Start with your own art. The stuff that brings joy to your soul, and nurtures you from the inside out. Then you can focus on the dollars and cents.

This is one of the biggest lessons Jim Woods has learned since leaving his job in accounting a few years ago.

He felt a discrepancy between what he was doing and all he was learning about himself deep down. So he set about building a full time business around his writing, and living in tune with his inner voice. This was the last time I spoke to him for The Haven, about three years ago.

It was great to get in touch again and check in with how he's been getting on. I love chatting with Jim because he always has a positive message to share when it comes to being gentle with ourselves, moving away from the noise, and nurturing our souls with the stuff that matters (rather than the stuff we're told we should care about).

I hope you enjoy this episode. It's the first in what I hope to be a series of conversational shows over the coming months. I want to bring you some of the voices that have impacted me over the years since starting the blog and podcast.

In this conversation we talk about:
Challenges of transitioning from full time employment to self-employment and freelance work (the joys and struggles)
How creativity is like exercise, and why it's important to do your own thing before the client work (however counterintuitive that feels)
The importance of turning grace towards yourself, avoiding unhelpful comparisons with other people, and establishing boundaries around your time and priorities
Avoiding overwhelm in the face of projects where there is always more that can be done - maintaining tranquility with a family, self-care, and all the other demands of life
Why marketing can be hard for introverts and highly sensitive people, and how to throw off the simplistic approach (sales = bad), and understand the deep mission of your goals
How to decide what to focus on when everything seems important and you feel guilty for choosing one thing over all the other stuff - the way to work smarter and design the arch of your days and weeks to work in sync with your own personal energy flow
Some of the problems with the way we disagree with one another in our modern age - the causes of anxiety and bottled up anger, which flows out online in ways that would never occur over a glass of wine in real life