Welcome to Tried and True with the Dash of Woo, where we blend rock solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach, and professional photographer. At your service, we are all about getting creative, diving into your business, and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey, hey, welcome back to Tried and True with a Dash of Woo. I'm your host, Renee Bowen, and Merry Christmas Eve. If you celebrate, I am releasing this episode on Christmas Eve morning. So we're going right into the holiday. I got my little holiday sweater on. I've got my holiday drink. I am fully immersed in all holiday things. As I hope you are, well, whatever you celebrate, right? Like even if there isn't a reason necessarily for you to take off for a few days, I hope that you are finding some time to do that. Because it's just kind of a good time of year to do that, just in general. It's right after the solstice. We're still in sort of that little window of solstice energy. And um I just I'm doing my 13 wishes this whole week. I started on the solstice. Those of you guys who joined my Unavoidable live class know that that was kind of part of like an extension of it, basically. So you can still get unavoidable, by the way. You can get the replay. It is good to do all through at least the first three months of 2026, truly. Uh the price is going to go up on the um 31st, though. So make sure you grab it before then if you're interested in that. Had some really good feedback from it. A lot of people really enjoyed it. It's about two and a half hours long. That's because we're like actively working through things as well. So, like I give you implementation time. So uh you could always pause it since you're watching the replay, but it's a really great time of year to do this kind of work. And it's not just your regular planning session. So, yeah, all that information is in the show notes. I won't go into it again. But um, I really loved doing it live. And honestly, just going through that process for me, first looking back at 2025, what am I not taking with me into 2026? All of that reflection was really impactful and important for me to do. Um, and then using AI to help me craft my five-year vision was really something. Like I have to tell you, like, I've been trying to do vision boarding for years now. And I always do some version of it, but I can only get so far. And there's something about this process that took me deeper than I've ever been able to go, which is really cool because I wrote the prompts for you guys to use. So it was really great to see that they work, right? Because, like, you know, you work on something for a long time and you kind of live in your own little bubble with it. So it's really hard to know like, is this gonna work for other people the way it worked for me? But everybody in the class said that it was just really, really, really cool. They got some amazing um results using AI, helping them craft not only the five-year, but we also did the next year, so all of 2026 and get like specific. So we backtracked, we get like the big, the big dream, the big goal, vision. And then we backtracked to doing 2026, and then we backtracked to the first 90 days so that you have an actual plan to implement in your first 90 days, the first you know, quarter of 2026. And then we even go even further than that and put some stuff on the calendar, like, okay, what are the action steps I'm gonna do to get these results that I want? So it was pretty impactful. I'm pretty proud of it. And honestly, you could do this at any time of year. So I'm just gonna leave it up in the store. If you have any questions about it, just let me know. But I wanted to do this show, Why This Season Makes Successful Women Question Everything. Um, because, well, first of all, if you're listening to this on Christmas Eve, I'm guessing one of two things is true. Either things have finally slowed down and you actually have a minute to think, or you're surrounded by people and the noise and expectations, and yet somehow you're feeling strangely alone with your thoughts. And if lately you've been questioning everything about your business, your direction, your motivation, even yourself, I want you to hear this pretty clearly right out the gate. That doesn't mean there's something wrong. Okay. It just really means that the volume got turned down enough for your inner truth to speak. So this episode is really for the women who look really good on paper, okay, who look really successful on paper. You've built something real, you are capable, you're smart, you've done the work, you, you know, did all the right things. Okay. But right now you feel maybe a little unsettled, restless, or even disoriented. So let's talk about why this season does that, what's actually happening under the surface and how to actually work with it instead of panicking or trying to fix yourself because you're not broken. So here's the thing that I don't think we kind of talk enough about is for most of the year, your nervous system is really busy. Okay. You've got a lot of work. If you're a photographer, you've got a lot of shoots, you've got clients, emails, content, launches, deadlines. So even when you're overwhelmed, there's like this motion, right? But this season like removes that momentum. The calendar like sort of empties out just enough to expose what's been simmering underneath the surface. And when the doing stops, the questions show up. So this reminds me a lot of, you know, about I would say about 15 years ago. Time is weird, but it's been a long time. So my husband and I have been married a really long time. I think this year we are 26. Yeah, 26 years, but we've been together like 30 plus. And our oldest son has autism. So when Reese was about 12, 12 or 13, I remember talking to my therapist about how, you know, Andrew and I, we had three kids under the age of two. Our oldest had autism, and we were really like not great financially for the first few years of having all these kids. We don't have any family members out here to help us. Like we were like, did this all by ourselves. So there was obviously a lot of trauma bonding, you know, between the two of us, but we like got stuff done and we had like this really solid relationship. Everything, you know, just we were good, right? We made time for each other. It was hard, but we were good. And then when Reese was about 12-ish, I started talking to my therapist about this. It was like all of a sudden, like these little stupid things were coming up out of the woodwork. Like we were annoying each other, you know, just like stupid nitpicky stuff, like nothing big. And she was like, Oh, that's just, you know, that's because Reese is doing so well. And he was. Like we had worked so hard to get Reese, like, he didn't talk till he was five. And, you know, by 12, he was just like doing so phenomenal. He was doing so well, in fact, that one of the psychologists from the regional center was like, I don't think he actually really has autism. And I was like, Oh, no, he does, and you're not taking his diagnosis away so that you can remove services. No. So anyway, he was doing really well. And my psychologist pointed out, okay, well, you have more space in your relationship now. You guys are not like living in this like crazy traumatic time of like both of you working 24-7. Um, you know, Reese is doing well, the twins are doing well, like there was more space. Okay. So when there was more space, then things are gonna pop up that you don't have time. You're living in fight or flight. You can't see all of this, right? Your nervous system can only do so much. And again, our unconscious mind is gonna do whatever it takes to keep us alive. So you get in fight or flight, like you can't see the forest through the trees, truly. So that's kind of what this reminds me of is that when we finally slow down because, and a lot of times it's because we have to, right? Like, you know, yes, we want to, we might say we want to, but those of us, and I'm calling myself out as well on this. Uh, those of us who are also workaholics tend to have a hard time doing that at this time of year. And so all of a sudden it's like we have this space, and so this other stuff starts bubbling up to the surface. Um, and so that's what I mean about like exposing what's been simmering underneath. And so when that doing stops, the questions show up. Is this still what I want? Why am I not excited as I used to be about all of this? Why does everything feel heavier than it should? Why do I feel guilty for wanting something different when this is objectively fine? So that questioning is not a sign of weakness. And I don't want you to judge yourself for it, first of all. I think that it's really a transition signal. Most women, I believe, were taught to interpret doubt as a failure of confidence. But in reality, doubt often shows up when your current identity can't fully hold the next version of you anymore. And so your business might still be working, but your internal operating system, your OS, has changed. I talk about that a lot. I kind of like use that metaphor of our brains as an operating system because I feel like that's just like a fun way of looking at our brains. And it can be a little bit easier too when you put it in that context. But I really feel like successful women often think that they've lost their gratitude when they've actually just lost congruence, right? So you can be thankful and still be dissatisfied. You can be proud and still be restless, and you can have momentum and growth and still feel disconnected. We contain multitudes. What creates the discomfort is not the things that are bad. It's that you are continuing to run your business from an old version of yourself, an old operating system, right? You gotta update every now and then to keep working, just like you have to update your computer. Otherwise, stuff is not gonna work, right? I always wait a little bit longer. Like I don't update my operating system right when it comes out. I want to wait until the bugs sort of like get worked out because like Lightroom or Photoshop might not work as well. Like I just kind of give it a few days to get acclimated and then I'll update. But kind of that's kind of the same thing for us, right? Like if you're still operating from this past version of yourself, but the world has changed and your family dynamic has maybe changed, and your clients have changed, right? So, how are you updating that system? Because the woman who built your business probably had different priorities, boundaries, energy, and even tolerance levels than you do now. And when your business hasn't evolved at the same pace as you have, your body will feel it first. So that heaviness you feel lately isn't laziness. It's not because you just, you know, don't care about anything. I really kind of see it as misalignment. Stillness removes distractions, but it also removes the numbing. Okay. I've talked about that a lot. This numbing thing that we do. I'm very guilty of that as well. It's a lot of things you can numb out on, right? But when you stop reacting, your nervous system stops bracing. And suddenly the emotions that you've been managing will come forward, whether you like it or not, sometimes. And so this is why like holiday reflection can feel even more emotional, disorienting, or even sad without a clear reason. I mean, obviously, there could be a lot of that happening anyway for you if you've experienced a lot of loss, or you know, maybe this is like your first holiday without someone in your life. That's that is a very real thing. So I'm not trying to discount any of that for sure. But for those of you who, you know, haven't had anything super traumatic happen and you kind of feel like I don't, I shouldn't be feeling like this, right? I have so much to be grateful for. There's so many people who have far less than I do and all of these things. Okay, well, first of all, you're a good person for having those thoughts, right? Like, I get it, trust me, but you are also allowed to feel your feelings. Okay, a lot of times, as women and people who run the family and run the businesses and things like that, we kind of just we don't give ourselves a break to even do that. So I want you to at least recognize that and also remind yourself that you're not like regressing into anything, you're really just integrating. Your system is asking for honesty instead of performance right now. And here's where a lot of women I think go wrong. They hear the questions and immediately try and answer them with strategy, okay? Because we immediately go here to the brain. We're trying to, you know, fix the things. Okay, I totally get it. I that's exactly what I do as well. It's a very normal response to have. And our brain just really wants to look for patterns. And it is a survival instinct as well, right? But you know, you hear these questions and you're like, okay, well, I need to do more, right? I need to create some new offers, uh, new content pillars, goals. Um, have to like redesign my whole life, all of this stuff, right? But these questions aren't really strategic. That's the thing. They're existential, truly. They're asking you who you want to be while you build, not just what you want to build. And that's really kind of the whole purpose of life, isn't it? Is to become the person you're meant to be while you're on your way to being it. You know, it's not ever about a destination. That's really why they say that. It's not the destination, it's the journey. That's what they mean by that saying. Because what's the destination? We don't make it out of this alive, right? So, what are we working toward? And I really believe that we have to like zoom out every once in a while and remind ourselves who have I become on this journey? And who am I becoming now? Because we are ever evolving. But let me save you some stress about this so we don't just keep swimming in that same context. This isn't really the season to make impulsive decisions, just in general. It's also not the season to burn everything down because you might be considerably burnt out right now. It's not the season to judge yourself for feeling a little off. Okay. And it's definitely not the season to compare your behind-the-scenes thoughts to someone else's curated certainty online. You don't know, first of all, what that person is going through. What you're feeling does not require like some dramatic solution. It requires attunement. Your job right now isn't necessarily clarity, which I know is weird coming from me because I talk about clarity a lot. I really think it's honesty, like radical honesty. We really have to go deeper into this part of ourselves. And I think it's an opportunity to look deeper and to look at pieces of your life, of your business that may not be working for you anymore, right? That's usually the first step, is just like at least looking at it without judgment, with just some neutrality, like, oh, that's interesting. That I I don't feel like that lights me up in the same way it used to. I mean, it could be a lot of different things. Like we just kind of get on autopilot, especially when we're in fight or flight or you know, high-intense stress periods. We tend to just kind of go through the motions. And I think that this is the perfect time of year when we are all sort of naturally slowing down for a minute to allow ourselves the space to get really honest about what we actually want. Right. Especially us moms and especially us, you know, type A driven women. We tend to forget about all of that, even our best intentions, right? Like we know we're supposed to pay attention to ourselves. We know we're supposed to, you know, do the self-care. And and we might be doing some of that stuff. Like I just got an amazing massage a couple of days ago. I'm like, this is the season, right? Okay, but that's not enough, right? Like that's great. But I also really have been allowing myself to just kind of like be where I'm at, you know, and not forcing myself to try and get out of it, try and have to post like 15 times a day and schedule all this stuff so that you know social media keeps going. No, I actually just think this is a perfect opportunity, right? Because when we are working and striving and in this constant like stress circuit, we can't let anything drop in because we're so tightly wound. And so because this is just a natural season of slowing down, it would be a great idea, if it feels aligned to you, to uh just focus on allowing yourself to just be in it for a minute, right? Like we are so hell-bent on fixing things, um, making things better. And then a lot of us will say things like, oh, well, you know, I just I just need a break. I just I'm so burnt out, I just need a break. And then the break comes and we don't take the break, or we try and schedule the break. We say, Oh, we're gonna take off two or three weeks. And then strangely enough, your calendar just starts getting full of these little things. I want you to be very, very hardcore with yourself the next couple of weeks, truly. And I want to give you something practical that doesn't feel like homework, but is valuable and will help you feel like you're taking some kind of action, right? So tonight or sometime in the next few days, I want you to ask these questions without trying to fix anything. The first one is where am I forcing myself to stay the same because it feels safer than changing? And then also, what is the cost of staying the same? The second one is what part of my business drains me that I keep pretending is fine? I'm laughing because this is very relatable to me. Right? It's fine, it's fine, I'm fine. And Most of the time we're not. So I want you to get very radically honest with yourself about that. And then the third one is what do I actually need more of next year? Not what do I think I should want? So try and tune out all the noise. There's so much noise. Try and tune out all the noise because you really know the answer. It's in there. It's it's definitely in there. Okay. But have you given yourself the time, space, you know, quiet, whatever you need for it to come up and out. Because a lot of times we just sort of we didn't we numb it, right? Like we talked about that before. There's a lot of w different ways to numb out. Um, but busyness is is probably the top thing that we do is we just overschedule ourselves. We tend to continue in that cycle of doing as a way of numbing out. But I would invite you to change that. If you know that that is a pattern that you have done consistently, I would invite you to change that this season, the next couple of weeks. Allow yourself to really just stop. The world's not going to end. And I know that it can be very uncomfortable and vulnerable when we do stop and when we do sort of like take off, tune out, whatever you want to call it. But I really believe that's incredibly necessary because sitting with it and allowing yourself to look at what's going on with honesty without judgment, that's the key. You will get to some really incredibly powerful places by just allowing yourself the freedom to do that. Okay, you don't need to reorganize your entire garage after Christmas, you don't need to restructure your whole CRM in like two days. Right. I know that this time of year, going into January and February tends to be a little bit of a downtime for a lot of creative entrepreneurs, especially photographers. And so we put things in our list, like, okay, I'm going to restructure my CRMs, or I'm going to redo this workflow or this funnel, this marketing thing, whatever it is. And yeah, it's a great time to do that kind of stuff. But what I'm asking you to do first is give yourself the time and space between now and the new year to just let yourself off the hook. Okay. Let yourself be where you are. Okay. You can do these things in January. You don't need to start them right now. And those questions that I just asked you to ask yourself, I don't want you to answer these from your head.

Okay.

You need to answer them from your body. That's where the answers are. They're in your body, they're in your nervous system. And getting back into alignment in your body is imperative, truly. And it's very simple. You don't have to go out and do like an entire somatic workout or whatever. Like, there's a lot of different ways you can do this. My little shortcut that I love, and you guys know who anybody who's coached with me or you've done any of my classes like this, you know the shortcut is just to put your left hand over your heart and your right one over your left hand and do some deep breaths, literally under five minutes. We're talking like three to five minutes max, breathing in from you know your belly, doing some deep breathing. And you can do box breathing as well during that time. And then just focusing on your heart center. The easiest way to do this is to think about someone that you love so much that you care so deeply about. Okay. Picture that person, those feelings that you feel for that person, how much you love this person, how much you care for this person, and then give it a color. You know, you can have that swirl around you. And then you transfer that feeling to yourself because the way that you feel about that person is really how we should feel about ourselves. We just have been taught and programmed that that is selfish, it's not the right way to do things. But then they always tell us, oh, well, put your oxygen mask on first if something, you know, shit hits the fan. Okay, but that's not what I've been programmed with since birth as a woman, basically. What I've been programmed with, and most of us have, is you put everybody else first and you care for other people and you put yourself last. But that martyrdom shit is so played out, and we can see it in all the women older than us, right? I'm in my 50s. A lot of us are still stuck in that cycle, but our boomer parents, or if you have parents older than that too, you see that mentality, right? Like I see it so much everywhere, a lot in my family. And it's nobody's fault. It's just the way that that has been, you know, passed down, this generational trauma sort of thing. We can decide that that ends with us. Okay. So I would invite you to look at those patterns, see where you have any coming up for you. And really, all it takes is tuning into your heart center, loving yourself, giving yourself this time, honoring yourself. And really, I'm talking like, yeah, a massage is great. Go get a massage. This that's not the kind of self-care I'm talking about. I'm talking about deep, deep love for yourself, appreciation for yourself. You know, those of you who have a connection to a higher power, you know, that is a really fantastic way to root into all of this as well. So use your faith and your practices um to tune in, right? I don't consider myself a religious person, although I was brought up very, very Catholic for most of my life. I still, I still love a lot of those rituals. I still fall back on a lot of those teachings, the ones that I really love that you know resonate with me. But I tend to identify more with universal law and you know, more spirituality-based things. Where I I definitely do tune into my higher self, uh, consciousness, higher consciousness. And what helps me, like I said before, that shortcut tuning into my heart center, because we are all so connected. Whether we want to believe it or not, we really are. And being human means being connected. I mean, they've done all these studies that show you the thing that makes you live the longest isn't necessarily a healthy diet and not smoking and drinking. It's how deep your connections are and how how much of those you have. So when you're out there giving and giving and giving to everybody else, how are you giving back to yourself? So tune into your body when you answer these questions. I want you to notice where you feel relief when you imagine letting go of something, and notice where you feel expansion when you imagine doing something differently. Because you cannot have something different unless you become someone different because it is all energy. That information just matters more than like any strategic plan. Right now, anyway. So if this season has you questioning everything, just remember it doesn't mean that you're off track or there's something wrong with you or ungrateful. Okay, it just means that you're evolving and you're allowed to. And evolution always asks for presence before it asks for action. Action's important. Just be present first. Okay, sit with it. And if you want some support navigating this kind of transition in a grounded way, not a panic-driven way. That's the work I do inside of coaching. It's not about fixing you because nothing's wrong. You're not broken. It's helping you listen to yourself clearly. But for now, be gentle with yourself, okay? Especially tonight. Let the questions exist without answers. They're not here to scare you, they're just here to guide you. And a lot of times things will just drop in when you least expect it, when you've let go, right? When you've released the hold on everything of trying to control everything, when you've given yourself that moment of expansion, that's when things will drop in. When you're in the shower, when you're out for a walk, when you're like having fun. So have fun the next couple weeks. That's literally your only job. Okay. Relax, sit with yourself, be good to yourself, and have some fun because that is going to lift your energy. And there is literally only good things come from that. Only good things. So I just hope you have a phenomenal holiday season. I will be back next week with a New Year's Eve show as well. And I'm thinking about you. I'm hoping that you are having lots of fun and connection. Thank you, as always, for being here. I appreciate you. Love you. Bye.