When the vision is clear but nothing's moving (what the gap is teaching you)

I've been journaling pages and pages lately. Something's shifting.

The last month has been some of the best weeks in my business ever.

And then everything slowed down. Two quiet days and I'm suddenly spiraling.

In this episode, I'm talking about what happens after the high - when your nervous system recalibrates, when old wounds get poked, and when you realize you've quietly shelved something because being fully exposed at your highest level felt too scary.

This gap between where you are and where you want to be? It's testing whether you can hold the vision when the external feedback isn't there yet.

If you've been pushing your dreams into the far future because wanting them now feels like too much, listen to this.

👉 DM me on Instagram - what have you quietly shelved? Tell me.

Transcript

 So I've just finished my breakfast. I'm very happy. I am just loving my Sunday morning, and I knew that I had to come to the studio and have a chat with all of you because I know that a lot of you are gonna relate to this, and I'm going through this currently. I'm literally sitting with a lot of this stuff that I'm gonna discuss inside of my journal. Currently, I have been journaling nonstop, and I'm talking pages and pages and pages of it. It's just felt really good to process this and to get this out, but I also know that if I'm going through it, there's gonna be a bunch of you who are also doing the same. So let's just pull up a chair and relax into this one, because I wanna talk to you about this idea that, you know, a really big change is coming and you know that something's fundamentally gonna shift the way that you are showing up as a business owner. Maybe your career changes are coming into play. Maybe you just know, you know, it's time to start a family. It's time to move. Countries like that kind of big life changing thing, and you can feel it in your bones, but right now in the air quotes, reality of your situation, things aren't moving at all. In fact, you are either going through a relatively slow season or kind of this sense of nothingness is going on. Same sameness. Somewhere in your gut feel, you know it's here for you. And when you do share it with a few people, whether it be your bestie or your family members, they think you are nuts for believing it because they're just like, Hey, can we come back to reality for a second? Because this is not what we see. We're kind of concerned for you. Are you sure this is the right path that you are choosing? So let's do it. Okay. I'm gonna set the scene for me and then I would love to hear what you get from this episode as well. The last month in my business has genuinely been some of the best weeks in my business, like ever, ever, ever. And what I mean by this is things like launches, landing sales, flowing clients, dropping into my inbox, all of them saying yes within five minutes or less. It's like the kind of momentum you dream about. And I know like when you hear it from somebody else, it's like, damn, like, I wish I had that. Or, you know, what is she doing that I'm not doing? And it's the kind of momentum where you wake up and think, okay, this is what I've worked so bloody hard for. This is what it's supposed to feel like. And it's been amazing, and I'm so grateful. And at the same time, I kept pulling out of my tarot cards, the four of sorts. Now, if you don't know tarot, four of sorts is basically a card of I read as rest and recovery, and I cannot stand this card. As a fire sign, I don't do well in recovery. Okay. I just wanna keep moving to the next, keep moving to the next go, go, go. I'm just not that and oh my God, I'm like, stop. Like all these signs keep coming up and so many other things. Anyway, so the universe has given me a little slow down moment, and when I say a slowdown moment, it hasn't stopped. It's just slowed. So I am not launching anything right now. I'm taking a breather. The dms are quiet again. And mind you guys, this is like two days of quiet, okay? And suddenly I'm all up in my head. I'm all up in my grill about it. And here's the thing, right? I wanna talk about the idea of big seasons. Nobody warns you about the other side of it. And oh God, I used to have this, um, this manager, when I was working for the accounting firm, I worked for. He was amazing. He's actually a really good mentor, but he'd say to me, you know, Ruby Tuesday, what goes up must come down. If I was on some sort of a roll with something and all the things, and I was like, you are such a cynic, you know, like, come on. And he is like, no, seriously, like you are not old enough to experience it yet, but this is what happens. That I swear has stuck with me. And there's moments where I just go, oh my God. Like things are going up, up, up. I'm in a hot air balloon. Things are amazing. Something's gonna come along. And. Run outta gas or Yeah, the balloon's gonna get popped. So, you know, I came across this reel recently that talked about how after any sustained high performance period, your brain literally needs to recalibrate like your dopamine baseline drops. And it's like this contrast of a free fall, even though. By every measure, things are still fantastic. You know, you're, you still got a roof over your head, you can still pay for food. And then greater than that, you've got money in the bank account. You are safe, you are good, but your brain has just gotten used to this highest of highs and now everything feels like danger, you know, which explains so much because I've had this incredible month in business and actually like really, really, if I were to think about it, the last six months has been blissful and thriving. And yet I still found myself in the last couple of days scanning for the problem, you know, around like, why have I had a quiet couple of days more context here, guys, it's the weekend and I'm like in this spin out, you know, it didn't last very long, but I still wanna be able to share these moments with you because as someone who, you know, I show up and I really wanna tell the real story and what goes on behind the scenes. I've been in business for eight years and things have always been, things have always worked out. These moments, they happen because we are human and we always wanna better ourselves and we always wanna progress. So if this is sounding familiar to you, then you know, I'm glad because we're gonna work through this together and I wanna show you also like what I do to get myself out of this silly funk and you know, okay. Another example, a client of mine had a post go absolutely viral. So happy for her. It just went nuts. I actually have a few clients who've had this happen. One client, she's had like less than 5,000 followers for ages and ages, and then she made a carousel post and it did like 250,000 views organically, and it just went absolutely bananas. Anyway, so for her, her post went really viral. And she was genuinely over the moon for 24 hours, like we were back and forth in the dms. I'm like, holy shit, girl. Like it's just hit 50 K, it's hit a hundred Ks, hit 200 k. And she was like, squeal, this is amazing. And I was like following her progress and seeing her follow account go up and up and up. And then she said to me, you know, a couple of days later, she goes, oh, the post has slowed down. And I was like, yeah, but look where it's landed. And she's like, yeah, I think that was sort of a fluke. Now that I think about it. She went on to say, you know, I might never be able to recreate that. What do you think I should do to make that happen again? Should I like repost it at another time? Should I post it as a trial reel because it was a carousel? Should I make it into an actual reel? Like, you know, what can I do to make that happen again? And that's a perfect example of you're going up and up and up and up, and then you just suddenly wanna deflate the gas from everything and it's like, oh my gosh. Like this was just. Why did I even celebrate that? It's never gonna happen again. Another client of mine has had the best revenue month that she's ever had, mind you, whilst traveling the world, and she was freaking out about this because she's like, how am I gonna sustain my income whilst traveling? Anyway, what's happened was she's had a lot of recurring revenue come in, which she kind of forget about recurring revenue because you put people on payment plans and then they just kind of shop in your, you know, in in your bank account, which is so nice. Or you know, she had a little launch that actually did really well, better than expected. And anyway, so she's had this amazing month with income, and instead of like actually allowing that to feel supportive to you, you start doing the maths around whether or not you can sustain travel for the next month. And that is so interesting because she's like, all right, so I've got now this income, but I've still got my mortgage to pay. I've still got my staff member to pay. I've still got travel fees coming up and I still wanna do all of these cool things and experiences and I think I'm gonna have to repeat that same month, but I've just exhausted all of my client list and they're not gonna wanna hear from me from a little bit because I've just come off this massive launch. So these examples, you know, I wanna keep it as real as possible. Mine my clients, what I hear on ground, and I know I have to say this to myself a lot. Okay? Lots of people go through this. The nervous system is just doing what the nervous system does best after a peak, and that is not freaking out. It's actually just recalibrating your allowance for what is to come next, but also kind of settling down like, holy shit, that was big. You know, like if you were to literally jump out of a plane and skydive when you land, you'd be like, that was amazing. And then you start going, oh my gosh, like, okay, adrenaline's settling in. That was really crazy and I'll probably never be able to do that again because it was super expensive. Or that's the first jump and the first jump's always the best. Like similar to that, right? And here is what I now know, and sometimes I have to keep reminding myself that any kind of aftermath of a highest of high, or if you wanna call it like a little slowing down moment. And this is something I wish honestly more people would have told me about earlier, or I read about it a lot more. I heard it a lot more that this is not the end of the good thing. Like babes, there is so much more to come for you, like really melt into these words. There's so much more to come for you and honestly. This is where the next good thing typically gets built in that funny little abyss moment where you feel uncomfortable and you feel like, oh, why is shit showing up? And literally, okay, this is a good segue about shit showing up because it's testing kind of where your boundaries are. You know where your upper limits are, where you've done the work, where you feel okay about it, where you've done healing, like deep, deep healing around things. Then all of a sudden it shows up and it seems to only show up during the quiet periods because you've got nothing else to distract you and think about. Okay, so I'll give you a very real example. This is super interesting. So in the middle of, you know, like kind of the highest of hires and all the dms coming through and all the launching happening, I signed a lot of clients, like I think over 30 clients in the past month. So that's heaps and, and the majority of those clients are high ticket. So incredible season. Anyway, I had a client who wrote to me and she was asking to rework a payment that she had made. Now I wanna be clear, she wasn't unhappy. She just needed to find a better way to process the investment because of the way her financial structure was. And you know, we did honestly like that, got sorted. It was absolutely fine. We worked out the best way around it and it got sorted, but I wanna be completely honest about what happened in my mind and body before it was fine. So the period between her sending us a message to us sorting it out was like 12 hours just because of time zone differences. Anyway, when I saw that, my stomach absolutely dropped, like my mind went somewhere old and it went somewhere really familiar and not particularly helpful and I'd spent a good portion of my day. Feeling so worried. And honestly I was trying to fully understand why this worried me so much. And I saw like, you know, because like part of the conversation was, I think we need to refund and then I'll repay, but in a different format. And I just clung onto the word refund like so tightly and in such a state of fear. Here's what I realized later, right? The message was a test, not from her. She's absolutely amazing, and she's like, Rue, I'm so sorry about this. This is what's happening. She goes, I'm just trying to work out a way around it. Like I promise you I need the refund and then I'll pay you straight back. Like there was no issues there whatsoever, but there was just this little poke in and I didn't even realize it was there, like a tiny little tear in my nervous system. Aura, let's call it that, and it got straight in there. And it was poking around exactly where it would kind of really trigger me the most. And it got me thinking like, wow, what's going on here? Like I obviously thought I had healed a lot of my wounds around, you know, refunds and people like not paying their entire coaching payment, you know, obligation and things like that, which again, I've talked about in previous podcast episodes. I've literally had hardly any of these, but I just really don't like them. I mean, who does? But how quickly do the foundations shake when something small and unexpected lands that gets you at your trigger point? I think about what is your trigger point? For a lot of us it, it has to do with something financial has to do with money, has to do with the safety of money. So how easy is it to take a neutral situation like that where it's like, Hey, I just need to sort out some stuff at an admin level, and how much do you let it erode the trust? In the weeks of real, genuine healing, deep work. I mean, I just realized with that one conversation, here I am going, I'm ready for my next level. I want the next thing. I wanna grow, I wanna have a ton of clients, and yet this one small admin issue got me good, you know, pretty easy. It turns out in terms of getting to this point where I just felt all the sensitivity. And, and I'm not reading into it too much anyway. I am telling myself I'm not. But like I say to a lot of my clients, and I am one of my clients at the moment, it's like, Ruby, this is a data point. This is information because if one five minute billing, admin conversation can color my entire day gray, this is telling me something about where my roots are. It's not in a self-critical way in this kind of work. Right. This is telling me, all right, let's just mend this up. Let's work on it deeply. Let's do some nervous system regulation. Um, this is genuinely the universe going, Hey, girlfriend, you probably haven't seen, but you got a bit of sauce on your T-shirt. Let's clean that up. Do you believe this? Like, do you believe in what you've built? Do you believe in what you've healed? And is there anything that would make you wobble into the next season and look like you might not know about it? Until you're actually there. Like I didn't know about this until I was here, but the answer for me that day was, yeah, okay. Honestly, I need to sit and do some more work, and I need to speak to my higher self, and I need to call in my guides and I need to pull myself together and know that it's very safe. It's very safe for me to be doing this. So that was a moment that I wanted to share, which kind definitely gave me a wobble. Now I wanna switch to a moment that gave me a wobble, but in a different way, in a really abundant way, but still made me feel uncomfortable af. So I live in a really, really beautiful part of the Gold Coast. Literally steps from the beach, like my front door, three steps. I'm at the beach. And I also live in a building where all of our apartments are all floor apartments, so it's just like one entire floor is our whole house. So it's really stunning. It's a boutique block. Everyone who lives here are retired board members. Yes. Very grumpy old men, but still extremely wealthy. Anyway, there's one guy who I became friends with. He's awesome. And he's actually been away for a little while. He's leased out his house because he is gone to travel. And as I was driving outta the driveway, I saw him and I was like, oh my God, Gary, how are you? Got talking? And he had just come back from months traveling around Australia, New Zealand, Bali, Singapore, wherever he went. And he is like, yeah, yeah. All good mate. Great to see you guys. How you going? Anyway, we're just back for a little bit. We're heading to Europe and we're gonna see our kids who live over there. And you know, in the meantime we're just staying at our other apartment, which is just on the street behind. And I was like, oh, I didn't realize you had another apartment. And he goes, yeah, I own that apartment. And you know that other block there, we own two more in there. And I was like, oh my God, that is so cool. And I don't know, he was just like talking about things like life very much on his own terms. No. Talk about the wars going on, and obviously that's a privilege, but also no talks about the financial things, the economy, what's going on in the news. He was just living his best, most fantastic life. And this is the part where I just was like smiling from ear to ear, just like, oh my God. And he, by the way, they just bought a brand new car. He was driving around on his new scooter and all the things, and you know, he's just the type of guy who always has gadgets like jet skis and all this. Lovely, lovely man, and I felt this uncomfortable kind of, it was like an ache in my heart space, but not like I was jealous. It was this sort of type of energy where you see someone living the version of the life that you want, and it lands somewhere between incredibly inspired and impatient. And my immediate thought was, oh. I'll be there in 25 years time because he's much older than me. He's, I think 25 years older. So you know, he's also retired. He's lived his whole life and he is doing all the things, and I almost let that thought, just sit there unexamined. You know what I mean? Like this is how you collect these belief systems. But I caught it because that thought definitely wasn't a realistic projection of my timeline. That thought is self protection. So by placing this desire, like, oh, it's 25 years away, I don't have to be vulnerable about wanting it now, and I don't have to do anything about it now, and I can sweep it under the rug for later. Like, I do not need to sit in this discomfort of the gap. And I just was like, happy to defer that and call it unrealistic. But here is what I actually believe, like the desire is actually very directional. You don't ache for something in your life where you're not capable of building or having. And I know a lot of you can relate to that with, maybe it's even like a partner, you know, like you wanna have a certain partner in your life and you want that and you desire that and you tell yourself, well, maybe someday some of you're like, oh, I wanna have kids, but, oh, I don't know, someday. But you have this like. Ability to hold that dream and hold that vision. The slow season or the gap or this, this nothingness season doesn't change that direction. What it's doing is it's testing whether you can hold the vision when the external feedback isn't quite there yet. You know, the results aren't quite there yet. I had a discussion with another client of mine this week. Um, I was like, she will laugh at this. I know you know you're listening. I know you know who you are. Anyway, she's like a very, uh, accomplished, let's call her executive, and she's like, okay, I've spoken to my CEO and I'm gonna leave my job. In the meantime, I'm gonna build this side hustle up, and I want your help with social media, personal branding, positioning, messaging, getting my offers ready, all the things. And I said, awesome. So when are you planning on leaving your day job? And she goes, oh, maybe over in about three years, my jaw went to the floor. I was. Three years, girl, I thought you meant three months. And we both cracked up laughing and she's like, oh my gosh, Ruby, I feel like it's gonna be sooner than three years, but I'm scared to say it. And this is the whole thing where you can defer it and you can call it unrealistic and you can sweep it under the rug. So what are you quietly pushing into the far, far future? Because wanting it now feels like too much. It feels crazy. It feels absolutely nuts for you to say, I can do that in this much shorter period of time. This could be the income level. This could be building your team. This could be buying a new house. This could be the dream trip that you've been dreaming of, the version of your business that works and sells for you whilst you're asleep and you're waking up to new sales every single day. Yay. That's what I wanted back in 2024. But you know, this sort of sense of like there's a chasm between you and those things is almost never time or circumstances. It's actually usually one or two beliefs that are ready to be updated. And you can do this in several ways. You can try and do it yourself for sure, like I have with journaling. But I know that I'm due to have a reiki session and a kinesiology session and maybe some hypnosis and maybe some psychic surgery. There's stuff that I will do in my own time, like, you know, in terms of spiritually deep work. But I wanna chat to you about something Gay Hendricks wrote about. Have you guys read The Big Leap? If you haven't, highly, highly suggest you guys picking that up as entrepreneurs. Gay Hendrix, the big leap. Inside of the book is one of these ideas that once you see it, you genuinely can't unknow it. You can't unsee it. And the premise is this, we all have this internal thermostat of how much good we are allowed to experience. You know how much we're allowed to have success, income, joy, ease, effortlessness, freedom, flow, play, and when we start bumping up against our own ceiling, something that nobody else put there except you. Something in us pulls us back from that edge. And it's not always traumatic, often it isn't. It's very quiet, it's very rational sounding like what? I've just given you those examples. The decisions sound good in your brain. Like honestly, my upper limit did not look like blowing anything up. It just looked like this. And I'll give you an example, actually, another one a few years ago. I ran a really, really high level mentoring container. It's called the Inner Circle, and I ran it several times, I think in total five times. So it was very private, a very small group of people. Extremely intimate, extremely premium. So it's the kind of work I know in my bones is one of the best work I do at the energy level, at a spirituality in business level. At a vision setting, entrepreneur going for big dreams, unlocking quantum leaps kind of level. And you know, it was interesting because when the economy dipped like a couple years back, really properly dipped, I retired the offer and I told myself it was strategic because it was a smart market reading that people weren't able to pay. 27 and a half USD for a six month container. And as part of that, there was also in couple of the rounds, there was VIP days, there was me traveling to meet everybody in certain areas. And obviously travel came to a halt. Like the restrictions got locked down, our borders got locked down. And yeah, I mean, these moments that I'm telling you about, it's true. It actually did happen. But if I'm, to be honest, and this is the whole point by the way. The market handed me a permission slip to do something. Part of me already wanted to do, and that was to step back from the version of the offer that required me to fully back myself at the highest level, consistently. Not just selling the offer, but showing up to these group of women who were edging towards their first mill and some crossed over their million dollars working with me. And I felt this level of I need to keep showing up as you know, this level of like next level leader or whatever the bullshit thing I made up in my head and that upper limit really scared the shit out of me. There were times before those inner circle calls where I'd be shaking, I'm not even kidding, like I'd be like, I'd have to do breath work and calm myself and Sage the room. Just sit with myself for a bit and then once I was on, I was fantastic. Like my clients would've never had known that I had this like mini freak out. That's the upper limit stuff. That's not telling you you can't do it. That's just saying, okay, you're at the edge, girl. You're like, you're all good. But you know, this is an example of it. Quietly exited my product suite and. It's kind of come back now, babes. It's come back. It, it's, oh, even just saying this, it's the first time I've said it out loud. I'm like, inner circle wants to come back at that level. Anyway, I wanna ask you, is there something that you've shelved, that you've retired, that you've quietly stopped talking about? That you know, honestly, if you were really truthful with yourself, it was less about the strategy and the logic. But more about not wanting to be fully exposed at your highest level, at the edge of your highest level. That's what Inner Circle is for me. And I know it's coming back when I say it's come back, babe, like I don't mean it's out there and launched. I just know what it's meant to look like now. So I'll build it and you'll probably hear me talk about it at some point, but, oh, it's scary, it's exciting, it's butterfly like, and I just feel ready. But also. The logic does, if I'm to be honest, the logic mind is louder than the energetic self right now. And what I'm tuning into and doing the work on is allowing the energetic frequency to carry me over the the logical mind. So if you know what I mean, it's you sitting in the frequency of ultimate success that nothing you do can fuck up basically. Whatever you choose to do in terms of riding that wave, it's gonna carry you all the way to shore and it's gonna be the best barrel of your life. That kind of energy, you know. But you know, maybe for, you have a think about like, have you dropped a price point recently and why? Maybe you deleted a post, maybe you deleted a whole damn account. Why'd you do that? Maybe there's an offer, literally, maybe you got inspired by the Google Doc episode. You wrote one out, but it's not gone out there yet. And it's sitting, catching digital dust, as I say. So these are the kinds of things that I really wanna bring to light, and it's stirring some things up, no doubt. But if the offer is coming back, she's coming back. There's a desire that's happening there for you. And like I said, I'm not going into detail yet. It's still taking shape. It still wants to take a slightly more elevated shape than it has to because so much has changed for me since the last two or three years that I've offered this. I've become a very different entrepreneur and business owner, and I know that I've got a lot more to offer because I've learned so much in these last couple of years. So how do you actually know that the next season is coming in hot? Because there's this level of De Lulu, which we do love, delusion. Because that's what gets us to where we wanna get to. But is it also a level of realistic, and is it also a level of, am I keeping it real, and is it a level of, I'm gonna get there, you know, because I think this is actually the real question underneath everything that I've shared today, how do you know that the next season is coming? And my honest answer is, you know, it's coming when you can feel that ache and that desire without flinching. It's yours to have. So when you can look at something else or someone else living the life that you want, AKA, seeing Gary doing his thing, I feel genuinely inspired of that. And, and now because I've done the work, I know that I don't have to wait until I'm in my sixties and seventies to achieve that. I could do it, you know, in the next, honestly, I feel like the next 18 months to two years, very, very, very much so. When that small wobble shows up, like a slow day, a slow weekend, a slow month, an unexpected message, a billing conversation. What else have I talked about in this episode? Anyway, all of that, it lands without taking the whole belief system down with it. Okay? Please don't take the whole damn marquee down with it. The next season doesn't have to announce itself with fireworks. Most times, like I've just said here, it's these quiet moments where I'm like, oh, okay. Inner circle wants to come back. Whoa, I'm not announcing that. I mean, now I am, I suppose, 'cause I'm talking to thousands of you about this. But it's safe because I'm in my studio and I don't have a thousand eyeballs on me. But you know, there's something that comes with that simplicity. And speaking of simplicity, ultimately I go back to after doing all my visioning and knowing that this next season is coming, I go back to my job. I do the things that I've always done. I show up, I help people. I create fun, amazing, playful, useful offers. I sell the offers every day. I keep the vision clear. I keep my energy really clean. I trust that what I've built helps people and that it's real and that it's solid and that's it. Everything else, the making it mean something that it's not the spiraling out of control. The quiet exits from my own edge and highest level. That is all noise layered on top of a process that's actually already working for me. That's what I love about learning through neuroscience and flow science, that your subconscious mind is already doing so much behind the scenes work, and now sometimes that can work against you because of your thoughts and beliefs and actions and the words that you say to yourself. How many times a day do you say shitty things to yourself? I'm an idiot. Oh my God. Like you loser. Oh, are you stupid or something? These examples. I think I used to say that to myself quite a bit. You know, in my twenties I used to say that like, oh, you're such a dumb shit. Why would you do that? Horrible. You won't find me saying those words about myself anymore, ever. My son couldn't work out some math equation the other day, and he's a whiz. He's just so good anyway. He's like, oh, I'm so dumb. Why couldn't I see that? And I'm like, oy, stop that. Take it back. You're not dumb. You know, you are working something out and you are training your brain to a new way of doing things. And that's what this is. So this is me saying it to you, my mum voice. O stop. Pull it back. You're just learning and you're getting to your edge, and I'm proud of you for that. All of this is for you to know that this sort of in-between chasm season is not the problem. What you are making it mean is, so let's make it mean something abundant. I'm at my edge, I'm holding my edge. I'm at my new ceiling. I'm ready for the next levels. Okay. So I hope that this has really helped you rethink, reassess, sit with some things that's really pulling you towards that next new chapter in your business, in your life. And I'm genuinely so excited to hear how this episode has impacted you. Come on over to Instagram at Ruby Lee and have a chat with me about what you've taken away. In the meantime, I think I am due to head to the beach. It is low tide now, my favorite, so I can just sit in these beautiful little pools by the ocean and I'm actually gonna finish the housemaid. I've only got like two chapters left. I'm gonna finish that at the beach. I genuinely cannot put it down right now. I can't remember the last time I flipped through and finished a book within 48 hours. You know, not a huge book, but it's such a page turner. Every opportunity I get, I'm reading it and yeah, I feel so excited and this is part of me just letting that. All the growth stuff that's happening behind the scenes with life and business fully integrate. I'm gonna take my mind off it. Beach Swim, vitamin D, a really good book. We're gonna have a roast slam later on. I'm excited. Anyway, I highly recommend you go and do the same and integrate in the best way possible. The next season is already here. Trust that it's here. In the most easeful of ways. I'll see you or I'll see you. All right guys. I'm gonna head off now. I'll catch you in the next episode. Big love.