Episode 32: Surviving vs Thriving

In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk about the differences between surviving and thriving. They discuss how their mindsets and actions change based on whether they are in survival mode or are thriving.

Show Notes

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story by Houston Howard

Transcript

JP: Hello, friends. This is episode number 32 of the Write Away Podcast and it is the 25th of February, 2021 as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my co-host…

Crys: Crys Cain. 

JP: Hello, Crys, how has your week been? 

Crys: It’s been busy. I had my LASIK surgery two days ago and my left eye’s doing great, like no problems, but my right eye, the way the doctor phrases it, “there’s a little defect.” Which I think he means he ripped something in the skin layer of the eye that heals, so it just means it’s going to take longer to heal. And right before we started recording, it felt like there was like a hair poking me in my eye, so I tried to brush it out and I touched my eye, and now I look like I’ve been sobbing for hours. 

JP: Uh, well, that sounds really rough. And thank you for coming on to record.

 I had a much better week. 

Crys: Good.

JP:  I don’t think I can top yours in that aspect, but I’ve had a good week, lots of writing and that whole time blocking thing that I was talking about has been working fantastically, and I’m just keeping up with it. The more that I do it every day, it increases almost like a muscle.

So, you know, all those people that say that, and then everyone’s like, “no, that’s not true for me,” I’m here to tell you, it probably is true for you. You should probably do it, but you do you. And that’s how we’ll go on. 

So today let’s talk about, Thriving versus striving or surviving. I’m curious about your thoughts on this one.

Crys: Yeah. This is a topic that I have a lot of emotion and a lot of thoughts about because when I started publishing, I was in hardcore survival mode. Between my ex and I, we basically had no income. He was doing tours here in Costa Rica for tips, and we were draining the drags of our savings, maxing out our credit cards just to survive with a newborn baby.

Then we got to the point where that was no longer going to be an option. So we flew back to New York to move in with my parents, and I started publishing right away, not expecting it to do anything, but it did take off. Yet, even though I was covering our income, covering my expenses, even being able to somewhat pay off the debt that we had earned up, I was still stuck in survival mode. This constant fear that what we had incoming was never going to be enough, and that I always had to be working, and that I always had to be doing other things. And that’s a really rough place to be in and a place I  know that many people have been in, especially in 2020, when everything that we thought was solid, kind of got ripped away from us.

Did you experience any of that? Because your job seemed like it flowed fairly easily into recovery mode.

JP: Yeah. I would say I felt pretty stable in my position. I mean, maybe that is a silly presumption, but at the same point, I work in an industry that’s considered essential, and my position may not necessarily be essential, it didn’t concern me too much. I just accepted that whatever happens, happens. And I think that that’s part of the mindset because I try to make  a great effort to not be in the strive or survive mode. 

Crys: Yeah. And honestly, one of the factors in me being stuck in survival mode was I had a partner who was terrible with money. And so  I realized after we separated that it really didn’t matter how much I made, there was never going to be enough with someone who didn’t believe in budgeting, didn’t believe in saving, didn’t believe in investing. He liked all those ideas, but he wasn’t willing to do the work or let go of some things in day-to-day life to be able to do those. 

How do we get from survival to thrival? Well, first of all, when you are in survival mode, when you’re in true survival mode, you don’t have space to do anything other than the necessaries. That’s okay, you only have to focus on the necessaries.

I know so many writers who are struggling to cover their income with their day job that they have, and they’re beating themselves up over not writing. And this kind of plays back to our short-term gains versus long-term goals conversation. But when you’re in that place, it’s really hard to have energy to work on the things that you love and want to do. If you can carve out time for them, awesome. If you even only carve out a smidgen of time for them, beautiful. But don’t beat yourself up that you don’t have the energy or the time to throw at it the way you want to. 

The number one things you have to cover when you are in survival mode are your bare necessities: roof over your head, food, medical. And then you go to physical health, like your physical, emotional, spiritual health. There’s a lot of us, people who are listening to this podcast, when we’re in survival mode, we do need to be creating something to feel like we still have a piece of ourselves. But you may have to adjust your expectations of yourself because when you’re in survival mode, so much invisible energy is going toward thinking about today, and the future, and do we have what we need. And you look at your time and you think, well, I ought to be able to do the things I need to do and the things I want to do, but you don’t see those invisible wheels that are spending your energy in the back of your brain. So be kind to yourself when you’re in survival mode.

JP: Yeah, I think what you had mentioned about if you don’t have the time, it’s okay. That conversation made me think back to when I was off of work for a week or two weeks, and I had in my mind like, oh, I can write every day, everything’s perfect. And then when I came back to the day job, I tried to take those time blocks and put them back, with the fact that I now have an additional eight hours of work that’s no longer a part of my writing day job.

It’s part of my day job and now I’ve mixed writing with it and it’s not going to be the same. And I think that, for those people that have the day job, you can’t set expectations in the same aspect that a full-time writer can. You have to account for your day job, and you have to account for the time in between it takes to mentally prepare yourself for a day job and mentally leave that day job and all of those sorts of pieces to it, because I definitely set myself in the same expectations as a full-time author, even though I know I can’t. And so all that does is put me in that strive or that survival mode, when I have to just look at the fact that the time that I can carve out is the time that I will be able to move towards my goals, but that may be 15 minutes, and that’s fine. 

Crys: That brings up a really important point, that you can still be in survival mode when you have more than enough financial coverage. When I was working my software development job, the job I was in was pretty miserable. The people who I worked with weren’t good managers, there was always some stress or another going on at the job. They didn’t fire people who they should have fired, who made life difficult for the rest of us who were actually working. And I was in a different kind of survival mode with that job. I desperately wanted to get out of that job, but it was different because there was the financial comfort. And so I didn’t go looking for other jobs. I was determined to pull myself out of it with writing, but also didn’t have the energy, because I was in this miserable job, to do the things that would pull me out of the job. So for people who are in that kind of survival mindset, where they’re in a job that provides really well and it’s draining them, if it is reasonable to consider a different job, even though it’s terrifying, I would suggest you do it.

Don’t let yourself get stuck in the trap. Survival mode can become a trap. Don’t let yourself get stuck in the survival mode trap. 

JP: Yeah, I definitely had that when I worked at a  different company.

I think it was my second job out of college and the expectation of the day was there was a pile of work, and there were six of us, and we had to tackle that work. All of a sudden, you start comparing yourself to others. You realize that others who’ve been there for a decade or more are maybe slower than you, maybe they are more checked out than you. And all of a sudden you start getting all this sorts of frustration. Like, well, why aren’t they doing what I’m doing? Why don’t they have the drive that I have? And then you bring that home, and then you start complaining to your partner, which I did, and it just feeds itself and it becomes this frustration and then struggle. 

It took a while, but eventually my partner was like, “why do you keep bringing this anger and this frustration home?” And that’s when I had to take a step back and I was like, hold up a minute. it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Ultimately, as long as you are not doing a job that will inevitably kill someone, the job doesn’t necessarily matter in the grand scheme of things. And so when I started to approach it in that mindset, that my success is not determined on the people around me and their success, it’s determined on my own internal growth and how I perceive the space around me, that’s when I started to realize it’s okay that this person goes three to five times slower than I do it. It’s okay that they’re mentally checked out. If they’re just another body here, that’s fine. I’m here to do my work. I’m here to prove what I’m capable of proving and progress where I need to go. And if other people aren’t willing to go with me, then they will stay behind.

And I think that once I had that mindset, that’s really when the whole thriving, regardless of the situation that I’m in, has taken that forefront step. 

Crys: Yeah. Accepting a ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude regarding external rules, or how people say you ought to be, or what you imagine they say you ought to be, is a really important step.

You’ve got to look at your goals. Like, hey, my goal is to no longer live paycheck to paycheck, or my goal is simply to have a roof over your head, food on the table, and diapers for your baby, whatever it is. Like if I’ve got those things, I’ve succeeded.

Especially when kids are in the picture, it’s so hard. I’m always looking at this particular phase, whatever the particularly difficult phase is at the moment will not last forever. And yes, I’ve committed to about two decades of craziness with a child, but that’s only two decades of my life, and the need he has for me, percentage wise, will diminish over time.

It’s not a deprecating value. He increases in value as he gets older, I personally think, but deprecating costs. I don’t know.  

JP: Yeah, I think that a lot of it involves mindset, but at the same aspect, obviously I always bring this up, mindset does not necessarily mean that someone who is suffering from depression can just get out of their depression.

So I would take a look at what your situation is. If you’re capable of shifting that mindset, then I’m all for it, but if you need help, that’s okay too. Go seek out help. That is another step towards taking yourself out of that strife, out of that struggle, is to find someone to talk to. Maybe it’s some sort of brain chemistry and maybe you need some help in that aspect as well. But all of these, regardless of where you are on whatever spectrum, are all steps towards getting someone towards more of that thriving mindset. 

Crys: Yeah, you’re not a failure, or you’re not doing anything wrong for slipping into survival-mode brain. It is a coping mechanism. It is a natural response to difficult situations, and we pick it up because it helps us deal with the situation we have. When it becomes less helpful is when we are moving out of the difficult situation, but we’ve still got that coping mechanism. I was in survival brain for years, even when I had three $10,000 months in a row.

When I had a six figure year from my writing, I was still in survival mode. Yes, I was spending money more freely because I did feel comfortable in that. But it affected my work ethic in that I worked too much, too hard, not giving myself enough breaks for my body to recover, aches, pains, and carpal tunnel.

I think one of the biggest tools that helped me was a form of gratitudes. They weren’t formal gratitudes, but I did have an occasional practice of sitting down and writing down all the things I was thankful for. I’m really bad at keeping to a schedule, so I didn’t do it weekly or daily or anything. I just did it whenever I really felt myself getting anxious, I would write down all the things that I did have. I think this is one of the really important ways of getting out of survival mode because in survival mode you don’t have the things you need, whether it’s support or it’s finance or whatever, you don’t have them. So when you sit down and you make a list, you write out the things you do have and force your brain to recognize that I am not in that place anymore. 

Most of mine is financial, just being terrified of going homeless again, having to move in with my parents again. I just had this deep visceral fear. It also bothered me because they’re not well off. I was putting a burden on them by moving in. There’s just a lot of fear wrapped up in that.

So the second thing that has really helped me, when I started going to do my monthly reconciliation, not my bank accounts, for my business and just see — because KDP reports two months before we receive our income — how much money I was going to have for the next two months. Having that 60 day outlook is beautiful. It really gives me a lot of security to know, at least for the next two months I know what’s coming in. And when I started going and seeing, one, there was more than I expected, two, there was more than I needed, and three, I’m able to finally catch up on the real debts that I had.

Slowly the fear started to heal. The key that I’ve learned is, not necessarily that you have to make a lot of money, it helps if that’s where your survival mechanism is, but making sure that you’re aware of the difference between then and now, and having clear pictures of what it is that you’re afraid of and what it is that you are currently in. There’s a lot of other things that have come out of being in thriving mode. I work a lot less, and I am surrounded by friends who are in the gung-ho first two, three years of their entrepreneurial authorship phase, and they work so hard.

I know that I worked just as hard during those phases, but it can be really addictive to be like, oh, I need to work as hard as them, like what you were talking about with that comparisonitis, and again, drawing a clear picture. Like I am not in that particular growth phase of my business. I do not have to work that hard, and it is not necessarily healthy for me to work that hard.

It’s not necessarily healthy for them to work that hard, but it is understandable and okay during certain phases of your life. Over and over, I guess the thing where we keep saying is just be aware. Be aware of what it is you actually need, what you’re putting up with for a reason, and what you really need to ditch.

JP: Yeah, I agree. And then, another thing I wanted to bring up with thriving is, I think that community is one of the most important things to thrive in. I’ve definitely found that once I started to join in on the whole TASM group, but then before that, even going to J and Zach’s events. It wasn’t really until that moment where I met other people who were in the same mindset as me, that I felt like I grew exponentially from that point on.

I think that finding those sorts of communities where people help each other out, even if it’s just being present in a room where no one is talking and we’re all just writing, fantastic. I feel like the work is getting done because I feel like there’s this collective mind, there’s someone else that’s doing the same thing as I am, and I’m one computer away from them.

It feeds into itself. It gives you energy. It gives other people energy. I don’t necessarily chat all the time in the whole Slack group, but just reading the comments that people have, seeing that people have those same sorts of struggles, or if I see a question that could be useful in the future. Seeing those conversations just really make me feel part of a community. It makes me feel like I’m thriving. I think that without that, I don’t know how well I could keep up the thriving mindset alone, without that — I don’t want to say external validation because that’s not really it — but it’s sort of just the community. It’s just having a group of like-minded people nearby. 

Crys: I don’t know how any author continues to write without having writer friends, personally. I know that there are people who do, they have such a strong internal push for it. But I also thrive off of having the connections, having somebody to go to with a question or a problem versus having to bear all the weight and energy spent on figuring something out on my own.

I have almost always had a writer group. When I lived in Nashville, there was the Nashville Writers meetup. And then every time I stopped writing was when I didn’t have a writers group of some sort, even if it was just a couple of friends and we shared whatever we were working on at that time.

So if you’re in survival mode and writing’s important to you, reach out to groups where you might make connections. It’s really hard with some of the bigger Facebook groups because you’re a little fish lost in the sea, but not impossible. Another way is your favorite authors Facebook groups, look for other readers who are talking about writing and starting and see if you can connect with them. 

Of course, there’s The Author Success Mastermind that we have a membership in. I help run it with J Thorn. That’s an amazing community, very much a writer family. And the key is just to find at least one person who you click with and who you can talk to about your dreams and your problems. Somebody who can share some of their energy for the creation. A lot of that, that’s what happens. You get talking about writing and the particular problems in your manuscript or just books you love. And then all of a sudden you have built up what Becca Symes would refer to it as energy pennies. You’ve built up energy pennies that you can now spend doing the thing you want to do. 

JP: There’s also this podcast, we’re here. 

Crys: There’s us. Join our mailing list and you’ll get extra thoughts from us every week and you can actually comment there and we can have conversations in the comments. So that’s a great reason to join or on the website, we’ve got comments there. We’re trying to be better about responding to them. I think your co-writer, Abe, was one of the last people to leave a comment and I responded in my head and was like, JP, we need to bring that up on the podcast because he had some good points. And then in real life I didn’t do anything.

Sorry Abe! 

JP: We will collate comments and probably bring them up maybe next episode.  

Crys: Alright. That sounds good. A reminder that this March book for our book club is called, You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Story. It is only in paperback. It’s very long and dense and it’s so good. 

JP: Also for crazy people like me that take notes while they read, you’ll need a journal next to this one to start writing in. Unless you write in the book like a monster.

Crys:  I do write in the book like a monster.

All right. Book club goes live on the 18th, so we’d love to hear your thoughts on it and how you’re going to apply it to your book when we get there.

But to wrap up this episode of thriving versus striving, my question would be how many of you feel you are in survival mode and what does that look like for you? And what do you imagine thriving to look like? If you’re not in survival mode, what is your thriving look like?  

JP: All right. So leave a comment on the website, and we will talk to you next week. 

Crys: Bye.

JP: Goodbye.