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Begin Again is for people in the second half of life who sense that the identity they've been carrying no longer fits. Host Winston Faircloth — spiritual director, daily poet, and fellow traveler — brings honest conversation, personal story, and original poetry to the journey of remembering, releasing, and returning to who God created you to be. Visit www.myreuniontour.com for more resources.
Hey there. It's Winston Faircloth, and welcome back to episode 51 of the Begin Again Leadership Podcast. Well, last time we shared, we're back after a break, and we're preparing for upcoming season number two, which is coming soon by taking you behind the curtain here at winstonfaircloth.com. Last time we shared a plan of how we're going to serve three types of business owners. Those who want, need, or have teams to help them multiply their impact in the world.
Winston Faircloth:And the top three takeaways from that podcast were one, we're taking business owners like you on a journey of building, growing, and keeping a team that you love. Two, your team is an extension of your intention to make a difference in the world. And three, this is my favorite, whether you're the leader of one or a champion of many, loving your team multiplies your impact. So how did we get here with a focus on teams when the last time we talked, we were focused on serving people who were moving into the online business world from corporations and nonprofits, and we were going to serve them with coaching and courses. Well, this spring, I hit the wall hard in April 2020.
Winston Faircloth:Our fledgling business was doing well with several courses launched and I was focusing on group coaching versus one to one mentorship because of the scalability. And I was excited. It was just a few months into my full time entrepreneurship journey and I just celebrated a milestone birthday. But something, something was definitely off. I noticed I was no longer celebrating the success of my peers.
Winston Faircloth:And that's a huge red flag for me. I'm a cheerleader, encourager. But it was worse than that. I was starting to build into resentment about their momentum and the comparatively slow pace of my new venture. I was constantly tired, listless.
Winston Faircloth:I certainly wasn't living up to the simple mantra I use to guide business decisions in my business. I used forwards with joy and ease. Well, this was about as far away from joy and ease as I could imagine. So I tried doubling down on productivity practices, right? Started working out and working longer and harder.
Winston Faircloth:And then one day during a new walking routine I'd implemented at the start of COVID, of the COVID lockdown here in Florida, it came to me a word out of nowhere. Refirement. I never heard of that word. But I had recognized that I had lost my passion, my fire, and all of the hustle courses, podcast gurus, they could not fix this loss of passion fire inside of me. And in that moment, I remembered that I'm the CEO of my business and I get to make the decisions around here.
Winston Faircloth:Refirement, it sounded so cool. And since I live in Florida, I could blend in with the retirement culture here a bit. So once I made the decision, I'm a quick start, I'm high D, I can make a decision pretty quickly. I had to unwind a few things. It sounded really good, idea of refinement, a sabbatical.
Winston Faircloth:But I had obligations. Was part of two high end masterminds I was a paid member of made of significant investments of time and resources and relationships. And I had to pause those for a bit. And then my winter group coaching course had a few more sessions to go. So I was responsible to finish that out strong.
Winston Faircloth:But I knew deep down I needed to get away. But during COVID, where would you go? Well, fortunately, is one fortunate thing from COVID and the travel lockdown during that time, there was nowhere to go. Only to a place that mattered most. Inside, drawing upon my faith, my inner guidance, to get me through this dark season, this challenging season, I had no real plan.
Winston Faircloth:But speaking to some peers, I ended up deciding to unplug to just get off the grid for thirty to sixty days. I knew that I would just take this thirty days at a time until I felt like myself again. I end up calling this a season of pause. Refirement was my external word for it, but internally, this was a season that I needed to just pause to get away. In retrospect, looking back over this season that ended a couple months ago now, took sixty days away, a little sabbatical.
Winston Faircloth:There are four key principles from that time that helped me find my new path. First was unplug, unplug, unlearn, relearn and rest. These are the four pillars in retrospect in going back and looking over what's happened. Unplug, I unplugged from those mastermind groups I told you about plus a whole host of other online groups I was part of. Unplugged from social media for a season.
Winston Faircloth:I've certainly got rid of screens, and put things in place so that I could just get out of the maelstrom of all the activity and advice and all the noise, the voices that were going on, giving me all these wonderful, proven practices that could really work for people, but they weren't going to work for me until I could sort them out. So this unplugged season was super important. But more importantly than that, I had to unlearn. That was the second phase of this season of pause. I had to adopt a beginner's mind again, Had to get back to the basics of what was going on inside of me.
Winston Faircloth:And so I ended up doing some work on a life mapping exercise, which is amazing. I'll share more about that in the next upcoming podcast. But to take a look at the patterns of my life, and especially the things that brought me joy and ease in business, things that come naturally easy to me that I can share with others, versus pursuing things because I think it would be fruitful and profitable. And instead looking at what feeds me, and what comes out of my natural passions and gifting, I had to unlearn all the things I thought I knew in favor of what is already known inside of me. I use the term life sentences for a lot of these mistaken beliefs.
Winston Faircloth:So many of our, so many of these voices are just, you know, the gurus, the things that we're attracted to and we connect with. There's a relatability there. But it doesn't mean that we just carbon copy what they do and hope to get the same results. No, I think every person who teaches in the online space would agree with me here. When I say that we all offer this out to people out of our typically out of our own personal experience, something that's worked well for us transformed something in our lives.
Winston Faircloth:We offer that out to others in hopes that we can shortcut or help them overcome a challenge and not make the same mistakes that we do. But to just carbon copy that doesn't reflect that your unique experience, your beliefs, your issues, your challenges, your opportunities are different. And so these mistaken beliefs that we can adopt, one nickname I've given that recently is called life sentences. They're senses that draw out of our own life experiences, and sometimes they can sentence us to repeating the same mistakes over and over again. The next stage, the third stage, was after I had cleared my mind of as many of these limiting beliefs, life sentences that I had, I had to go through a process of relearning new beliefs.
Winston Faircloth:And in this case, I ended up working with a couple of external resources. They weren't your typical business coaches. They were more people who would help me along this path of discovery. One was a spiritual director who was referred to me by a friend. Because faith is so important to me, I wanted to make sure that I was grounded in my faith journey as I moved through this period.
Winston Faircloth:But then I also worked with someone from a health perspective who has piece by piece dismantled many of my life sentence beliefs about food and nutrition and health and exercise and all of that in favor of a more joyful and easy way to go about living. And so the work in both of those dimensions has been so invaluable and continues now, after the refinement phase. And then fourth was rest. I needed to figure out why I was so tired and so worn out all the time. And so I became very focused on a quest to obtain the ideal sleep environment, experience, so that I could recover.
Winston Faircloth:And so I then started recording the things I was doing in my day to day life. And I'd taken a lot of stress out of life by taking this little sabbatical. So that was one variable that was no longer in play. But now there were these other things that were prohibiting a really restful night's sleep. And so this was lots of little self experiments to figure out what things really work for me and my body at this stage of life.
Winston Faircloth:So the season of pause really ended up being four key principles: unplug, unlearn, relearn, and rest. And so this is part one. There's four parts to this whole process of getting back on track and moving forward with a new life and new business, a begin again moment, if you will, kind of taking this and sharing it out with the world. We talked last time about a plan. That's the fourth P.
Winston Faircloth:And today we talked about pause. So next time we're going to talk about purpose. And this is emerging for us. And what we know for sure, I shared this last time, but I'm gonna share it again, is what we know for sure is that we value long term relationships. We value being a strategic partner.
Winston Faircloth:And we're preparing ourselves to meet you as business owners along the journey through a series of seminars, group intensive mentorship, and our unique approach to unlocking team innovation. We're just getting started on this journey. As I mentioned last time, you won't see this on our website, because right now we're busy working with our initial cohort of business clients across this want a team, need a team and have a team spectrum. And over the coming weeks and months, you're going to see that shift in this podcast and in our online presence. So today we talked about step one, pause.
Winston Faircloth:Next time, next Monday, we'll talk about step two, finding purpose. And as I mentioned last time, catch our upcoming episodes being released at 07:07AM Eastern Time every Monday. That's when our next hot off the press weekly podcast will go out to the world. And if you don't want to miss a podcast, subscribe at Apple Podcast or any of your favorite podcast players so you don't miss a single episode. And as we've shared on now 51 episodes, remember that the biggest breakthroughs in life and business occur the moment you decide to begin again.
Winston Faircloth:I can't wait to catch you on the next episode. So let's draw deeper faith, inspiration, and encouragement in our own begin again moments. If you'd like to help others, make sure to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. Remember, your honest review helps us spread the word. And when you post your review, capture a screenshot and contact us via the link in the show notes.
Winston Faircloth:We'd love to send you a gift. And for more support and inspiration in building your own faith centered mission driven business, visit winstonfaircloth.com for free resources and guides. And remember, the biggest breakthroughs in life and business occur the moment you decide to begin again. I'll catch you on the next episode.