371 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How to Achieve “Overnight” Success

Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 371. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Joanna Hennon. In this episode we talk about how to achieve “overnight” success—and that “overnight” (in quotes).

We ask the question: is overnight success actually possible? Does it actually happen? Because sometimes it seems like it does, but what is really going on there? We talk about what is the real secret to getting everything you want, or the things you want. We discuss how not to give up on your dreams. What to do when you feel like it is not ‘meant to be’. We share the questions that you need to ask yourself when the going gets tough. How to keep going when it is hard, how to deal with frustration and disappointment, how to face failure, because sometimes the journey between where we are and where we want to be is not a straight line, sometimes it is a bit confusing and sometimes it feels like chaos and sometimes it feels that you have hit a dead end. So how do you deal with that? How do you deal when the path to your goals is not super-straight and easy? Often it is not, but it doesn’t have to be hard, there are ways you can make it easier, both mentally and (I don’t want to say physically) but how to get going, how to keep going, how to do the inner work? How to do the outer work? And how to take practical action when things feel rough. So hope you find this episode interesting and useful and let’s get started.

Holly: Hey Joanna.

Joanna: Hi Holly.

Holly: I am very excited about today’s topic.

Joanna: I know you are!

Holly: I have been wanting to have this conversation with you for a while. {laughing}

Joanna: Yes it seems like we have a lot to say.

Holly: Yeah or at least you do {laughing} but I know I do too, that’s really why I want to have this conversation.

Joanna: So just for context, Holly suggested this topic and then I just ranted at her for about 20 minutes! {laughing}

Holly: And I took notes on all the bullet points, so we have got lots to say. So today we are talking about how not to give up on your dreams or the real secret to getting everything you want. Overnight success, is it possible? Does it really happen? I don’t know. {laughing}

Joanna: I know! {laughing}

Holly: So this was inspired by some comments that you have received lately. Tell us about what is going on for you right now?

Joanna: I am still in a transition phase on my big dream, so those of you who have listened to this podcast before know that my big dream is to move my family to Ireland. We currently live in Belgium and we want to be in Ireland, we have a whole bunch of things that we needed to set up so that we have money to live on in Ireland and all sorts of things. So we are actually at the final stages of this.

Holly: Yay!

Joanna: And Holly is cheering. I have been talking about this for so long and we are now at the final stages. We just put our house up for sale, so we are selling our house and once we sell this house we will have what we need to buy our new house and we will be able to actually bid on those wonderful houses that we are seeing in Ireland. And so that is where I am at and I have had some really interesting reactions to where I am at. So I have had people say: wow it is great that you didn’t give up on your dream because it is has been so long. I have a tendency (if it not working) to just give up on it. Right? Which really is what inspired Holly to suggest this topic because we both think it is super, super, important to just acknowledge that that determination and tenacity to keep going and to stay committed to what you want is what it is all about. It is not that everything has been smooth sailing over these past years. I called Holly more times than I can count balling my eyes out: it is never going to happen! It is certainly not smooth sailing in any sense.

Holly: It has been a long journey.

Joanna: It has been a really long journey and a lot of stuff had to shift in me, a lot of stuff had to happen and the fact that we are here and have obstacle along the way, we had plenty of opportunities to say ‘actually it is not worth it’, or, ‘clearly it is never going to happen so we are just going to stop thinking about it’. And the only, I am going to say the ONLY reason that we are in a place where it is actually happening is because we are in a place where we did not give up.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: That is the ONLY reason, you will not be able to convince me that there is another reason {laughing}.

Holly: Well that is the thing, if you had given up you would be doing something else now and you wouldn’t be about to move to Ireland next year, you would be settling into Belgium for the next decade.

Joanna: Exactly. So when people say, you know those quotes on Facebook, those mean things, and once in a while this one goes around that says, ‘the only thing that separates people who are successful and people who are not successful is that people who are successful don’t quit’. You kind of see that and you are like, ‘er I guess so’.

Holly: But that’s TRUE! It is so simple just f***ing believe it!

Joanna: It is the actual truth, that is the secret.

Holly: And also, talking about memes and inspirational quotes and stuff, another thing that I love, and I love every time I see it, it is ‘the path from A to B is not a straight line’. It is all jumbled around, and it is not what you expect and it is confusing but you get there in the end if you keep going. If you stop somewhere in that chaos and confusion part you are not going to get there.

Joanna: And that is really the only secret. I will tell you that I remember, when we first started talking about this, and I decided that the only way that we can do it is I have my own business and if my business supports us, or is bringing in enough money to support us when we go to Ireland. This is what I decided was my way. So I remember very, very, clearly reading all the manifesting stuff and all the law of attraction stuff and all that kind of thing and I remember saying, ‘I am going to be an overnight success’. I said this like eight years ago! So there is no need for a spoiler alert, you know how this ended right?

Holly: It didn’t happen yet! {laughing}

Joanna: Well, I just decided that it was going to happen quickly for me. I felt that was possible and that I was going to be that example of an overnight success. The thing is that I was focussing on the wrong thing and there was a whole bunch of inner stuff that I needed to uncover and work through and heal and transform and get ready and blah blah blah blah and then eight years later, or seven years later, I don’t know exactly how long, but I always say seven years and I think that’s about what it is. And now we are here, and I know that in fact my business is successful. Is it hugely successful, am I a world name? No. But it is successful enough. Does it need to support us? No. Because we found a different way, so I took that pressure off. And it is all fine. So the house changed along the way, but the overnight success I think, you tell me Holly, is overnight success possible?

Holly: Yes if you win the lottery but that’s good life strategy, because the odds are not in your favour. So I think it is possible in really, weird, random, circumstances but for most people that want to have a business, or want to move to Ireland, or how real life goals that are attainable, no, I don’t think so. Successful people say this all the time, people always say: you are an overnight success as an author or a business person or whatever but they don’t see all of the work that goes into the background. They don’t see all the stuff that you have done, the practical action, the mindset stuff, they don’t know what you have done. They just see that you went from here to there, boom! 

Joanna: Yesterday you weren’t known and today you are known. I think that whether overnight success is possible depends on what your definition of success is, because if my definition of success is moving to Ireland that could have been overnight, I literally could have decided, seven years ago, ‘we are done, we are moving’. We could have done that but my definition of success just includes other things like yes, we want it to be in Ireland but we also want it to be in Ireland in a nice house with plenty of money, with clarity on schools, with everybody happy to be going, there were other factors and so we had to put certain things in place which meant that it was going to be impossible to have it overnight, right?

Holly: I think that is important, you had to put things in place, it wasn’t just one step that got you from Belgium to Ireland, or about to move to Ireland, it was a series of steps and a series of actions that you needed to take.

Joanna: I think probably some of those things I could have done quicker, to be perfectly honest, you know. You see this in business success, there are people who get their businesses working, or earning plenty of money, quicker than other people. And I have been observing this, without a doubt, the deciding factor, whether you have something to fall back on. Time and time again when I see people who have to earn the money, they just do it, they do the things that you need to do, they are not sitting there going, ‘I am too scared to do the video, what will people think of my hair?’. If you need the money, you don’t have the option to be thinking about that, you do the f***ing work and move on. (I can’t remember, should we be swearing, or should we not be swearing?)

Holly: Yeah, yeah, totally, go for it! {laughing}

Joanna: I am in a sweaty mood today, so.

Holly: That’s the thing I think that we are kind of, we expect instant gratification, everything comes…so many things come so easily. I live in the UK, so I busy something on Amazon, and it gets here the next day. I just upgraded my iPhone; I had an ancient iPhone that I had for years. I upgraded it and I bought it on a Friday evening at 8.00pm and it was at my door at noon the following day.

Joanna: Crazy!

Holly: I know! I even thought it was crazy. They told me that it was going to be there on Monday and ti showed up on Saturday. We are so used to buying stuff and it comes…boom, right away. If I lived in London I think I could get Amazon stuff even faster, but I don’t. So many things are so easy to get, yes we are talking about buying stuff, but we are so used to that. Netflix, you go onto Netflix and there is all this stuff available and it is so easy to watch the thing that you want to watch.

Joanna: It is so true; it is so true. First of all, I am totally jealous because I still have to wait a week for my Amazon stuff out here in Belgium. I feel like that is the end of the world, you know?

Holly: Yeah but, do you know what? Ten, fifteen years ago, or a little bit more, I lived in Mexico in the jungle and Amazon wasn’t really an option for me and mail from one side of the country to the other, took six weeks to arrive if it got there and it usually got lost.

Joanna: It is a culture of instant gratification and I can see it. When you said Netflix and we have a ten-year-old and it is impossible to explain to him that we used to have to wait for the next episode. That is just so not part of his reality and I think because things have gone fast and I am not against that at all, I am certainly not one of those people who like yearns for the olden days of the eighties. No. I certainly do not, I like receiving my Amazon stuff immediately. I like that I can go on the Kindle and get my book immediately.

Holly: Yes!

Joanna: If my WiFi is a bit slower and it takes five minutes I am like, ‘what the f***? I want it now; I am not going to wait!’. {laughing} So I like all this stuff but I think we have lost this willingness to stick to things and to wait and even to work towards things, we just expect everything to be overnight and then if it’s not then it means that it is not meant to be and we just quit instead of persevering. I don’t think as a race, I don’t think that is a good thing that we have lost this ability to persevere.

Holly: No, no, no. I think we have applied this…it is great to have instant gratification of things like Netflix and Amazon but the rest of life doesn’t happen that way it is like, if you want to progress in your career path, or you want to run a business, or you want to run a marathon, you have to prepare for those things, you don’t just wake up one morning and go, ‘oh I have never run a mile in my life, but I am going to run a marathon next Tuesday’. That is ridiculous!

Joanna: Stop with the running talk! Honestly, this is me, this is totally me, I always tell this story of saying to my husband, ‘I want to once in my life run a 5k and run through that finish line’, and I just remember him looking at me and going, ‘okay, you do know that you are actually going to have to go running though, right?’. {Both: laughing} And I am like, ‘yeah that’s the part I am not so crazy about!’ I want the success and that feeling of running through the finish line, but I don’t want the path of going out on a wintery morning and struggling through my first five minutes.

Holly: Right so this is such a perfect example. So that goal of running a 5k is not important enough for you because if it were important you would do what it takes.

Joanna: Yes in theory except now that I see my mind stuff around it, there were certainly times when I said, ‘okay, this is actually really hard, it is not mean to be hard, and therefore this is clearly not an aligned goal’.

Holly: Yeah. So let’s talk about this, ‘it’s not meant to be’, BS. So…

Joanna: It is a cop out.

Holly: Yeah it totally is. So yeah it is a cop out and I have been there, I have been there where I have been pushing through something and it is so hard and it is like, ‘I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to keep going, it is frustrating, maybe it just not meant to be…’ I have been there.

Joanna: Give us an example.

Holly: That’s an excellent, I know I have been there. I think I have been there a lot with my business but I have still kept going but I think, this is maybe not a good example then because I think those are the points where I have pivoted and done something a little bit different and then changed my path a little bit, so maybe that is not a good example.

Joanna: I don’t know if you want to talk about this publicly, but you have literally just done something that you thought was really hard.

Holly: So I did this advanced bushcraft course a couple of weeks ago and then I just got back yesterday from the two-day assessment and it was so challenging, there were so many things we had to do, all these different written exams, five different written exams on heat and cold inquiries and water management and… (god I can’t even remember because my brain is fried!). We were going from nine in the morning until eight o’clock at night doing all these different things and in the pouring rain.

The first day it was pouring, really intense rain, and when the rain stopped it was windy and we had to produce flame using four different methods one of which had to be fire by friction and one of our fires we had to build, we had to present a fire laid out that was good enough to boil 750ml of water and make a cup of tea with it, in the pouring rain and wind. So we had to go out and collect our firewood and process it and make our kindling and it was all soaking wet because it had been raining and it was just miserable and I was down on my belly in the mud blowing sweet gentle breaths onto my amber to get the fire going. That was the easiest part of it! The fire by friction was so much worse than this. This was what started my morning, it wasn’t the easiest bit, but I did it right away. Whereas the fire by friction took me the entire two days and I only got it in the end with so much coaching.

Joanna: But you did it.

Holly: But you did it and you didn’t give up.

Joanna: First of all, before I go any further, serious question: if the world is ending and we have all this climate stuff going on and all this, will you come and live with me?

Holly: {laughing}

Joanna: You don’t have to answer right now you can consider it for a while. I feel like you would be a real asset!

Holly: {laughing} I learned so much, I feel like now when I go out into the woods, camping, or hiking, or backpacking, I feel like I am safer, I am going to have a safer experience now because I am so much more knowledgeable. I know how to use a knife, I had to carve a spoon, I had to cut down trees. I have so much practical bushcraft knowledge right now.

Joanna: I will make sure that my new home has a space for you! So you said the assessment was difficult, but we spoke several times over the few weeks that you had to prepare for this.

Holly: Two weeks I had to prepare, two!

Joanna: Okay, it was two weeks and during that time you also wanted to quit because it was hard, and you weren’t sure if you could do it. So, okay, it is a very focussed example over two weeks, but you can extrapolate over any period of time, obviously from that and it is the same thing you could have quit. I asked you that question, I remember saying, ‘can you defer this until you have more time?’, and you were like, ‘no I really want to do it’. Well then if you really want to do it then you need to sit your butt down and prepare for it, that’s what you need to do. So really at any point, at every minute, of every day, you had a choice to either quit or defer or you had a choice to get on with it and see what happens and keep taking the next step, learning the next bit, then show up at the assessment and see what happens.

Holly: And not everyone showed up at the assessment, for various reasons, some of which were work-related but out of ten, seven of us showed up for it. Yes and there were many points during the assessment, especially with the bow-drill, which is the fire by friction part, the entire group finished at 3.00pm on the last day, a lot of people had long car journeys to get home, they were waiting to get home and there was another woman and I who were still going it.

And John, one of the instructors, the owner of the school, kept saying, ‘well you can always come back, you can go home and do it on a video, or you can keep going’, and I was like, ‘I want to keep going!’. I kept going, I kept having to take breaks because I was getting physically exhausted and mentally frustrated and so much so that at one point I got out my knife to whittle down my spindle and cut my finger and so I was like, ‘now I really need to take a break because I am cutting myself’ and I would take breaks and I would go back and I would take breaks and go back… Eventually with much coaching and assistance I got it, it was painful and frustrating and ah.

Joanna: And are you happy that you kept going?

Holly: Yes, absolutely. I was so satisfied and when I got it, when I finally got my flame, everyone was cheering and I cried, I burst into tears and I was like ‘thank you, I got the flame… (wavering voice)’, and someone took pictures of me. I felt so much support, not just from the instructors who were totally supportive but the people in the group were rooting for me and every time I would go to take a break they would be like, ‘did you get it, did you get?’ And I would be like, ‘no, not yet’. But it was such a satisfying experience. In a survival situation I am probably going to use the bow-drill and create fire? Probably not because I am going to use a fire stick or something much easier. This is really when you have nothing.

Joanna: But still!

Holly: But I DID it!

Joanna: You did it, yay! And thar is really the secret to getting everything you want, it is that perseverance and willingness to move through, and not push through necessarily—Holly has described a lot of pushing there—not necessarily push through but sometimes a bit of a push is needed.

Holly: Yeah, but also take a break sometimes.

Joanna: When you said take breaks, I remember that one of the other examples we used from, was it last year, or the year before, that we went to Glastonbury together and you guys convinced me to climb the Glastonbury Tor, which is like this giant mountain!

Holly: {laughing} Not it is not!

Joanna: {laughing}

Holly: It is a big hill!

Joanna: Fine, I will take it. I remember that for me it was a really big deal. Holly took my son and they basically sprinted up three times, I could see her running up and down and back and forth and I was like: okay, I took my time and I took breaks and I kept going and I took breaks and I kept going, and I took breaks and I kept going and I did it. I was so proud of myself for reaching the top and I just remember thinking, this is a total symbol for everything that you could possibly want.

Could I have given up? Yeah it didn’t really matter, Shane was taken care of, Holly had him up there, I could have just stayed at the bottom and waited for them to come back down. But I wanted to do it. I committed and wanted to do it and so I did it slower and took breaks, but I did it. It is the same sort of thing you have to stay committed, if you really want it you have to stay committed and keep choosing for it. Every time I took a break, I would be like: okay, do I go on? Or do I stay here and wait for them to come back down? And I kept choosing to go on. And I think this keeping choosing to go on, is what people are missing.

Holly: It is a conscious decision you have to make. Now you didn’t get to the top of the tour because it was meant to be. You got to the top of the tour because you put one foot in front of the other uphill until you go to the top of the tour. It wasn’t, ‘oh it was meant to be so I did it’, and if you hadn’t done it it wasn’t because it wasn’t meant to be, it was because you chose to not do it. 

Joanna: I think that is the thing, it is that choice, that willingness to do hard things in order to get what you want. Yes granted, what you want needs to be something that you actually want and if the Tor had been twice the size that it is, I probably wouldn’t have wanted it because it would have been just too much for me. It wouldn’t have been worth the effort, but this was. So you have to ask yourself whether what you really want, is it worth the effort? If you want to run a successful business, are you willing to learn how to do that? Are you willing to do the marketing? Are you willing to learn to do video? Are you willing to accept people’s judgement of you? Are you willing to do all that stuff, right?

Holly: Yep.

Joanna: If you want to run a marathon, are you willing to get up maybe earlier and go running? If you want to write a book (ahem Joanna!) {both: laughing} are you willing to block out time in your calendar, called book writing at the expense of something else? There is always that. Of course you could do something else with that time, are you willing to use that time for that particular project or are you not? So if it is meant to be, what that means is that it is a possibility for you, it doesn’t mean that it is going to magically happen, no matter what you choose to do with your time and effort.

Holly: And it doesn’t mean that it is going to be easy, sometimes things are meant to be, but you have to put in the effort.

Joanna: That’s another thing. I think we have started using this ‘meant to be’ thing and just keep in mind, listener, this is coming from two very spiritual people who, I certainly believe in an element of ‘mean to be’, for sure. And I believe that there is a soul path, I believe all these things. And yet I think that I too fell in the trap for a while of thinking that it is meant to be then it is going to be easy and I don’t think that is necessarily the case. I remember actually sending an email to my subscribers about this, I said something like ‘alignment is uncomfortable’, or something like that, because I remember I had to push myself to do some videos to run some things live and it was not easy— I wanted to throw up every time I pressed the button but I had committed to doing it. And I was just thinking, ‘does this mean that this is not my path?’.

Holly: Yes!

Joanna: I was like, ‘no, I am not going to let somebody else, or some energy out there, even my higher self, if it is my path or not my path, I am choosing for this to be my path and so I need to get over the hard stuff to experience the more ease that is being promised.

Holly: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Joanna: I think the perseverance comes with this willingness to do hard stuff, because if you are asking yourself to commit to a goal or a dream, it is not going to be all rainbows and kisses along the way because this is life, it is going to be up and down, there are some bits that are easy and then you will run into some kind of obstacle perhaps manifested as a belief, perhaps for another reason, but there is going to be stuff in the way, always, I think and you have to be willing to go through it and recommit.

I talk about this commitment piece a lot. I always talk about it in the context of hand-fasting which is a pagan wedding ceremony, a pre-Christian wedding ceremony. The way they used to do this, apparently in the way olden days—really olden days (not like the eighties!) {laughing}

Holly: Like pre-Roman.

Joanna: Like pre-Roman. Thank you Holly, historically accurate description of olden days.

Holly: The real olden days.

Joanna: So they used to have these ceremonies, the couples would have this hand-fastening ceremony every-year-and-a-day. I always say sadly I wasn’t able to convince my husband to have a wedding ceremony every year! I thought that would be kind of fun but the point of it is really important, the point of it is to recommit, to not just think, because you made a certain choice, you are stuck with that now, it is the recommitting. And I think when you have this big dream or something you have to keep choosing for it, you have to keep recommitting, and if you don’t, it is not that it is not mean to be, it is that you are choosing not to.  

Holly: Yeah. Not making a decision is the same as making a decision because you are making a decision to not do anything.

Joanna: Right. So I think this, ‘meant to be’, is just a cop-out, it is much easier to think, ‘oh yeah, spirit doesn’t want me to move to Ireland’. Do you know what I mean?

Holly: Yes. Or ‘it is not aligned with my life and with my soul’.

Joanna: Really, your mantra, instead of ‘meant to be’, should be ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: I read something this morning, somebody was telling a story of success, and she started by saying, ‘it all started with a ‘no’’. I read it and I was like, my story is exactly the same, several ‘no’s’ in fact, because we wanted to buy some house in Ireland a few years ago. We went to the bank and were told, ‘no you can’t because of the rules between Belgium and Ireland etc.’. We applied for a mortgage and the answer was ‘no’. Loads of no’s! Each time we, instead of thinking, ‘it is clearly not mean to be we have to stay in Belgium’, we were like, ‘okay, what else is possible?’.

Holly: Yes, let’s find a different way.

Joanna: Find a different way. It has to be possible because we want it so badly.

Holly: Yes, I think that is the key to success for so many people, you keep trying, you try it a different way, you try a different thing, you keep going. It is like that, I don’t know if you know of the stuff, it is an American thing, called WD40, it is this lubricating oil for joints and hinges and stuff, it stops squeaking. It was called WD40 because it was the 40th formula, formulas 1-39 did not work. Formula 40 did.

Joanna: That is really funny to put that in the name! I like that! It sounds really important and technical.

Holly: Yeah, it is just the 40^th recipe that actually worked.

Joanna: There are stories like that all over the place. I can’t remember who it was, whether it was Bill Gates, or the Apple guy, one of them had this story of building a computer in his garage and the first whatever, I wanted to say 40 again but however many.

Holly: Maybe 40 is the magic number you have to try 40 different things!

Joanna: That is interesting… but however many failed and didn’t work and then he built one that worked and built a multi-gazillions company on it and there you go. If he had given up then somebody else would have done it, right? Or we wouldn’t have had personal computers at that time, or whatever. But he didn’t give up, he was like, ‘I have this dream and I am going to keep trying to do it’. I think in some cases it is easier to keep choosing for it than others.

When we are talking about business it gets really complicated, because we kind of intertwine our energy with the energy of the business and our self-worth with the results, all of those kinds of things and I think it is much more difficult to choose for that, but it is just as important. I had to go through the same thing there, the way you choose for it is to allow yourself to think about not doing it, right? I had to be, for Ireland, ‘all right, what if we don’t go, what are the choices there? What if we choose not to go?’ And the same for my business, what if I shut it down? I have asked myself that question several times over the years, and what it does, it makes me realise, ‘well, I don’t want to shut it down, totally, I wish it was more fun’. And then, ‘okay, so how do I add more fun into it?’.

Holly: Yeah, it is find a different way, pivot. Find a different path. There is not just path to your goal, there are many… and there are many dead ends.

Joanna: Yes, indeed. So this what I got rant-y about before the recording, this expectation that everything is going to be easy and that the things that are meant for you happen magically. So this is the other thing that people are saying to me. I hate this, so if you are listening and you have said this to me I am really sorry, but I really hate this, people say to me, ‘you are so lucky, your dream is happening’. Luck has nothing to do with this, you have no idea how many times over I had to choose for this over something else!

Holly: That’s the thing, people don’t see that journey, they only see the result. It is like with actors or famous people who have high profile jobs, you only see them making millions of dollars on their TV show or film or whatever they are doing. You don’t see all the auditions they went to that failed, you don’t see all the work they had to do, all the studying, all the practising, all the whatever, you don’t see all the stuff that goes behind.

Joanna: I totally agree, we have to make it very clear that all the journey stuff is not miserable and hard, that is not the point we are trying to make, it is that there is a journey and that journey can be as easy or hard as you are willing to make it. I firmly believe that, over the years I have made things a lot harder on myself than I needed to be for sure because of expectation and belief and all sorts of things, but there is a journey. It is not as easy as people want to think but that is only because we expect things to not take any effort.

There is a quote from someone, I want to say it is Liz Gilbert, but I am not sure, actually maybe it is not, somebody said, ‘instead of always thinking about how to make things effortless, think about the things that are worth the effort’.

Holly: YES! I like that!

Joanna: I really like that too. There will be certain things in your life that are worth the effort. How badly do you want to have a business?

Holly: How badly do you want to write a book? How badly do you want to run that marathon? Do you really want it? I think that is the most important first step: do you really want this goal? If you have got a list of goals, go through your list and make sure you really want it.

Joanna: Yes and are you wiling to put in the effort? It is going to require some effort, even if all that effort is is commitment. Writing a book, you may really love your writing slots, but you still have to put them into your calendar as opposed to using that time for exercise or something else. So there will be be a choice to make always.

Holly: And it is probably going to take you outside of your comfort zone too, because the comfort zone is the space where you are now, so if you want to get out of where you are now and go to somewhere else, that will often be uncomfortable.

Joanna: Usually yes. I think that is the point that we want to make, it is not necessarily going to be hard, but it might be and there might be hard bits of the journey, you personally might find some bits hard. You might find the being visible to other people or opening yourself up to judgement hard. It is a matter of keeping going.

Holly: So how do you keep going when it is hard? When it does get challenging and you are frustrated and disappointed and how do you keep going?

Joanna: You recommit, that is the only answer I have for you. That is what I have had to do over and over and over again. When the going gets hard, I have to ask myself, I have to realise that I have a choice. Now this is the key, when the going gets hard, you have to understand that you don’t have to keep going. There is always something else to choose, something easier, whatever it is, usually, I am not going to say always, there are sometimes situations, but usually, in 99% of cases, there is a choice: you can be on welfare, you could move in with your parents. There is going to be another choice. If it is tough, you don’t have to keep going. There is that saying, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough keep going’?

Holly: ‘The tough get going’, yeah.

Joanna: You don’t have to. You can change your mind. So when it gets tough and you feel like quitting, make that an actual option.

Holly: And how does that feel? Imaging that? What does that look like? How would your life change if you went down that journey of quitting? Maybe it is better? Maybe you would like that?

Joanna: Indeed.

Holly: Or maybe not, but kind of fantasising and daydreaming about it will give you an idea for whether or not that is the rough path for you.

Joanna: Yes, certainly when it comes to online business, your own business, that kind of thing, that is a really important question to ask yourself, a really important process, to take yourself through all the bloody time, because there is going to be hard stuff all the time. You have to really want it and to be honest not everybody is well-suited to it, there are certain things that come with it that aren’t desirable to a lot of people. We all talk about the freedom of it but we don’t talk about any of the other stuff and there is a lot of other stuff. So if you, let’s take that business example, if you are finding it hard, what would you do instead and how would that feel?

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: Whenever I would ask myself that question, ‘what would I do instead?’, the answer was always, ‘I would just start another business’. Because I like running a business, I enjoy it, I enjoy the marketing, I enjoy the business side, I enjoy it and I always have loads of ideas. A few years ago I hit a rough patch and so I was like, ‘okay what if I close this down?’ ‘Okay, I won’t have to do this anymore so I will have lots of free time, fine, I will read some books, eventually that will get boring and what is going to happen is that I will have another idea and I will set up something again, some kind of project. So actually it makes no sense to shut this down, I could just let go of the things that I am not enjoying anymore and start the project that I would start instead. 

Holly: Yes exactly, you would end up in the same place, just with a different project.

Joanna: Indeed. Whereas for some people that I asked this question to, they said, ‘I wouldn’t mind working for a NGO, or I wouldn’t mind working for this kind of thing’. Or ‘actually, I don’t need the money, so I wouldn’t do any of this.’ And I am like, ‘well then, don’t’.

Holly: Exactly.

Joanna: It is actually that realisation that you have a choice, and when we talk about persevering and recommitting and it is really based on that assumption that you do have a choice, you don’t have to keep going on that path, but if you are going on that path, if you are going to continue, then you have to keep choosing it and that is a totally different energy because then you are wiling to do certain things. Maybe you are willing to sacrifice some of your time, maybe you are willing to do some things differently, because you are choosing for a certain result.

Holly: Yep. And you have to accept that failure will be part of the journey, sometimes you are going to make mistakes, sometimes you are going to try something, and it won’t work. And you know, don’t take it personally, I think that is the thing. As they say in NLP, ‘there is no failure only feedback’. That is feedback that that didn’t work so try something else, but don’t use your ‘failures’ as an excuse to feel bad about yourself.

For me it was really frustrating that on my first day of my assessment all the men got the bow drill straight off and the two women didn’t, of which I was one, and I…I was disappointed but I knew it would be challenging so I didn’t expect to get it done right away. I realised a few years ago, probably even a couple of years ago, I probably would have used that as an excuse to feel bad about myself and my mood would have spiralled down. Whereas I was tired, I was physically tired, emotionally tired, I was frustrated, but I didn’t get into that loop of, ‘I failed and so therefore I suck’.

Joanna: That’s it, to be neutral around failure really, because sometimes, it never really means anything, I am going to bring it back to the concept of ‘mean to be’, because what I tell myself is that it is all working out exactly as it needs to. Now for my goal of Ireland, I have been able to recommit to that for so long now that I know that it is my path, so when something happened, yes, the first instinct is to cry and whatever and it’s never going to happen etc. But, what if the failure is exactly right? Even if your situation, what if your failing the first few times is exactly the right thing for you to realise something? 

Holly: Yes.

Joanna: To make those bits that we don’t like exactly the right thing.

Holly: Well that’s interesting because one of the instructors kept saying to me, and he said this to me so many times, ‘for men bow drill is often really easy, because they can just crank out an ember with brute force, whereas women often are smaller and they can’t apply enough pressure so they have to really work on technique’. So a lot of times women are really good at bow drill and they can create an ember in poor weather conditions because they have had to work so hard on the technique, because they have tried and failed and tried and failed and troubleshooted. So many times that they have got it right: their form is right, and their position is right, every part of their kit is right because they have tried and failed so many times.

Joanna: What a great life lesson in general, right? Sometimes it is better, it looks like failure, but sometimes it is better to have things take longer so you have time to perfect your technique, and business would be a great example of that, right? It looks like failure because nobody bought your thing but actually you learned so much that next time you know what to do if you allow yourself to stay committed and have a next time, right?

Holly: Absolutely.

Joanna: So again, if you really want that result, you have to find the good bits, about the failure and about the hard stuff. The only way you are going to fail ultimately is if you stop, right? Or if you had said, ‘it is too hard for me because I am a woman’.

Holly: exactly, yeah.

Joanna: You would have stoped and that would have been the end of it.

Holly: Exactly.

Joanna: I think it is important to note that getting your dreams to manifest, that is really what we are talking about, getting things to happen, it has two elements and one is inner and one is outer and you have to do the inner work and you have to do the outer work. And I think people forget that as well, some people just get stuck on the inner {laughing} and don’t do the action because it brings other people into the mix, and maybe some judgement and maybe other stuff and so some people don’t do the inner so they try to force things and it just doesn’t happen or happen easily. I think because there are these two elements, inner and outer, things can happen in a certain flow, but it doesn’t mean that it is going to be super smooth all the way.

Holly: Yes. It is not necessarily hard work, but it is often challenging and often takes you out of your comfort zone, not always, but sometimes.

Joanna: It would do I suppose if you are trying to create something that is not your norm, and that is what we are talking about when we are talking about aims and goals, then it has to take you out of your comfort zone and that is why that inner piece is just as important. I see now how much stuff I had to heal and transform in the past years to be in a place where I am comfortable in this situation, where I can step into the unknown, where I can trust that it will be okay. All this stuff, all this work that I have done, and my focus was on getting the money together, I had thought that was the only thing that I needed to do, where in fact it was just a piece.

Holly: Yes you have got to do the mindset work as well.

Joanna: I had to have some inner shifts, be willing to leave the security of my job, and be willing to leave my house which I love, all this stuff, right? It takes the time it takes. Could I have done it quicker? Probably, I probably could have. There were many times when I chose for comfort rather than stepping outside of my comfort zone, there were many times when I had inner stuff that I didn’t want to look at. So I did it at a pace that suited me, could I have done it quicker? Probably yes.

Holly: That’s important, you have to choose the pace that works for you, even if it is not full throttle ahead. You know, you can’t sprint a marathon, you can sprint a short distance but a marathon you have got to pace yourself because it is 26.2 miles, 42 km.

Joanna: And the inner work takes time and the energy stuff takes a bit of time to recalibrate as well because you have to integrate. So if everything happens at the energetic level first, that has to integrate and then you have to wait for the physical reality to catch up. That is kind of how I feel about where I am now and it is extremely frigging frustrating, I feel like it is all done, I can really be on board with the energetic side of it now and be: okay it is done, I feel like we are in Ireland, but we are not. In fact I have to go through the physical steps of getting my house and accommodating viewings and all that stuff and calling the moving company, I have to do all those things.

Holly: You have to say yes to the opportunities because if it was such a pain to have viewings of the house that you said, ‘no, no, no, I am busy, I have to work, I have to do this, I have to do that’, you are not going to sell the house, so you have to say yes to the opportunities when they come to you.

Joanna: Yes indeed, and that is something that I have definitely been thinking about a lot lately as well is that opportunity piece, I think you can use energy to attract opportunities for sure, opportunities can manifest in your life, but too many people say, ‘it is too hard’, ‘it is not the right time’, ‘I still need to learn something’, I need to lose some weight so I can do videos’, there are all sorts of things. You have to just say yes. So we said yes to the Real Estate Agent that wanted to sell our house, we could have said no and looked for a different one first of all, right? We said ‘yes’, and that took us on snowball because the project then takes a life of its own, even if you have to recalibrate and do some things differently along the way, it is moving, it is moving forwards, you have started the ball rolling, so that is a huge part of it.

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Joanna: Yes, I think just to end, just to mention, this is another quote and I am pretty sure it is from Liz Gilbert or Brene Brown.

Holly: {laughing} one of those women!

Joanna: And the quote is, ‘you can do hard things’. So it is possible to have that determination and it is possible for you to create something that seemed impossible and it is possible to get through stuff that is hard. You need that willingness. We have collectively lost the determination and drive to do things because things seem too hard and we are all counting on effortless then nothing is going to happen.

Holly: Yes exactly. I think that is why I find it so satisfying and why I am so drawn to physical challenges like walking 100 miles or walking a trail or doing stuff like this bushcraft course because I think when I put myself out there to do challenging things physically or mentally, it helps me in other areas of my life. Every time I did that bow drill and didn’t give up that is going to help me in m life to do stuff in my business, to do stuff in my writing, to do stuff in my marketing, it is going to help me with other aspects of my fitness, it is going to help me with my running. I think every time we practice this skill of not giving up and keeping going and staying committed to the things that are important to us, I think that helps us to stay committed to other things that are important to us. It is like a commitment muscle, or a determination muscle, or a keep-going muscle.

Joanna: It is a discipline muscle and I think we have a podcast on discipline.

Holly: Yeah we do.

Joanna: Which is really linked to this. Actually it is probably lots of the same stuff!

Holly: No it is a very different conversation I think.

Joanna: It is a piece of it—no it is not the same conversation you are right, now I am thinking back to what we said on that. It is part of it and something that you can definitely train. Just be aware of it, where are you quitting because it is too hard, and you don’t believe that you can do hard things? Or are you quitting because whatever needs to be done next seems uncomfortable? And when you are quitting, when are you blaming it on the universe, ‘meant to be’, or anything of those things and not taking responsibility for just choosing a different path. If you are blaming it on the universe, or ‘not meant to be’, you are going to feel bad about yourself, right? It is going to be something external to you, whereas if you choose not to have a business, if you choose not to move countries, if you choose not to write a book, you are never going to be one of those people who wants to write a book, you won’t be able to say that anymore, and there is a certain kind of energy around having ambition like that.    

Holly: Yes, yes and drive to do something, that drive to achieve your goals. It is so juicy to me, I love that, ‘I am working towards this thing, that I love, and I want.’

Joanna: So if you choose to do that thing you lose that identity as well and that could be hard, so just question yourself on that stuff, do you really want what you say you want? Whether you are willing to go on the journey of creating it and what you yourself believe about doing hard things and whether you can do hard things. And your own determination and look at some of the things that you have quit on, whatever dreams you have decided are not possible for you anymore, and just take them through some of the questions in this conversation and see where you have given up, given up based on something external and where have you consciously chosen that you don’t want that? Or you don’t want it because it is too much effort for you?

Holly: And you can always pick up stuff, if you quit something, you can always go back and pick it up again. If you go through this and think about something that you have quit and you say, ‘you know what, it is still important to me, but the mindset got in the way or ‘he physical aspect got in the way, or something got in the way’. If you quit a marathon you can sign up for a new marathon, you can’t go back and change the past, but you can go back for a new one. Again, just because you quit once that doesn’t mean that that is gone forever.

Joanna: For sure, definitely. Maybe we should do an episode on changing your mind?

Holly: Yes, yes, let me make a note of that.

Joanna: I think we have exhausted this topic Holly.

Holly: I think we have done a very good examination of the topic!

Joanna: And I wasn’t too rant-y or angry.

Holly: No! You were swearing a lot more when we did the notes than when we actually hit record {laughing}!

Joanna: Well I am glad I got it out of my system.

Holly: I think this is a really useful, for me at least, thing to explore, why did I give up? Why did I not give up? Really useful for me because I have such clear goals and I want to achieve them, but I also want to be mindful about the journey to get there. So as usual I hope you found this interesting and useful, if you have any questions you can email me at, [email protected] or Joanna?

Joanna: You can just contact me through any of the social media, I am Joanna Hennon throughout.

Holly: Great so good luck on achieving your dreams and your goals and let us know if you have any questions.

Joanna: Bye.

 

Holly: I hope you found that episode interesting and useful, please drop me a line and let me know wha you thought about this topic you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. I would really love to hear from you, I love hearing from listeners. And thank you for listening, if you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, it would mean the world to me.

Remember to visit: https://hollyworton.com/371 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you so much for listening.