Becca Ribbing is the author of The Clarity Journal and has been a coach for over a decade. She’s on a mission to help people break out of the cycles of uncertainty and struggle that hold them back. She helps women going back forth and with the big, seemingly endless question of what to do next so they can stop going around in circles and finally figure out what they truly want and create the clarity and momentum they crave.
So many people find themselves stuck and unsure of their direction. Using journaling prompts and helping people become more honest with themselves. She moves her readers forward gently and empowers them to embrace their strengths while letting go of any negative self-talk that has held them back in the past. She’s been on many podcasts, including “What to Read Next” and “Say Yes.”
Questions
- Could you share with our audience a little bit about your journey? How did you get to where you are today?
- We have a lot of listeners who are business owners or managers in businesses, females, males, how would this book really help them? Could you share with us just how this all comes together?
- What are maybe one or two things that you would recommend that they could employ in order to just be more confident or have a greater conviction or assertion in whatever they’re thinking of doing or not doubting themselves or be so fearful?
- Could you share with us what’s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
- Could you also share with our audience, maybe one or two books that you’ve read, could be books that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you’ve read recently, but it really has had a great impact on you.
- What’s the one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about, either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people?
- Where can listeners find you online?
- Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you’ll tend to revert to this quote or saying, it kind of helps to get you back on track or get you refocused if for any reason you get derailed?
Highlights
Becca’s Journey
Becca shared that about 3 years ago, she was going back and forth about her next career move, she had just had her second son and she had been a coach for a while. And she had also been running a mindfulness website that she had to let go when her son was born, her son had a bunch of medical issues, none of them were huge, but they all were very time consuming.
And so, about 3 years ago, she was going back and forth with a friend of hers about what path she wanted to take next. And it was so funny, because she stopped her and finally she said, “Hey, Becca, you are a coach, you’ve been a coach for a long time, what would you tell your clients in this situation?” And she stopped, she was like, “Oh, what would I tell myself?” And she got off that call and she wrote down all of the questions she asks her clients to help them move forward.
And as she was writing these questions down and asking them of herself, she started getting more and more and more clear. And the thing that came up for her is that she really needed to get back into writing, even though it was difficult with the kids, writing was really truly what she loved doing. And so, this ended up becoming her first writing project. It was just so powerful to have the questions asked that she wanted to make sure they got out to the world.
Your Book, The Clarity Journal – Find the Clarity and Momentum You’ve Been Searching For! – How This Book Can Help Business Owner or Managers in Business
Me: So, your book, as we mentioned prior to the actual recording starting is entitled, The Clarity Journal – Find the Clarity and Momentum You’ve Been Searching For! So tell us, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners or managers in businesses, females, males, how would this book really help them? Because I know, for example, there are people who are in their 20s and their 30s, sometimes even in their 40s, who still have not figured out if what they’re doing is what they really want to do. And so, where do you start? Do you start just by having a conversation with yourself in your head? Or do you find journaling helps more? And is there a scientific proof that supports that? Could you share with us just how this all comes together?
Becca shared that the main thing, is to start getting yourself out of the question and moving towards an answer. So, she finds a lot of times when someone comes to her and is really stuck, they are just constantly asking the same question over and over again, “What do I do next?” Or “What is my passion?” And they really just get so fixated on the lack of what they don’t know, that they have a really hard time branching out from there.
And so, she would say she loves journaling, you can also hire a coach. She thinks that a lot of us get stuck and we don’t even realize it though. We get stuck in this single train of thought where we’re looping back over and over. And so, she would say that the very first step in her mind is recognizing when you are stuck, being mindful about being stuck and recognizing that you are not going to be able to really move yourself through it, doing what you’ve been doing up to date.
So, she believes journaling helps a lot, she thinks that hiring a coach helps a lot and some of your listeners may not be stuck about what they want to do, so much as like stuck about exactly how they want to do it, or exactly what the career path should look like for them.
And she runs into this a lot with entrepreneurs, especially very small business entrepreneurs, where they really aren’t as clear as they think they are about their mission and what they are doing, and so it just muddies the water so much because every time they start something new, every time they go to do a blog post, or every time they start working on a new product, because they are not clear, they have a really hard time diving into it without an awful lot of second guessing at the very beginning.
And so, she doesn’t really have scientific proof that journaling works, she can’t off the top of her head think of a study and now after she gets off of this call, she’s going to go look and see what scientific studies there are for journaling. But she thinks the real trick of all of this is to just be honest with yourself about where you are.
Because we also oftentimes want to push away that indecision, push away the fear; push away whatever it is that’s causing us discomfort. And so, if we don’t actually shine a light on it, if we don’t really look at it deeply, then we’re going to be stuck in that same cycle and she thinks that really comes clear when she’s talking to her clients that are managers and are in this realm, because they aren’t clear and they’re muddying the waters for their employees. But also, a lot of times, they’re not clear about what they want in terms of employees.
She runs into a lot where someone’s been dealing with a bad employee for a very long time, and speaking of scientific studies, there is a really interesting study a couple of years ago, the statistic she’s going to be a little bit off on because she can’t remember what exactly it was. But basically, if a team had a complainer on it, that the entire team’s productivity went down by something like 30%. Isn’t that shocking?
And so, really getting clear about what you want your management style to be, really getting clear about what it is that you need to be successful can also be extremely powerful.
Recommendations Persons Can Employ In Order to Be More Confident
Me: So, persons who suffer from like low self esteem, or their confidence is not as high as another person, what are maybe one or two things that you would recommend that they could employ in order to just be more confident or have a greater conviction or assertion in whatever they’re thinking of doing or not doubting themselves or be so fearful?
Becca stated that that’s a great question. She feels like a lot of times people don’t really recognize their strengths. When we have a strength, it usually comes really easily to us and so we discount its value, because it’s not hard.
And she finds especially people with low self confidence, they haven’t really embraced the strength that makes them really unique and valuable, and so they’re constantly using things that are actually their weakness at work.
And so, she would say that her first priority when she gets a new client is actually to help people see their own strengths because if you can’t see it, then you’re not going to try to design your life and your job around using your strengths.
When we’re in school, all of our teachers and our parents usually do this thing, if we get a report card and we have an A in writing and a C in math, they don’t focus on how great the A in writing is and what they could do with their life with the A in writing. What they do is they focus on that C in math, “Oh, you need to work harder; you need to work harder, like what is going wrong that you don’t understand this?” And there’s a lot of blame, and the kid feels bad.
And so, we have been trained as kids to focus on our weakness, to focus on fixing our weakness, to focus on what our weaknesses are and that she feels like really does not help you in the real world, because in the real world, the more you can bring in your strengths into work, the better off you will be.
So, if you were having low self esteem right now, you were actually trying to do this, one of the things that she would do is actually ask, if you have a really close friend who’s a co-worker or even just your family or friends, the ones that are really positive and supportive, when you ask them, “Hey, what do you see my strengths as being?” really listen to what they say and try very hard not to discount it. Don’t tell yourself, “Oh, well, everyone has that,” because they don’t, not everyone has that strength. And the people that don’t have that strength, that kind of means that it’s a weakness of theirs, it’s okay to value it even though it comes easy to you.
Me: It’s so interesting that you brought that up that they focus on the negative it’s so true. Even as a parent myself, I have to kind of retrain myself as an individual in terms of focusing where my daughter is concerned. I remember growing up, ever report that I got from I was in kindergarten come all the way up to university said, “Yanique is our great student, but she just talks too much.” I love to talk to this day, clearly. That’s why I have a podcast and interview people. And that’s why I’m a Customer Service Trainer and my voice is now how I express myself in so many different areas, like different platforms, and to contact and connect with people. So, I think you are right, you should focus on what your strengths are, and don’t negate the fact that you’re good at something, even if you’re not so good at something else, because we all have strengths and some of them won’t be similar. So, we all for example, can’t be a lawyer or a doctor.
And then that’s the next thing too Becca, I find that traditionally, especially here in Jamaica, we’re not training our kids to do careers that are not the normal careers, because I’m sure that there are careers that have emerged since the pandemic, that if we were to ask somebody if they would go into that profession 5/10 years ago, they wouldn’t, they would have been like, “No, that’s probably never going to exist.” But so much has forced people to just do different things differently and technology has increased so much that professions that didn’t exist, all of a sudden, because of the pandemic, and we’re all forced into the digital so quickly, it just has really emerged. What are your thoughts on that?
Becca stated that having a career now versus say in 1950, just requires so much being willing to be flexible. And she thinks that one of the things that goes along with that is recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, because you will make better shifts if you can really analyze what it is you want to be using within yourself.
And she has to say, she laughed as Yanique was telling the story about everyone saying that you talk too much, because of course, it’s actually a beautiful strength, it’s just not a strength if they want you to sit still at school for 6 hours a day. She thinks that something that’s been really hard for her is also what Yanique was talking about with the kids, because you want them to be persistent, you want them to try their best and you want them to really flourish. And the way that they’re going to flourish is to like find their joys, find their strengths.
And so, when she’s working with people about, back to the original question about how do you do this going forward, the thing that she has noticed the most, especially with older clients, and we will all eventually be older is that they hit a certain age and they start not wanting to learn new things. And she should back preface for anyone who is like 50 or 60, 70 even, not everyone does this, but she does notice a big trend with older people where they’re not going to learn the next app, they’re not going to learn the new computer programme and they fall off a bandwagon at some point where they’re not going to do anything new because it’s not useful to them, it’s too complicated, they just don’t have the brain space.
And she would say that when you do that, you end up limiting yourself because as you start to insulate yourself from the new technology changes, you are inherently going to limit your potential 5 years from now because you didn’t keep up with the times.
And she thinks that there’s a lot to be said for that that happens a lot in business too where you have a slightly older manager and what’s working right now is working and so we don’t have the bandwidth as a company, especially as a small company to add something new. And then all of a sudden, what you have been doing has been working, and it might work for another year or two but you’re going to end up running into a brick wall if you haven’t been consistently changing with the times.
Me: So, really being adaptable and being flexible, and just being open to learning new things regardless of your age. And you are right, I do notice it myself but I don’t think it’s everybody. But I do believe that the older persons tend to be a little bit less willing to embrace something that they’re not familiar with, or they feel like it’s just out of their comfort zone. I remember my dad died about 3 years ago, and he was a business owner for many years. And of course, just to make deposits at the bank for his business or anything, he would still physically drive to the bank and have to stand up in front of a physical person even though the technology exists for online banking, or even just going to an ATM and using a debit card, he never had a debit card. If he needed cash from his account, he would go to the bank physically and stand in front of someone because that’s what he was so accustomed to and it’s just amazing. Even when you said to him, “It’s so much easier, Daddy, you could try it this way.” It was just not something that he was willing to embrace. And then the flipside is I’ve met persons his age, and they’re fully with technology, they probably use social media way more than me, I guess they have more time on their hands. And they really and truly embrace it. So I guess it depends on their headspace on how open they are.
Becca stated that also she’s actually run into it with younger people, too. She once had a client who was 24, who was a graphic designer who hated Adobe. And she was just like, you’re fighting a losing battle, you’re going to have to use Adobe in any job you have, you’re a graphic designer. So, she doesn’t want to stereotype too much but as we get older, it becomes easier to get into the status quo. And it’s almost always going to hold you back.
App, Website or Tool that Becca Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business
When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without, Becca shared that she has been really loving this programme called Ommwriter. And it is this very streamlined writing software that has like this beautiful background and it has music that pipes in that flows, that’s very flowy music and it also sounds like a keyboard, like a really nice old fashioned keyboard.
And she has found that when she’s using it, her writing speeds up, she probably writes about twice as fast as she normally do because something about it just helps her flow through and write really fast. The picture on it naturally draws your eyes to the bottom and she just feels like the whole UI is so great.
It’s not great for editing so she usually copy and paste whatever she’s writing into a Word document to actually do the like the spell-check and the grammar check. But it is amazing. She thinks a lot of people have this experience, even if they are not writers, where they have to write an about page or a page for new sales for a new product or just even a really long and complicated email where just even getting it out is hard. And so, she knows a lot of people have actually switched back to pen and paper because of that. So she would say if you ever have a hard time or you’re writing long length things and you find yourself getting stuck a lot, then definitely download it, it’s only $7 or $8. Her new favorite toy.
Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Becca
When asked about books that have had a great impact, Becca shared that she is loving Burnout. It’s called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD. And it really speaks, she thinks, mostly to women but it is all about why we get overwhelmed, and why we get stressed out and frazzled, and very practical little steps you can take to help combat that. And she thinks that anyone listening to this, especially anyone with kids, or a really intense job can relate to feeling burnt out, and feeling stressed. And so, if you are in that space right now, she highly recommends the book.
What Becca is Really Excited About Now!
Becca shared that she’s working on her next book. So, she just got started on writing the next book, her kids just went back to school and it’s been a little hard in the States, I assume in many other places where people are listening with COVID. So, the kids have been with her for a very long time.
Me: And what state are you in?
Becca shared that she is in Washington State, she’s in Seattle. And so, she’s working on her next book. And the working title right now is called Mindful Procrastination.
Me: When are you expecting and is that book going to be similar to The Clarity Journal, like a working book? Or is it more of a reading book?
Becca stated that it’s a book, book, and she’s hoping that it’ll be out within the next year. But this will be her first book, book so she’s cautiously optimistic that it will take her about a year once everything is said and done and the editing process is all finished.
Where Can We Find Becca Online
Website – www.beccaribbing.com
Twitter – @beccaribbing
Instagram – @beccaribbing
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Becca Uses
When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Becca shared, “Be here now.” Very often times when she’s stressed out, it’s because she’s thinking of 100 things and it helps really centre her on the one thing she needs to do right now. Whether that is family or work, it just helps clear out the clutter because yes, we all have 100 things on our to-do list, but you can only do one of them at a time.
Me: Very true. You really can only focus on one thing at a time. And I think many years ago, I read an article that said that it’s not humanly possible for you to be doing two things at the same time and be doing both of them at 100%. So, it’s like driving and talking on the phone or driving and eating, something is going to not be done at its highest level of efficiency because it’s just humanly impossible for you to do both of them at 100% capacity.
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Links
- The Clarity Journal – Find the Clarity and Momentum You’ve Been Looking For! By Becca Ribbing
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD
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