​Hey, Dr. Jess Reynolds here and welcome to the Conscious Practitioner. This is the audio version of my newsletter, and it's made for wellness practitioners who love the work, but maybe are feeling a little bit overwhelmed, burned out, and you still want to build a practice you love. If you'd like to get the email version, you could find a link in the show notes. So I've spent the better part of the last two weeks in a hospital room. I was there supporting my family during a major surgery. Not for myself, but for my dad. He had a lung transplant, a double lung transplant to be specific. Now things are going well. In fact, they're going incredibly well, which I'm super grateful for. But during that time, everything else in my life just stopped. No laptop, no meetings, no audio books or podcasts even. Barely any work was done at all on AIM or my private practice. Just time to think, observe, and be fully present. Now for anyone who runs a business, you probably know what this feels like when you're the one holding everything together. Stepping away feels like tempting fate, like the whole thing might crumble if you're not there. But here's what surprised me, it didn't crumble. Now, sure, my income dipped, but nothing broke. I did maybe 20 minutes of essential work in the evenings right before I crashed, and somehow the world kept turning. So here's the thing that no one really tells you about. Forced downtime. It tends to make you become brutally honest about what actually matters. So sitting in those terribly uncomfortable hospital chairs, watching and waiting, walking the halls to get a bit of movement here and there, something eventually shifted inside me. Without the constant noise of emails and to-do lists, my brain finally, finally had space to think. Really think this wasn't like being on vacation where I'm still listening to business podcasts and sketching on ideas. It was true stillness. What came up, honestly, wasn't that pretty. Because I realized how much time I've been spending on projects that don't really light me up projects I've said yes to, because they were available opportunities, not because they energized me. Workshops I'd agreed to teach because someone asked, not because they were in my wheelhouse or my area of expertise, or what Gay Hendricks calls my zone of genius. It was like watching myself ignore my own advice yet again. I'd been saying yes to everything because I have a pretty wide range of skills and knowledge. But having the ability to do something doesn't mean you should do it. So when I came back to work, when I sat down at my desk, I decided to put this new clarity to the test. I sat down to keep building my business course that I've been talking about the last few months, and I immediately hit a wall. Because I'd made this outline before all of this hospital stuff happened that included an entire module on legal considerations and expanding to multiple locations. Sure, I could talk about this. It's super important stuff, but it's just not my area of expertise and honestly, it's not really my vibe either. A younger me would've powered through it anyway, just because I could present me though. I deleted this whole section because every time I tried to work on modules outside of my sweet spot, outside of that zone of genius, it felt like dragging my brain through mud. So this course isn't going to be some monster program that tries to cover every possible angle of running a practice. It's going to teach you what I know in my bones, which is how to build a practice that doesn't require you to be everything to everyone, but how to create a sustainable business that gives you permission to do less and to do it better. 'cause here's one of the many things that those hours in the hospital taught me. The practitioners and business owners who last, they're not the ones trying to excel at everything, at least they tend not to be. They're the ones who figure out their unique strengths and they build around those instead of spreading themselves thin across every possible skill. Like I tend to do sometimes the best business decision. In fact, sometimes the best decision in life is deciding what you won't do. So here's what I'm curious about. If you stepped away from everything except for three things that actually light you up in your practice, what would they be? I've got a feeling you probably already know the answer, so send me an email, jess@aimonline.com. I read every single response and I genuinely love hearing from you. And if you enjoy this type of content, subscribe to the conscious practitioner, wherever you listen to your podcasts, and like always be, well, my friend.