Entering my new alignment era (more authenticity, more creativity, more Dina)

I’m entering a new era of business where I do what I actually want to do.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have seen that I started a summer project to be more creative and experiment with my content—it’s called Calligraphy Poems for the Soul.

I’m not sure how long I’ll continue this for, but for now, it brings me a lot of joy.

How it works is that people (including you!) can tell me a bit about their situation and I’ll write an uplifting poem with my calligraphy and mail it to them.

As of July 30, 2024, I’m only charging $10 to cover supplies and shipping. If someone were to commission a piece from me of the same length and give me someone else's poem/quote to write out, it would be at least $80.

Recently, here are the things I’ve been thinking about while starting this new project, and I hope these can help you along your journey too.

👉What’s the best way to pivot?

In the last five years of running my creative business full-time, I went from selling greeting cards and teaching calligraphy workshops, to coaching calligraphers on how to start a business during COVID, to starting a YouTube channel, to selling Canva templates on Etsy, to doing brand deals and UGC projects with companies, to selling digital courses and coaching to my email list.

I’ve made several pivots and experimented with different income streams—and now I feel like I’m in another pivoting season again.

A lot of people know me as a business educator.

On YouTube, my most viewed videos are how-to videos on various business topics. I talk about business a lot, share advice, and I’ve also offered business coaching services.

While I can definitely talk about business and I’d say I’m quite good at it, I see myself more as an artist rather than a teacher.

I want to create and share things more than I want to educate.

I don’t feel like I’m making a huge pivot right now… just a slow pivot where I incorporate more of Artist Dina rather than Teacher Dina.

Artist Dina still enjoys talking about business but she’s experimenting with creating more.

Actually, I feel like most of my pivots have been slow pivots where I have a transition phase or I just blend together the two things I want to do.

I’m a fan of slow pivoting.

You don’t have to burn your old business to the ground. You can just transition slowly into the new one. It might not be great for every case, but for me, it feels easier.

👉Should you follow what others are doing or do what feels more aligned for you?

For the last two months, I’ve been feeling really stuck in my business.

After doing multiple exercises to try to figure out what’s next for me in my business, I realized that I need to create and share more:

My dream is to be inspired every day, create beautiful things, and share my journey with the world so people can get inspired and have confidence to also chase after their dreams.

The main thing I’ve been missing this entire time is creating in a way that feels 100% aligned.

I believe—for me, at least—that a business is a reflection of the person running it, and if you aren’t fully aligned with what you’re doing, you’re in for a difficult time.

And that was exactly my experience.

I was running my business based on what I saw others do.

Other people are teaching calligraphy workshops? Let me try that.

Other people are offering coaching services? Let me try that.

Other people are making courses? Let me try that.

Other people are starting Etsy shops? Let me try that.

But honestly, as someone who had low self-esteem in general, I think there wasn’t any other way I could have started my business without copying what others were doing.

I definitely wouldn’t have had the guts to actually do what I wanted to do, which was writing and creating art.

So was it good I did what other people were doing? Yeah, I’d say so.

Following other people helped me build confidence, learn business strategies, and practice putting myself out there.

There’s nothing wrong with following what other people are doing, and heck, I could have done that for the rest of my life and made good money.

But at this point in my business—5 years of running it full-time and trying out a whole bunch of stuff that I saw other people doing—I feel like it’s finally time for me to do what feels most aligned for me.

There’s a time to follow others, and then there’s a time to do your own thing.

👉How do you figure out what’s aligned with you?

Of course, it makes sense to do something that feels more aligned.

But what if you don’t know what makes you feel more aligned?

That was my struggle for a while.

I knew what I was doing wasn’t 100% aligned, but what would make it more aligned?

Here are three things that helped me:

The first thing I did is I re-read one of my favorite books called P.S. You’re a Genius by Kelly Trach. The main premise of the book is that everyone has 3-5 core gifts, and by combining them together you can do your GENIUS.

My 4 gifts are writing, creating, self-motivation, and learning. (There are many journaling prompts in the book that help you figure out what your gifts are.)

So I've been thinking about how to use all my gifts.

I'm pretty much using my gifts on a day-to-day basis except for writing.

I mean, I write email newsletters, social media posts, and video outlines, but what I've been missing is CREATIVE WRITING, which I now realize I need to do more of!

Hence my new Calligraphy Poems for the Soul project.

One of my favorite quotes from the book:

A lot of the time, we resist what's easy in favor of what's hard. Quite often, we distrust our easy ideas, pump the breaks on spontaneous ideas, and talk ourselves out of playful pursuits. No matter how good our ideas, our minds conclude that things can't be that simple and we buy back into the myth of endurance. When I catch myself doing this, I scratch my complex plans and go back to my initial instinct.

The second thing that got me going was one day when I met up with one of my friends for coffee. She made me write down my "superpowers" on a napkin (we didn't have paper haha).

There were probably 20 things I wrote down, but some examples were: motivating people to do things, having a diverse skill set, being a jack of all trades, being very consistent, and liking to share my journey.

While I didn’t specifically come up that creating was what I should be doing more of, it was a powerful exercise in helping me think about what I’m really good at.

The third thing I did was the 16 questions exercise by Eva Alordiah and this is sort of an Ikigai exercise.

I would highly recommend you check out her YouTube video for the full strategy and that you dedicate at least 30 minutes to do it.