Man oh man, am I ever excited about my new website! After YEARS with a static web presence showing a dated, decade-old picture of me, I finally have a new dynamic site I’m excited to show off. It’s pretty, but more importantly, it’s functional and it’s going to help me run Wellness with Claudine MUCH more efficiently. I’m crazy-excited.

I love my new site, but I also have my insecurities about it too, like whether or not my face is too huge on the home page. If you would be kind enough to share your feedback, I’d be grateful. And please be honest.

Creating this site was an interesting and stressful process for me, and get this, I’m not even the one who built it! For crying out loud, I hired someone who did 90% of the work, which makes it a little hard to explain exactly why I found the process stressful. But I guess anyone who knows me knows that nutrition is my thing – technology isn’t. I love devouring nitty gritty details about digestion or hormones, but ask me to make decisions about my website or learn how to run its back office and I immediately feel blurry, overwhelmed, and irritated. It’s like a bad blood sugar crash, except I’m not crashing.

One day when I was feeling frustrated and tempted to abandon a pain-in-the-butt task I needed to do to get the thing launched, I had a profound realization that the frustration and irritation I was feeling was likely akin to how many of my clients might feel when they’re embarking on (or continuing) the journey to improve their health. They can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel – no matter how hard they try.

It was an important space for me to step into again because it put me squarely in the shoes of my clients. See, even though I find shopping and preparing healthy food for myself and others fun, many of my clients don’t (yet). The same could be said about exercise; I think it’s enjoyable, but I’m sure some of my clients would like to strangle me when I suggest that they, too, could learn to like it. The truth is that following through with new, foreign tasks that I knew were necessary but didn’t want to do took some healthy doses of positive self-talk and discipline.

So I wanted to offer some tips for staying on track for success when you really don’t want to. Don’t get me wrong, these tips aren’t about making something easy – they’re about getting ourselves to follow through when we don’t want to:

• For crying out loud, hire a professional who knows what he/she is doing. I think my new site is pretty doggone cool, and I never, never, never could have built a site like this myself. And nobody would expect me to because technology is NOT my thing. I’ll admit that in the past I have “put up” websites myself using templates in order to save money, and you know what? They sucked. They didn’t look good and they didn’t generate website traffic, which added up to a whole lot of wasted time and energy. This time I was serious about making a positive change happen and hired a professional who could help me achieve my goals. I hope with all my heart that this is the role I play for my clients. This is what I strive to be every single day – your partner-in-crime in achieving the goals you have for your health.
• Get clear about why the task/project at hand is important. What’s the ultimate result you’re going for? Clarity and purpose go hand-in-hand. In my case, this new website will ultimately mean my business will run more efficiently and make it possible for me to spend LESS time on tasks I don’t enjoy instead of thinking about them and having them sit on my to-do list in perpetuity. When trying to improve your health, I’d say most people are trying to avoid bigger health concerns down the road and improve their quality of life now. That’s super motivating provided we stay in touch with that greater vision and purpose.
• I had to remind myself that almost everything takes longer than you anticipate when you’re learning. This reminder was then followed by a deep breath and some self-encouragement, “It’s okay, Claudine. It’ll get done, and you’re not stupid for not ‘getting it’ right away.” Just like when we’re learning to cook and care for ourselves in a new way, showing ourselves some compassion and patience during the growth process is critical. When we’re faced with a learning curve, why do we so often think we should already know how to do something?
• Break tasks down into small steps to decrease overwhelm. This is super important. No step is too small, and any step taken in the direction you want to go is better than nothing.
• Identify preconceived judgments you have about the situation or task at hand and ask yourself if they’re really true. It’s embarrassing to admit, but there were times when I’d already decided that a task on my to-do list was going to bite just because it was website related, and then it turned out to be no big deal. How often do we do this to ourselves?! I thought revising the content for my site was going to take me FOREVER, but it didn’t. Human beings have a knack for making things harder than necessary. Learn to check yourself.

I became an Integrative Nutrition Coach because I love to support and nurture people on their health journeys, not because I was super stoked to deal with technology and website stuff. But it’s a necessary “evil” of being an entrepreneur.

No matter how much we wish it weren’t so, sometimes we just have to buckle down and do the work we’ve been avoiding. It’s great spiritual practice. If there’s something you’ve been avoiding because you think it’s too hard or because you’re positively sure you won’t enjoy it, I hope a little piece of you feels more capable and inspired to tackle it now. Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Just take the first step.

Now tell me, what do you think of my new site and my big face?

Love, Claudine