March (UN)DONE
#9 a month of unlearning
(Un)done is my monthly round-up. Sharing what I’ve been (un)learning, what’s captured my interest and how that’s shaping my focus for the coming month, with some prompts for you along the way1. It’s free-to-read for all subscribers. 😊
Hello
After my end-of-January smugness that summer was just around the corner, March brought me back down to earth with a fog I wasn’t expecting. Not tired in a ‘sleep will sort me out’ way, but feeling foggy about everything. It’s been a job to dig beyond the surface symptoms to understand what’s going on. I have some answers I think, but also more to experiment with. The lighter days are doing some heavy lifting too.
How’s March been feeling for you?
What I’ve been (un)learning this month
What if this wasn’t a threat but evidence you’re doing the right thing?
I read a book this month that made me meltdown. It wasn’t bad, it was too bloody good. And it made me question EVERYTHING I’d been doing.
The culprit was Lauren Currie’s Be Upfront, a book all about building confidence. The irony wasn’t lost on me that a book on confidence had given me the biggest wobble since I pivoted the business.
You see this isn’t your average self-help book about power poses. It helps you to unlearn all you know about confidence and rewrite the rules. Do you see the problem?
Yep - unlearning, rewriting rules, experimenting - basically everything I wang on about, albeit through the specific lens of confidence. As I read it I had every ‘woe is me’ narrative playing out - she’s got a bigger audience… people are going to think I’m copying her… what hope do I have… why even bother anymore.
It was a sobering moment. From having thought I’d invented the word a couple of years back to seeing how more and more people are talking about unlearning, culminating in a whole book being published. For the first time I felt like an imposter (and I don’t even believe that’s a thing!).
BUT I took a breath to calm myself and reframed it. Maybe this book isn’t the threat I’m thinking it is, maybe it’s the best bit of evidence that unlearning as a concept is real and people are willing to buy into it!
Re-reading the book through that lens and I could see what a gift it was. It’s the tangible proof that I’m on the right track. I’ll be sharing it with my clients going forward. I want Lauren Currie and me to become besties in the future!
And on that, in a wonderful moment of serendipity, the same week of my wobble who did I happen to pass in London? Lauren herself! I did something very out of character and stopped her to tell her how wonderful her book was. We had a brief but lovely chat.
💭 How could reframe a situation you’re feeling threatened or uncertain about?
Introvert seeking connection
I’ve always thought of myself as someone who doesn’t really need people to get things done. I’m a self-starter, independent, recharges alone. All of this is technically true, but this month I’ve had to sit with a more uncomfortable version of it.
What I’ve noticed is that when I don’t have regular connection with the right people, I go flat. Not dramatically, but like someone has dialled down all the buttons on the fader. And then when everything lands at once I tip the other way, trying to squeeze conversations in between the busy work instead of letting them breathe, and anything I haven’t actioned immediately gets shunted into the quiet moments where it just sits there (and is often left undone).
I felt this really starkly this month, in the midst of my fog, I joined a live call with one of the communities2 I’m in - a real-time conversation about the business, what’s working, the impact it’s having. It felt so aligned I wanted to bottle it so I could replay it later, when I need that boost.
But I know from experience that bottled conversations lose their spark. Which told me something. What I’m actually missing isn’t the occasional brilliant exchange that I try to preserve - it’s a steadier drip of this. Enough that I don’t feel I have to ration it to make it last.
I’d been treating meaningful connection like a treat, whereas it turns out it’s closer to a basic requirement for me nowadays.
💭 What are you treating as a luxury that might actually be a necessity?
It was never about having mornings to myself
I shared last month how my experiments within the (Un)learning Lab had me looking at how I spent my mornings; instead of feeling like I had to fulfil a 9-5 working day, I would encourage more flexibility.
Well, in my quest to rip up the rulebook I think I went too far the other way. In the attempt to be flexible I ended up removing all boundaries. And tbh, I think this is a big part of why I’ve been feeling the fog. I’d lost my non-working day, I was letting work bleed into my weekends, I’d truncated my holidays. It started when I pivoted the business last year and at the time I was worried I’d lose momentum if I slowed down. Then I pushed back against corporate conditioning and argued that working late and the weekends was my choice and an act of rebellion. The problem was I’d forgotten to give myself any space.
That’s what I’ve sat with this month. An afternoon in the Tate Gallery coffee shop with my thoughts and my notebook gave me space to think. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, it once was part of my practice following an experiment to get me writing more but somehow it had slipped out of my routine. I realised at that moment I’m not yearning lazy mornings to do big reading, I need pockets of time with my notebook in a coffee shop allowing me to process my thinking.
And this was most certainly confirmed during said coffee shop session, as a bigger realisation was that I’m filling my time with busy work in the guise of ‘I need to do this in order to attract clients’. But how would I cope when my books are filled? I’m creating my own overwhelm. So the experiment I took away with me for next month’s Lab is ‘would I make better choices about how I spend my time if I act as if my books are already filled?’.
Plus I’ve decided to take a whole week off work, no excuses or distractions!
💭 Where is busy work distracting you?
And keeping me occupied…
I went to the Tracy Emin show at Tate Modern. I can’t say I’d paid that much attention to her work before, but I was interested to see this show as it’s part retrospective and part new. It was a heavy experience. The pieces are laced with trauma - sex, rejection, abortion, illness. At many points I felt that the definition of art was being challenged - written journal pages displayed in frames, embroidery telling stories - asking you to question who and what defines an item. I was also really fascinated (and not fully satisfied) with understanding the actual creative process; you could see the bones of another image underneath the final one and I was left wondering if that was always the intent or something that happened during the process.
After realising I needed to be less ‘on’ when it came to work, I also went on a solo cinema date to see the Jeff Buckley documentary film. I admit to being a fan of his music anyway, but to hear the songs with that cinema sound - wow! The film itself was haunting. With my unlearning hat on I was really interested in his shedding of identity and not wanting to be categorised by the media. One quote stood out: “If you’re comparing me to my father, you don’t understand me.” And ultimately he was searching for who he was within, something I resonated with deeply.
My reading stack this month looked like:
Grotesque Natsuo Kirino, Before We Forget Kindness Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Beautiful Ugly Alice Feeney, Be Upfront Lauren Currie, This is Fine Poorna Bell, Rodham Curtis Sittenfield.
Also, if you haven’t watched it I highly recommend Waiting for the Out on BBC iPlayer. Based on a true story about a guy who teaches philosophy in a prison. Leaves you pondering a lot of questions.
In case you missed it, here’s what I’ve been writing about this month:
One thought I’m taking into next month…
What else am I putting off?
Having finally cancelled my professional membership and feeling totally underwhelmed by it, I’m wondering what else I’ve been building up as a bigger thing in my mind instead of just taking the action. This might be a question for another coffee and notebook session I think!
Thanks for being here 💕 Let me know how your month has been and what final thoughts you’re taking with you. If you’re reading this in your emails then click the link below to share your comments.
All the best … Lee x
🌟 I work with high-functioning, purpose-led people, helping them to unlearn the invisible rules shaping how they work and live - so they can stop over-carrying, over-performing and reclaim their agency to build a life that actually fits.
Here’s how you can (un)learn with me…
If you want to explore this lightly → The (Un)learning Lab
If you want to untangle one rule → The (Un)learning Intervention
If you want to reclaim your identity → The (Un)learning Blueprint 🌟
If what I write resonates, this symbol 💭 offers moments for you to sit with the exploration.
I’ve been loving being in aligned communities, if you hadn’t already noticed! If you’re interested, two of the communities I’m part of are both about to start the next rounds of their programmes. I’ve done both and really recommend them. Claire’s Business of Substack course is great if you want your substack to be part of your business offering and it includes access to all her Sparkle on Substack resources. Hannah’s Best 90 Days Ever is the perfect marketing support for small businesses, you get 10min action prompts every day and Hannah is very active in giving feedback on your ideas and resources. I’m an affiliate for both, but honestly I never recommend anything I haven’t done, enjoyed and benefitted from.