Weekly Review: Finding more joy & safety in my work

This week I wanted to try something a little new when sharing my updates with you. If you didn’t know, for the past 2+ years, I’ve been completing what’s called a Weekly Review.

At the end of every week (it can be any day that I signify as the end of my week, currently that’s Friday), I sit down and review the goals I set for the week, celebrate myself for my accomplishments, and assess what worked well and didn’t work well. Then I use what I gathered to set expectations for the upcoming week.

This has been an important practice for me as I set and work towards my personal and career goals. A lot comes up for me in these sessions. Sometimes what comes up feels very vulnerable and personal, which makes me want to keep them to myself.

However, I’ve been sharing these reviews with a trusted group of business peers that are following this practice as well. One piece of feedback I’ve received from many of them is that my reviews hold so much wisdom. Even though I write these purely for myself, they gain their own unique insights from them.

This is a compliment I’ve heard in other areas of my life as well, and it feels extremely uncomfortable to receive. I don’t feel wise and I’m certainly not trying to sound wise. Oftentimes, I feel like a mess. 😅 That’s why I go through this practice each and every week. It’s to dissect, clear out, and reprogram the mess.

But given that so many people have expressed how useful these are, it feels selfish of me to withhold them. I have the natural tendency to hide the parts of me that feel most raw and vulnerable, and I think sharing these over time will start to soothe and heal that rawness.

So without further ado, here’s what I got up to this week! My weekly reviews can be quite long and I go over a lot that happens in my week. I’m just going to pull out some of the highlights and things that may be the most interesting for you.

What I Accomplished

I accomplished a lot this week, but one of the consistent accomplishments I’ve been keeping up with this year is publishing two new designs to my shop on Spoonflower.

If you didn’t know, Spoonflower is where I sell my pattern designs on fabric, wallpaper, and home decor. I’ve been selling my work there for about 5 months now, and while things felt a little slow in the beginning, I’m starting to gain some momentum making sales there.

This week a customer reached out to me saying they loved one of my designs and asked if they could get it in a different colorway to match some of the other decor in their home. I quickly whipped up the changes for them and they were so grateful and immediately bought multiple products.

The feeling of making a sale is great. Little baby Rachel would have never dreamed of being able to make real money from selling her art online.

But money aside, I got such a high from being able to work one-on-one with a customer. The collaboration and process of helping others with their needs is something I miss about my full-time job, and I’m so grateful I got to have a taste of it in my business.

Here’s a look at the design they purchased! I was really inspired by their color choices. I sometimes struggle when playing color. It’s nice to see what others are drawn to so I can improve my own eye for it.

If you ever see something in my shop that you like, but want it in a different colorway or scale, feel free to email me at any time! I’m always happy to make changes.

What’s working well?

A few months ago, I noticed that I’ve been moving about my days with a heaviness that’s been very uncomfortable bear. I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself which has sucked a lot of the joy out of my work and caused me to feel less safe showing up as my authentic self.

To remedy this, I started doing some meditation and visualization work to create that sense of safety and calm, and wow has it made a huge difference.

I had no idea, but I’ve been going about my days with a super unregulated nervous system, carrying an undertone of anxiety and fear everywhere I go. It’s not a happy or healthy way to go about life for an extended period of time.

Being able to visualize a safe space and safe people whenever my nervous system goes into fight or flight mode has really enhanced my quality of life. Something as simple as writing this vulnerable blog post would have sent me in a panic, but I’m able to regulate my emotions much better now.

I’ll be continuing to rewire my subconscious and create more inner safety and peace through this work.

I follow a very particular and intentional process for this work, but it’s quite involved so I won’t get into all the details here. If you’re curious about what specifically I do to achieve this, let me know!

What’s not working well?

The biggest hurdle I’m working to overcome right now is my tendency to hide away. If I could go live in a cave away from the world and everyone I know without needing to worry about my basic needs, I would do it in a heartbeat.

It’s not that I don’t love my life and the people I’m surrounded by. I just feel a deep sense of safety and security when I’m sheltered from the world. My closest friends and family know that, even though I love them so much, if they don’t check in on me they might never hear from me again (I’m sorry, I really do love you ❤️).

This is a beautiful thing that I accept about myself, but I’m also aware of how it gets in the way of me showing up as my truest, most authentic self.

If anything comes up that feels even the slightest bit uncomfortable or unsafe, I got into hiding. But this prevents me from having new experiences, meeting new and interesting people, and challenging myself to grow.

I’m working on overcoming this by, again, learning to call on safety within myself whenever I need it. Being able to do so will keep me from physically retreating. I also plan to intentionally share more of my life with others, just as I’m doing now, even when it feels super vulnerable and scary. Over time, my brain will learn that allowing others to see me as my whole self isn’t dangerous.

My Plans for Next Week

Next week is going to be a pretty average week for me. I’m working through a couple of design courses currently and at the same time I’ll be developing a couple of new designs and releasing them to my shop.

This is a pretty standard routine for me now. I try to create 1-2 designs per week so I can share them with you. I’ll update you next week on what I end up creating!

That’s all I have for you. This update was a little lengthy, but I hope it was interesting to read what I’ve been up to and maybe you gained an insight or two. Let me know if you had any thoughts or ‘aha’ moments.

I’ll talk to you again next week!

Rachel