This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 113 / Detaching and Honoring the Messiness

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

I’m doing something I’ve never done before: a completely unscripted podcast episode. That’s right…no topic picked out, no prepared thoughts and no clue which direction it’ll head in. So buckle up because my foot is on the gas but I have no destination in mind. Consider this the think out loud episode, the stream of consciousness episode, the trust my gut episode. I share the behind the scenes of book launch, the successes and (holy shit) the challenges. How my personal challenges and the spectacular screw ups on the publishing side have left me feeling, quite frankly, numb. How I defaulted to old patterns and behaviors and how it’s taken a huge toll on me and has left me feeling out of balance. So right now I’m pausing, taking a step back, releasing control, listening, getting quiet, creating space for my inner knowing to speak. I don’t know where this is going to take me, but I’m trusting that it’s necessary. Let’s trust ourselves firmly and boldly, and then see what we create from here. To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com. Get your copy of Validation Is For Parking.

Hello, friends. You are tuning into a very strange episode of This is Woman's Work because I don't have a topic picked out. I have no prepared thoughts and I'm not sure what direction we're going to go. So buckle up because my foot is on the gas, but I have no destination in mind. This, by the way, is the opposite of how you're supposed to do podcasts, or at least the opposite of how I usually do them. Typically, I have a topic in mind and over several days, weeks, or months, I collect thoughts and ideas and things that I want to share, beliefs and opinions that I hope will make a difference and an impact. I plan, I prepare, and I even practice once before hitting record, but not today. Today I'm thinking out loud. It's the stream of consciousness episode. It's the trust my gut

episode. It's the, I was supposed to deliver my team a post book launch episode several weeks ago, but I kept pushing it back because I'm white and I can't figure out what to say, which is making their lives difficult. So I decided to put my big girl pants on and talk into a mic and trust that whatever comes out of my mouth is good enough. That's the episode. Good luck turning that into a title. Anyway, let's get started.

I am Nicole Kalil and I have no idea what I'm going to say. How's that for an inspirational start to the show? I'm the anti-perfectionist right now. I'm not even half-assing it. I'm full-assing it. So the original intention of this episode, at least as how it is on the calendar, was to share with you an update after releasing my first book, Validation is for Parking, to share some successes, give some behind the scenes, and talk

about some of the challenges. And I guess I can do that, but holy shit, that's going to sound a lot different than I thought it was going to sound when we planned it out a few months ago. So let's start with the things that there are to celebrate. And there are so many things. These are the things that if you're outside looking in would make you think that I have it, and I put in air quotes, figured out. And that life and business is so good. And that I'm swimming in my successes and I have a clear path, a straight shot to all my goals, and that I'm somehow experiencing complete bliss. It's the highlight reel we often compare ourselves to. It's shiny, it's exciting, and I am incredibly grateful, but it is part of a bigger picture, which is,

I think, so often the case. And the other parts of the picture, we often don't see. So here are some of the results that this results junkie can be proud of. These are some wins, some things that I am in fact celebrating. Okay. So the big goal in launching the book for my publisher was to sell a thousand copies this year, like a year from launch. I told them that I was going to try that to do that in the first week. And they started using terms like level set expectations and be realistic and averages because the average book sells around 250 copies in a year. Trust me, there's really no money in book sales for 99.9% of authors. So I quietly worked behind the scenes, followed the advice from other successful authors who I'd called and picked their brain. And I'm thrilled

to share that we did sell over 2000 copies in the first week and hit just under 4,000 copies in the first month. How's that for level setting expectations? And validation is for parking hit number one bestseller on Amazon, not in just one, but in four categories within 24 hours of release, which surpassed even my hopes. Our podcast has had like 10 times more downloads in the last week than our best week ever, which is awesome because we are literally hitting our best week ever every single week for the last six weeks in a row. So I don't even know how to map out the trajectory of that growth, but thank you all for listening.

Additionally, my social media has gone from like 3,000 followers to over 30,000 and has had more engagement than I guess normal. So much so that people are regularly reaching out to ask what in the hell I'm doing. I've had some incredible speaking opportunities with new organizations. And one of the highlights being able to speak at Salesforce on the Ohana floor, which is apparently a pretty big deal. Katie Longman, if you're listening, you are the best. Thanks for making that happen. I got to be on 52 podcasts as a guest with incredible hosts, with incredible reach. A few of them being in the top 0.5% of all podcasts. So people I had on my bucket

list last year and the year before. I've had publishers from two different countries reach out to ask if they could translate Validation is for Parking into other languages. I just did an interview for an Oprah Daily article, which was a very surreal moment. I bombed it, by the way, but that's a story for another day. Lastly, and most meaningful to me, have been the countless calls, texts, messages, DMs, and just outreach that I've received with how the book has impacted you, the reader, the beautiful people who showed up at our book signings, some of whom flew across the country to do it. People that have gotten to hug, people who haven't kept their support quiet and have shared with their friends, sisters, and coworkers. The men who've reached out that they're reading the book to.

Those of you who've shared on social media or in a quiet conversation and in your reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Side note, if you're wondering how to best support, please keep the reviews coming on Amazon and Goodreads. So far, we have almost 100% five-star and that's awesome, but I care less about getting all five-star reviews and more about getting feedback. So even if it's not a five-star review, I'm going to ask that you keep putting those reviews in. Anyway, I know validation is for parking and my confidence isn't tied to anything external, but I also know that all this love and support has been icing on the confidence cake and you've made this entire experience richer and sweeter. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I feel like there aren't words, at least not the right words to express my gratitude.

So I think you'd agree that there is a lot to celebrate. And I will tell you that I am choosing gratitude. So the question is, why has the overwhelming feeling that I've experienced over the last couple of months been numb? No feeling, lights out, nobody home. Well, because all these amazing things are just a wonderful part of a bigger picture. Because life doesn't give a shit about bestseller rankings and life still happens to those of us that are living. And life has been hard in the midst of all of these successes. But before anybody starts thinking my life is harder or wants to tell me to stop complaining or be grateful, or you have so much privilege or starts comparing my hard to somebody else's hard. I want to be clear that it's been hard

for me. I'm grateful and I do have privilege and it has been mentally and emotionally draining the last couple of months. I know I'll get through it, but honestly, it just has felt fucking hard. So to give you an idea of some of the other pieces of the picture, in the last year, we lived in a rental while renovating our home. And we moved back in August to an unfinished home. So we still had workers in and out of the house right up until and through book launch. We chose to do this and we have an amazing home and moving is one of life's biggest stressors. And we've done it four times in the last two years. We told JJ early in the year that she could get a puppy for her birthday. When we thought her birthday would be after our move and after a book launch instead of on top of

both of those things. And we didn't want to go back on our word. Again, we chose this and having a puppy, no matter how cute and how much we love him, has been a lot more work than any of us anticipated. And having less sleep and more potty breaks was not ideal during the busiest month of my life. We had a flood in our basement. We had the normal back to school for JJ. And without getting into details, probably one of the most difficult parts is not just one, but several of the people closest to me that I love the most in this world are going through huge life-changing, life-defining challenges. Like they need all the love, support, care, listening, and somebody to be there. And I could only do my best and nothing ever really felt like enough. And many of these have had consequences for me, which is unimportant given what they're

dealing with, but is impacting me mentally and emotionally, as is the case when the people we love face health challenges and big life transitions. And I'll just leave it at that because while I'm very open about sharing my stuff, sharing other people's business is a line I won't cross. So during book launch, I had very personal challenges combined with some pretty spectacular screw-ups on the publishing side. Without getting into those details, I'll just say that two days before book launch, I was frankly unsure there would even be books. And at that point, sheer panic turned into complete numbness because I did what so many of us do. I went into get it done mode. I set aside feelings and focused on tasks. I bucked up. I did what needed to be done and dealt with the

things that were right in front of me. I tried to be all things to all people and lived my days like a 24 hour checklist with no time to feel. Probably my biggest regret is that my sister and a handful of my best friends on the planet were here for the launch and the weekend. And I was never really with them. Like my body was there, but not the rest of me. They got the empty version of me. And I wish now that I would have not tried to keep it all together, that I would have trusted myself more to just fall apart because they are the people I could have done that with. And they wouldn't have judged the pieces. More likely, they would have helped me pick them back up. In short, I defaulted to old patterns and behaviors. I definitely have had

moments of judging myself for having a book out there on the topic of confidence while experiencing all this messiness and while not exactly doing the things that I share to do in the book. As I'm recording this, it's been a week since I could slow down, even just a little. I ran so hard through the last week of October, and now I've had about a week to reflect. And here's the biggest thing that I'm thinking and learning and noodling on, this concept of how to detach, the concept of detachment, which is something I've heard of before, but completely misunderstood in the past. I had in my mind detachment as something cold and unfeeling, as giving up or harshly cutting something or someone off or shoving somebody out of your life. I had it as being unfeeling or unaffected, but that's not it as I'm learning. Detachment is releasing a problem or a person in love.

It's understanding that there are problems we can't solve, people we can't fix. It's letting go of things that don't serve anyone, least of all you. Things like worrying, controlling, and taking on other people's battles. And because I'm still kind of figuring out this concept, I'll read you a direct quote from the book, Codependent No More, that really resonated with me. And this book, by the way, was delivered to my house by accident, which is one of those moments that reminds me the universe provides what we need and there are no real accidents. Anyway, it says on page 60, for those of you who want to get and read the book,

detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself. And we can't solve problems that aren't ours to solve and that worrying doesn't help. We adopt a policy of keeping our hands off other people's responsibilities and tending to our own instead. If people have created some disaster for themselves, we will allow them to face their own proverbial music. We allow people to be who they are. We give them freedom to be responsible and to grow. We give ourselves that same freedom. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. Then we stop trying to change the things we can't.

We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. We cannot solve a problem, and we have done what we could. We learned to live with or in spite of that problem. And we try to live happily, focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today and feeling grateful for that. We learned the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more. Whoa. Now that's the type of detachment that feels like an opportunity, a gift. It feels like deep love for self and for others. And it's different than how many of us are socialized as women. I'm supposed to want to help and please and nurture everyone all the time, right? I'm

meant to sacrifice myself and my wants and my desires for those I love, right? I don't know. I've been rethinking this a lot lately. I think I'm meant to love and trust myself firmly and boldly. And in doing so, I can love others without losing myself. I can give without it emptying me. I can support in ways that serve those that want to be supported, and I can be supported in turn. This feels like a new way to love for me. This feels like an

opportunity for so many of us. And I definitely don't have this figured out. It's going to be a huge work in progress. It's scary and uncomfortable because right now I'd normally be getting into like planning mode where I'd begin to ask the question, what's next? I'd set big goals. I'd strategize, plan, I'd execute, which for me mostly looked like putting my business hat on, thinking over feeling, controlling, forcing, pushing, solving, doing. Now you may be thinking, or at least I thought like, hold on. I thought action built confidence and you'd be right. I still think that that's true. Action does build confidence, but action toward what matters. Small actions and big actions alike, but the toward what matters is important, not just

action for the sake of action. And right now, the action I'm taking is to get clear on the what matters part, to trust that detachment is an action, an important one, a scary and unfamiliar one, because I'm so used to focusing on mechanism tactics and doing this. I often say that confidence is trusting yourself firmly and boldly. And right now, releasing control and letting go of trying to solve all the problems feels pretty fucking bold. The action I'm taking is listening, getting quiet, creating space for my inner knowing to speak and And so that I can actually hear it. And if that doesn't sound like action to you, I'm guessing it's because you've never tried it.

At least for me, I can share that it's much harder for me to do that than a lot of the other action steps I could be taking. I'm trusting that the universe is in perfect order and that my hard times are serving an important purpose. And that the only thing I'm missing right the universe is in perfect order and that my hard times are serving an important purpose and that the only thing I'm missing right now is hindsight. You could say I'm setting aside the masculine to embrace the feminine, not because I hate the masculine, but because I've been living out of balance lately. So I don't know what any of this means yet. I'm not sure this episode makes any sense other than I detached

from how it normally looks and embraced the messiness and trusted that whatever came out of my mouth was enough because I'm enough. And because I am, you are too. Separate of your results, your achievements, successes, separate from what other people think and everybody else's opinions, separate from how it looks, from how you look. If you set aside the shoulds and the shouldn'ts and for a moment believe it's all possible, if you started with a yes instead of all the reasons you can't, if you listen to that quiet voice that knows everything there is to know and loves you all the time no matter what, what would she say? What if trusting yourself is the biggest opportunity right now for any of us? I don't know what that means. I don't know what it looks like.

I'm just playing with that for a little bit. And if that's of any interest to you, I invite you to join me. Let's trust ourselves firmly and boldly. And then let's see what we create from there. What if we embrace that life is in fact a paradox, that we can be detached and care, that we can trust and be tenacious, that we can lead and we can follow, that we can speak and we can listen, that there's just so much opportunity. And I, for one, am going to take some time to just sit in it for a little bit. Okay. So I've been talking for, I don't even know how many minutes now, and I honestly don't even know how to close out this episode, this strange, uncomfortable, messy, unplanned, trusting episode. I'm just going to hope that maybe this message resonates with somebody listening. I'm going to hope that

I'm not alone in this. I'm going to choose to be grateful, to trust, to hope, and to listen, because that is woman's work.