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Momentum call
Speaker 1
00:01Hi. Okay,
Jessica Abel
00:05let me get my own recording started in just a second. Here. Elizabeth wrote on the platform that she can't be here today, so probably this is our group. We'll see if garima comes today.
Speaker 1
00:20I we
Jessica Abel
00:24have two other members who are not often here. So Lori, hi, if you're watching this, uh, cos, hello.
Unknown Speaker
00:33Um, okay, let's, oh,
Jessica Abel
00:37I didn't record that, so they didn't even see my Hello. But anyway, there are two other numbers, okay,
Jessica Abel
00:49all right, so this is our implementation session on the reflect phase, and we are here getting started on November 19. Okay, so my plan for today is to go over my notes on the reflect phase of the query to focus workshop. I'm also open to, you know, any questions or things that have come up this week that anybody wants to get into. So I will just get started with my plan, but feel free to, you know, make sure that we get to whatever it is that you want to cover today. So the big overview that I want to bring today is that the reflect phase is really the initiation of the entire creative engine cycle,
Unknown Speaker
01:52and
Jessica Abel
01:54what you've learned and what's been blocking you, what's going on a deeper level, and then also, when you're doing this sort of strategic planning, and you're thinking about like, how do I take what I learned before and turn it into something the next thing? Also, what was it did I get curious about in the past? So what my next projects might be? What are the next things I want to get involved in? All of those things come out of reflection of one form or another. And I think the thing that I have come to over the years working on this system is getting that more explicit and more structured, more systematic is of great benefit, because a lot of times otherwise we forget. We forget to do it. We forget to spend any time really thinking about what, like, what literally happened? You know, one of the things I do with my quarterly reviews, I spend a bunch of time going through my logs and things
Regina Anaejionu
02:51being a timeline,
Jessica Abel
02:56what happened this quarter? Like, what you know? What did my kids do? You know, what did I make at the pottery studio? Like, what like, what did I do? You know, what happened? And even that level of paying attention to my life really helps me think about stuff. And because I've been doing this for a number of years, I can go back and see what happened a year ago. And a lot of times I see seasonal similarities, that certain things happen in certain kinds of ways throughout the year, where I see long arcs of my life, and like, oh, that's why I felt that way for this amount of time. Because, like, I've been trying to do these kinds of projects and trying to push these kinds of things through. Next implementation session in two weeks is going to be quarterly review. I'm not necessarily quarterly planning, because they're already basically in a plan. Like you will talk about what it is like, how to look at it, but basically, I'm just going to ask everybody to do a sort of two month Quarterly Review, and kind of look back on what's been happening last couple months and, like, timeline, literally, like what's happened. And so I'll give you that set of questions, it's all in the quarterly review, deeper dive and and ask you to do that, but that's, you know, it's part of this review process, this reflection process, and is where we are asked. We ask ourselves to be the most Zen and detached from results, the most kind of like giving ourselves that you know strategic distance. You know, however you want to look at it, but but getting out of that moment to moment and day to day. So the main chunks in this unit, in the reflect unit, are talking about
Jessica Abel
05:07which I used to place earlier in the course, because it comes up immediately, obviously, but it is a reflective practice, you know, to think about like, how do I deal with this? And what you know, what is it? And so I ended up deciding to put it here. And then we go through various kinds of review, weekly review, quarterly review, and then talking about the ways to keep everything going, ways to make sure things stay, you know, sort of on track. I think I was talking, I'm trying to remember where I was talking about this. I think last week, when I did the ACC all ACC coaching call, I was talking about reflection. Because some people were asking about, because a bunch of CFW members who came in in the first cohort are rolling off now, if they don't, you know, re enroll. And so they were asking, like, how do we keep going? And I was like, really talking a bunch about the reflect phase, so that recording is in the, you know, ACC coaching call, you know, feed, if you want to check that out, there were some really good things that came out of that I felt where, you know, talking about that the value of reflection and how to make it minimal enough to make it really doable, so it doesn't have to feel like this big burden. You know, my quarterly review process is ridiculous, and I don't even like it like it's so long, but I keep needing it, and so I keep make doing it, but it takes forever. And anyway, so I very much see the value of coming up with a sort of minimal version of this that's just going to do what you need it to do any thoughts so far?
Speaker 2
06:50Yeah, are there? So I'm hearing that value of the quarterly review, and then doing this over years to see the seasonal, whatever the aggregated data. Data are there, like, micro,
Unknown Speaker
07:09our stream throughout, okay,
Jessica Abel
07:12yeah. I mean, that's what the top threes are. You know, that's what the shutdown routine is. That's like, I look at it and that's in the that module. When I talk about the reflection process, that the top threes is a daily reflection and just kind of a moment, and really can be just like three minutes, you know, does not need to be a big long deal, but like, what's going on tomorrow? What are my top priorities? What do I need to take off from my my pile tomorrow, so that I can, you know, be present with things that need to be there. And then there's a weekly review. And the weekly review, I find to be the most useful rhythm for checking in with larger projects and connecting the larger project with the daily work and the daily, you know, practices that you're checking in often enough that you can coursework get too weird, but you're not, do you're not looking at that on a daily basis where it can get kind of overwhelming. So it's like, you know, a weekly review is, is that for me, and again, my process, I do not recommend because it takes too long, but I do enjoy it, but it more than the quarterly review. But basically, I do a lot of blogging. Like, I have logs for my business, my children, my mom, you know, like a couple different things that I'm trying to track. And when I have a live book project of some kind, I will have a log about that, you know. So, like, I'm and I log every week. Like, I go in, I don't necessarily log if I don't have anything to say, but, like, it's on the list to, like, check in on this. That's what takes the most time, is doing that, but having some kind of weekly review. And I know, you know, Jess, you've been doing this with the do you go to the group thing, or you just do it on your own? Do you go on Sunday to the meeting? Oh, no, no, I've
Jessica Mehring
09:05just been replying to the thread.
Jessica Abel
09:13There's a nice little Sunday group. They meet and do this. And then there's the you know, you can just do it asynchronously, but like that, practice of just kind of checking in on stuff, I think is really valuable. And then there's the quarterly level, and you can do monthly too, if you want. But like, I feel like quarterly is fine, like it means it's more work because you haven't been doing it monthly, but it's if you've been checking in weekly, mostly you know you have what you need to get something really valuable out of the quarterly reflection. So, yes, it isn't on all different levels. Like, I think having that constant sort of ability to, you know, pull yourself out of the day to day, have a moment to think, make some decisions, make some judgments about like, what's important and is really important.
Jessica Mehring
10:03Can I ask you what you're talking about logging? What system do you use for that? And I'm curious, because I literally
Jessica Abel
10:13it's like a notion page, and I there are situations in which I have a more complex system, if I have to track, like, a lot of little individual stuff, like my pots, like, is it in greenware? Like, has it been bisque? Now, does it need to be, you know, like, I have to track all these little steps, but mostly I don't need that. So what I do is I have a backwards chronological order document now notion, and I think this is probably true of some other things too, like it wants to load everything that's visible, and so one of the things that trick with notion is I put previous years in toggles so it doesn't load them all. Because once it gets, like, a super long list, it's really hard, it doesn't load it, you know. But the Yeah, so every week, it's like, assuming there's anything to log, anything to say, I'll use the date and again in notion, I go like at today, and
Jessica Abel
11:16an h3 header so that it's visible in the nav. You can see it in navigation, and then just write a couple sentences about what happened with my business log. Frequently. I also do this other practice that I learned from and I'm not trying to overwhelm you guys, like you don't have to do what I'm doing. Like it just these are just things I do. And if it's interesting to you, you know, take what's actually
Jessica Mehring
11:41be simpler than what I'm doing. So please go okay, hoping I like pick up some some simplicity tips from you.
Jessica Abel
11:49So with my business blogging on a daily basis, I do a thing that I learned from Michelle Warner, which is three good things, three challenging things, and three thoughts about those things. And sometimes it's hard to come up with three of and, you know, in any of those categories, but I try to come up with three.
Jessica Abel
12:19And then at the end of the week, I do a weekly one, and at the end of the month, I do a monthly one, and then I do quarterly and so, like, there's layers of them. And for that, I'm using a notion table where I should have different visibility and stuff, which I'm happy to share with you if you want. But I do that. And then, like, so if, for when I do the weekly one, I'm looking at the five days of the week, and I say, what are my big takeaways from the week? What were the good things that happened? What were the challenges? And what are my thoughts about this? And sometimes I'll do more than three at that point, like, I'm not going to limit myself to three if there's more things I want to remember about the week. And those things frequently, I take those directly into my weekly log for the business, I just copy them over there in more text form, and I can fill them in longer, like, write about them, you know, if I want to. But it's like, I'm when I implemented that Michelle Warner system, which was, like, I want to say 18 months ago, or something like that, at first I was kind of same thing. Basically, I'm saying the same stuff. And so I'm just going to copy this over there. And the reason I copy it is because then it's in this sort of, like, more scannable format. And I, when I'm doing quarterly reviews, I will go into my logs. One of the step steps is going to the logs, putting stuff into the timeline, and then also, like, highlighting stuff that's like, important, so I can scan through the document, go like, what happened, you know, and kind of like, work my way back through bold things, you know, add notes, whatever. So I sort of see, like, what's the arc of the activity for the quarter? And I'll do that too with, like, my kids and stuff, and think like, what are the big things that happened, you know, with my kids, some weeks are like, it was a great week. Things were fine. And sometimes it's like, oh my god, so much happened, you know. So it doesn't have to be the same every week at all. My new book, my new old book, Life. Like,
Jessica Abel
14:32and so I had that blog live forever where I was, like, trying to get this thing reprinted, trying to get, you know, talking to different publishing options, you know, figuring out, trying to get my agent to answer, trying to get somebody else to answer. So that was like, something I checked in on, and had nothing to say most weeks, but it like was there on my list. It is not retired. Thank goodness. Good.
Jessica Mehring
14:59Yeah, I use notion. I use notion too. And yeah, Abel, okay.
Jessica Abel
15:06I mean, you have a bigger team than I do, and so there's probably more things that need attention paid to them. But yeah,
Jessica Mehring
15:14I mean, so I have a daily journal. And notion actually got this idea from Marie pullin, and I've been doing it for years. So the database is massive and unwieldy, but I have property I track, and what I find is that I'm great about logging things on a daily basis, but then I never check back in. I don't do the weekly or the monthly, and then by the time it gets to quarterly, I'm like, I don't even know where to start.
Jessica Abel
15:45Yeah. I mean, I do that too, and originally from really ri, but then I've, like, altered it a lot. I've been doing something since like, 2019 so it's a lot, a lot of stuff in notion. I mean, the some of those properties are things I pay attention to on a weekly basis. Like, for example, I try to track when I start and when I stop in the day. Mostly, I'm trying to track when I stop so I don't work too much. Like, I'm trying to, like, you know, limit that. And so I have a table that I use for a weekly in my weekly review, which is a habit tracker. Essentially, it's like a, you know, things I'm trying to pay attention to under on the theory that when you pay attention to something, that's what happens, you know. And so I will track how many days in this week did I work longer than I intended to. How many did I end early, you know, and feel good about that, and then I don't really look at it that much afterwards, but, like, then I have a weekly, like, I've I came up with this way to make a table, this based on something Marie had built, but I've changed it a bunch that then, like, counts up and gives me a percentage, and by the end of the quarter, I have just a percentage. It's like, I hit my target in terms of not overworking. You know, 85% of the time that's not enough, or it's enough, or whatever. Like, I changed my target at one point because I was like, I'm never hitting 100% on this. And so I lowered the like, my goal, and I'm like, trying to hit 100% on my lower goal. You know what I mean, like that. But that was one of those things where I was like, Okay, I'm in a situation where
Regina Anaejionu
17:30this
Jessica Abel
17:43I said the goal is this, and I'm not hitting it over and over again, and I feel bad about that. So clearly, I need more flexibility here, like it's it's the system, it's not me. Yeah, you know, I do still want to aim towards this, but I need to make sure that I'm giving myself enough flexibility that I can be human about this. And some days I'm going to work late. You know. And maybe that's on purpose, and it's fine. And so I changed my target from like, five days a week to four days a week, you know. But so, yeah, I mean, you have like, a, like, a system set up so I can see, like, the days and whatever. But if you don't like I think what you're saying is true. If you don't look at these things on a regular basis, or you don't have some way to use a formula to sum them up for you, then they're not useful. And it's just too much data, too much stuff,
Jessica Mehring
18:38a lot of data. Yeah,
Jessica Abel
18:48yeah, and again, as I said, I'm happy to, you know, share, like, blank versions of these things with you, if you want me see if I can,
Jessica Mehring
18:59like, counting up the list of properties on my daily journal, and I think I'm at like 30 now,
Jessica Abel
19:04yeah, I deleted a lot of them for that reason. You know, like I had a bunch and I got rid of them because I didn't want to. I
Jessica Abel
19:22yeah, I didn't want to overwhelm myself. Yeah,
Jessica Mehring
19:27I always worry about losing data, so I just hide them. Yeah, they're still there
Jessica Abel
19:33well, and which is fine, I mean, but like, I again, I tried to what I did with some things with this is I like, took them out of one table. And I, like, I got the information out and something like a property on the table. It's like, you know, captured somewhere, but I can show you this looks like. So this is my daily for tomorrow, and you'll see it's the start time and stop time. Gratitude, wins and lows. These are things that I used for logging at the end of the week, or sometimes, like, you know, whatever. And then how am I feeling, emotionally? What I do with my kids? So I have, like, different activities, like to make sure I'm doing things and seeing them. Did I do anything fun? I don't use this one that much because I end up forgetting to use it there, and I just write a note. But I did something, whatever. And then relationships. So did I see so and so did I, you know, like seeing friends, my husband, my kids, I like pick, take a note so I can actually count like, how often I see people,
Jessica Abel
21:02books, 
TV, whatever this is, you know, exercise. I don't use this one very much, but I was using it a lot when I was having trouble sleeping. So I was like, noting that. So I put it there, and now I might hide it and not use it, I don't know, but, like, you know, menopausal stuff, I was like, well, then I got on HRT, and it's way better, so, so I stopped using it very much. And this is, like, basically my timeline. This is where I put in, you know, what's the what's going on in the day. And the other thing, little trick I use at M dash at the beginning of all of these texts. Text fields so that and let me see what I can share here in terms of my weekly i
+4
TV, whatever this is, you know, exercise. I don't use this one very much, but I was using it a lot when I was having trouble sleeping. So I was like, noting that. So I put it there, and now I might hide it and not use it, I don't know, but, like, you know, menopausal stuff, I was like, well, then I got on HRT, and it's way better, so, so I stopped using it very much. And this is, like, basically my timeline. This is where I put in, you know, what's the what's going on in the day. And the other thing, little trick I use at M dash at the beginning of all of these texts. Text fields so that and let me see what I can share here in terms of my weekly i 
Jessica Abel
22:03i 
do here is with my weekly I can I have a formula view of these that's programmed to find the M dashes and make a new line and like, basically, it rolls up everything here so I can see it at the end of the week. And then I can write a little overview of the week here, and that includes all my daily notes which are long. You know, those are long. And so this is less useful to me than like, this is when I'm writing my weekly overview. Then I have kind of, like, you know, bunch of, like, my top threes for the week, stuff that's fun, things that I'm thinking about adding in. I'll kind of organize my week here. Like, when I have stuff in here, I'll be like, I'll drag it in here and then put it into my daily. But this is a way of, kind of, like, getting an overview and then the daily I be
+3
do here is with my weekly I can I have a formula view of these that's programmed to find the M dashes and make a new line and like, basically, it rolls up everything here so I can see it at the end of the week. And then I can write a little overview of the week here, and that includes all my daily notes which are long. You know, those are long. And so this is less useful to me than like, this is when I'm writing my weekly overview. Then I have kind of, like, you know, bunch of, like, my top threes for the week, stuff that's fun, things that I'm thinking about adding in. I'll kind of organize my week here. Like, when I have stuff in here, I'll be like, I'll drag it in here and then put it into my daily. But this is a way of, kind of, like, getting an overview and then the daily I be 
Jessica Abel
23:10done. They have like, you know, I worked late last night, and then, like, what did I do with my family and like, these are the three main factors and stuff I have a an upcoming tasks view down here. And these can, these can all toggle shut, you know, so I don't need to look at them all the time. This is my hiding stuff that I might want to do in the future. But this is a synced block so I can, when I make changes, it shows up on all of my weekly abused, and then, with my goals, check in the habit tracker looks like this. So I have a line that's the percentage of the tracker, like, percentage of the quarter. Like, how many weeks are left of the quarter? And in this quarter, because of the holidays, it's like, it's shorter. Normally it's 13 weeks. But then how many? You know, what percentage
Regina Anaejionu
24:06at here and
Jessica Abel
24:13kids volunteering shut down and not drinking, you know, like days not drinking, right? So that's what I'm tracking right now. And before, I was tracking stuff like doing exercise, going outside. But once that became enough of a habit, I took it off there, and I ri I make a new one every quarter. I don't keep the same one and run it. I like duplicate it and change it. So I'm not like running this ongoing, but I have the old ones, like, saved on another page somewhere if I need to find them. But at the end of the quarter, I'll like, note down the percentages and put that in a sort of text overview that I can see quickly. So I'm constantly having to go back into the weeds and this thing, it's like this kind of and I guess this gets back to what we were saying in terms of, like, review and how to like manage all this data. I collect a lot of data. Not everybody needs this. I don't necessarily recommend what I just showed you to most people,
Unknown Speaker
25:09but
Jessica Abel
25:25pulling the data up to higher levels so that you're able to make use of it. Because if you're constantly looking and this is gets back to the very daily level, all of the tasks you have, all the tasks, if you can't get a grip on what they are and, like, what are they about? And why are they there? Then you can't use them because they're just, it just overwhelms your brain and sort of pull things up in a pyramid into like, here's the summary of the things. So the things that I recommend when we talk about quarterly review are all about summarizing stuff that's happened throughout the quarter in such a way that you can then draw some conclusions, like figure something out, use it for something. And so that's what I would say to you. Jess, in terms of your data, is like, how can you use roll ups, Formula fields, you know, other kinds of technical things to summarize your data on a usable basis, or
Regina Anaejionu
26:34whatever.
Jessica Mehring
26:35I have those in place. I don't look at them.
Jessica Abel
26:40Okay? Well, that's a different problem. That's a scheduling problem. Yeah,
Jessica Mehring
26:42I have it rolled up a week, and then I have the weeks rolled up to months, and then I just, I don't, yeah, I don't look at
Jessica Abel
26:50them. Well, when you're doing your weekly review this week, look at your week. Yeah, just look at those roll ups. You know, they they're there. So just take a look at them and say, like, well, what does this tell me? The way that the form that I've created is set up. It's very simple, and it does not require that level of attention. But I think for you, since you have those things, it would be wise for you to think like, Well, what do I want to do here a little bit differently to be able to, you know, why am I tracking this stuff? I think, asking yourself that question all the time, like, why am I tracking this thing? What's it for? If I'm not trying to do something with this factor, I don't need to try
Regina Anaejionu
27:35food and sleep. I'm
Jessica Abel
27:37not worried about my food and sleep. You know? I don't need to track my book that's finished, you know, like, I don't need like, I don't need that stuff. I need to be tracking what I need to work on. And so even if you've been tracking something for five years, if you don't need to work on it, take it off your list, you can always go back to it.
Jessica Mehring
27:59And I like the idea of just taking the data out and putting it somewhere else, yeah,
Jessica Abel
28:05yeah, yeah, export it somehow, you know, create that giant roll up, figure out what it tells you, and then take it, take it out. Thank you, yeah, sorry for that tech Deep Dive. You guys, I don't know if that's at all interesting to you, but
Jennifer Catalano
28:25Can I jump in quickly? Yeah, I loved it, and I've really not used notion. I've like played around with it for very short period the time, where and
Jennifer Catalano
28:49I have a recommendation as to where to start, or like Marie Pula, how difficult is it to build something like we
Jessica Abel
28:57showed us? The loves that, and I'd love to dive into it, but also it feels a little daunting, so I'm curious. Notion mastery is the course that we both have used in her. She has a lot of YouTube videos and things to check them out see if you like her, but she's great her course, like I've was using notion before I met her, like when I met her, and so it wasn't, I didn't learn initially from her, but I learned a bunch of things from her that I used and then, like, she's actually developed so much more structure around how to learn it than I had. You know what I mean? I kind of, like, I'm, like, half self taught stuff's kind of a mess, whatever. But if you go into her thing, she has levels like she her course is really leveled, where it's like, go in and use level
Jessica Abel
29:57two, and it's all integrated, and they have, you know, coaching calls To support and stuff. It's a really good course, really high quality, and it's called notion mastery, okay? And Marie is a wonderful person, like, she's just a really great, like, personality and, like, just such a warm presence, you know, she's really, really great. All right? So let's back to the chapter, the or the the unit. The other thing I wanted to make sure I talk about a little bit is, should monster, which is the word that we came up with for the inner critic in the creative focus workshop way back in the day, which has, interestingly, has not come up a ton here. I think that's fascinating, but it's definitely something that many people struggle with a lot. And the thing that I have sort of started like I moved toward the last few years, is this idea of triage, that inner dialog.
Jessica Abel
31:02You your brain tells you into categories. Because one of the things that I've realized is that a lot of the things that we say, oh, I should, I should, I should, that are really painful and like, kind of constant, this kind of mattering, not like the really mean stuff, but the kind of constant nattering stuff is actually a capacity issue. It's not, you know, like trauma or something. It's like, I mean, it all can be related to trauma, obviously. But like, the the that it's like, these are things that you kind of want out of your life. Like, one of the things I early on, when I taught about the should monster, people were like, well, what if these shoulds are actually good things, like, I should write my novel, you know, I should get in shape, you know, stuff that you really kind of should do, like, that's, those are good things. And I was like, I don't really know what to do with that. And so one of my clients came up with this idea of, like, dividing it into shoulds, want tos and wills.
Regina Anaejionu
31:58And from
Jessica Abel
32:08what is different about these things, and that's how I started identifying that these are like projects and or habits practices that we have not committed to, just like any other project. We've not committed to, just like open loops, just like, you know, idea debt, that's what it is. And sometimes those are things that come from what other people tell us we should do. So I should be vegetarian. You know, do you care about being vegetarian? Like, maybe in theory, but not in practice? You know? Like, that's one of those things that, like, there's a lot of reasons why we should do that. All of us should do that, but we also don't, you know, for reasons and for non reasons, and whatever you know. But it's like, there's a lot of the things that come from outside that we get that we need to assess.
Jessica Abel
33:13How important is that to me, personally, to my family, to my future, to what I want out of my life? Is it important enough to commit my energy to implementing that thing, and if it's not, it's not a should, it's just an option. It's a thing I could do more it could than it should, right? And so demoting that so that you don't like Think it over and over again as you go through your day and making a clear decision is really helpful. So, like, my big example in my own life is exercise, because for many years, I optimized the crap out of my life to the point where I had no time for anything. Like I did, like it was wall to wall. I had, like, three jobs, two kids, like, all the stuff, right? And it wasn't super healthy or great, but it was what I was doing. And I felt like it was necessary. I felt like I had to do that, and I had no room for going to gym. Like the idea of leaving for like, an hour and a half and going off and doing something that wasn't work related was like insane. Like there was no way that was going to happen. And so I didn't. And for so long, I was like, I should exercise. I should exercise, but there was no container for that. There was no like, well, what would I do if I were to exercise? What would that look like and not like? I'd never done it before in my life, but in that period of my life, I wasn't doing it. I was like, I don't I honestly have no idea. And so it took a really long time, and I mean, years, for me to figure out first, like, and this is in Philadelphia, like, I had other things, I did other places, but like, getting here in 2016 then I was like, Okay, I will need to have find a gym, and the gym is going to have to be like, within easy walking distance. I can't get in a car and go someplace. I can't get on a bus and go someplace I will never do. I need to
Jessica Abel
35:16just fall there, fall in, you know, and and so I looked at the options, and I was like, Okay, here's one that's like, on my route between here and school when I was teaching, and then I had to find out their schedule, and then I had to block it like, I had to talk to Matt and be like, I'm not going to be home for dinner at 456, I'll be home at seven on these nights, because I have to go to this class, you know, and block all that stuff in. And then I had started doing that and all these things, right? And then COVID And so whole other thing. But anyway, the the point is, it took me two or three years to get to the point where I was like exercising two to three times a week. You know, it took a lot of work for me to create the capacity to carve out that capacity and and commit to devoting it to exercise, as opposed to anything else I could do, and so that the exercises that I
Jessica Abel
36:27I start with cataloging your shoulds listening to that inner dialog and writing it all down. And once you that can be painful, and I acknowledge that, but like, once you do that, you can go, first of all, there are things that have internal contradictions between them. And the example there is Susan holdings list, her real list. This is what she actually wrote, which were like, I should get a great job, and, you know, get a great apartment, because you know that that would be great for me and my my family, or I should leave the city and live in a cabin, and doesn't matter how much it sucks for my family. Like two things that are completely against each other and don't like they don't you can only have one or the other. You can't have both, right? That's a dilemma, because there are positive and negative things that come with each choice. And the fact is, she has not had, not at that moment, made an actual decision about this. She just had these the matter, right? Like, I should do this. I should do that. So you can look at this list, you can say two things, I need to set aside some time to think about how I feel about those things and whether either of those is a good option, or whether I care, or do I want to do something else. Like, that's a decision to make. Then there are these other things that are like options, things I know could be a good idea. Somebody thinks they're a good idea. Maybe I do. Maybe it's somebody else. How much do I care about those things? How much capacity do I have for those things? That's a list you can make, and you can add it to your green room and be like, Okay, let me consider this every quarter. Like, will I take one of these things on just separate it out, and you're left with the hard ones, you know, the ones that really are irrational, and usually come out of some kind of big T or small t trauma, you know, where somebody has been mean to you about something, you have had a bad experience and or you've seen somebody had that to have a bad experience, even brain put like a shunt in place to prevent you from getting there and from from experiencing that problem. And after a while, that shunt becomes more painful than the thing itself, because you grow up and you're capable of handling these things, but your brain still has this, like, automated, like, Nope, you know, and it's often very mean about that. It's like, you know, trying to force you to stay away from this dangerous place, scare you into staying away from this dangerous place. That's very difficult and is in some ways beyond the scope of what I mean. I can, we can talk about it, and I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm not a therapist, you know? I don't have the real tools to resolve those core issues, but simply acknowledging that this is something that your your brain and your body is doing to protect you and being grateful for that
Jessica Abel
39:32change your the polarity of how this feels, where, instead of being angry and upset and and hurt, say, like That's really interesting that my brain is trying to help me with this thing. I wonder what's going on there? Again, scientific detachment, curiosity, little bit of distance. I hear my brain screaming at me right now. Why is it doing that? What does it think is going to happen? That's going to be bad. Why did that? You know what? Like, the where it came from, piece is something that where the emotional support needs to come in and, like, you know, loved ones, therapists, whatever, to kind of work through whatever that source is, but at a functional and tactical level, I think, simply acknowledging that and saying, like, okay, that's real. That really happened, and that was painful, I'm going to be really kind to myself now and kindly guide myself through this situation, because I know I'm capable
Regina Anaejionu
40:27of doing things.
Regina Anaejionu
40:35I know I can do it.
Jessica Abel
40:47I'm going to comfort that part of myself that is afraid and I'm going to get
Unknown Speaker
40:54through it. I don't want
Jessica Abel
40:55to oversimplify. I don't want to make this sound like something that is that easy, right? It's not easy, but I think that there are there, there we can make steps towards having a better relationship with that protective voice and really just starting with understanding that it is trying to protect you, not very nice, but it's trying to protect you. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
41:28any thoughts about that.
Jessica Mehring
41:33I had honestly never thought about writing down all the shoulds. It's a really healthy idea.
Jessica Abel
41:49Yeah, give yourself some, you know, a safe place to do it, you know. So if you start having a lot of feelings about it like that, you have support, because it's not fun, but it is, I think, yeah, it is a very valuable thing to do. And that part of the activity, too, is then making an image of it, or creating a, you know, an artistic representation of subcon way of giving you a little distance on it, giving like, what is this thing, and giving you that space can be helpful.
Speaker 2
42:21Yeah, I would, I would just chime in and say that there's a bunch of modalities that really support that, you know, internal family systems, polarity therapy. I mean, there's many, and the main features are making space for and then appreciating like, acknowledging, like, awareness, acknowledgement and then appreciation, because then
Unknown Speaker
42:47it gives it some space
Jessica Abel
42:51to, yeah, the internal family systems have come up any number of times in coaching calls. I've never really looked into it, but like, it's, it's clearly
Speaker 2
42:59amazing. It's the best. It's literally the best. And I
Jessica Abel
43:03think that, I think it's interesting that I've come to this system basically independently of any of that, and other people come up with other systems independently, each of them coming up with their own approach to essentially the same, the same basic understanding. And again, as I'm not a trained therapist, I haven't trained in any of these other modalities, but I do think that they there. I mean, there clearly are several that are, like, really significantly helpful with this stuff. Okay, so the final thing about the in the in the modules is this idea of how to keep going and how to like implement this into your life, how to implement this, the CFW creative engine kind of writ large.
Jessica Abel
43:55Think the biggest thing about it is this idea of recognizing that it's a cycle and that each thing feeds the next thing, and really implementing this idea of giving yourself pauses to reflect and get distance so that you can because really, like I set it up like it's reflected, then it's collect, then it's decide. But of course, there's reflection that happens at each little moment, and you need reflection in order to decide, you know, you need reflection in order to act like there's it's throughout the whole that that that objectivity and scientific kind of point of view, this sort of experimental, let me try. Let's see what happens. And kind of looseness like that is really essential to the whole to the whole thing as well as, you know, going that, going along with, you know, self forgiveness and flexibility through it as well. Okay, so that's kind of what I have to say about. I
Jessica Abel
45:00I 
reflect phase. What I would recommend taking away from this is, again, like look at your daily shutdown routine, reflection process. If you don't have one, think about having one. Keep it as lightweight as it needs to be. And essentially, the essential parts are thinking about what is for sure going to happen tomorrow. It's on the calendar, and what are the things that I for sure really want to, you know, make sure that these things happen tomorrow. And how can I match those things up? And those things could be work things that can be family things, it can be personal care things, whatever it is. But like, what are the things that really need to go into that? And then highly recommend implementing some kind of weekly reflection on how the week go and like, how is this related to my larger strategic goals? You know, like looking at the road mapping every week and go, like, where am I on that is that happening? If it's not happening, maybe I should put a task or two onto my days that move that along, instead of thinking like it would be great if that happened. You know, like you need to again, like, connect like, draw down from that higher level into your days in order for stuff to really happen. The lesson brief, today, I talked a lot about that. I talked about the idea of, like, how to create this kind of the layers of systems, and how do you connect the project level, the strategic level with the task level.
+1
reflect phase. What I would recommend taking away from this is, again, like look at your daily shutdown routine, reflection process. If you don't have one, think about having one. Keep it as lightweight as it needs to be. And essentially, the essential parts are thinking about what is for sure going to happen tomorrow. It's on the calendar, and what are the things that I for sure really want to, you know, make sure that these things happen tomorrow. And how can I match those things up? And those things could be work things that can be family things, it can be personal care things, whatever it is. But like, what are the things that really need to go into that? And then highly recommend implementing some kind of weekly reflection on how the week go and like, how is this related to my larger strategic goals? You know, like looking at the road mapping every week and go, like, where am I on that is that happening? If it's not happening, maybe I should put a task or two onto my days that move that along, instead of thinking like it would be great if that happened. You know, like you need to again, like, connect like, draw down from that higher level into your days in order for stuff to really happen. The lesson brief, today, I talked a lot about that. I talked about the idea of, like, how to create this kind of the layers of systems, and how do you connect the project level, the strategic level with the task level. Jessica Abel
46:48Any other thoughts or questions on the topic, and if not open open table for whatever we want to talk about. I
Unknown Speaker
47:15my
Jessica Mehring
47:17my lead magnet thing that I moved from the Google Sheet. Over to the Google Form. Yeah. I want to see how nobody else has anything to talk about. I can. I
Jessica Abel
47:26want to see, I want to find out, in general, like, how this whole project is going. Is it up on your site? Now? It's
Jessica Mehring
47:31not the next step. So my task for this week is to write the landing page and like, get that, get the landing page up,
Unknown Speaker
47:42pull it up here.
Jessica Mehring
47:46And actually, I need to add a step to have some folks test this out.
Unknown Speaker
47:57I would test it. I'm so curious about it, right?
Jessica Mehring
47:58If you Yeah, I will definitely share it for you guys to test. Share my screen.
Regina Anaejionu
48:11Move There we go.
Jessica Mehring
48:13Okay, so this is where it landed. I wish I could customize the colors a little bit more like give some background colors, but I kind of broke it down into steps, and I put the email field up here so people can get, you know, an email of their results, their Yeah, an email of what they put in here. Added a section for contact. So what broad topic idea do you want to play with? Who's the audience question that, yeah, is
Jessica Abel
48:47this, is this a lead magnet itself, or is it something that I get as a result of signing up for something, or is it just like free and open and
Jessica Mehring
48:56so my my thought is, this is going to be the lead magnet, so people have to give their email address in exchange for access to this school,
Jessica Abel
49:08right? So I was thinking like that intro up there makes sense. If it's gonna, it could get shared, I guess, to other people.
Jessica Mehring
49:17Yeah, and it might,
Jessica Abel
49:21but it's maybe getting people's minds in the wrong place at the moment. Okay, you know, you just say this is not for marketing. This is not a marketing list. This is just so you can get the responses back.
Jessica Mehring
49:34Oh yeah, I
Jessica Abel
49:35got you just, like, simplify it a little. Yeah. Okay, so
Jessica Mehring
49:38you're talking about like, step one here, yeah, okay, so maybe just take this off. Yeah, yeah. See, I wanted to be careful because of GDPR, I wanted to be careful about how I handled people. What was I thinking of doing here?
Jessica Abel
50:05Well, what I could what I'm saying, you could say here is like this. This is not, you're not getting added to a list with this. Say that, but like, you know, like purposes, but like, this is all, you know. I'm not collecting this, yeah, I'm collecting this in order to send it. Yeah. And you can also say, like, you cannot put it on here and use it live like that. That. The other thing is, like, if you don't want it mailed back to you, if you don't want to provide your email, just use the form and write down your answers, you
Jessica Mehring
50:36know. Okay, yeah, you're right. I think I was thinking of something different when I added this here, I wanted to be careful. I'm just super conscious of GDPR because I do have clients coming in from other countries.
Jessica Abel
50:48Oh no. It's important. I think it's important. It's just like, I don't want people's minds to go the wrong place when they show up here. And I think why you want email is good. You need to say that like, I'm not, you know, I'm not collecting these, like GDPR is like, I'm collecting this for what purpose I'm collecting this so that it can get mailed back to you. You also have the option of not giving your email, but then you will need to, like, screen.
Jessica Mehring
51:18That's a really good point. Yeah,
Regina Anaejionu
51:20yeah.
Jessica Mehring
51:24And I'm gonna, like, write more around this on the landing page, for sure, and then people will get follow up emails, you know, like, like, welcome sequence with a little more instruction.
Jessica Abel
51:36Yeah, you don't want it on here too much, because it's just, it's really unwieldy, yeah, yeah,
Jessica Mehring
51:41but yeah, that's really good point. Yeah. So that's where we start. And then, you know, just kind of giving some context to their thinking, and I acknowledge that these things may change, and that is fine, just we want to have our minds in a place when we begin, and then the next section is the angles, and just looking at the topic through different lenses and prompts, And I've got several in here that
Regina Anaejionu
52:17choose from. I
Jessica Mehring
52:29I answer as loosely, concisely, wordily, shabbily or enthusiastically as they like. So you're
Jessica Abel
52:37not using any conditionals in here.
Jessica Mehring
52:41No, because what I ended up doing for the ones where it was like a multi step, I just I broke it down into literal steps.
Jessica Abel
52:52I like it. I do feel like using some conditionals could make this do
Jessica Abel
53:12I feel less like less work. You know, if you have a drop down, which is like, What angle do you want to have? And then, like, the drop down we'll give you all the drop downs
Jessica Abel
53:30I write about that, you know.
Jessica Mehring
53:34Okay, so instead of listing out all of the angles as questions, basically, is what I've done here. It looks like you need to do them all, yeah. And if, yeah, so,
Jessica Abel
53:46you know, choose an angle, okay? That's, you know, choose a choose a lens, so that you can develop a new angle on this topic. And then you have a drop down, which is like, here are the things, okay? And, you know, I think you can also just make it visible, like you don't have to have it be a drop down. It can be like just a there's different styles, right? So you can have it, you have to see what will be most readable. And then maybe you have a short version of each of those. So it's like the you know, what does the audience believe? You know, what do I need to be solved? Like, short version, and then you have, like, a conditional field will pop up, which has a longer, like, more detailed description of how to think about it, yeah, but just for that one picture,
Jessica Mehring
54:48yeah. And I need to play with the conditional logic to see if, after they complete that, I can get another another drop down to pop up, where they can choose another lens. Because that, that was the great thing about air tables. I felt like air table gives me so much more control over the experience, but the data management just was not, not good. Yeah. I
Jessica Abel
55:14mean, I I think if you play around with this, you'll find that it's pretty similar, like what you can do with in terms of the visibility and stuff. I've done a bunch with these and they there's a lot of things you can do in terms of making it visible and not visible. But I also think the feeling of like, this is a little bit magic, is that it's a super short form, and you come away with, boom, done, out. I'm in and out. That's it. And so even the thing that you have at the bottom, which is like, here's another way to do it like that could be an option on your list, instead of having a whole section which is like, and now do this like, what you want is somebody to say, like, Okay, I need to come up with an idea. All right, here's the topic, and I'm gonna pick an angle, I'm gonna do the thing, submit, send it back to me. I'm writing so they're not having to, like, kind of assess all of these and think, like, oh, do I need to write them all and compare? Because that's kind of what it feels like here. Like, you can write them all, okay. Like, which one's better? Yeah. And then, you know, maybe there might be a way to, like, hit a button submit. And like, I think you can do a new and like, one of the things you can do when you submit is, like, having, like, another answer,
Jessica Mehring
56:35so you can start over, yeah, but then they're going to get multiple emails,
Jessica Abel
56:38yeah, because they're different ideas. Yeah, okay,
Jessica Mehring
56:41yeah, let me play around it. But I get like, each
Jessica Abel
56:44one is an idea. Like, each email is like, here's this concept, here's another concept.
Jessica Mehring
56:52Yeah, okay. I wonder if I could pre populate too. If say, you know, they they hit submit. Like, that's possible anyway. I will play around with it, because you're right. I like that idea. Just kind of,
Jessica Abel
57:09yeah, yeah. And then you can, you're kind of like, great, I did it instead of feeling like, Oh, but I didn't do the other ones. You know that sense of needing to complete everything is very powerful,
Jessica Mehring
57:22yeah, for sure, easy check box, okay. And, I mean, some of these are so different.
Regina Anaejionu
57:32Why does this problem
Jessica Mehring
57:35versus? How does this relate to a book or movie you loved throughout your life? Yeah? I mean, those are like, totally different tones, totally different lenses, which is the whole point is to really just get creative and get those juices flowing.
Jessica Abel
57:50You could even look, yeah, I don't know if you can do this in the form, but you should look and see if you can, like, categorize the options. Mm, hmm. I think about that, I don't know if it's possible or not technically, like technically,
Jessica Mehring
58:08yeah, and I don't, I don't know if that would be beneficial, because mixing them up in this way, it can create more, you know, more creative space For thinking, Yeah, okay, thank you. Yeah, you're
Jessica Abel
58:29welcome. You.
Jennifer Catalano
58:43Actually a quick question for Jessica. ERP, yeah, Jessica and blue, I have a possible need for a copywriter and or I might be being asked to do some copywriting, which I've never done, and I was wondering if you would be willing to meet with me and just talk about some of that? Of course, yeah, I'd be happy to last way to connect with you.
Jessica Mehring
59:08Let me drop my email in here. If you want to send me an email, I can send you a scheduling link.
Jennifer Catalano
59:18All right, sorry to take up group time for that, but thank you.
Jessica Mehring
59:25Yep, I always like talking over zoom. I think it's a good way to work through things. Yeah,
Jessica Abel
59:31for sure. All right, so let's wrap this up. Thanks for being here. Good to see you all. And next week is an open session, so bring whatever you're working on. Let's get updates on everybody's projects, and I will see you then. And Jennifer, since we were going to talk for a minute about this possible team thing that I'm doing, so if you want to just stay, I will, like, get everything else out and stop the recording and stuff. Okay, see you next time. Sounds good.
Jessica Mehring
01:00:07Let me Get This.