Ahhh, you guys, we have the loveliest, most uplifting episode for you this week. She’s Rhiannon Adler and you’re guaranteed to feel good after listening!
Meet Rhiannon
Rhiannon Adler is a creative business and website guide. She offers mentoring, guidance and web design to creatives and changemakers running big hearted businesses. She’s also co-director of the Department of Kindness, nurturing self kindness and creativity to make the world a kinder place.
Doesn’t that just make your heart happy?
She’s a massive multipotentialite (yay!) and her work is really about encouraging people to bring more self kindness, self acceptance, and joy into their lives and their work, their businesses, their creativity. This theme comes out in pretty much everything she does and is a thread that runs through all her work.
We’re actually not going to spoil the surprise too much – you’ll have to listen to the episode to get all the joy straight from her.
What we talk about (the speed read)
Rhiannon’s journey to where she is now, her initial very different path (International Development Studies!), and how glandular fever changed that path with energy limitations. Creative writing, volunteering, managing expectations of work life.
Knowing what you want to do when you grow up – and not knowing. No lightning bolts here!
Changing things on a huge scale and on a tiny, immediate scale, and the moral dilemmas and power balances that come with that. Impact.
Self kindness, choosing what works for you, techniques for managing energy and illness alongside creativity.
Seeing, appreciating and being kind to yourself even when you can’t work “normal” amounts or hours. (we are SO on board with this).
Kindess and acceptance being two sides of the same coin. (also yup!).
“Not one ginormous, shiny, single glorious moment. But what stands out is I’m getting more moments where I feel kind of like a real heart glow, like this real moment of like joy and bliss and warmth. Those really connected moments when I know that I’m doing what I love and I know that I’m doing what is right for me at that moment”
WE ARE STEALING “HEART GLOW” – it’s such a perfect description!
And remember when all you wanted was to be where you are now – at this point we are all grinning like loons and would really love to have video alongside the podcast so you can see!
Notable discussions
Kindess and self kindness and creatives in business. Originality. Self doubt and self kindness. Focus and shiny thing syndrome and ALL THE IDEAS.
Being open about who you are, being most yourself and being in heartflow – which is wonderful and terrifying at once.
Noticing, meditations, compassion. Anticipation of judgement from others (which doesn’t always materialise). Dealing with your inner critic.
Practice, being bad at things, the taste gap. Habits, and not forcing yourself to be amazing on the second time you try a new skill or technique.
“we’re actually creating every single day, there are just so many different forms of creating as well. And I think it’s also really important to acknowledge that you don’t necessarily have to be doing specific practices to be creative to be creating, it doesn’t define who you are.”
On kindness and balance
Balancing kindness to yourself and kindness to others, not burning out by being kind to others and forgetting yourself. (Oh hi, we’re feeling very seen right now).
If you struggle with like giving too much, then it’s ok to pull it back and really focus on self kindness – filling your own cup first. When your cup is full it’s more likely to overflow and be easier for you to extend that kindness to others.
Start with self kindness – focus on you, acknowledge what’s really important for you, what your needs are, what do you need to stay well and healthy. Boundaries and balloon membranes.
Compromise where you can, and where you can’t, honour your boundary with kindness.
(source unknown, but quoted by Rhiannon and we bloody loved it)
Rewriting the dictionary – some final thoughts
Societal expectations and kindness. Kindness does not mean having no boundaries at all, or doing everything that everyone asks of you without question.
You can’t box it – it can be really contradictory, which Rhiannon says is one of the many things she loves about it.
Golden nuggets of goodness (but we’re not calling it advice in this episode, ok?!) – listen for the beautiful way she puts it, but the essence is that it’s ok to do things your way, to try things and then keep or ditch them based on how you feel. It’s ok to create a life that plays to your strengths and works for you, even if it doesn’t look like the model we’re meant to follow.
And a very wonderful little footnote about creativity, thinking we’re creative (or believing we’re not and then discovering we are) and the shifts that happen with that.
Which feels like a wonderful way to draw this episode to a close!
Get more Rhiannon in your life
Find her at rhiannonadler.co.uk for creative and business mentoring, web design and other website support
She’s on Instagram at @rhiannon.adler, where she shares her own creative explorations
The Department of Kindness, which we didn’t talk about in detail but which we’ll definitely feature on a future episode, is at deptofkindness.com and @deptofkindness
And if you hop on our mailing list we’ll let you know when the Dept of Kindness episode is coming!