Happy Productive with Jennifer Dawn
Welcome to the Happy Productive Podcast, where business transformation meets personal fulfillment. Hosted by Jennifer Dawn, Business Coach and founder of Jennifer Dawn Coaching, this podcast delivers actionable insights and heartfelt guidance to elevate your productivity, align your goals, and enhance your time management skills - all while keeping joy at the forefront.
With 30 years of entrepreneurial expertise and her unique Inside Out Results Roadmap™, Jennifer offers a blend of practical advice and genuine support to help you break free from the grind and create a sustainable, thriving business. Each episode is designed to empower you and your team with resilience, authenticity, and a positive mindset.
Join us and discover how to transform your business and your life, one episode at a time. Learn more at www.JenniferDawnCoaching.com
Jennifer Dawn
Hey, hey everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Jennifer Dawn, and I'm really thrilled to have you join me today as an entrepreneur, entrepreneur for over 25 years and the author of two books, The Joy Guide, Finding Your Joy in a World of Crap and The Apple Stand, How to Rekindle the Love for Your Business. My passion is coaching business owners to escape that hamster wheel of constant doing, unpredictable cashflow and misaligned teams.
And I love empowering them to create a thriving company culture that is profitable, sustainable, and fulfilling. I'm the creator of a signature two -step coaching method designed to get maximum results in minimum time by working from the inside out. I've helped over 50 ,000 business owners so far, and I'm thrilled to have you with, I can't talk today, you guys. I'm thrilled to have you here with me today. In this special seven -part series, I'm hosting the Business Bliss Challenge.
To help you go from being burned out and hating your business to loving it again. If you're not already signed up, just hop over to applestandbook .com and get signed up. Now, my goal is to help you rekindle the love for your business in just seven days. And I'm breaking this down into simple, actionable steps that you can take right now, today, to start feeling better. Why? Why is this important? Did you know 75%, 75 % you guys.
A business owners struggle with their mental health and feelings of isolation, anxiety, stress, and depression. And if you've been a business owner for any length of time, you know that that is a legit stat. And guess what? It's time to stop smiling on the outside when we are dying on the inside and do something about it. And that's actually why I wrote my second book, The Apple Stand, because enough already. Like we need to start having some really good conversations about this. Now.
In this first episode, I'm gonna lay the groundwork for future episodes. But remember, you do not get the result. It's not gonna happen if you don't do the work. So I'm really gonna encourage you to take an action at the end of each of these shows. And I will share lots and lots of practical actions. They are all things that you can do right now today. And guess what? They don't cost a thing. These actions are gonna be in four different categories. Mental, which are gonna be new ways to think and direct your mind.
Emotional ways to master your emotions and spend time or more time in the higher emotional states, our language, which is going to be awareness around the words that we use and how they shape our reality. And finally, physical healing foods that will support and heal your body and also improve your energy. And who doesn't want to have more energy today and today shows we're going to be exploring finding your lost spark.
So when you're feeling burned out, like depressed, or find that you are hating some or all of your business, and I realize you guys that hate is a strong word, but these are strong emotions that you're feeling right now. And if we wanna change them, we need to own them 100%. And the truth is that a little tiny bit of dislike is actually a little bit of hate.
And for some of you, you might be carrying a lot more than just a little bit of dislike for your business, which means that you are carrying around a whole bunch of hate and you are, you're carrying that around with you all day long. What do you think the effect that that hate is having on your mental, your physical and your emotional wellbeing? Hmm. Right. Think about that for a second. Maybe you're feeling exhausted, unmotivated, or just like stuck, stuck, stuck.
You might even be starting to resent your business. Maybe when you wake up, you are dreading each and every day. If this sounds familiar, it's because I have been there myself many times and I know exactly how painful it can be. I've been through several rounds of burnout and I never forgot what a wonderful coach once told me. So I'm on a coaching call.
I'm probably bawling my eyes out and I'm apologizing because I'm like, all right, you know, I'm freaking out about all these things, but it's probably just PMS. And you know what she said? She said to me, Jennifer, there's a lot of wisdom in PMS and she was right. And when I thought about that, I realized that during the normal month, I could repress all those emotions, but during PMS, ooh, they just boiled right up and went kaboom.
But the truth is that I was carrying all that stuff around with me the whole rest of the time. I was just repressing it better, but that isn't good. But here's the thing. We don't actually have to carry all this stuff around. We can do something about it. And when we do, that's when we're going to find that, guess what? Our joy, it was right there all along. It was just sort of buried under a few layers of junk. And once we clear out that junk, whoa, there it is. Now.
Why do we want to do this? Well, because when we're operating in our joy and our bliss and our happiness and our passion, we're way more creative or more resilient or more motivated. It's a heck of a lot more fun. We're not just going to grind away through those challenges. We actually become better able to see the gift in our challenges and even get to a place where we can thank them. Yes, you heard me. Thank those challenges because guess what? They're all there to teach us. So.
Where do we start on this beautiful journey when we're just feeling beat up and burned out, we just don't know where to go or what to do. The very, very first thing that we have to do is we have to own it. We cannot change anything if we are blaming other people or we're not in our power. And this is what happens when we start blaming other things outside of ourselves, we are giving those things our power.
Whatever's going on outside of yourself is actually happening because of what's going on on the inside. For example, if our money situation is causing us to feel really burned out or hate our business, well, that money situation isn't all the things that you're blaming. It's my people, it's my sales, it's the economy, right? All the things that we come up with to blame all these outside factors. Your money situation is a you problem, okay? Your health.
If your health isn't what you want it to be. well, you know, all the things that we can put on. I don't have time to eat healthy. All the food industry processes food that isn't healthy, blah, blah, blah. Okay, if your health sucks, it's because of you. Your time. If you're like, I don't have time, I don't have time. Okay, you don't have a time management problem, you have a you problem. Same thing with your relationships. If your relationships are sucking at work or privately, it's not about the relationships, it's really about you.
And every minute that you spend blaming all of those other things outside yourself is just a waste of time. You've got to take ownership of it right now, all of it. What that means is that if my money situation sucks, what do I need to do to change it? Me, what do I need to do? What do I need to change? If my health sucks, what change do I need to make? If my time management sucks, what change do I need to make? My relationships suck, what do I need to change about myself? Okay, that's where we start.
Because now once you own it, you're actually back in your power and now you can actually make a change. Okay? So that's the first thing. Whatever's burning you out in this business, stop blaming, start owning, and from there now we can actually make a change. Okay, next. Take a moment and I want you to just ask yourself, why did you even start your business in the first place? What was it you were hoping to do? What problem were you trying to solve?
If I took your business away from you right now today, what would you miss about it the most? And I really want to help you to reconnect to the parts of your business that you actually love. So just take a moment and think about that for a second. What parts of your business do you really, really love? And if it was gone today, you would actually miss. Here's the deal. Wherever we focus expands. So if we go through each day focusing,
On the things that are wrong in our business or that we hate about our business, what's gonna get bigger. Instead, if we flip that and we spend time focusing on the things that we love about our business and the things that are going right, what's going to get bigger? Love is like a compass that is gonna guide you back to your true north. And all of this work that we're gonna do together, we're gonna do it in love, in the emotion of love.
That might sound corny, but I promise you it is a higher emotion. It feels so much better to be in love than hate. And you are going to be able to make these changes so much faster if you love yourself to the finish line instead of trying to beat yourself up to the finish line. The changes that I'm going to suggest are really simple, but they are, they might even seem too simple, but I promise you they're really, really powerful. And here's the thing. Most people are not going to do them. They're not going to do them, but.
If you do do them, you will get the results and you might even find that they are life and business changing. Okay, as I mentioned in each of the episodes, I'm going to share simple actions that you could put into practice right now today. So when you're feeling burned out, here are three things that you can do to start to rekindle that spark. Mental. All right, we create our reality with our words and our thoughts. Think about it. Two people.
They show up, they exchange vows and vows are basically words and we exchange those words but from that moment on it changes everything. If we get up and we say, I'm having the worst day ever, what happens? We have the worst day ever. If we get up and we say, I'm having the best day, well guess what? That's what we create. And even if something comes up that's a challenge when we're having the best day ever, it doesn't phase us. It just, woo, it just blew right, blew right, right past it, it doesn't matter. The truth is that we can create calm or we can create chaos with our thoughts and our words. And guess what? It's the same amount of effort and you get to choose. So we're going to start by paying attention to the words that we're using and start to choose better ones. For example, how many times in a day do you say or think things like, I hate not having money. I hate all these people I have to work with. I hate my clients, I hate my business, right? Okay, so if what we focus on expands and we're using those words and we're putting those words out into the universe, what are we gonna get back? What are we actually creating? So instead, let's shift it. Now, the shift does need to be true for you. So for example, I hate not having money. The flip of that is I love having money.
I don't know about you, but that's pretty true for me. I do love having money. And so throughout the day, every time you're tempted to be like, I hate not having money. Just flip that to, I love having money. And that's true. I love having money. I love having money. Maybe like people are driving you crazy. We can flip that to, I love being a mom. I love being a dad. I love being a leader. I love being a business owner. And if it's true for you, wonderful. The truth shall set you free.
Okay, instead of, I hate my business. I love fill in the blank about my business. And it needs to again be true. Well, you actually love about your business. And as soon as you refocus yourself on those positive aspects, one, you're going to feel a lot better. In fact, feel the difference in your body between, I hate not having money. Feel that feels kind of small and gross to me versus I love having money that feels expansive. It feels lighter. It feels more fun.
Feels really awesome. And that's all we did. We just changed a thought, we changed some of our words, and we literally created a physical shift in our body that we can feel. So when we're speaking about our emotions, all right, here's a little emotional thing that you can do. Whatever you're feeling that's lower on that emotional scale, okay, whatever shit you're going through, whatever you're feeling, angry, frustrated, bitter, resentful, whatever it is. Give yourself permission to just feel it. Because so often what we do is we're angry or we're frustrated and then we don't like feeling that way. So then we beat ourselves up a little bit of like, well, why are you feeling that way? And all that does is it just compounds it and adds a whole nother layer of negative emotion. Instead, just give yourself permission. I'm feeling frustrated right now. I'm feeling frustrated right now and it's okay. That's it.
And when you give yourself permission to just feel it, you might also feel a shift. I feel that in my body of like, it just gets lighter. It just gets easier. It's okay that I'm feeling this way. It doesn't mean it's going to last forever. And I don't have to beat myself up or shame myself because I'm having a negative emotion. I'm human. It's normal. Of course that's okay. All right. So that's number two. Give yourself permission to just feel it. And finally, the physical or physical bodies.
Eat more living foods because they make you feel better. Now here's the thing, I'm not food shaming. Choose any diet that you love and works for you. But in that diet, I really want to encourage you to eat more living foods, things like fruits and vegetables. You've heard the statement, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. And there are so many healing properties in our food.
So in addition to focusing our mind, working on our emotions, we can also intentionally eat some things that will also help us to feel better. So my focus food for today is an apple. I know it's simple. You've heard an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And guess what? It's true. Apples are anti -inflammatory. The phytochemicals in apples make them a...
perfect brain food. They feed your neurons. They increase your brain activity. Apples also aid in detoxification and help you to cleanse and purify your internal organs. And they are also deeply hydrating on a cellular level. Apples are an ancient food and they have supported human beings since the very, very beginning. They're frost resistant. So even when things get cold, they continue to grow and ripen.
Apples are kind of like a protective shield that you can put around yourself no matter what is going on on the outside. Think about it. How good do you feel when you're eating a juicy, crunchy apple? Yay! Versus something that is packaged, over -processed, and deader than dead. Okay? Here's the thing I really want you to hold onto here.
When you eat the apple, after you eat the apple, are there any feelings of shame or guilt that get created versus when you're eating that package, overly processed, super dead food that you know isn't good for you. Once you're eating it, it might be like, yay, this is so yummy. But then after you eat it, be honest, how do you really feel? I know for me that when I'm binging, I make up a lot of excuses to eat this junk and then I eat it and it's like, it's so yummy. And then afterwards,
I don't feel that great. I don't feel that good about myself. And I've noticed that these additional negative feelings of shame and guilt actually get created, but I never have that after I eat the apple. So I'm going to suggest just think it all the way through. It might seem like a good idea at the beginning, but if you think it all the way through, how am I really going to feel after I eat this? It might help you to make a different decision.
But again, no food shaming, eat whatever you wanna eat. Maybe just consider adding some beautiful, healthy, living, vibrant foods to your diet. I learned this actually a long time ago, business coaching, that if I wanted to have mental clarity and lots of energy all day to support my clients, I could not eat a lot of junky foods throughout the day because it just really killed my energy. And so generally during a working business day, I'm eating 100 % fruits and vegetables because...
My energy is woohoo off the charts. And if I'm going to eat a bigger, heavier meal, I usually do it at night, right? Don't need all that energy for my clients. Okay, so that's going to be it for today, you guys. But please remember, get clear on the parts of your business that you love and start using words and thoughts to create more of that love and put your focus into the love and a little less focus on the things that you're hating.
When you're in the love, you're going to feel better. And that's when your creativity, your ingenuity, your problem solving is going to be so much better because you're in a higher emotional state. It's okay. Whatever you're feeling, just give yourself permission to feel it. And last but not least, eat some apples to feel better. I really, really hope that this information helps you guys today. Remember, you can opt into the challenge from Apple Stand Book.
And as my special gift to you, you can also get the first chapter of my book, The Apple Stand, completely free. Remember, your spark is still there, even if it feels buried under so many layers of stress and frustration. Join me tomorrow when we're going to be discussing day two, getting back to the basics in our business. Now, if you enjoyed this episode, please re -listen as necessary or share it with another business owner friend who really might need this message today.