208. Shamelessly Reclaiming My Edge

I'm giving myself 90 days to find out what happens when I genuinely start going for it again. This is the formal announcement, the whole messy truth, && the reason I'm coming back to social media for a little bit.

Also… MIXTAPE opens September 21st to waitlisters only. ;)

TOPICS WE EXPLORE

• The slow unraveling nobody notices until it's already happened
• Why slowing down && soft living literally stole my fire
• The moment I realized I'd been laying down for a few years
• What I do know even when I don't know what I want
• The intolerance for risk I developed without realizing it
• Why comfort is not found in avoiding discomfort
• The 90-day challenge: locking in for Q4
• Why I'm coming back to social media even though I stand by leaving
• What MIXTAPE is actually built for && why I've been living inside it
• What I'm terrified of && going anyway

THE POINT

I've been thinking my way to answers for years, but honestly… thinking doesn't give you answers, action does. So I'm taking 90 days to find out: do I still want this? && I'm going all in to find out.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Episode 206: Shamelessly Not Having It Figured Out
• Episode 207: Shamelessly Unaligned: Doing Shit I Don't Want to Do
• MIXTAPE waitlist (opens September 21st, waitlist only)
• Work with Ash

MORE ABOUT ASH

I'm Ash McDonald — the Entrepreneur's Therapist. Trained therapist, seasoned entrepreneur, mom of 3, && the person you call when your business coach doesn't get your brain && your therapist doesn't get your business.

I built the thing I couldn't find anywhere else: whole-picture support that holds your strategy && your humanity in the same conversation at the same time. 

LINKS:

• Work with me 1:1 → Deep Cuts
• Fast-track your results → The Green Room
• Solve one thing right now → Studio Sessions
• Burnout-proof your life && business → Mixtape
• Get your free podcast playlists → The Soundcheck
• Weekly emails that tell you what your business coach won't && your therapist can't → Subscribe to The Beat
• Website: ashmcdonaldmentoring.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm your host, Ash McDonald, the only therapist who speaks fluent entrepreneur. Welcome to Shamelessly Ambitious. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Shamelessly Ambitious Podcast. I am here to bear it all today. I'm here to bear it all. And just be really honest with you about some things I have been navigating, which honestly I think I already have in so many ways on this podcast. And it's less of like, oh, now I'm ready to tell you the whole truth, and more of, oh, I feel like I have more clarity on it. I've just been sharing the exact pieces that I was experiencing. And now I feel a little bit clearer. So a little backstory. A couple of years ago, I hit a level of success I had dreamed about for years. And you've probably heard me talk about this many, many a time. And after that, kind of slowly, I didn't really see it happening, to be honest with you, but pieces of it started to unravel. And in so many different ways. If you've been around for this journey and these stories, you heard of the season with which I thought maybe it was burnout. And I shut down my business for a while. This season, even before the burnout, when I thought it was because I was doing everything too intuitively and needed to have more structure and funnels and whatever. And this like perfectionistic version of me turned on. And then came the burnout. And then after that, it was like, oh, all the same characteristics have just found themselves back again. And I feel like slowing down has literally stolen my fire. And now I'm gonna speed back up and reignite these parts of myself. And none of it has been overly unsuccessful. All of it's been data, which is what I always speak to. There, this is all data for us to collect. It has been a lot of data. And honestly, fuck, if I'm being really honest, it feels like it's been forever, forever, since my, you know, the slow unraveling, if you will, was my business changing and me changing and my relationship with my ambition changing. And again, along the way, over a year ago, I left social media and I started to question whether I even wanted to be an entrepreneur anymore. And maybe not just the entrepreneur side, because what I can be really truthful about is that I have had so many ideas, aspirations, concepts. Some I've taken action on, others I've merely dreamed about, of different things that I can do all within the entrepreneurial realm. But then there's also been some non-entrepreneurial stuff, like what if I became a teacher? What if I got my license back and did more traditional therapy? What if I, what if I, what if I? And so I just have had a lot of questions. And I started through all this and through all these questions imagining entirely different careers and lives for myself. And I think, yes, I am multi-passionate. So part of that makes sense. But the truth is that this thing, this thing that I've been doing for so long, used to light me up so much. And what really changed was that it wasn't really lighting me up anymore. Not consistently, I guess, at least. I have certainly had lots of moments of being lit up. And I have said this to a million people, and I'll say it to a million more, over exaggerate much. That when I am on a client call and I'm serving an extraordinary woman, like I cannot imagine myself anywhere else. And I think that's what's been so confusing is because whenever I do it, as cocky as it may sound, I get off and I'm like, I'm really fucking good at this. And I love it and I enjoy it, and it gives me so much energy and it's just so good. And then that'll go away. And I've spent a lot of try time trying to understand why. And I'm kind of all done thinking about it. That was honestly my revelation, which is sort of lacking in the realm of revelations, is I'm done only thinking about it. And so I've decided to do something a little radical. I'm giving myself 90 days to reclaim my edge. And no, I'm not rebuilding my old business or trying to become someone that I used to be, but I do want to figure out like what happens when I genuinely start going for it again. Cause I think that's been part of the issue. And this is why I've been talking about this for the past year, if not more, of this idea of like soft living and slowing down and all those things that never really aligned with who I am at my core cost me so much. And I do genuinely believe that. I believe that I turned away from how I personally operate. Not everybody, but me, how I personally operate. And I think like a lot of people in my shoes, and I think we all know this to be true, when you become an entrepreneur, it's like a fast pass into understanding every hurt and every trauma and every insecurity that you have. And that has, that's, you know, it's got its blessings and it's got its cons. It's got its pros and cons. And what I notice, and I've noticed this of myself as well, is there becomes this sort of toxic energy around constantly healing. And I think that also was not really of service to me, nor do I think it's of service to anybody else, which is why I think the way that I mentor even and especially as a therapist is so different. Because I think there actually is a point to which you were spending too much time thinking and trying to heal yourself to betterment as opposed to take action to betterment. And I think that a lot of what happened, the culmination of what's happened over the past couple of years for me is slowing down, accepting defeat a little bit in the burnout realm, allowing, and let me say this part of this too is that my life has had so many twists and turns, my personal life, in the most positive ways. You know, traveling full-time required very different energy from us and from me specifically. And then deciding not to travel anymore and getting the kids enrolled and finding a house and furnishing the house and all, I mean, all of this takes energy, of course. And that also plays a role where you're just like, I don't have the bandwidth that I used to have. And there's this funny thing that I think happens with age. It's not the wisdom. I've talked about that on here before as well. I didn't gain all this like miraculous wisdom because I'm 39 years old now. No, no. But I did gain an intolerance for risk. And I do not like saying that out loud because I feel like in so many avenues of my life, and I can think of so many pieces of evidence where I was the least risk-averse person. I would go all in, I would do shit. I mean, I could tell you stories of things I've done, whether it's jumping off of bridges or out of planes or swimming with crocodiles or things that people wouldn't consider, all the way down to, yeah, selling fucking furniture I own so I could hire mentorship for myself because I believed in me more than anybody else. And not that I don't believe in myself, but I do feel like life kind of fucking beat my ass for a while there. And I think unbeknownst to me, there was a lot of me that became really risk averse that stopped being willing to take strong leaps that stopped being willing to push against discomfort. And it's really hard to say that because it feels like one of those realizations where you're like, really, me? But if I get really honest, if I'm very, very honest with myself, there's so many things I could have done over the past several years that I just wasn't willing to do. And I don't believe it was unwilling to do because I've got these like vast boundaries and I'm just like, you know, don't touch me. I'm doing what I want. I think it was because I was scared. I think it was because I was scared and because I just wanted comfort so bad. But you know what is so interesting the more that I've explored this within myself and even in the work that I do and the clients that I work with is that comfort is not found in avoiding discomfort. Isn't that funny? Because we think it is. We think, oh, if I just if I don't put myself out there, let's say for instance on social media, if I don't put myself out there on social media, then I'll never fail. I'll never have to be embarrassed or worry about anybody seeing it. If I never send the email, if I never make the pitch, if I never, whatever. And I have continued to do things, but at like uh I hate even saying this, kind of at a bare minimum. At a yeah, I'm willing to push it this far. I'm willing to push it that far. And I really do think a lot of it had to do with hitting this insane level of success and almost this moment of, but who am I? You know, after everything I've been through, after after the life that I've had and the hardship that we faced. And I think I also fell into this. Now I deserve to just sit. I did it. I checked the box, just enough is enough. And I think there was this inner child in me that was just like, holy shit, you have really put yourself out there for so long and you did it. So now lay down. And I laid down for like a few years. Now, what's important to note here is that one, I don't know what the fuck I want. Okay, I'm 39 and some days I want to open up a coffee shop, and some days I want to just decorate my house, and some days I want to make a million fucking dollars. But what I do know, I don't know what I want, but what I do know is that I want to be sure. I want to be sure. And I feel like for me, uh I needed to understand, I need to understand, am I feeling these things because yes, in fact, there's something intuitive telling me that this era of my life is coming to a close. Or is it something telling me, hey, stop being a pussy ass bitch and not putting your whole back into things and like, let's see this, you know, let's lock in. So I'm locking in for well, the next 90 days, I say, but I'm really doing this in like Q4. Obviously, behind the scenes, if you don't know this, I am actively inviting people onto the wait list for mixtape, which is an offer that I built very much on the back of all that I'm sharing over the past gosh, however long it's been, it's been a while. I've been building mixtape. And it's kind of hilarious because I think I'm standing inside the exact work I've been creating for you. And as it was completed, and now I'm inviting everybody onto the wait list. Because if you haven't heard me say this, I'm only launching it to the wait list. So it's you will never be able to just purchase it off my website or have doors open and you can join. You have to be on the wait list. So if you want to be on the wait list, definitely get on the wait list. That link will be in the show notes. But ultimately, mixtape isn't about becoming the version of yourself who never gets stuck. None of the work I will ever do will do that. But it is about knowing yourself well enough to recognize when you're getting in your own fucking way and knowing what to do next. And as I've been sort of embarking on this the last several months and building out my own work. So to put this blankly, like I've been testing things and trying things and witnessing what it does for me. And that's how I've come to this realization of, oh shit, it's been me. I've been holding myself back. And it's funny because I will say this a thousand times, but I think that we all need the medicine that we can give the most. And so it's of no surprise that this is where I'm at. But essentially that's what mixtape is. And I really hope that you will get on the wait list. It's gonna open up to everybody on September 21st and it will be open through the end of the month. And on the end of the month day, which is September 30th, I don't know why I said it like that. I will be on a plane to go to Europe to do some business masterminding and just connecting with a dear friend of mine to have a little solo adventure in the middle and then to have a girl's trip with my best friend at the end. It's about 11 days. And it feels sort of like this reclamation in and of itself is like going and living big and also, I think, coming back to the roots of I am, in fact, more on fire in my life when I travel. And right now that's not ideal for my family. And I'm so happy where we are. I genuinely am. Like I love our home, I love Colorado, I love the people here. I am genuinely happy. But there is a part of me that really misses traveling. So it felt like that was an imperative part of this reclamation. And you might be asking, okay, but what's happening with social media? Oh my friend, what's happening with social media? So, one of the this is the bigger realization that I really wanted to come on. A lot of these other ones are like something I've been discovering over the past couple of months, but this one is only over the past couple of weeks and I'm very uncomfortable about it, okay? Because I put a flag in the sand. Is that what you would say? I I said I'm off socials and I'm very, very, very behind why I got off socials and the value behind it. Okay. Period. I I stand by everything that I said. I do think it is not necessarily a safe place for everybody. I think that you can have the best boundaries in the world and it's still impacting the chemistry of your brain. Everything I've ever said, I stand by. And like I said, I'm not trying to go back to who I was. I am trying to find the me that needs to exist in this version of my life. I will never be the 29-year-old who just didn't give a shit and would do anything at any cost. It didn't matter. Or the 35-year-old. I'm not any one of those women and I don't want to be her. However, when I look back, one thing that I do notice was that social media was a very strong accountability tactic for me. It was a way for me to make a commitment and show up for it. Whether it was something I was launching, it was something I was trying, it was something I was saying, it doesn't matter. And it it sort of fueled the fire of a lot of different arenas in my life. And it feels like one of the important pieces of this reclamation for myself. And so, yeah, I'm gonna stay on social media and I might, in fact, get to the end of Q4 or fuck, it could happen at any point, but I could get to the end of this challenge for myself where I'm literally for 90 days fucking going for it again. And I I just want to know, I don't want to, I mean, of course, having a massive amount of success would be awesome. But the point is just to understand, do I still want this? That's what I'm trying to answer. Do I still want this? I feel like social media is a big part of that. Also, I know I'm not alone. If you have felt anything that I'm feeling, please reach out because we all need to be in this together. And I know I'm not alone. I work with so many clients who are experiencing the same sort of confusion. And I think, again, we cannot find answers by just fucking thinking about them. We have to take action. So this is sort of my 90 days to figure out is this where I stay or is this when I say goodbye? And I think social media is a big part of that, no matter what it ends in. So I very well could leave again. I very well could leave halfway in between. I definitely am gonna be really, really aware of how I let it impact me, but I also just want to bring you along for the ride. And so this is my formal announcement. I'm not officially going on the quote unquote ride until October 1st, but that's right the fuck around the corner. And I hope you'll get to be a part of it. I will say that one strong, beautiful part of mixtape is that within it, obviously you're getting a ton of content delivered via audio course. So it's just uh tape after tape of all these tracks that I have utilized for the past 12 plus years as a therapist, as the entrepreneurs therapist, as a business strategist, and also more importantly, what I've learned in the past couple of years about fucking everything. That's all I can say. It's not necessarily like, let's not have burnout and let's not, you know, the whole point of this program is to help you figure out who the fuck you are, for you to become so resourced in who you are. And I'm actively practicing so many of these things again, myself, to reignite this edge and this passion. And anyway, one cool piece of it is in addition to all that content, you get me. You get to ask me any questions, any personalized questions. I will upload them into the audio course when I have answers for you. But also a lot more of this, like the real behind the scenes, especially of this entire challenge for myself. Of course, I will share a lot on email and on social media, but mixtape will get the very unfiltered good, bad, ugly versions as well. So, anyways, if you have questions, you can always reach out to me. But this is my announcement, whatever you want to call it. And I'm excited and I'm anxious and I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm terrified. I'm terrified for many different reasons. I'm terrified that I will find out this is not what I'm meant to do anymore, and that feels really scary. I'm also terrified of the commitment because I don't think I've made this big of a commitment in a really long time. And I think that says a lot. I don't want to fuck it up. So there's that fear that lives inside me as well. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot there. And there's also a lot of hope and a lot of excitement. And so, if anything, I hope this nudges you a little bit. If there's just an answer you have been dying to have, and you're like, how do I get it? Maybe this reminds you or inspires you that it's not about thinking your way to an answer, but taking fucking action and figuring out what action you need to take to get the answer that you're looking for.