Jade Boyd: What do you feel like you should be doing and how are you opting into the default expectations that you think others around you or our culture in general is expecting of you?

Today, we’re talking about opting out and how it can be a really important part of taking care of yourself as a business owner, as a just person, as a modern woman in business, trying to do all the things for all the people. And I want to start with this definition of opting out so we can enter this conversation with just a clear understanding of what we’re talking about.

So Miriam Webster defines opting out as choosing not to participate in something. So if we’re choosing not to participate in something, then it must mean that we are currently in some capacity participating in it. And when we think about participation, I don’t know about you, but my mind always goes to sports or something that you officially fill out a form and sign up for.

But when we’re talking about participating, we’re really just talking about anything that is making its way onto your to do list. And we participate, or we say yes to things, either by choice, we intentionally make the decision, this is something that I want to prioritize and put on my to do list or put on my calendar, but we also participate in things by default because we think it’s expected or we are automatically signed up for something.

And for the default things, we would have to decide to opt out of them in order to get them off our list. Instead of intentionally choosing to pick it up and put it on our to do list. We have to intentionally choose to pick it up and take it off of our to do list. And there’s this thing in science and psychology called the default effect, which is really, really interesting.

And there’s been a lot of experiments done around the default effect. And it basically just shows that making an option, the default option, increases the likelihood that it is chosen. So a few examples of this. One is donor registration in systems or processes where you are by default signed up to be a donor in those countries, cities, areas, they have a really high donor registration rate because it’s the default choice. And the opposite is also true when you have to opt out of being a donor instead of it being the default option, there are less people in those areas who are donors.

The same is true with companies who do like default insurance programs. If there’s a default insurance that’s chosen for everybody, when they become an employee and they would have to opt out or choose something different, there’s a higher rate of people who are opted into the default option for insurance.

And as business owners, we can kind of use this to our benefit, right? So if you have a form when people sign up for your course or join your program, if by default, there’s a checked box that opts them into your email list, that is to your benefit because people are automatically opting in and people will sign up for your email list and higher rates because people choose the default option.

Or if you’re having discovery calls with clients, if you suggest a service to them where you say, this is the thing that I think we should do, but they have the option to opt out and choose something different. Most likely, most of your clients are going to choose the default option that you suggest to them.

So there’s definitely ways that we can use this psychological principle to our benefit. But today, we’re talking about as people, how we need to be aware of the default choices that we’re making in other parts of our life, because they’re not always in our best interest and they’re not always aligned to the life that we’re trying to build or the schedule that we actually want to live out.

And the reason why most of us opt into things by default is because making decisions and thinking about alternative choices is exhausting. It literally burns mental calories. We’ve talked about this before. It takes physical energy to make decisions. It’s not a passive thing. And so defaulting to whatever the default option is, is almost always the easier option at first and like keyword at first because it doesn’t end up always being the easier option in the future and taking the extra time and energy to opt out of the default option might be the option that’s best for you in the long run. Best for you, best for your business, best for your family, your home, your sanity, but it does take effort to opt out of things.

And we can also set default decisions for ourselves to make our lives easier. I talked all about this in a previous episode called How To Simplify Your Life With Categorical Decisions. Basically the principle that you can decide something is going to be your default once and it makes your life easier in the future because you eliminate all of those decisions that you might have to make to steer yourself away from your default.

So for example, In our house, we’ve been renovating for a long time and our default paint color has become Greek Villa by Sherwin Williams. It’s my favorite color of white and in the beginning, it was really hard to find a shade of white that we liked and I spent way too much time and way too much money on paint samples.

But now that we found one that we like, we enjoy, it’s clean, it’s simple, it’s easy. We save a lot of time and money and mental effort by just saying by default, when we finish a room, we’re going to paint it Greek Villa. We most likely for most rooms we’ve finished have already had enough Greek Villa stored up because we’ve just bought it for every room that we’ve done so far.

And it makes our lives easier, but that’s something that we have chosen as a default. Another example of this is, by default, I have 2 Good Yogurt. The brand 2 Good is 2 W O. It has two grams of sugar in it. 2 Good Yogurt, blueberries, and homemade granola with almonds for breakfast every single morning. And that’s a default that I have chosen to make my life easier. I don’t have to come up with a bunch of different breakfast ideas, I don’t have to think about what I’m going to have for breakfast when I wake up in the morning. By default, I have something that is fairly healthy and delicious, and it’s easy to meal prep for, it’s easy to shop for, and I’m good with that.

There might be some default decisions that you’ve made in your life that are not contributing to your happiness. I’ve mentioned on the podcast before, when I was in my season of burnout and my full time job, before I went back to get my MBA, there was a season of my life that by default, I would wake up and eat breakfast and watch TV every single morning.

And that was a decision that I made. It was, relaxing, it got me out of bed in the morning because I looked forward to watching TV because it was mindless and allowed me to enjoy a small sliver of my day before I went to work. And that is not a default decision that I loved for myself. It was not contributing to my overall happiness. It was a very short term happiness that it was contributing to, but there’s probably a lot of default decisions that you’ve made for yourself that you might want to opt out of as well. So they’re not always made by other people.

And if you’re listening to this podcast, then my guess is that you don’t want to live your life by default. You have some desire to be more intentional, to make your own decisions, and to be really thoughtful about the things that you’re allowing on your to do list and into your schedule. And you overall would prefer not to have other people make those decisions for you.

And so you may have realized that this is a topic in an episode that is not typical for a lot of the content that we have brought to the podcast this year. And you might see quite a bit of future content like this on the podcast, talking more about intentional living outside of your business or in your life overall.

And I am super excited. I actually don’t think recording episodes up until this date that I’ve mentioned this, but I am launching a membership this fall called The Simplify Your Life Membership. And it is all about living intentionally and setting up systems so that you can incorporate slow living, intentional living, and living by choice rather than default.

And this is separate from your business. So it’s open for people who are business owners, of course, but it’s also open for women who have careers, women who are stay at home moms, women in any stage of life who want to live more intentionally and want to build a life that’s aligned to their values, a life that allows them to spend more time actually living their lives than just managing their lives.

Right now there’s this viral, real going around Instagram of a video of, kayakers and rafters who are on like this raging river and the text is always like go with the flow. That must be so great and like what the flow actually looks like. And I do think that that’s the way that so many women are living their lives when it comes to managing their home and their relationships and even their personal health.

That they’re just going with the flow, doing what they’re by default opted into and not making intentional choices, not being strategic. Not having an audit or regular rhythms that can help them live a life that’s actually aligned to the goals and like the vision that they do have that they would rather be pursuing. We end up just living by default by what’s easiest in the moment, which is not what is typically best for us in the long run.

So like I said, this membership is launching in the fall and I’m super excited to bring the systems and strategies and routines and just resources that I’ve gathered by implementing a lot of this in my own life. Like I said, it takes so much effort to make these decisions, but it is so incredibly worth it.

And the membership is my way of helping you make this more bite sized. This is not a join tomorrow and we’re going to change your entire life. This is a membership that provides the community and accountability and resources that you need to make small pivots in the right direction so that you can gradually build that life because it does not happen overnight.

And so if you’re interested in joining the Simplify Your Life membership, I’ll make sure to link the waitlist in the show notes so you can be the first to know when doors open this fall.

Okay, with that being said, we’re going to spend the rest of this episode talking about three things that you are probably opting into by default that you could opt out of for your own benefit and your own self care.

The first thing that you’re probably opting into by default is cultural expectations of who you should be and what you should do as a woman, as a mom, as a friend, as a homeowner, as a business owner.

And just speaking personally, I have always just wanted to fit in as a teenager, especially in high school and even throughout college, I just wanted to be accepted. I wanted to fit in to everybody else’s expectations of me to check all the boxes to do what was expected of me. And that Mentality and that way of living, if you’re looking to please others and to not stand out, to not ruffle any feathers, not to upset anybody or to have anybody question your decisions, that. leads you directly into default living and just meeting other people’s expectations of you.

I remember specifically, and this is really embarrassing, but I, was on the University of Iowa. That’s where I did my undergraduate in business. I was on homecoming court my senior year and for the homecoming court process in college, you go through this interview process. And when you’re selected for homecoming court, they ask you a bunch of questions and like feature you in the local newspaper.

And I remember, and this is still online, I’m sure you could find it somewhere if you know my maiden name and can Google it. But I said that I wanted to have six kids and as like one of my major life goals after graduating and at the time that is not even something that I think that I wanted. And I think that I said it because I wanted to get married, I wanted to like be accepted by somebody and I thought that was what people or men would expect of me like wanting to marry somebody who wants to have a bunch of kids. And just thinking back, like I said, it’s embarrassing because I, I don’t know why I said that. And it was published in a newspaper and it’s on the internet forever and I think that is what a lot of us do. We just say things that we don’t mean, and we do things that we don’t want to do because we want to fit in and we want to do what’s expected of us. And we want to like live the default life because it’s safe and it’s normal and nobody questions it.

Another example of this, which is probably less embarrassing, but also more surprising, maybe if you know me now, when I was in grad school, getting my MBA, I wanted to be a management consultant. And a lot of that made sense because I loved doing research. I mean, I still do. I love digging into business problems and giving people advice. That is, literally what I do, I’m like a management consultant for small business owners, but the typical management consultant career, if you’re going the traditional route is to work for a consulting company and pre COVID, a lot of consulting companies and consultants would travel four days a week to whoever your client was, and then you’d go home for the weekend.

It’s a very, transitory, life, a very busy, life, a very stressful life with a lot of deadlines and a lot of responsibility. And I remember thinking that that was so cool as a grad student, like just thinking about the prestige of it and the accolades and how important it would feel to be so busy and to be flying every week.

And really, I just wanted to choose a career that I thought other people would think looked really impressive and was not really thinking about the type of life that that would actually lead. At the time I was single, and so I just cannot imagine if I had went that route and graduated and become a management consultant, I would not have married my husband that year. We had a short engagement. We got engaged that fall and then married right before winter. And like, that wouldn’t have happened if I was chasing all of these corporate accolades and trying to be this person that I thought other people would respect and be proud of instead of becoming somebody that I actually wanted to be.

And it’s really easy to see these things in retrospect, right? To look back years in the past and be like, oh, I was just doing what was expected of me and that clearly was not what I should have been doing, or that was clearly a stupid decision for me to make or a dumb way for me to invest my time, or I was not doing that for the right reasons, but it’s a lot harder to look internally in the present and be aware of how you’re opting into cultural expectations now.

So a good way to reflect and kind of bring these things to the surface when you’re analyzing where you’re at today is being aware of the quote unquote shoulds. So fill in the blank. As a wife, I should fill in the blank. As a mom, I should fill in the blank. As a business owner, I should fill in the blank. What do you feel like you should be doing and how are you opting into the default expectations that you think others around you or our culture in general is expecting of you?

I’ve said it a million times, but I’ll say it again, productivity starts with clarity. So to opt out of cultural expectations, you first have to become aware of what cultural expectations you’re opting into, which ones you are actively participating in, right? If we go back to the definition of opting out, it’s choosing not to participate in something, which means that we are currently participating in it.

The first step is clarity and becoming aware of what you’re opting into that is just a cultural expectation and not something that you’ve actually chosen. there’s a lot of different ways to pursue clarity. This exercise will definitely help you identify some of those cultural expectations, but it can be a lot more helpful to decide what you want. So there’s the state that you’re currently in, things that you’re opting into and saying yes to that you may or may not have intentionally chosen.

But there’s also this other form of clarity of like, what do you actually want? What does success really look like to you? What kind of life do you actually want to live? What kind of person or business owner or mom or friend do you want to become? Whose opinions actually matter to you and whose don’t?

And that is the type of clarity that helps you start opting out and making decisions that are more in line with the life that you actually want to build.

And this is really difficult. It might seem simple in principle, but I think being intentional and being self aware It gets easier the more you’re able to slow down your life, the more self aware you will naturally become, and the more attuned you’ll be to your own emotional state and the reasons why you’re making certain decisions, and you’ll be more aware of the areas of your life that do feel out of alignment.

When you’re living your life at a hurried pace, this is really difficult. And you might go years without realizing that you’ve been opting into things that are making you miserable. I think we’ve all been there at one point in our lives or another, if you’ve been around, if you’ve been on earth for at least two decades, I feel like you’ve probably had a period of your life that has felt like that.

But the more you slow down and the more present you are, just coming back to the Simplify Your Life membership and why I’m so excited about this offer, so much of the stress and overwhelm and so many of the problems that you’re dealing with just go away when you slow down your life to a natural pace.

So many things become easier without you even having to try to do them. And becoming self aware and identifying these things is one of those things that just gets infinitely easier.

So, tying this one up with a pretty little bow, opting out of cultural expectations of what you should be doing or who you should be becoming, is one of the best things that you can do for your personal health and for your self care.

Okay, the second thing you might be opting into by default is the hashtag boss babe mentality. And this one is definitely harder for me personally, as a business owner, and especially as a business coach who helps business owners grow their businesses, I do feel very often that I should quote unquote should have it all figured out. And sometimes that pressure and that expectation that I’m opting into by default stresses me out and creates a lot of unnecessary overwhelm.

And I know if I put this all in perspective, that no one has it all figured out, no matter how far into business you are. And that business would be really boring. If I did have it all figured out, if I ran my business like that, it would probably fail really quickly because I would not be open to learning or experimenting with anything new.

But I do feel that pressure a lot. And I think a lot of business owners feel that, that you have to like constantly be improving constantly be achieving and hitting milestones and leveling up and like I said, especially as a business coach, I do feel that pressure to be that type of business owner, to be the hashtag boss, babe, who’s just like crushing it in every area of her business and constantly launching new things and sharing her income goals and, you know, all this stuff.

And honestly, when I step back and think about this, it’s so ironic because that is not who I am at all. And because I’m not that person, that is why most of my clients hire me because they don’t want to be that person at all. They are not interested in being a boss babe. They’re interested in building businesses that are aligned to the life that they want to live.

And most of my clients honestly do not really care about making a million dollars and surpassing income goals month after month after month. They care about building a business that pays them well. So finances are important in some aspect of it, but they care more about the life that their business allows them to live. So they care about making enough money so that the time freedom becomes possible.

But oftentimes as a business coach, I can look around at what other business coaches are promising and offering and what their marketing looks like. And it’s all, I hit this revenue on my launch and I just made a million dollars. And this is how I did it. You know, that type of marketing messaging has never resonated with me.

I would never hire a coach who primarily markets with that type of messaging, but then as a business coach, I feel influenced to have that type of messaging to market my own programs when that’s not, that’s not what it’s about. But I can fall into that trap in my content of feeling like I have to project that boss babe personality in order to feel like I’m a legitimate business owner, and it’s just not the case.

And recently, especially stepping into motherhood, it is felt even Less aligned to me to think about marketing or messaging my own programs, my own business, or my own personal brand, honestly, in that way. And I’ve noticed so many other women, business owners, podcasters, making the same shifts when it comes to their business in general and shifting away from the boss babe mentality, and even scaling back, knowing that they’re going to lose revenue in order to create more alignment in their life.

I’ve noticed more business owners talking about taking Sabbaticals and cutting back on their work hours or being a full time mom and managing business. And we are lying to ourselves if we say that cutting back does not impact your business, that you can have an equal amount of success in your business while increasing the amount of success you have in your personal life. It is a give and take. And I do believe in scaling your business, that you can separate the time that you put into your business from the income that you’re able to make. But of course, if you’re putting 40 hours into your business, it’s going to grow faster than if you’re putting 20 hours into your business, if you are actively the CEO of your business. If you’re the core strategist and the person who is leading your team, if you have a team or the only person who’s creating passive income offers, if you’re scaling with passive income, whatever that looks like, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful and set your income goals in a way that is highly motivating and high achieving even while working part time hours, but the more time you put into your business, again, if you are the CEO, the more potential you’ll have for growth.

So unless you’re in that place where you are hiring a CEO to take your place and you are like a passive investor almost in your own business, that’s different because then you do have that person who is putting in 40 plus hours a week and is growing the business intentionally. That role has to be filled.

But I just think that we’re doing ourselves a disservice if we tell ourselves that there’s no trade offs, that deciding to cut back hours from your business doesn’t mean that you are sacrificing something because any goal that you have takes sacrifice.

And again, I just think we do ourselves a disservice if we’re not just aware of the trade offs that we’re making, because that is an inherent truth of life. They are just trade offs to decisions that we make, and the more aware of them and the less that we deny that those trade offs exist, I think the better off that will be and the better decisions we’ll actually be able to make.

And clearly I’m also obsessed with how doing less can actually increase your business impact. And so I feel like I’m going back and forth here, but there are many ways that you can cut back on what you’re doing in business and actually increase the amount of money that you’re able to make. And I teach that in my coaching program, but I do think there is a time and place where push comes to shove, and we do have to force ourselves to make those hard decisions and recognize that trade offs exist.

Okay, so pulling this back up, I went on a little bit of a tangent there, but pulling back up to the boss babe mentality, I just don’t think that you have to be a boss babe to serve your clients well and provide an amazing value in the services that you’re offering and pulling back on your business for a season even, and a season can be a few weeks, it can be a actual environmental season, like summer, and it might be a season that lasts for years and pulling back on your business for a season to create or live a life or opt out of things that make you feel more aligned does not make you a failure. But oftentimes that’s the default mentality that we’re adopting. And part of that is cultural. Part of it is probably internal, at least for me, but opting out of the boss babe mentality is telling yourself and believing and living out the truth that pulling back from your business for a season does not make you or your business a failure. You define what success looks like for your life and for your business and each season.

And I do just firmly believe that when you do adopt the mentality of having to be a boss babe and always going for bigger and better continually in each season, it’s always the next best thing. The next goal, everything, the bar is getting raised constantly. It will lead you to make business decisions that are not aligned with the life that you want to live, that don’t feel good and that don’t ultimately help you get ahead in business.

But when you’re able to build your business with intention. making strategic and aligned decisions with your unique goals that are carefully considered based on the season that you’re in, you will build the business that you actually want to build that is highly successful, that does pay you well, but actually makes you feel successful at the end of the day.

So to tie this one up, opting out of the boss babe mentality may be one of the best things that you can do for your own self care right now.

So the first two are more mentality based and belief based where the third one is very, very practical. And the third thing that you can opt out of for self care is generally events and invitations, things that are getting put on your calendar. And I immediately thought when I was thinking of this one of one of my friends last year, I did monthly brunches with my friends, and this is like friends from all area of life.

That has been one of the hardest things for me to make time for in my regular schedule, keeping up. And maintaining those relationships when I have friends in so many different like friend groups and stages of life. And so one of my default decisions that I did last year to make that a little bit easier was to host a monthly brunch and just invite all of my friends.

And then typically five to 10 people could make it each month. And I was able to catch up and have conversation and like, keep those relationships fresh with my friends throughout the year. But one month, one of my friends responded to the invitation and was basically like, I won’t be coming this week because we had an open day and I just want to enjoy a free day at home.

And I am so glad that she said that because it is such a valid reason to opt out of invitations and events. Just because you don’t have something else going on and because you technically could say yes and you do have room in your schedule for those things, it does not mean that you have to say yes.

You can always opt out and say no if you just want free space on your calendar. And I think that more of us need to live with that understanding and that reality and exercise that right more often. You need white space on your calendar to hear your own voice. And again, to get that clarity to be intentional and to build an aligned life and just be in tune with yourself. You need that free space to just think and be and live and not constantly be doing. And you have to free up time in your schedule to actually live your life and be present in it. So whether it’s an invitation that is fun or personal or social event, or if it’s an invitation to do something in your business, like interview on a podcast or speak at a conference, there might be things that seem good in theory, but might not be the best use of your time and intention, especially if you’re in a season where you do not have any white space on your calendar, opting out of events and invitations might be one of the best forms of self care that you can give to yourself this season.

So, to recap, three things that you might be opting into by default that you may want to opt out of in order to take care of yourself.

The first one is opting out of cultural expectations and the shoulds that you’re believing about yourself as a wife, a mom, a business owner.

The second is opting out of the boss babe mentality and the belief that you constantly need to be leveling up in business.

And the third one is opting out of events and invitations that are cluttering up your calendar when what you really need is some white space and some downtime.

So I hope that this episode has opened up your eyes to some opportunities for you to opt out and take better care of yourself in this season. And again, if you’re interested in learning more about how to live intentionally outside of your business in life and in motherhood and marriage in home ownership, make sure you head to the show notes and check out the wait list for the Simplify Your Life Membership.

This truly is my way of bringing women together and making living intentionally simple for you and providing the community and access to like minded women who are thinking the same way, who have similar goals to you and are doing life differently, who are opting out of things that might be uncomfortable to opt out of, who are saying no and sticking to their boundaries and helping you to do the same.

Again, every month in the membership, we’re going to do a bite sized, very minimalist challenge to help you implement something in your life to slow down and simplify your life. Just one step, one challenge at a time, and it’s going to be super fun. So make sure you head on over to the show notes and grab that link, join the wait list, and you will be the first to know when the simplify your life membership launches this fall.

Until next time, business minimalists, take what you learned today and get 1 percent better this week.