Are you settling into a new sense of normal these days and continuing to devote time to marketing and building your business?

Or has it been hard to?

Maybe the disruption of having the house suddenly full of family has made it hard to settle down. Or perhaps, even though you’ve stopped checking the news so often (you know it unsettles you,) you find yourself scrolling on social media instead of focusing on creating content and doing your marketing.

Or maybe you’ve gone into marketing overdrive, pushing and putting out new ideas and connections for your business.  

I’m a highly sensitive empath. Even though I have an office with a door on it, I hear all the noises, every one of them, in what used to be a quiet house.

Right now, I hear my youngest daughter pouring herself a bowl of cereal, opening the fridge for milk, and her spoon clinking on the bowl. I hear the garage door open as my husband heads outside for a walk mid-morning, the door slamming behind him. I hear walking upstairs as my oldest daughter moves from her room to the bathroom.

I hear other house sounds – a ticking clock, birdsong, the spinning washing machine, a car rushing past – and sense all these energy bodies around. I’ll admit it can make it hard to concentrate.  

When there’s disruption, no matter what level, it requires a period of settling in.

And it’s normal to feel a sense of unease by all that’s going on in the world right now. You need to shower yourself with compassion for the events that are unfolding and how you’re reacting to them.

And yet. It’s also true that the world still needs your gifts, and your business still needs your attention. So how DO you settle into what might feel like strange new circumstances and become better able to give your attention to what’s needed, despite what might be going on in your life and in the world at large?

The Old Ways of Doing

The temptation in the face of disruption is to keep doing what you’ve always done.

Old patterns can creep right back in and take over what you’re doing (or not) or what you’re focusing on (or not.) And this is especially true when marketing your business is asking you to be more visible.

If you’re someone who tends to collapse in the face of obstacles, recent changes might be enough to derail you from moving ahead on your marketing and business building all together. Perhaps you haven’t written a blog post in weeks. Or posted on your business page.  Maybe you’ve even stopped showing up at your desk for regular periods of working on developing your business.  

On the other hand, if your tendency is to charge ahead even faster, putting even more shoulder into your efforts, this situation is likely to cause you to do the same. You’re likely to hunker down, fingers curled over the keyboard, and push until you either just can’t anymore or you get all the things done. So you end up putting out post after post, creating new free offers and new courses. All without pausing really, deeply, to see what’s needed.

Or perhaps you are not moving on anything in your business, but you double down on being productive at home. You’ve made a sourdough starter and are attending online mandala making classes before embarking on your Marie Kondo tidying project.

A Fresh Look

Here’s the problem with these approaches – they’re at opposite ends of an extreme. Disruption (in the form of, say, a global pandemic) can be an opportunity to take a fresh look at what’s really needed to best relate to your marketing and building your business.

Instead of it becoming an excuse for avoiding something difficult or a reason to charge full steam ahead, it’s a sign of something you need to pay attention to.  

And, the truth is, you can’t tell what’s needed until you check in with your heart.

Checking with Your Heart

There is no one size fits all approach. No do this and you’ll get that. What’s important here is what’s always important. Checking in with your heart and your inner wisdom for guidance. Only you can tell what’s right for you, and there is a lot of noise out there, especially in disruptive situations, so you have to listen carefully.

When you check in with your heart, its guidance is never all or nothing.

You might need to take on less, lower your expectations and set new smaller more attainable goals. Or you might need to spend a little more time with your business, giving it the attention it needs right now. Not because there is some impossible external standard you’re trying to meet to be a ‘good’ business owner, but because your heart is urging your attention toward your business, toward growing your audience and your network so you can more readily help those in need.

Marketing and building your coaching, healing or creative business is and always has been about creating something in the face of the unknown.

It’s like that now more than ever. What you’re being called to do in the face of uncertainty is to step ahead, in whatever way your inner wisdom guides you, grabbing onto a ribbon of trust and your own inner truth to lead you forward.  

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash