← Courage & Clarity
Courage & Clarity
107: Stay Mentally Strong & Focused During Distractions Like Elections & World Events
00:41:08
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- [00:04]
Steph Crowder
Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello. Hello, CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast. This is episode number 107. I'm so happy you're here. Today we are talking about what I think is a really, really important topic for not only the next couple of weeks, which are going to be a little bit noisy here in the United States and honestly, across the world, but this episode is super relevant for other world events. There will always be world events happening that unfold that can impact you and your mental state and your business and have really profound effects. As of right now, I am, of course talking about the upcoming election for the next president of the United States coming at us real fast. I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but that one, it snuck up. I know we've been talking about this election for months and months and months, but it's crazy to believe that really it's here. And I wanted to carve out some intentional space here on the podcast to talk about your game plan for navigating this particular election, which is a, I think, an especially charged election. Maybe it also has to do with, you know, TikTok and places like that being bigger than ever. There's obviously more cracks and crevices to explore on the Internet than arguably ever before. It's noisy. There's going to be a lot of distraction, and you need a game plan. You need a game plan for staying mentally strong regardless of the outcome. Okay? Regardless of the outcome. And listen, this is going to be really great for navigating the upcoming election, but this is really applicable to any world events. Okay? So regardless of how relevant this particular event, this election is to you, depending on where you live, depending on many other variables, regardless, this is just one example. I think it's a really important example. It applies to many, many, many of us. But there are other big world events that you need to have a game plan for. Because you can't stop life from doing its thing. And when these events come to our doorstep, I think it's really important, as in with so many other examples of things, to be intentional and to not just let it kind of happen to you and get swept into it, which we're going to discuss at length here today, but rather to have an intentional, proactive game plan for how you are going to handle the noise, the pomp and circumstance, et cetera. Okay, so let's talk about it. Let's talk about your game plan, how to stay mentally strong and focused, focused on what matters. Because here's the truth. This election, any other world event doesn't take away from your dream, your goals, the clients you want to help, the impact that you want to have on this world. Right after the dust settles from this election and any other world event, you're still going to be at the helm of your business.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
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Steph Crowder
So we need to put this in its proper place in terms of our attention, our bandwidth, which can be a really challenging thing to do, especially when the horses are already out of the barn, so to speak. What I mean by that is once you are getting swept up, it is harder to pull yourself out. Kind of like quicksand, the media and social media quicksand of really sensationalized, supercharged times. It, the pull is hyper magnetic and it's by design. We know this, we know this about our algorithms. It is going to ask you for your attention. And I want to make it really clear. I'm not saying to put your head in the sand. I mean, first of all, can I please just say, if you live in the United States, vote. This episode is coming out in advance of the election. Please vote. Please exercise your right as an American citizen. It is of the utmost importance. So do what's in your control, which is voting. But we need to really understand where this entire conversation, where this entire event belongs on your priority list and in within. We're really going to explore your sphere of control.
- [05:17]
Co-host or Guest
Right?
- [05:18]
Steph Crowder
So one of the things that made me really want to record this episode was something that happened to me recently and personally in the United States. It has been hurricane season and if you don't know, I live in Kentucky. Okay, we don't, we don't have hurricanes here. But you know, this year has been there. I don't know. I, I don't know that much about hurricanes. I've never lived in a place that has hurricanes. I certainly know about the big ones. Over the course of the years that, you know, I've been alive and I've been an adult, but this year has felt like, you know, we had Hurricane Helene and then Milton was coming and it just has felt like a really big and scary year for hurricanes. And you might be wondering why I'm even bringing this up. Because again, I live in Kentucky. I don't have any family in Florida. I don't have any property in Florida. I don't. I mean, I care about human beings, of course, I care about the people who were going through these extreme circumstances. But when, especially when Hurricane Milton was coming after on the heels of Helene, which was so devastating for multiple parts of the country, I found myself really unable to look away from this storm that was like on its way to Florida, even though it didn't directly affect me and there was nothing that I could do about it, right. Watching TikTok video after TikTok video after TikTok video of people who were supposed to leave but couldn't leave, or were supposed to leave and chose not to leave, you know, and were writing their Social Security number on their arm and Sharpie or on the arms of their toddlers because they really were told there was a significant chance that the storm was going to be unsurvivable. I could not stop watching these videos. In fact, you know, we, we could, we could talk about parasocial relationships. There were particular people on TikTok who I had like a mental list of people that I was checking on. Again, people I've never met, people who are just strangers on the Internet. And at one point, multiple of my friends were like, you have got to get off of TikTok. Like there's like this storm is coming and there's nothing you could do. And I didn't sleep well the night that it was coming again. We didn't even get any rain where I live from this storm. And I think it's really important to point out that empathy is important and caring for. I'm not. Again, I'm certainly not suggesting that we should not care about people who are going through really hard things. There are so many examples. We could talk about just catastrophic things that are happening overseas and places that you've never been to that you may never go to. I think it's one thing to care and to be really troubled about the well being of others, but what we're going to explore in this episode is like, at what point is it not productive? And in fact, I am even here to argue that it is counterproductive and even harmful to the world around you to become so swept up and so troubled in things that you have no control over, that is actually actively doing more harm and putting more negativity out into the world when paradoxically, what the world needs most in those moments is for the people who are not directly affected to be mentally strong. And we're going to talk about the importance of that. So we're going to get more into that example. I'm going to dive deeper into some of my takeaways from how I operated during this accidental quicksand that I fell into just a few weeks ago. And I think that again with this election coming up, I want to share how I have learned from that recent experience. And I really want to show up differently, determined to show up differently and not be so tossed around emotionally. You want to talk about a storm emotionally tossed around like debris based on what is happening, Right? Based on no matter who wins and what happens, there are things that you can control. There are anchors that you need to hang on to. And I think we need to defend that. Like our lives and businesses depend on it. Okay, so if you're an entrepreneur, a business owner and a high achiever, and you really like the idea of staying focused and mentally strong during periods of political world events, you know, natural disasters, whatever, that really create distraction. Again, I think there's a huge difference between awareness, like the. We all have a responsibility to be aware of various things happening in our world. Again, I am not advocating for ignorance. I think that's a recipe for social disaster in a lot of ways. Awareness is one thing. Education is one thing. I'm talking about distraction. I'm talking about overwhelm. Unnecessary overwhelm, where you're just kind of working yourself up. And if you're truly, truly honest, it's not helping anybody. It kind of reminds me of. It's actually a great analogy that just came to me. It's like when there's a horrific car accident and you are not involved in the accident, you're a bazillion cars back from the accident. You don't know anyone in that accident. What ends up happening is everybody. What do they call it? Rubber necking?
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
Everybody driving past. My husband calls this gaper delays. Like people are gaping because everybody's looking. And sometimes people even get into secondary accidents because they're staring and they're not looking where they're supposed to be looking. That's like the worst case scenario. But even still, sometimes there's unnecessary traffic. Unnecessary. Like none of this is helpful to the People impacted by the accident in the first place, the people in the accident who might be injured or worse, the first responders who are just trying to do their job. Like our over involvement and obsession and distraction is actually in some cases actively agitating and making these situations worse.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
And it's certain like that at the very least it's just not helpful. It's just. There's a point at which it's just not helpful and you're making yourself sick. And then we're going to talk about this too. The downstream effects of not being able to be the version of you that your people need. Okay, so let's dive into this because I think again, we've got some time before this election gets here. You have the opportunity to set your intentions. How do you want to be? Who do you want to be? Let's get into it. So the first thing I want to talk about is the problem here, right? So how these external events derail our focus and why we get pulled into these distractions in the first place. So whether we're talking about natural disasters, world crises, you know, they capture our attention for a lot of different reasons. They have impacts on our lives. Something like an election, especially when we want to talk about this election, you know, being a woman and. Or a parent of a female, women's rights. There's a lot of big topics that we're talking about with this particular election. It's an important moment for many different. That's just. And that's just one example. There's a lot of different reasons why people feel like a lot is at stake. Which again is why we're going to vote. Okay. That's why we're going to vote and do what we can do. But I just want to again sort of underscore that there is also the emotional intensity and the 24 7, not only media coverage, but now we have social media coverage. It was really interesting through the Hurricane Milton story that I was telling. I wasn't even watching like the local news or like my television. I was watching the on the ground reporting on TikTok and I was getting like all of my news from individuals who are riding out this storm. And I think it's just a really interesting time to be alive because you have not only the media, the mainstream media or all, you know, major media that is vying for our attention. And they're really, really good at getting it with headlines and the constant pushing out of updates. But then you also have like this secondary media, this secondary, secondary storytelling that's happening on platforms like Instagram, TikTok X threads, et cetera. And it just, I think, really ratchets up the nonstop nature of the information and the opinions. I think it's the really. The opinions, right? The opinions that are coming at you. And I've just had this thought a lot recently that it's like humans really weren't designed to live in a world where we're getting so much input all the time. And you have people in a highly emotional state talking to you through their screen, and they're telling you that everything is an emergency, and they're telling you that everything is urgent and that this is life or death. And to stay in that heightened state for an extended period of time, again, is just not how we're built. We're not like. I talk a lot about sort of our survival instincts on this podcast and our wiring and how we're wired to survive walking around in a state of fight or flight for the next seven to 10 business days, if not longer, depending on what actually happens with this election. Let's not even talk about whether things come down to the wire and how that could be extended, et cetera. There could be any number of things that transpire. We are just not designed to stay in this, like, heightened state of emotional turmoil. And I mean, it's like it feels as though there is an actual attack happening on you.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
And so our body, to a certain point, can't even tell the difference if we're. Our cortisol is high, our stress hormones are high, and we're having a reaction as though we are literally under attack. And in a lot of ways, we are. If you think about it, it's a war of your attention, It's a attack on your focus. And it might sound dramatic to hear me say it that way, but yeah, it is, because this is kind of a high drama time. And it's just, I think, important to call that for what it is and see that for what it is. Here's where it gets even more interesting is I notice that not only. So not only are we in like an agitated state and we cannot look away. It's the car wreck. It's me with the TikTok and the Hurricane Milton. I mean, I could not stop. I was scared to even look at my screen time for the day. You know, I didn't. You. I could have been spending time with my kids. I was on my phone. I was just so wrapped up in this. That's one thing. But then we take it a step further. I talk to people all the time who are again, accidentally, inadvertently so swept up into. And I could pick multiple different world events where I've seen it create more inaction for my clients. I've seen it create excuses, right, where, oh, I can't launch because, you know, this thing happened with the election, or, oh, I can't, I can't sell my services right now because what's happened is so upsetting.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
I can't prospect and try to book sales calls right now because I, you know, it's just like, there's just too much noise out there. And on one hand I think that we can say, like, sure, do I agree that, like, maybe launching you day one of your launch, should you host a webinar on election day? No, I'm going to go ahead and coach you to not do that. But there's a middle ground where it's like, we can kind of give this event the stage and space that it deserves. There's a difference. There's just such a spectrum of your response. There's a difference between reverence for the American electoral system versus getting swept up, swept up in the noise, noise, the noise of the election and allowing it to create a loss of focus, a loss of focus on your goals, on your sales activities, and most importantly, on what's within your actual control.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
You can't control the outcome of the election apart from voting. You can't control people's reactions and what's happening and any other number of things that might happen. But there are so many things that you can control, again, like voting, but also like launching a product, like getting out there and serving your clients, like being the parent that you want to be, showing up in this world as another day on the planet that you were gifted. I don't care if it's election day or not. You still have a responsibility to show up the way that you want to show up. Regard. Like, instead of being at the mercy of what's happening externally, it's like this shift from this external locus of control, which is basically like, I'm at the mercy of whatever is happening in the world versus the world's crazy. There are big things happening and I can sit down and ask myself, what am I in control of? So that kind of takes me to the next part of this, which is really getting into the importance of mental strength in uncertain times. I mean, Lord knows we've all been through our fair share of uncertain certain times in the past five years. Unprecedented times. We've all heard that turn of phrase over and over again. And the truth is we don't have that control. We don't control the results of the election. We don't, we don't control many external events yet even though we have zero control again, apart from our one vote that we get to cast, we for some, some of you who don't live here in the United States, that's not even something in your control.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
You're just kind of watching from the outside. Because of course it impacts, it has global impacts as well. I totally recognize that. But even still, you know, these, these, this reality that we can't control consumes an enormous amount of mental energy. And if you think about your mental energy as a finite resource, which it is, you only have so much mental energy. I know we all wish that it was just infinite, that we just had infinite mental energy, but we know that we don't. We know that we only have so much mental bandwidth before we're tired, before we're drained, exhausted, frustrated, need to lay down, need to eat a pint of ice cream.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
And so if you think about your mental energy as a currency, it's a really interesting way of thinking about it. You only have so much money in your bank account. What if you looked at your mental energy the same exact way? I'm not saying spend 0 of your mental energy on something like the election. Of course not. I want you to be informed to the degree that you feel appropriate for your own self. But think about if you had a hundred dollars in your bank account. Do you want to spend. And that hundred dollars has to go towards everything that takes mental energy in your life. Your business, your family, your friends, everything that matters to you, everything. And you got a hundred dollars. And it's like, what's the appropriate amount of that money, that mental energy that should go towards the election? Yes. Even on, on election day, are you going to give a hundred out of 100 to this election?
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
Or do you want to give like 15? Right. Do you want to cast your vote, watch the news in the evening? We'll all have Steve on. What's his. Steve. What's Steve on cnn.
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Co-host or Guest
Right.
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Steph Crowder
We're all going to be watching. But like, what's the appropriate amount of energy to expend on something that you ultimately have no control over? Because make no mistake, spending, overspending. Let's look at this as an overspending of your mental energy. Think about the way that robs the other places in your life where you have committed to showing up. So this brings us to you and your Clients, Right. As an entrepreneur, your ability to stay mentally strong directly affects your business and your clients. I know that if you listen to this podcast, you are a person who cares deeply about helping people. I hear that across the board from my listeners and from my clients. You care so much about the people who you're helping, and if you have expended all of that mental energy, what do you have left over to be of service to your clients? Again, maybe they need you more now than ever as well. So the truth is, the more focused and present you are, again, not head in the sand. Okay, I want to be really clear. The more focused and present you are, the better you can serve your clients and grow your business, regardless of external circumstances. So anything can be happening out there in the world, and it's not that you're unaffected. I'm not asking you to be a robot, but I am asking you to dole out those mental energy dollars with the utmost care. And just remembering that, like, I think that's an interesting thought, that in a moment, if it is a difficult moment in the world, if it happens to be a negative moment, a scary moment, we actually have an opportunity. If you're someone who's, you know, in a position to do so. Kind of like me with Hurricane Milton, right? I was in a position to create more positivity. I didn't live in Florida. I wasn't having to prep for a hurricane. I could take my mental energy and go out and create more good in the world versus allowing my energy stores to just be zapped by consumption and overconsumption and over worrying. I was literally awake in the night worrying, as though something was going to happen in my house, right? And it's like, what are the downstream impacts of the world around us? If you're somebody who gets swept away by something, like world events, it's because you care about the world around you, right? And so I'm here to say, if you care about the world around you, I think it's important to take a step back and say, how can I help this world? What gifts do I have? And it's my obligation to double, triple down on what this world needs from me versus not being able to give my gift because of that swept away sort of feeling. So let's get into a few strategies, a few specific strategies I have for you about how. So, like, I know it sounds great, but how do we stay mentally strong and avoid getting swept away? I think the first thing is setting boundaries. You know, we. We know that boundaries can be the Just the most useful thing across the board in our lives. So what would it look like to set boundaries for consuming news and social media through the election? Again, this goes back to our mental energy dollars. How do you want to spend them? Let's decide in advance. It's like a budget. Put yourself on a budget. Don't walk into the mall with your money and just blow it all. As you know, again, these platforms, social media and the news are designed to get you to spend your time and attention. So how do you want to flip the script and be intentional? So I think that that looks like what I'm planning on doing is creating intentional time blocks in my calendar and in my day for checking the news and looking at any social media I want to look at. If you have reporters on social media that you enjoy following, include those, you know, include your time on TikTok or Instagram or wherever you hang out. So an example of this might be setting a timer, right? Setting a timer on your phone. If you're going to, um, if you're going to go on TikTok on election day or around the election, set a timer for yourself. Otherwise it's gonna be two hours before you know it and there's gonna be just more and more and more to consume. So for me, as I'm thinking back of like how I showed up with the Hurricane Milton situation, it's not that I think I should have just not paid attention. I had again, I had these, these creators on TikTok that I was like, really wanted to know that they were okay. And I'm not making myself wrong for that, but I think I could have set a. And actually I did end up doing this because I, I realized I was making myself so sick. I started just like intentionally deciding, okay, I'm going to go on and check on the people and then I'm going to log off, I'm going to see, make sure they made it through the night and then I'm getting off of this for the day. Like I'm moving on with my day, right? So isolating like what's actually important to you with intention versus just again, allowing it to take over all of your day and even all of your week, right? And having it become like this just huge cloud that's following you all week long. So for this upcoming election, if, again, if it's something that feels relevant to you, I would really encourage you to intentionally limit your exposure to the news, to social media during your critical work hours. For my clients, you guys know, across both my programs, we're working on our money making activities. Your MMAs, you should be doing them first thing in the day. Even on election day, I want you doing your money making activities. It's not an excuse to not do your work. It's not an excuse to put it off. Because guess what? If you don't have the clients that you want to have, that problem is still going to be there no matter who the president is. And you've got to be working on that. So when you need to be focusing on your high priority tasks, I want you doling out your mental energy to those tasks in the time that you've allotted to them. And then you can give yourself a break to go see what Steve is saying on cnn. That's perfectly fine, but do it with intention. So that was the first idea, is setting boundaries. The second thing is focusing. Again, we talked a little bit about this, but just to really hammer at home, focus on what you can control. I want you to really think about things that are in your control and start to shift your energy so that you avoid feeling powerless through if this, if this election is feeling activating for you, if it's feeling emotional. And that could be happening for any number of very valid reasons. I think what can help you go from powerless to feeling like you have some control is to focus on what those things are. Because the truth of the matter is, no matter who the next president is, you are not powerless. I promise you, you are not powerless.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
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Steph Crowder
You can still control your business activities, your client interactions, your personal growth, your fitness habit, hugging your kids, doing a craft with them. There's so many things that you control, even when it feels like your life and the world around you is happening so far out of your control. So staying focused and if we think about business right, like staying the course on your next launch, staying the course on your next client project is so much more productive than worrying. We never got anywhere by worrying. And so really coming back to what are the activities in your business that you can delve into, dive into. And again, it could be things in your personal life too, things that bring you joy. But bringing that control back to front and center will help you go from powerlessness to feeling like you do have some autonomy in your life, because I promise that you do. I'm telling myself that as well. The third thing is I want you to think about how to stay grounded. We hear this advice all the time and we skip over it because it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, grounding, go touch some grass, right? But really, what we need, if we think about my, my sort of visual that I have in my head of like being tossed around, emotionally tossed around by something like an election. How do you avoid being tossed around? You need to be anchored, you need to be tied down. Okay, so how do you want to do that? It's different from every. It's different for everybody. But, you know, before diving into the day, maybe especially on election day, what can you do for yourself that will make you feel tied down? It's probably variation of gratitude. I mean gratitude, y'all. Being grateful for all of the things in your life that are untouchable, regardless of who the president is will immediately bring more peace and calm. You know, for me, I know I share a lot on my social media and here on this podcast, that moving my body, picking up heavy weights is a big part of how I feel grounded. I have to feel that resistance. I have to put my body through hard things in order to show myself that I'm strong. And so for me, on election day, my kids will actually be home and a lot of you may have that circumstance as well. I'm going to be still going to my early morning gym class, getting it in regardless of what's going on around me so that I can have that grounding again. It's not an excuse to abandon all of my self care. I notice that when we're extra worried and anxious, a lot, lot of us, like a lot of the grounding practices just go out the window and it becomes a bit of panic. And so to avoid that, we have to ask ourselves, what's one thing I can do? I'd love for you to choose something for the entire election week leading up to it and then after. What's one thing you can do to center yourself before you dive into your day? Could be as simple as sitting with your journal with a coffee. Could be a morning workout like me. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it's something with your children or your spouse or whatever. Walking your dog, dog, playing with your dog. Think of something that makes you feel centered and I want you to rigorously, vigorously commit to that practice for the upcoming couple of weeks. Okay? Huge importance of huge importance. Now this next one. Number four. My fourth idea for you is maybe my favorite. I really like this one. I find it to be the most settling and that is cultivate a long game mindset. Cultivate a long game mindset. I want you to focus on your long term goals and visions. I want you to focus on your mission here in this world. I want you to focus on what matters in your life. And I want you to be reminded by the fact that all of that stuff is not going to be impacted by one election cycle. One world event, right? All of your business dreams and your bigger. Your mission on this planet is bigger than one election. Okay? It's bigger than one storm. It's bigger than one unsettling world event. And I know this can be really, really tough, but the bigger picture is huge, and we have so much evidence of this. Like, I know being an entrepreneur through the pandemic, for example, was really terrifying. We were all like, those of us who were in businesses at time were, like, scrambling. We were like, what is gonna happen? Are we gonna. Or is anybody gonna have any money to spend anymore? Is the economy in a crash? Like, so many unanswered questions. But what really helped in that time was to focus on the bigger picture, on how, like, I am committed to helping my business thrive in the long run. We will get through, you know, any individual event. Like, having the thought there's not one individual event that's going to derail my whole business. It's just not something that I'm going to allow to happen. So regardless of external noise, your business is going to outrun and outlive any one individual circumstance, any one individual pandemic election, you name it, natural disaster. Your business is, you know, going the distance. And so if you have that long game mindset, if you're scared of, like, gosh, I'm supposed to be launching, but there's this election. Oh, my goodness. I want you to have the mindset of, like, we'll get past this.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
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Steph Crowder
We'll get past this. I'm gonna play the long game in a couple months. It'll just be in the rearview mirror.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
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Steph Crowder
And it, like, these things just have a way of settling down and we adapt to the new normal and we think, oh, my God, it's gonna be terrible, or, or whatever the case may be, whether it's a happy outcome or not, what. However you feel about it, things come back to equilibrium and it actually happens relatively quickly. Like, for me, I'm gonna be starting to promote my next launch, which is going to be year on the wall. Yes. We're still doing it. And I'm going to start talking about it just a couple days. I'm going to give it the election, like two days, and then we're going to get into it.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
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Steph Crowder
So just playing that long game mindset that, you know, no matter how noisy the week gets, it's not going to be enough to take my business down. My business is longer, stronger and has deeper roots than any one individual event. Even though in the moment it can just feel so huge and scary. Okay, my fifth idea for you is, and this kind of goes hand in hand with what I just discussed, which, which is really just connecting with your why.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
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Steph Crowder
Connecting again with your mission. So just reconnecting to the deeper reasons you started your business can really help keep you focused. So for me, when I think about my clients who still need to grow a business, regardless of who the president is, still want to quit their job, regardless of who the president is, they still have amazing work to do in this world and they aren't getting the clients they want and need. That does not change regardless of who is in charge of the country. Okay? And so when I connect to that, it reminds me of where my true place is and what my responsibility is. And I have the thought, I can't afford to be overly distracted because they need me in the same way that my kids need me.
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Co-host or Guest
Right?
- [34:34]
Steph Crowder
Like I can't afford to be the overly distracted mom. My kids still have to get up and have their food and go to school and do the sports and I'm going to be here for them. That's my why. So regardless of what's happening, just remembering the importance of what you bring to the table. And then the last strategy I really wanted to share here is surrounding yourself with, with focused, positive influences. So this to me is about being intentional about your environment and who you interact with, both online and offline. So, you know, thinking about people, you might have people you love, you love them so much, but they're getting swept up, they're in the quicksand, okay? And sometimes you just can't pull a friend out of the quicksand, and that is okay. But you don't need to get in with them, okay? You don't need to get in with them. If you have a family member, you know, aunt or uncle, or you know, somebody at your gym who you just know is like really overly consumed by this particular event, again, in a way that's not useful, okay? Again, maybe they're doling out a hundred out of their hundred dollars of mental energy, it's okay to create a little bit of very short term distance between you and that person. It's okay to allow yourself to gravitate towards people, environments, experiences that make you feel really good right now. It doesn't mean you don't love them. It doesn't mean that you're mean, it just means that you are. I want you thinking about kind of protecting your energy, and I want you thinking about energy through osmosis, okay? At a time like this, like, it really is true that especially in, you know, really any time, but maybe even more so in a time like this, it's like, what is that expression that you are the sort of aggregate of the five people you spend the most time with. Think about that energetically. If you are surrounded and immersed in. In conversations with people who are just hand wringing and the apocalyptic thinking and oh my gosh, like, all is lost, like, that's it. So horrible. You're gonna feel horrible, okay? That just is what it is. And you're an adult. You can hang out with whoever you want. But just don't be surprised when you then feel horrible also, okay? So make your decision wisely about where you want to plug in. If there's accounts online, on social media right now that are bringing up those feelings of like, dread and just, wow, man. Every time that person posts, read something terrible and it's making me feel awful, it's okay to mute that person for a little bit. Doesn't even have to be forever, right? I. I can think of people like this that I care for that are really posting and posting and posting to the point where, again, it's not even informative. It's just. It's just overkill at this point. I've muted those people, okay? And I'm not gonna tell you who they are, but I can tell you that I just have to protect my energy because I need my energetic space to be as high and clear and vibing as possible for me again, to come through on my commitments and do my work in the world. So surround yourself with positivity. You know, again, it's not about toxic positivity. I always feel like I need to say that, but it's about asking yourself, like, what would it look like to ruthlessly commit to feeling good? Because no president can take away your ability to make yourself feel good. It's so funny because I'll share a little personal story with you all. My son, My son listens to the Snoop Dogg affirmation song at school. Do you all know this song? I don't know. Maybe people with. Without toddlers don't know this song, but Snoop Dogg, God love him. Snoop Dogg has an affirmation song. And it actually, it goes real hard. I love this affirmation song. You can find it on Spotify. And one of the things my son, he's Always repeating it. He's like my feelings matter. And he's like always saying my family loves me so much. And one of the things that comes up in this song is I control my own happiness. And I love hearing my 5 year old walk around saying I control my own happiness. And it's like it's true, it's true. And so I want to leave you with that thought that regardless of what's going on around you, again, this could apply to so many things we just happen to be coming into election. So I really wanted to touch on this because I how it's going to come up for a lot of us. But I just want to remind you, you have options, you have choices, you can control what you can control. And what I would really love for all of you to do is remember to take just a few moments to ask yourself, what kind of boundaries do I want to have around this event? How can I focus on what I can control and what am I going to do to stay connected to my long term goals and my why? And so if you can even just identify one strategy that you can implement in the coming week or two to stay mentally strong during the election season. Again, this could be setting the news boundaries, creating a grounding routine, reconnecting with your why, any number of those things or any combination of those things. I think if you can take that one piece away from listening to this episode, you are going to feel less tossed around and honestly, you'll have less picking up of the pieces to do after the election blows through. If we think of it as like a tornado that's come into town, I want you to be prepped. It's like, it's kind of funny. We talk about Hurricane Milton, right? Think of it as like storm prep, like a storm is coming. How do you want to prepare? Are you just going to stand outside in the field and let the storm take you? Because that's what a lot of us are doing. Myself, I hey, I gave you an example of how I've done that. How do you want to prep? What does it look like to anchor down things that might blow away so that when this storm passes, and I promise you it will pass just like every other storm before it, you have less cleanup to do. You don't want to spend a week or two weeks after the election being in an energetic hangover, having to do deep cleanup. And when it's two more weeks that you could have been launching, selling, helping clients and deepening your impact in the world. Okay, my friends, I hope this has been helpful. If you enjoyed this episode, please stop by on Instagram. You can DM me at hey, Steph Crowder. It's a little bit of a different episode than what I typically do, so I would love to hear if it was helpful. You could also reply to any of our emails, tell us what you thought. I'd love to hear what you think. And my friends in the good old US Of A. Again, I'm going to ask you to vote. Just get out there, get it done. And in the meantime, I am wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love. See you next time.