Imperfectly Live: Your permission slip to start

This episode is for the dreamers, doers, and passion project starters who are tired of waiting for "perfect". I'm showing up, mic on, ideas half-formed, heart wide open- because chasing what lights you up doesn't need to be polished to be powerful. Join me as I build The FitZen Project podcast in real time, sharing the messy, beautiful process of creating something meaningful without having it all figured out. This is your permission slip to start before you're ready.

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The Expansion Room
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there. I hope you are having the best day so far. And thanks for tuning in today. Today's show is basically going to explain to you how imperfect I am and things that I've been doing lately, how I get stuck, and then I'm gonna tell you about these techniques that I use to get unstuck. So let me just know currently I in my real job, I'm running four different implementation projects right now, and it feels really heavy. But in my personal life, you know, I'm a mom, I'm nourishing my partnership, I'm nourishing my friendships, my family, and finding this me time. And I'm also starting this amazing project in podcasting. As we all know, like thank you for being here with me during this process. And one of the funnest things about my life and what I do in my life is I'm always really good at starting stuff. Really, really good. Like, um, if you know me, my cardinal sign, my card, my sign is a cardinal sign. So I'm always like really interested in beginning again and beginning again and new beginnings and all these things, starting new stuff. Like I'm an innovator by nature and just full of all of these like rambunctious ideas. So it's also a lot of fun for me to close out stuff. So as a project manager, which actually I'm now a project executive, but as a project manager, you get to start, you have this middle, and you have an ending. And your steps are initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, and closing. So it's a lot like writing an essay in in layman's terms. So if you take the project management out, it's a lot like writing an essay where you start out your essay, everyone has been taught this in school. You would have your introduction and your thesis statement would have your three points that you're trying to make. And then you've got your body of your essay, right? So like your first paragraph would be talking about your first point, your second paragraph, your second point, third paragraph, third point, and then you would have your closing paragraph. So a five-point essay here, you got the introduction, then you got your thesis, your, you know, you just explain all that. So that's basically how project management is. It's like writing an essay. You have to gather all of your requirements, and before really even setting your planning out, like that's part, that's part of it. Like you're getting your contracts and everything to even start your project plan. So you have to understand a whole lot of the intricacies that go in and out of your project. So back to me and doing this podcast. This has been my personal project. And it's stuff that I'm doing on my spare time because I like I said, I really, really, really enjoy my job. I enjoy my team. I it gives me purpose, it gives me this like sense of honor in a bit for myself. Like, I'm really proud of the work that I put in and out for my company, and I'm really proud of the work that I do with my teammates. Like, my teammates are the bread and butter of everything that I do, and I really, really just enjoy them. So not giving that up anytime soon to be a full-time podcaster, and that, my friends, has really taken me in this like brain spin. I've been in such a brain spin because I'm like, my podcast isn't perfect. Man, my podcast isn't perfect. I'm kind of disappointed at that it's not perfect, but I'm also relieved that it's out in the ether. You know, I feel like I can groom it like I would a relationship. Like I'm just now meeting you people. I'm just now meeting myself where I'm at, and that's what I teach in yoga, y'all. That is exactly what I teach in yoga. So I'm taking what I'm teaching in my yoga classes, and I'm actually applying it to you today in my own personal project of podcasting. I'm not applying it to you. No, I'm applying it to me. But I'm telling you the techniques I'm using to even make my next step. Like my next step being like after I press stop recording, my next step and how I'm gonna carry this through for the remainder of our relationship together and my podcast out in the ether. So, as I mentioned, right now I've got four projects, and to me that feels really heavy, and it is, you know, there's no denying that. Um, there a couple of them are really strategic, so I've gotta get really into the grain. And because they are strategic, I have to be strategic with the other two that are not, so I make sure I don't fail their experience when they're onboarding. And that's important to me that everybody has this like really nice experience, right? And that's how it is in when I'm teaching yoga, you know, I really don't care if you can come to the class and not do a full-on expression of a pose. So the experience is that you show up and that you get to do the whole entire yoga class, right? So why am I holding this weird, I don't know, rule to myself. Like I'm holding on to some self-inflicted expectation for my podcast right now. That it's gotta be XYZ, or it's not gonna be a real podcast. It's not gonna be good enough for anybody out here that I've never met. And some of you I have met, but y'all also know, like, why am I out here trying to be like this straight A student? I am not a straight A student. I gave that up when I went to college and realized it took me six years to get through. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm just going to actually just do what I like to do. I'm gonna have fun while I'm doing it. And yeah, I don't know, I'm paying for it, so whatever. My expectation in college needs to be like how I go through the rest of my life. And sometimes it's just not. Sometimes I get really wound up and I'm like, oh my god, I miss this. Ugh. Cringy. And I'm like, why am I cringing? I'm the one that set that expectation. I'm the only one that knows that I didn't meet my own expectation. So, anyway, the requirements of podcasting is a lot, it's very overwhelming. And when you start getting into this business, you get a bunch of stuff thrown at you. Like, I've been drinking from a water hose in my free time. And I'm wondering like, is that affecting my family time? Is it affecting my partner? Is it affecting any of that? But I tell you what, I have the best buy-in of my entire life. Like, my partner has been so supportive. He's like, hell yeah, get out there. You're a badass boss babe. Woo! And I'm like, thank you. Oh, I love you so damn much. Oh, and I do, like, I needed that buy-in, I needed that engagement. And you need the same thing when you're in project management. FYI. If you don't have the buy-in from your leaders and your leading stakeholders, and you're trying to implement a technical project for end users to change their processes, it's not gonna happen. You might as well go ahead and fold the deck. So while my partner is not my technical leader in my podcasting, he is very important to my life and how we raise my son and how we move through the day. And, you know, I've been at nighttime like up here recording in my spare bedroom, and I'm up here like trying to get ideas and get things flowing, and he's downstairs and he's making dinner, he's playing with my son, he's uh I mean, I'm hearing dinosaur roars and I'm up here editing, and you know, like he's really taken on after he drives an hour and a half through Wild Wild West to get to Lexington and then drives back home, he's picking up all this stuff, you know. It's pretty amazing how supportive I've been, and I'm not um discounting any of that. As a matter of fact, it helps me flourish. So the buy-in's important, and just like going to a yoga class, your mental buy-in is important. The fact that you even showed up shows me as a teacher you've bought in to the next 60 minutes. So no matter what kind of project, whether it's going to a yoga class or it's doing a very strategic implementation in technical implementation world or it's podcasting, you have to have this l level of buy-in, you have to have a level of support. And if you're by yourself, then you need to keep believing and believing and believing and believing in yourself until you can just like actually get the thing started, get it done. You know, I it get it done is relative, also, because technically I've gotten my podcast done, right? Like I've already aired out two episodes as of this exact moment. I've got a few in the backlog, but this is this podcast right here, this is gonna trump the others because I feel like this is so important for everybody to know that it doesn't have to be perfect. So if you're interested in starting a podcast, this is one of the ones I would probably listen to to, you know, give yourself some grace. And it's important to have some grace because you are not gonna get it perfect. There is no such thing. So there's a nice little debunk. There's no such thing as perfection. No, not even in IT. And if you have a project and you actually make your go live date without a hiccup, I want to read that lessons learned log. I want to read it because I'm gonna be like, hmm. The lessons learned must be a bunch of keepsakes, you know? Like you must have met this ROI seamlessly. You know, you're all of the goals that you started out with. I can't wait to see this lessons learned on an absolutely perfect project plan. And nothing be tweaked along the way. You know, no communication fail, no missing somebody in an email, even one person not being invited to a meeting, scheduling a meeting on top of someone else's schedule where they've already got three in that same exact time slot. Tell me about your perfect project. Literally, like write me an email, info at fitzinyoga.com. I want to seriously see your your lessons learned on this perfect project plan. So if you've got one, you want to send it out. I'm I'm here to read that and I want to know about the lessons learned on it. So anyway, back to me, podcasting. There have been so many things that I didn't know on podcasting. You know, I really thought, oh, you get in this or area, you gotta get a cute little mic, gotta get your headphones, everything set up. Like, that's easy. I can go buy this stuff, like give me the physical material list. That sounds great. And I'm learning all of this stuff from Kathy Heller in her um podcasting course, and it is phenomenal, by the way. She is great, she's like the the knowledge sharer, you know. Everybody who keeps knowledge to themselves, I'm like, why? You don't want people to know? I don't know. Like, it's like kind of sharing a recipe, and you leave out one of these like really good ingredients, you know, forever, the uh derby pie, for example, that recipe was for a forever kept secret. Like, oh, we cannot share. I'm like, you can share, you can share the whole damn recipe, and you can make a lot of money on that. So why would you not share the recipe to the derby pie? So everybody can first of all have a really nice derby pie, and second of all, like you make money, and third of all, if someone's buying it, they're gonna make it, and people are gonna be happy because who doesn't like a nice warm derby pie? I mean, there might be somebody out there who don't like it, but you know, teach their own. So, anyway, with Kathy's world, she shares everything, and I am loving this, like it's a whole new world. So that's where I'm learning how to do all this stuff um in my free time, and it's been real exciting. It like it's taken me to school, you know, because I'm really finding my edge, and I'm really uncomfortable, very, very uncomfortable. And it reminds me so much of how I first started out doing yoga and then teaching it, and then applying some of this that I do in yoga in my professional world, and when I started applying my yoga techniques into my professional world, my life amped up professionally, and I have all the things to give to my my yoga practice, and it's personal, it's my yoga practice. So some of the things that I take from my yoga practice that I apply in my professional world, and that I'm now applying to this podcast project is some grace, a lot of grace. I'm gonna mess up. That is a guarantee. I am not gonna be perfect. And I am also not everybody's cup of tea. I get that. I've I learned that as a child. I've learned it over and over and over and over through many failed relationships, friendships, or romantic. I've learned that through working with people that didn't quite get along with mesh well. We didn't have a vibe. I've learned that with working for people that I didn't vibe well with at all. And then I've also learned that I can be people's cup of tea. And I had to learn how to then receive that back. And that was a big lesson learned for me is receiving true friendship, receiving true people that I work for that actually want me around, that love to see me learn and love to see me apply these skills that they're teaching. So I I I had to rewire my brain. And thanks to my yoga practice, I did rewire my brain in taking what I'm learning from these really great mentor teachers and what I'm feeling in my body, and then I'm applying that into my actual life as I know it. Like, even like right now, I'm applying it into my life all the time. Now it's more like just who I am, instead of intentionally making this like rewire happen. So now it's more of who I am, and I really like it, like I really like who I am right now, you know, just learning all the time and making mistakes sometimes and learning from that, and then how does that affect? How can that amplify? How can I go forward? Being grateful for where I am. Y'all, I am so damn grateful. I am so grateful for where I'm at right now. Like I am the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. And I would say, well, I don't know how, but that's a lie, y'all. I do know how I'm so happy. I'm happy that I'm accepting these things. I'm accepting being loved with a very supportive partner. I'm accepting being loved as a mother. And I'm accepting being valued as an employee. And I'm accepting learning these new techniques and how to actually like be real with myself with this whole uh program that I've been learning with in the Kathy Heller world. Real quick, with any good recipe, I am definitely gonna share. And like I have mentioned in most every podcast I have done, Kathy Heller has been one of my greatest mentors, and I am so glad for the day that I signed up and started doing her coaching sessions. So if you are interested in having a coaching session with her and you want to join her VIP, I do have a link in the show notes that can grant you access with money off. Feel free to use it. So, anyway, um, maybe one day I'll get lucky and she'll be like, I'll be on your podcast. I'll be like, Oh my god, let me fall out first. But, you know, stranger things have happened. But doing this podcast, I've learned uh That you need so many things. So not just your mic, not just a personality, headphones, or whatever else you're recording on, but there's like these platforms. There's so many platforms. You can publish your podcast through a plethora of platforms. And then you also need to have this like editing software. And there's some free ones. And there's free platforms, there's free editing software, there's all sorts of free things, but then you only get a limited hour or maybe two hours of voice and content that you can apply, see how you like it, see if you're even good at it, and then you can pay a bunch of money to allow yourself more hours to put out into the ether. And that's fine, you know how important it is to you. What is your buy-in? How important is your engagement? And like, what is it that you're actually trying to share? Do you think that's important, you know? And I think that for me it has changed over and over and over and over and over again. But what I stay true to is my center and my core. And for me, that is being a really good employee with project management because it's something I really actually like. And it's also being really good with yoga and keeping my yoga practice because it's something that I really value. Like I value my yoga practice immensely. And it's not just me teaching, it's me being a student. And I have to be a student. I'm a forever student. I'm a forever student as a mother because my son is my biggest teacher. I'm a forever student as a lover because it really does mirror how I'm showing up in my relationship. I'm a forever student as a project manager because it's really important to me to have this lessons learned list so I can continue to evolve myself and my team. My team is so important to me. I really genuinely care about them and how they spend their time with me is important because I don't want to take any of that for granted. I'm not here for that. I want to see them rise up and I want to see us all rise up, you know. There is no glass ceiling. The sky's the limit, you know, then you're out in space. Whatever. But that's how it is. That's how I am viewing all of this in a world full of possibility. So when I'm learning that there's like all these different platforms of podcasting, and I gotta make some choices, and then I'm going down the rabbit hole of comparing them, you know, like what's the what's the reviews? What's the five-star reviews? It's almost like I'm putting an RFP out for myself, but I'm the one that's putting it out, and I'm also the one that's responding, and it's a whole lot of work. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of time. So I initially started my voice content in February, but my ideas and starting in the Spark that happened in like January of this year, and now I'm in the middle to the end of April. So, and it's part-time, if that. And I'm again very grateful for the opportunity that I get to have some free time, some time to reinvent myself a little bit and come out here and voice it out. But I'm like literally voicing it out to all of us, all of you, you know, and it's you if you're listening, you're still here. So, anyway, this podcast isn't perfect. There's a lot of things that I've forgotten. No, I didn't forget. I just don't know what I don't know, and if I don't have time for it, then I can't really put it in my project plan. I got time constraints already. All right. Like I said, I'm a busy, busy woman. I got high priorities. I am the CEO of my life. And as a CEO, I'm doing project management work on the side for a hobby. All right. So you're gonna get what you're gonna get. And right now, I don't have um, I'll just name the things that were part of a requirements list of things that I thought were very interesting, and I'm like, ooh, those are nice to haves, but not 100% necessary to go live with, but they're nice to haves. And I understand as a project manager, nice to haves can always be implemented once you're in operations. Nice to haves aren't really things that are hard requirements, right? So if I'm basing my grade per se of my podcast off of nice to haves, I'm doing it wrong. That's the lesson, all right. If I'm basing my yoga practice on how flexible I am, I'm doing it wrong. My practice is not about how flexible I am. Hey guys, if you're really enjoying the podcast so far and you want to support me monetarily, feel free to do so with Buy Me a Coffee. You can go to buymeacoffee.com forward slash the fits in project. The link is in my show notes. So thanks so much. The rest will come. You know, the rest will come. Build it, they will come. Isn't that what they say? And the rest will come, and I fully value and trust myself that I know I will get to these points of having a transcript or a different artwork or a virtual assistant. Y'all, these virtual assistants, like, am I in the right career path? Let me just say, virtual assistants, you can make like$165 an hour. If you didn't know, now you do. And as a virtual assistant, you listen to people's podcasts and you edit and you write their transcript, and then you pull out these like little nuggets of information, and you would create their content for the social medias, which is cool. Virtual assistants are like the backbone of podcasting, just like a business analyst is the backbone of my implementation project. If I didn't have my business consultants and my senior consultants as part of my project team, I would not be able to do any of this. I would not have a job. And that's just how it is. You need a team of people, you need a team of people to do an IT implementation, and you kind of sort of need a team to have like one of these Mel Robbins podcasts out here in life. But I'm not Mel Robbins, I'm Rachel Fitzpatrick, and here I am with my podcast, and this is just me showing up as my own CEO, my own project manager, my own business analyst. And I'll just let you know, I don't have time for those things. I don't have time for taking notes to my own podcast, I don't have time for writing up some like blog scripts, and I don't have time for posting these fun little nuggets of information with the artwork on Instagram and Facebook right now. If you get one a week, I'm doing a good job. And that's pretty much all I can do. That's all I want to do, it's all I really want to devote anyway. So let me just set that standard. I really enjoy the rest of my life. All right. I really enjoy my full-time job. I really enjoy being a full-time job mother. That's not a job. Ooh. Nope. That is a privilege. It is a privilege for me. I really enjoy it. It's a privilege for me to have a supportive partner. And a privilege for me to have a supported family and friends. So I've got a couple of friends that have listened to my podcast and given me some feedback. And oh grateful. I'm so grateful. And that was part of my monitoring and controlling process after making my first go live, my very first um fits in project podcast. So that was really cool to have some of that feedback. Um I know that my first prod my first podcast was so messy, and I was rambling and repeating and all the things. I was so nervous just like standing there in front of myself, like in the mirror. It was so cool. But, you know, I it was it was nervous. I was very nervous, and I'm like, I'm gonna put this really weird thing out in the world and just, you know, roll with it. And that's what I did, and that's how I got it. That's how I got it out. I just had to like get over myself. I was so in my way. I was and I've been in my way. And I've been in my own way for the past, I don't know, two weeks. And I just rolled out another podcast this past Tuesday, and it really got in my head about it. Like, got really, really in my head about it. And it was about um some childhood stuff. Go back and listen if you feel like it, but it's probably a good reason why it got in my head because it brought up some different emotions in me that I haven't really had to experience much as an adult, and I haven't experienced probably since that time. So it just was a little bit emotional for me, and I had to get over myself for a bit. And I'm realizing that that got in my way and has given me this analysis paralysis, and I'm like, well, I don't have another topic to talk about, I don't have anything else to to give. And it's like, that's not true. Look at me where I'm at right now, look at me. And I did this this morning, and that's why it's important for me to be on here right now to give this podcast as I'm doing it, like right now, because I had to give myself some grace. I had to bring in the yoga part. I had to understand that I am and never ever have been perfect, and there's hard requirements and there's soft requirements to all of this. And hard requirements can feel overwhelming, but you can also break those down in different tasks. And once you identify what they are and get real clear on what these hard requirements are, and then you break them down in little tasks, you'll find that one percent of work a day gets these hard requirements done. And that's where it's at. You gotta break it, break it, break it, break it, break it until it can't be broken anymore. And in project management, we call this a work breakdown structure. And in yoga, we call these breakthroughs. Breakthroughs. I had a breakthrough this morning. And this morning, my breakthrough was I'm not perfect. Why am I trying to be something I'm not? Oh, why am I trying to be a perfectionist when I know I'm already not one? When I know that that's not how I roll, that's not how I roll in real world. Like I am no way, shape or form out here trying to be the most perfect mother. I know in some way, shape, or form, I'm gonna mess up my child, and he's just gonna have to find his own way of getting over it. Because that's what we do as parents. We will mess it up. But there's gonna be a lot of things that I'm gonna get right. And he won't have to get over it, and he's gonna be real thankful for, just like there's a lot of things that my parents did right that I'm so grateful I didn't have to get over. And I'm thankful to them for that. Way more than I am bitter about the stuff that I had to get over. You know, like most of the time we're in this and we're caught up in ourselves, and we're caught up in our head, and we're like, man, I can't get out of it. We get angry, we get analysis, paralysis, you get a little stuck, yet real stuck in your head, in the I can't, in the I'm not good enough. But or this is never gonna happen. Ugh. And then you can like dropkick the door of possibility and let yourself breathe. What if you just dropkick the door open and you felt some fresh air for a little bit and you just breathed into all of this and you sat in it and you felt it out, and then you realize like not all of this matters. It doesn't matter. And thank God for this conversation that I had with my partner last night because we talked about it, and I was like kind of crying on the inside, and he said all of these little nuggets in these roundabout ways, and I took them in and I got to sleep on it, and then I'm like waking up today and I'm like ding ding ding ding. Thanks, babe. Yeah, like he was my yoga teacher last night. He doesn't even do yoga, he's never doga in his whole entire life, but he didn't know that he was my yoga teacher yesterday. He might find out if he listens to this whole entire podcast, but who knows if he will or not. He's just here to support me to keep on going. He's really not even out here judging. He listens to me all the time, so I don't care if he listens to this or not, but I'm really, really grateful that I got a chance to kick open the door and breathe in some of this fresh air. And that's a it's just an analogy. I'm not really out here drop-kicking doors, but that's where it's at in yoga, too. And I'm gotta be my own teacher through this process and give myself this grace because I'm not here to touch my toes right now, I'm not here to be this perfect Instagram yogi. Cause I'm not. Like there are a lot of things in yoga that I just can't do, and there's a lot of things that I can do that I could never have ever imagined I could have done. Okay, it was all a stepping stone that one percent of these hard requirements. That's all. So when I get through this phase and I feel really good, and I'm gonna be rolling with this stuff, y'all. I'm gonna be rolling it out every single week. And when I get to this and I'm ready, I'll let you know when I got these transcripts up, and I'll let you know when I get this email list written out, and I'll let you know when I'm ready to go on LinkedIn. You'll see me. You'll see me, and in LinkedIn, I'm just Rachel Fitzpatrick. You'll see my face. You feel free to follow me if you if you want to, but um, yeah, I'll be there. I will I'll be there right now. Those are not hard requirements, and I'm letting you know. There's other stuff that goes into podcasting too, and quite frankly, I don't know what I don't know. And that is my mom's saying. When we were growing up as kids, she would always say, I don't know what I don't know. I'm doing the best I can. And she would check in with me and my brother like all the time. Like, how'd this make you feel? What you know, whatever punishment it was, was it too much? Too much gas. Should she let off? You know, she was always, always in her own world of lessons learned as a mother. I am so grateful for that. Maybe that's why I'm a project executive now. I don't know. I would say it has a lot to do with it, but I don't know. I know I like it. I like it a lot, and I like doing this, and I'm gonna keep going. And I really love yoga, and I'm gonna keep bringing that into it too. So there's my little spiel for the day, y'all. And thanks for playing. Thanks for hanging out with me, and I will talk to you next week, you little cutie. Bye.