually something really grounding about that, like coming home to the work instead of always running away from it toward the next thing. The other thing that came through, and this one really did catch me off guard, was a sense of peace, an almost physical sense that we're gonna be okay, that things are uncertain right now. Yes, but they've always been uncertain. Every generation has looked around and thought, things are moving faster than ever. How do we keep up? And they figured it out, and so will we. I wasn't expecting peace to be what showed up when I got quiet. I think I half expected anxiety, like maybe stepping back would make me feel like I was losing ground. But it was the opposite. And it was like this deep exhale. And I think that exhale is available to all of us if we're willing to create the conditions for it.

Fear Of Falling Behind

Sheila 9:04

Now let's talk about the fear because I know it's there. There's a real fear underneath the consumption habit for a lot of people. The fear that if they stop, they'll fall behind, they'll miss a trend, they'll become irrelevant. And I want to share this with you because I think it deserves a proper response. First of all, if you're afraid to get quiet, that is a thing worth paying attention to. Because you're gonna spend more time with yourself than anyone else in your entire life. The relationship you have with your own thoughts, your own intuition, your own inner voice, that's the most important relationship you've got. And if being alone in that space feels scary, that's a signal. I actually built alone time into my kids' lives when they were really little. So they had play pen time at first. That became room time as they got older. And what was so cool is eventually they looked forward to it. They didn't feel forced, they discovered their own imagination, their own ideas, their own quiet, and how valuable it was. And that capacity to be with yourself without needing constant input is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself as a leader. And I want to push back gently on this idea that we'll miss something important if we step back. Frankly, maybe there are some trends we need to miss. Honestly, I think that there's something genuinely refreshing about being in a conversation where someone references something that happened in the news or in the online world and I don't know about it yet. And then they tell me, and I can respond to just that thing without all the noise that came before it. There's a cleanness to that. It feels like the old days, you know. We're not meant to take in as much information as that is available to us right now. And I find the most grounded, effective, most genuinely influential leaders I know are the ones who are the most plugged into themselves and they're discerning about what they let in. You'll always be relevant as long as you're truly tuned into the work that you're meant to be doing. That is the key. It's not the trend, the leaderboard, the work, but your specific, particular, nobody else can do it quite the way you do work.

Boundaries For News Social And Rest

Sheila 11:20

So, what does that healthy dance actually look like in practice? Because I think this is where it gets real. And I want to be specific with you. For me, it depends on the season that I'm in. I've just come through a period of forced rest and I'm still moving a little slower than I normally would. And rather than fighting that, I've been treating it as a gift. It's let me prune to look at what I was doing and ask, what do I actually want to do? And do I want to keep doing this? And the honest answer for some things is no. And that's okay. One of the things that's been really interesting during this slower period is that I've actually seen more connection to my work, not less, more listeners, more people finding their way to what I offer. And I think it's because when you step back from constant output and let your work speak for itself, people genuinely feel the solidity of it. There's something that lands when the noise clears. In terms of practical day-to-day stuff, there's some things that I've done differently too. So, for instance, for news and world events, I check the news a couple times a week, midday, not morning or night. I go to a few different news sources, check the headlines, and if something warrants going deeper, I do, but I don't get my news through social media. I keep those spaces separate and I look typically at the news just during the week. And that's a boundary for me that's been really good for my nervous system. And for social media, I post in the afternoons mostly, which means I'm not in the apps first thing in the morning. I create first, I connect with my own thinking first. And then I show up in the social space from a place of having something to offer rather than just having consumed a bunch of other people's things. And this allows me to really think clearly with myself. And calls, whether they're client or catch-ups with friends, even or family, those are afternoon and evening things for me because I'm genuinely more inward in the morning and more social as the day goes on. And that's just my natural rhythm. And I've stopped apologizing for it. Working with that instead of working against it has really changed things for me. I'm also really dialing in my sleep right now because I know that the quality of my thinking, the depth of ideas that come through are directly connected to how rested I am, because rest is not separate from the work. Rest is part of how the work gets done. And I think that through everything that I've been sharing today, the through line are that the conditions you create for yourself, the space, the quiet, the rest, the boundaries, those are not extras. Those are foundational. And that's where the real work lives.

Replace One Input With Nothing

Sheila 13:59

So here's what I want to leave you with today. This week, I want you to try something. Pick one input you'd normally default to, the morning scroll, the commute, the podcast, or newsletter that you open out of habit, and replace it with a nothing. See what shows up in that space and give your own thoughts a chance to be with you and be the first things you hear. And if something comes through, write it down, voice memo it, message someone. It might be the thing your audience has been waiting for. You've got something to say. I know you do. And this world just needs you to get a little quieter so you can hear what it is. And if you're at a point where you want dedicated time and space to get clear on your voice, your direction, what you're building toward, I'd love to have you join me for a breakthrough day. It's a full day together where we do exactly that kind of work, focused, intentional, and designed to move you forward in a way that actually sticks. And if you want to stay connected to timely reflections on what it really looks like to navigate growth as a founder in these unique times, I'd love for you to subscribe to Sheila's Notes. It's where I share what I'm thinking about in between episodes, the things that don't always make it into a full recording, but are worth saying anyway. Both links are in the show notes, and I will see you there. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I hope that you carry something from today into your week, and I'll see you on the next episode.