A Baker's Guide to Unsticking Yourself

Late Bloomers! 🌸

I'm on the hunt for women whose stories will make us think, "If she can do it, so can I!" Whether it's a complete life pivot, a long-delayed passion project, or finding courage they (or you) didn't know they had—I want to hear about it. Hit reply or fill out this form to nominate someone for our Late Bloomers series.

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I had no idea my old pan could get this clean

My bread flopped and fell flat as a fritter for the last two weeks. Why? Because I used a cheaper flour that didn't work. My baking pans always seem to be dirty. Why? Because they've always been too hard to clean. So I tried a new method for cleaning that made it a breeze, went back to my old flour, and popped out some puffy, pretty loaves from nice, shiny pans.

In baking, it's pretty easy to isolate the variables, figure out where the friction is, run a couple of experiments, and figure out what is and isn't working. But sometimes in our work, relationships, and creative lives, things get a bit murky.

When Kate Milligan from last week's episode got sick of pitching women’s stories to gatekeepers who wouldn’t publish them, she moved from DC back to Detroit and created the platform herself. She started small, she gave herself permission to make mistakes, and took the neccesary time and space to learn from her experiments.

I see this approach everywhere with my coaching clients. One entrepreneur realized her team meetings felt like a drag because she was trying to cover everything in one hour. Her experiment? Split them into two focused 30-minute sessions. Suddenly, everyone showed up more engaged.

Another client kept burning out on her content creation. Instead of abandoning it entirely, she tested batching all her writing on Tuesday mornings when her brain felt sharpest. Tada.

A third client was drowning in email. Rather than declaring email bankruptcy, she experimented with checking it only twice a day and using voice-to-text for quick responses. Her stress dropped dramatically.

When we're feeling stuck, it's tempting to think everything needs an overhaul. But what if we approached it like baking and got curious about which specific ingredient isn't working?

Maybe your morning routine feels chaotic. Instead of redesigning your entire life, what if you experimented with just preparing your coffee the night before?

Maybe your creative work feels stagnant. Instead of switching careers, what if you tried working in a different location for a week?

Maybe a relationship feels tense. Instead of having "the big conversation," what if you experimented with asking one genuine question about their day?

We actually stall our progress by expecting ourselves to find the perfect solution immediately. By developing the skill of noticing what's working and what isn't, then running small experiments to test our theories, we speed up progress.

Lifting Up Other Uplifters

This week, let's rally around

Sara Axelbaum

from episode 30. Sara is writing middle grade fantasy fiction and looking for networking and mentoring in the publishing community, so she can best bring her book to market. Have any ideas for her? Just reply to this email and I'll connect you. Sara is awesome, and you can hear her story here.

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