Having An Alter Ego: Overcoming Resistance

I felt the pressure and I was taking a risk and so I was just really getting in my head about it. That’s why I needed this like badass outfit to be like, no, I’m a bad as I’m going to go in. I’m going to find my spot. It’s going to work out. It’s going to be great. Maybe I’ll even meet someone new. It’ll be great. You know, like just go out there and do it. And instead I was really resisting.

Are you ready to open up and talk about all things business? I’m Crystal Vilkaitis, a curious entrepreneur who loves talking about business, especially over a glass of wine. I started Crystal Uncorked to share open and honest conversations about my journey and talk to other entrepreneurs about their experiences.

We pull back the curtain and talk about the highs and the lows. Wine isn’t required, but is recommended. This is Crystal Uncorked.

 Welcome to episode 90 of Crystal Uncorked. 10 more until we reach 100, which is so exciting. Now, if you’re watching this episode, I look kind of cool. I’ve got my leather jacket on. Check out these cool sunglasses. I mean, Come on, I should have wore this outfit on Sunday because I was really struggling and I’m going to talk about what happened on Sunday and how I overcame it and some cool synchronicities, but I was struggling a little bit and I almost needed this outfit to be my alter ego.

There’s actually a great book. I had to Google it just to make sure I had the right name. It’s called the alter ego effect by Todd Herman. And I haven’t read that book, but the whole purpose of it or the whole concept of it is that when we have an alter ego, we can like, step into that person and, perform or achieve something.

Classic example of this is Beyonce has Sasha Fierce when she performs and she just steps into being Sasha Fierce on the stage to really show up in a whole nother way. So this outfit, actually, with these glasses, I put this together for a photo shoot that I did with my friend, Christina Gressianu.

She is a photographer. I like, I want to wear these glasses all episode long. They’re so cool. But she’s my photographer. Such a talented, most talented photographer I’ve ever worked with. I love her work and she’s here in Northern Colorado. And if you follow me on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, you’ve seen pictures she has taken of me.

Like I always get so many compliments and I’m recording this on a Tuesday on Friday. We did a new photo shoot because I chopped off my hair. I need new photos. And it’s good I produce a lot of social content and all the shows so you need that lifestyle content And so we went there and we had this is one of my outfits with my glasses and one of the only photos I’ve seen so far is that one with my glasses and this leather jacket and I look like such a badass.

I was like, yes, this girl, this is crystal 2.0. If you went to my evolve conference, I started the conference off by having everybody write their “You 2.0” like in a year from now, what have you done? What have you achieved? And you write this letter. As if it’s already done and you look back and you say, Hey, Crystal.

Oh my gosh. Look at all the things you’ve done. I always start my You 2.0, with hey, badass self. So it’s fun. I always say badass and then I have the pictures to match it. I can’t wait to show you what she created. I love working with her and Christina and I were talking so you need to check her out.

If you are in northern colorado? You should work with her. She does headshots, lifestyle shots, family portraits, solo portraits, pets. I have worked with her for 15 years, at least 15, in all capacities. She’s also willing to travel to businesses. She does this for like branding kits. So if you, your team, you need that kind of content, she can travel, you can come to Loveland.

Check out her work at photocg.co. We’ll link to it and we were talking and she’s going to give you a free wall art upgrade. If you do work with her, I know it could be challenging if you’re not in Colorado, but still there might be an opportunity to have her come to you. I can’t stress enough how much I love working with her and I love the photos that she creates for me.

I put this outfit on today. Cause I’m like, I need a little bit of that badass energy because I have totally been resisting recording. And there’s just this side to creatives. I know I’m not alone in this where, when you have to create and you have to produce content, like create content, you are performing, you have to be on.

And I really feel like you have to do those ideally at the right time. We can’t always do it at the right time because of schedule conflicts. If you’re doing interviews, then you’re on other people’s timeline. But I say the right time because for me, I have been putting these CU recordings at night and by the time, or like late afternoon, by the time I get to that, after my full day, I’m just so tired. So I don’t have the energy to show up and do the show. And so there’s been a lot of resistance. And so I’m like, okay, I’m doing it in the morning. So no wine today. And I’m putting on my bad ass outfit so I could totally feel like a bad ass and then share the story that happened to me on Sunday.

And sometimes I just feel like with the show, I struggle with creating or figuring out what I want to talk about on the show because I want it to add value to you. I want it to either be entertaining, educational, inspiring to you, the listener. And it can be hard to be like. Oh, are people gonna resonate with this or they gonna like this, but you just do it anyways and you can learn from listeners.

And I think part of the resistance and like waiting till almost last minute, you can it can be divine timing because I have this story to tell you. That’s very timely. That just happened two days ago to me. And and I’m excited just to share it now and then get it out next week. So here’s what happened.

I needed to. Get a lot of shit done. It’s Sunday. We had a friend in town from Portland. And I was I’ve just been feeling so behind. I’ve been on the road so much. And I’m home, this stint, for 12 days. Which is the most I’ve been home all summer. So I’m trying to really get caught up on all this stuff that kind of gets pushed back burner and my recordings.

And then, of course, there’s a ton of meetings and errands and just like life stuff, like paying bills and just house stuff, you know, so, on Sunday, I’m going to do some work so I can go into the week feeling really good. Sunday, I just wanted to lay in my bed and binge watch shows like it’s Sunday, the day rest.

I didn’t want to do anything, but lay in bed, but I knew that my tomorrow self would be really grateful that I got some stuff done. And so it was so hard. I was just like dragging myself out of this building. I knew I had to leave my house because if I stayed here, I wasn’t going to get everything done that I needed to get done.

I needed to go to a coffee shop, get out of here and just know okay, I’ve got to get these things done before 1230 because that’s when I’ve got to leave to go help out my grandma. So I leave. And here’s the deal. I can sometimes feel like just comfortable at home. It’s more comfortable when you’re at home, right?

Versus going out somewhere else. And I have a go to coffee shop. That’s here in Timnath, the town I live in, but I’m not in love with their menu options, their food options, I try to be gluten free, and I don’t love just, I don’t love the menu options I was looking at finding something else, mix it up, get a new environment.

I’ve talked about this on CU before. When we change our environment, it can change our energy to the project. It can create new and better answers to things. If you’re trying to create something or solve a problem and you’re stuck and you’ve been stuck for a while, I really recommend changing your environment.

This is why we have ahas, or we finally answer questions that we’ve had for a long time when we go on vacation. Because we’ve changed our environment. I just really felt like I need to change my environment, I need to bring a new energy today. I’m so tired, so I really want it to feel upbeat and…

Modern and cool and I found this great place in Old Town Fort Collins. So that’s more city energy Like there’s a lot going on down there. And so it’s okay, I’m gonna try this out now I In all transparency and as maybe as silly as the sounds or maybe you can relate to it. I will have fear of going to places by myself like I just I care a lot about what people think.

It’s been an ongoing struggle for me. And I worry, like in the coffee shop example, I worry that I’m going to get there and there’s nowhere to sit, or I can’t sit next to an outlet, and so then I’m going to have to leave, and then I’m wasting time. And I only had a two and a half hour block until I had to be at my grandma’s.

So I really needed to find a place, sit down, start working. I felt the pressure and I was taking a risk by going to a new place. And so I was just really getting in my head about it. That’s why I needed this like badass outfit to be like, no, I’m a badass. I’m going to go in, I’m going to find my spot.

It’s going to work out. It’s going to be great. Maybe I’ll even. Meet someone new it’ll be great, like just go out there and do it and instead I was really resisting So I was like, okay break it down first things first You just got to get in the car when you get in the car We’re gonna put on a playlist that really inspires you and raises your energy Remember, I’m like, I need to be in my bed sleeping right now And I was dreading all the stuff I had to do for these two and a half hours Like it was not fun stuff.

And unfortunately something went wrong deleted all the work I did I wasted like an hour on something and then had to redo it and I’m sitting here at this coffee shop wanting to cry and scream and just so frustrated. But I made it through. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to because of that.

But anyways, okay, I needed to pump myself up so I’m like just get in the car. where I’ll put on a playlist. So I have a playlist on Spotify of all my liked songs. So I put that on and blaring it and I am just singing at the top of my lungs and just like changing my energy. I often will call this for myself, flip the script.

If I’m in a negative state, I need to flip the script. If I’m looking at the lack or what I don’t have, I need to flip the script. And so I flipped the script. I’m driving, listen to this great music. And then I’m like, okay, you’re approaching. I don’t know where to park so that can waste time and that can be frustrating and it’s a Sunday.

It might be busy down here. I’m like, okay here’s the deal. If you can’t find a place to park, you can do a couple of laps. Here’s where you’re going to go. You can’t find a place. This wasn’t meant to be. And we’ll go back to your normal coffee shop. Okay. So I had a backup and then I was starting to really feel like.

 How am I going to look like the whole, I can’t explain it, but it’s just this whole fear of what people think of me. I’m showing up alone. I’ve never been in this coffee shop before. Am I going to look awkward? I’m kind of a clumsy person. Am I going to do something stupid? Whatever.

I was just getting my head about it. So I said to myself, all you’re going to do is just, Like exude positive energy and love just be kind love people smile That’s it! For me when I think about that do things through love through kindness. I Feel more grounded. I feel less in my head more in my heart more, secure and I’m like, okay I’m just gonna love people if somebody needs help and I smile.

Thank you. You look great, you know, like just Love people. So I’m not kidding. This is full on true story. Okay. I’m telling myself, just love people in the car. Listen to my playlist, my plan for parking. Okay, here we go. Find parking. Awesome. Get out of the car. Walking up, walk in. It’s pretty busy. And I start feeling like, Oh, am I going to find a place?

And I’m waiting in line and when I’m in line, I’m like, would I feel this insecure if Dustin was with me? If I had somebody with me, I’m like, no, not at all. I would have been like. What are you going to get? And this is a cute place. My energy would have been very different. Instead, I just felt, I think because I felt so tired and just really wanted to be, like, alone in bed.

And I just had this very introverted day and feelings. That being out in the public in a busy space felt really unsafe, like really scary to me. And if you can relate to this, you should DM me on IG. Let’s chat about it. I know I’m not alone in this, feeling, and this might come to a surprise for some people because if you follow along with me over the years, because I’m a public speaker, like I travel alone.

All the time. I go to restaurants alone all the time when I’m on the road. I get up in front of people that are complete strangers and I’m by myself and I speak and I do all the things. I also have moments of being introverted and unsafe and scary and all those things. Standing in the line thinking about that, I’m like, okay, just continue to love people, smile.

You’re going to find a place, it’s going to work out. And you know what, if you can’t find a place to sit? Then you’re going to have a coffee and we’re going to figure it out. I was just like, just don’t get there yet. Don’t get to that place yet. I get to the register, and I order a breakfast bowl.

They had great food, great coffee drinks. It’s called Lima Coffee Roasters in Fort Collins, Colorado. And so I got food. I got my matcha latte with oat milk. And I I, put my credit card in and I’m like, what’s your guys Wi Fi? Or do you guys have a Wi Fi password? And he goes, yeah, it’s LOVEPEOPLE, all caps.

I can’t make this up. I’m not kidding. LOVE. PEOPLE. ALL CAPS. That’s the password of the coffee shop. And my mantra driving and standing in line was just love people, smile, be kind, love people. Because when you think about that, that will change your energy. It just changes your energy. And how people treat you and how you treat others.

That was my mantra and that is the freaking password for the wifi at Lima Coffee Roasters. Like how cool. So I just grinned when he said that. And then I was like, oh, I’m so meant to be here. I just felt so aligned and then I walked around the corner and there was a table. One, it only could seat one chair because of where it was, it was right next to an outlet.

It was like in the corner. It was a perfect spot. And I camped out there and I did my work. And unfortunately I had that whole issue and lost a lot of work I did and had to redo it and it was frustrating. But still I was like, I meant to be here. This is going to be amazing. And I got some heavy stuff done.

Now here’s another tip or another value add that I want to point out in this. Episode is that one of the things that I really needed to get done was my calendars. I have four different calendars. I work off of my rooted in retail interview calendar, my crystal and corked interview calendar, 15 minute meetings and 30 minute meetings.

And I use Calendly to schedule all those and do all the auto reminders and it will automatically put the meeting on my Google calendar and on my Asana, which I use as my to do list and project management software. So it like creates all this automation for me, but you have to update the calendar as, you know, meetings happen for me as my travel schedule changes.

And then just as time goes on. So I really needed to get a calendar ready for November, December, and January, and I also was like, I have to have some structure to my calendar in my days because it feels like a shit show right now. It feels like I have to have blocked days. Where I’m creating content and I’m not taking meetings because you have to be in two different mindsets to do those things.

I was finding it really challenging to be in a meeting and then shifting gears to then create a solo episode of CU. I just wasn’t doing it. I was then just not doing the solo episode. To create social content to write my book to to just work on my slides for presentations in 2024 topics like that requires a lot of creative energy.

And if I have to switch between meeting creative, meeting creative, I’m set up for failure. So I sat at the coffee shop and I said, okay, Monday, Wednesdays are going to be my days. Monday’s often like an admin day. I do numbers, like our books, I balance out our QuickBooks. I do meet with Pauline with our Level 10, and that’s just like internal check in on things.

Any mail, any emails, any tasks that need to be caught up, like that’s when I can do it. Wednesday is going to be more of like my content creation day, filming solo episodes things like that. Tuesday, internal, external meetings. And that’s it, right? No content creation, internal, external meetings. I’ll also book appointments on Tuesdays.

Thursdays are interviews for either CU or Rooted and half day on Friday are also blocked for interviews. If interviews don’t get scheduled on Friday, then I’m either going to take an admin day or take it off and have a nice longer weekend. Here’s the deal. A lot of us entrepreneurs know this, you’re not really taking the day off.

Instead, you’re going up to the mountains and you’re brainstorming new ideas or coming up with content ideas for your shows or you’re writing down, new missions and new goals and vision casting and doing all sorts of fun stuff like that. So that really is where Fridays can come into play if I don’t have those interviews booked.

So all of a sudden I had a lot more structure to my day to where I can really live in a creative sense or in the business development meeting sense. And so then I needed to put all that into Calendly and I was resisting this because it felt hard. It felt, there are a lot of moving pieces here and I had to learn Calendly.

Different aspects of it to be able to set up some different automation in it, have it automatically link my zoom account. So that’s already done. I don’t need to send a zoom when somebody schedules a meeting, it already happens and then just needed to make sure that there wouldn’t be conflicts with the different calendars I had.

So I was resisting it because it’s just shit you don’t want to do, right? Like often the stuff we don’t want to do is backburner, we resist, we put it off. But I tackled it at this new coffee shop that I love and then all my work got lost so I had to redo it all and then it was done. And Oh, my gosh, going into Monday and having that done and then telling my team Hey, team, here’s protocol.

Here’s what I’m available. These are all up to date through January. And then I booked a couple of meetings yesterday and boom, I was able to do it. It was so fast. It was so easy. So I took 2 hours to probably save myself. Hours of hassle and frustration because it could be 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there.

Think about when you’re trying to schedule meetings and you got to move stuff around. Can I do it then? And then you, Oh, fine. I’ll just schedule it on this day. And then you don’t do your creative stuff on that day, even though it’s blocked for creative. I’ve saved myself so much time and hassle by getting just two hours.

At the end of the day, it took me two hours, and that’s with my issue of deleting everything and having to do it all over again to save myself so much time. Is there something that you’ve been resisting or procrastinating on? Because it’s shit you don’t want to do. But, first of all, how much time is it going to save you once it’s done?

And two, how much time is it really going to take you to do it? That should have only taken me an hour, it took two to save me so much time, hassle and frustration. And the other thing, the final thing about this is I then have a system. Here’s where my schedules are for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

I tell my system to my team. I have the exact times of when I’m available, what’s going on, what meetings are when. So now when it’s ready to update my calendar again after January, when we’re going to do February, March, April. Maddie or somebody on my team can go in and do all that for me because I documented everything.

It’s like a one and done. But I had to initially do the first one to know okay, how do you do this? What is it going to be? What do I want to create here? I’ll then live it for a couple of months, make sure it’s working well for me, tell Maddie or somebody on the team, and then boom, they can do the rest for me, saving me a ton of time.

And then making me feel like a total bad ass because I saved myself a ton of time. So I just wanted to share that story. It really was, I love when you have those synchronicities of the love people being the password and just feeling in alignment and feeling where you need to be. I love the feeling of setting yourself up for success.

And I think that we just don’t do that often because we’re so busy putting out fires and doing the thing that’s right in front of us and working off of everybody else’s agendas that we’re not taking a little bit of time to block and do something for ourself to set ourself up for success. So I really encourage you to look at your calendar, look at what you have going on.

Is there something that could set you up for success and do it in a new environment? Go try a new coffee shop. Be brave. Maybe, those things don’t scare you. You’re like, whatever. I could go wherever I’m fine. But go to a new coffee shop, go to a new restaurant, go somewhere new, new environment, get that thing done.

And then take a picture of you do this. I know I’m giving you so many. Things to do, but take a picture when you’re at the coffee shop and tag me and put it on Instagram. Cause I want to see what you’re creating, what you’re doing you in a new, environment. I love seeing that stuff. And I love hearing from my listeners who are like, Oh, I listened to that episode.

I did it. Or you’re so right. I can relate. Like that shit lights me up. I love when people take action from these shows. So do it. And and I just want to remind you that if you. Need photos, you need to check out Christina Gressiau photocg.co love her so much. So talented. Go check out her site and see all the things she can do.

She can do so much. She’s so talented. I love her. I can’t recommend her enough. And I’m excited to see you on the next to you, which we’re going to talk about. An AI story, artificial intelligence story, that it could be controversial and it might, there’s a very solid chance it’s going to blow your mind.

So you’re going to want to tune into that episode. So you understand where AI capabilities are today and what you need to know for the future and what’s coming. This is real, like this will be one of the most important episodes I do actually next week, so make sure that you tune in to 91. Thank you for listening to this one, and have a great week.

I’ll see you on the next. See you. Bye.