23 Days of Tunnel Vision – Embracing a Business Heresy

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to market yourself in ways that feel fundamentally wrong. It doesn’t come from effort, although we try to bust through it with all kinds of actions. It’s a fundamental misalignment. It’s the energy leak that happens when you’re constantly consuming other people’s strategies, comparing your behind-the-scenes to their highlight reels, and second-guessing every creative impulse because someone else got there first.

And look, we go into this misalignment with the best of intentions. We’re trying to make our businesses work, and we’re rightfully in student mode, learning from those who’ve gone before us. But when you’ve been doing this for nearly a decade like I have, it’s time to graduate from student-level thinking and claim my mastery.

A week ago I documented something that started as mostly for me, definitely for those who join me later, but maybe for you too. It was about reclaiming my autonomy as CEO, my role as the Leading Lady of my own damn business, and trusting the wisdom that lives inside my own process.

The Problem with Outside Directors

Here’s what I realized with painful clarity: Over the past couple of years, I’ve been listening to a lot of outside directors. Hiring mentors, hiring coaches, buying programs (some of them I never finished, if I’m being completely honest), participating to masterminds where co-directing is part of the deal.

Sometimes it’s obvious: “You need to do it this way.” But often in my world, it’s usually more subtle. Those gentle suggestions that somehow become shoulds. The “have you considered…” that morphs into “maybe you should…” that transforms into a bossy internal voice saying “everyone else is doing it this way.”

I’ve been collecting strategies like some people collect vintage teacups; beautiful, potentially useful, but ultimately just taking up space on a shelf while I reach for the same familiar mug every morning.

Make no mistake, I learned from each of them. I’m a woman who claims her ROI right from enrolment and I have become who I am today because of the insight and info poured into me by these brilliant beings. I’m deeply grateful to them all.

AND I really just wanted to see who I am now, to implement what I’ve learned and to go it alone for a minute.

I’m a Libra. I don’t “go it alone” very often. My natural inclination is to seek counsel, to gather perspectives, to make decisions through collaboration and synthesis.

But this urge has been brewing a while – an urging to take a necessary step in trust, in self-determination, in being self-led. Because somewhere in all that external input, I kinda lost track of my own inner compass.

Tunnel Vision: Embracing a Business Heresy

I learned about the concept of tunnel vision as a business strategy from Dani Gardner (she of Quiet Marketing fame), and it was counterintuitive enough to stop me in my tracks.

In a world that constantly tells entrepreneurs to “stay ahead of the competition” and “keep an eye on what others are doing,” Dani suggested the radical opposite: intentionally close yourself off from seeing other people’s content and offerings.

At least for a while.

Why? Because, as she puts it so perfectly –

Seeing what others are doing will tend to swing you off your center
and disconnect you from your own ideas and self expression.

Dani Gardner

It was like a thunderbolt of recognition. How many times had I been excited about sharing something, only to see a peer post about something similar and suddenly feel like my idea was derivative, late to the party, or not unique enough? How many creative impulses had I talked myself out of because someone else got there first?

Dani’s approach isn’t about isolating yourself from learning or growth, it’s about protecting the tender shoots of your own creativity from the constant comparison that social media and industry noise create. It’s about maintaining what she calls “the integrity of your own creations.”

When you’re constantly consuming other people’s strategies, their launch sequences, their content calendars, their “proven systems,” it’s so easy to go from just learning, to absorbing their energetic frequency. (If you have an Open G Center like me, this is a constant hazard.)

You find yourself creating from their blueprint instead of making it your own. Initially it’s deliberate, I mean, that’s why you invested in the course in the first place, right? But then, somehow, it morphs into the way things are done and you lose sight of how you do things. And you wonder why there’s no juice in anything anymore.

The tunnel vision approach says: trust that everything you need to know is already inside you. Trust that your way of doing things, even if it’s messier or less “optimized,” will attract exactly the people who need what you have to offer. Trust that there’s a whole different way for you to make your offerings known, but you’ll probably never discover it while you keep talking yourself into going about things the way everyone else does. And trust that if you need a tool, you’ll find your way to it, or it’ll show up for you. Because that’s how the Field works.

My 23-Day Tunnel Vision Experiment

So on August 1st, I started something I called “23 Days of Tunnel Vision.”

Why 23? Well, because 23 is a magical number in its own right. Numerologically, it’s tied to freedom, adventure, synchronicity, and spiritual alchemy. It’s the number of transformation and intuitive wisdom.

AAND I’m deeply pragmatic and the timing works beautifully. I have a day for an Opening Night ceremony (of course!), a Grand Finale wrap-up ceremony to close, which gives me a full 21 days in between. Plus I then have a week at the end of the month for review and integration.

Here’s what my tunnel vision experiment looks like:

• No scrolling Facebook or Instagram for business content, I intend to stop as soon as I catch myself. And in the first week, I’ve caught myself often!
• No reading emails and newsletters from mentor-type people, except for my current coach, of course. I’ve invested to work with her till the end of this month and I’m a woman who claims every last drop of juice from her investments. Some of these folk I follow are treasured guides so I really didn’t want to unsubscribe completely. Instead, I’ve created a rule in my inbox to automatically pop them into a folder for later. Maybe I’ll read them later, maybe I won’t. That’ll be part of the unfolding. I’ll let you know how that goes when I do my final review.
• No business books, webinars, posts or videos, I’d been wanting to get back to reading fiction. I get magically inspired by a good story, and it feeds my creativity in ways that business content never can.
• In other words, for 23 days, I’m keeping outside voices to an absolute minimum.

The Fear I’m Working Through

I’ve shied away from this kind of radical self-reliance in the past because I have an abiding … not fear… but rather a bone-deep abhorrence of failure.

That has to stop too. Because really, if I “fail” at something, I learn something valuable. So it’s not actually a failure, right? It’s research.

And God knows every bad rehearsal I’ve had in my 25 years on stage led to a more brilliant performance. The mistakes are often where the magic lives.

So: tunnel vision, no scrolling, no reading of outside instruction, no consuming other people’s methods. Also, no more hiring right now. I am coach-less and mastermind-less at the end of August, and that feels perfectly timed.

It’s a chance to really focus on what wants to emerge from inside my own desires, ambitions and creative ecosystem.

My Magical Supplies

I have a palm stone of labradorite that’s been my companion for all my recent noodlings as I embarked on this experiment. Thanks to my wizardly client Meg, who deals in all things energetic, this stone found its way to me at exactly the right time.

Labradorite is a stone of magic and mysticism that symbolizes transformation, change, resilience and fortitude. It’s known for enhancing psychic abilities and helping people trust their inner knowing, which feels like exactly the energetic support I need for this experiment in self-trust.

There’s something powerful about having a physical anchor for internal work, a tangible reminder of the intention I’m setting. (That’s why I talk about Activation Stations so much.) Every time I hold this stone, I remember that I’m not just avoiding distraction, I’m actively choosing to trust my own process.

What I’ve Discovered So Far

This tunnel vision experiment is turning out to be a kind of coming home to myself, of remembering who I am beneath all the strategies and systems I’ve collected. It’s about trusting that everything I need to create something meaningful is already inside me; I just need to stop shying away from it by drowning it out.

Case in point: I’M DONE WITH BEING ‘CONSISTENT’

This was the grand revelation/decision delivered by the first week of Tunnel Vision.

 There are many who say you have to show up consistently in your marketing. Post daily; newsletter weekly; preferably on the same day, same time, etc etc.

I tried that. Many times.
It never stuck.

So I’m not going to follow that rule anymore.
Instead, I’m leaning into my inconsistency like a super power.

I’m not meant to show up every day in the same way with the same vibe – I end up boring myself to literal distraction!

So I’m (finally) giving myself permission to show up when I want to, how I want to (video, written, messenger, whatever) when I have something to say. Not to get but to give and to let it surprise and delight, wherever my message may land.

This applies to socials, my posts to the Backstage Group and these Letters.

My most potent sharings have always come from lived experience.

When I unfilter myself (like in this video), my words have weight.

People don’t just hear me, they feel themselves through me. They hear their Future Selves through me. And the response is real and often extraordinary.

In this next era of Me, I will speak when I hear my cue from within, and not because some algorithm demands it

It’s been extraordinary what this small permission slip has unleashed – a surge of creativity, confidence and enthusiasm for my business that has been awol for a while.

The clarity is already remarkable. And that’s just in the first week!!

When you allow yourself to stop consuming everyone else’s input for a while, you finally hear your own signal coming through loud and clear.
Your Future Self gets the mic – and suddenly, you’re in a whole new show.

If any of this is stirring something in you, if you’re also feeling that particular exhaustion that comes from misalignment, trust it. You might have your own version of tunnel vision calling to you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole tunnel vision concept. Have you ever felt that particular exhaustion from consuming too many strategies? What would your own version of tunnel vision look like? Do let me know. My work gets better when we work it together.

Blissings,

PS this personal experiment is informing something much bigger I’m creating – Something that honors the fact that your attention is precious – it literally crafts your reality – and precious-things-that-craft-your-reality deserve attention.

More on that soon.

PPS If you’d like to see how it all played out – the surprises, the shifts, and what 23 days of listening to ME first actually revealed – I recorded a Grand Finale video. You can watch it here.