How to get through failure when things just aren’t working out.

if you have been following Along on my 11mon Etsy Journey you will know that there were a handful of times where I just felt really frustrated with my Etsy and really iffy about whether or not I want to continue and I think the main thing was I just felt like my Etsy Shop failed and I let everyone on YouTube down and it's just so embarrassing and so I had this idea to make this video for those of you who might be struggling as well or those of you who might feel demotivated because you're not getting the results that you want so first when you are feeling really down about your business don't avoid it just be with it feel it it's okay and you know this is just a part of the Journey of being a business owners there's going to be highs there's going to be lows there's going to be middle I'm not sure if any of you are into the inag but I am obsessed with the inag I'm in inag 7 the Enthusiast or Adventurer and what my type tends to do when it comes to negative emotions or when I just feel bad in general is I tend to run away I avoid it and I want to escape it and fill up the negativity or just get rid of the negativity by doing something else so in my business when I do feel like something has failed I actually tend to work more and try to just distract myself and maybe the feeling will go away and I'm just covering it up I'm not actually addressing the problem and the more I did this the more it would just happen again and again because I would never really address the reason behind why I feel like some things are a failure and usually if I have some kind of a business problem it's usually like a personal problem that I have so if I feel like my business is a failure I usually feel like I am the failure and I have to coach myself through this and there are a lot of methods I use like I Journal uh running is really therapeutic for me and it helps me to reflect on things and process things and sometimes this means that you need to take some time off to reflect on things to think about what's the core of it like am I feeling like a failure because I had expectations that it was going to go this way but then it actually went this way and so that's why I'm disappointed in myself that's why I feel like a failure or like what is the core issue so a huge reason of why I feel like my Etsy Shop is a failure is because my third month was so good and then every single month after that it just wasn't as good me feeling like a failure is a problem I've had for a huge part of my life and it stems from the thought that I'm just not good enough when you get to the core of an issue instead of running away that's when you can really address it and you can heal it if it needs to be healed and you can do something about it and when it comes to taking time off to think about things and reflect on things yes you can just take like a weekend or an afternoon off to you know reflect on things but you actually might also want to take some real time off off the business so at the beginning of September my Etsy Shop was doing horrible and I actually I was feeling so not motivated I was like there's no point in me working on this Etsy shop it's like only getting two sales in 14 days like why am I even doing this and so I actually decided to not work on it and it was actually good timing it worked out because I was super busy with traveling and wrapping up my visit in Beijing so I actually just did not work on my Etsy shop for a good 2 weeks and then uh you know I I saw some more sales come in in those two weeks that I was not working on it and this really gave me some time to think about do I want to continue with my Etsy Shop do I not I was actually thinking about maybe taking one or two months off Etsy so I could focus on other things on my business but actually after taking two weeks off I realized that I have been just feeling like I'm on this hamster wheel working on my Etsy shop but the thing is I do believe that my SC shop can make a lot of money like I feel like my products are good and my marketing is getting better cuz I'm redoing all the listing photos and I really believe that my products are unique they are different from everything else out there but I need to have the right mindset around it I can't just be working on it and feeling jaded all the time so for now what I'm going to do is I will keep working on the shop until at least the new year and then in the New Year I'm going to re-evaluate next step I have for you is to write a new definition of success and I feel like I've talked a lot about this on my channel I've showed you my definition of success so many times but you know I have new viewers every day and I pinned it right there it says success is learning and growing every single day that is a definition that I wrote 2 years ago because like I had the same problem like I felt like a failure so the business coach that I was working with at the time told me to write a new definition of success that is not based on results but it's based on the dayt day what I can do every single day that can make me feel successful and for me if I'm learning things every day if I'm growing every single day then I am a successful person next thing I want to bring up is should you pivot in the thing that you're doing or not in my 5 years of business I've actually pivoted a lot so I went from having a calligraphy business and I started coaching calligraphers and coaching creatives then I started this YouTube channel and then I did a bunch of random side gigs because I wasn't making money with YouTube so I did some Tik Tok video freelancing I did some pet sitting and that's also another reason why I started my Etsy shop because I was thinking my YouTube is not making money maybe let me start this Etsy shop thing that I've been thinking about for while maybe the Etsy Shop can make money while I wait for my YouTube channel to make money a really good book that I read when I was deciding whether or not I should continue with my calligraphy and coaching full-time or pivot to doing content creation full-time was the dip by Seth Goden it's a book that answers the question when is it the right time to quit should you quit or should you continue and it can give you a lot of perspective on things so for example maybe one reason you have been feeling like a failure for a long time is because you're not happy doing the thing in your business so for me when I was doing calligraphy full-time I didn't love doing it full-time and making it my full-time thing I love calligraphy as a side hustle and right now I still like I want to do more calligraphy workshops by the way if you are a company in Vancouver or a company in North America I can do an inperson Workshop or a zoom Workshop so yeah if you're interested in that uh email me so I want to do calligraphy on the side and I also want to do some coaching on this side like I think it's really fun to support people in growing their business but I never wanted these