Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Susie Lynn. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Susie, so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.
Part of my communication skills being effective came from my former job as a retail manager. I was an English major at the University of Colorado at Boulder and developed a passion for writing in college. However, during that time, and post-college, I was a Store Manager for DSW. As a manager in general, you need great communication skills because you are often relaying messages from corporate or your District Manager to your team of Assistant Managers and Sales Associates. If you aren’t great at being clear with your message, everyone underneath you gets confused and has no clue what they are doing. And if you aren’t clear with your managers, they aren’t clear on how to help customers, so on and so forth.
The other part lies in practice and knowing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of not getting clear communication. And of course, if you’re ever confused about the task at hand, you can’t be afraid to ask for clarification unless you want to waste your time and energy doing something incorrectly. For anyone who struggles with communication skills, my biggest piece of advice would be to partner with a friend or colleague who has excellent communication and ask for their tips. Being organized and clear in your own head before trying to put your thoughts onto paper also helps!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am a lifestyle blogger. I absolutely love blogging for a couple of reasons. For one, I get to put that college degree to use. While I know having a Bachelor’s Degree definitely helped me get more money as a former retail manager, I certainly wasn’t putting my expensive degree to work! I also love to blog because I have the luxury of picking the topics I want to write about. I can keep them on current happenings like about trips my family has taken, or about what holidays are coming up, or on party-planning tips, and everything in between. I also have a fairly active audience where I will have people send me questions on Instagram, or ask for me to cover specific topics, and I am happy to oblige. I also just launched a shop on my website and am so excited about that. I get to use my former work life as experience since it’s a retail gift shop but it’s all online with no brick and mortar store to worry about. Also, I sell the things I love to buy for myself, so it’s easy for me to be happy with my gift shop offerings. I know a lot of my gift shop items are unique, and they all speak to my soul on some level.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I think the top three qualities that were most impactful to my journey were my positivity, resilience, and willingness to adapt. Even after losing my brother, Mikey, to suicide back in 2008, while that threw my entire family and I into a very dark place, we just kept plugging along, taking every day one step at a time. I remember sitting there crying after losing him, wondering how I’d ever find joy in life again, or ever love the holidays again, because everything felt like it was doomed to forever suck without my little brother there with me. That quote, “You’ve survived 100% of your hardest days” definitely was how I got through the muck. My parents and I literally lived our lives day-to-day, focusing on mundane bullshit tasks just to get us through the first week, month, year, and so on of losing my brother. Eventually I learned to love the holidays again, slept through a night again, enjoyed food again, basically all the things that I never thought would happen right when he died. I also knew that Mikey would never have left this earth if he thought that it meant my mom, dad, and I would cease to exist and wish our own lives away. My advice though is, you don’t need to lose someone you love to learn these lessons. You can enjoy the moments you are in without having to live through the horrible side of loss. You can also learn to stop sweating the small stuff that really doesn’t matter when the day comes to an end. I continually have to reign in my own anxiety, so my advice to any readers who feel like they’re in a constant state of worry, is to just fucking breath. Know that the things you are feeling judged about or that you think other people are thinking of you, is truly made up in your head. Someone may notice or think about you for a quick second, but then they go on to their own lives worrying about what they are doing themselves. So if you are afraid to start blogging or writing in fear of what others will think of you, know that at the end of the day, they aren’t thinking of you at all! And then you’ll have a sense of freedom that comes through in your writing, and adds to your overall creativity.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
Whenever I am overwhelmed, the first thing I do is talk it out with someone I am close with. Sometimes it’s my husband, sometimes it’s my mom, sometimes it’s my friend Jenny or my cousin, Mary. But no matter which one of them it is, I know that I can be honest about how I am feeling without being judged. My cousin, Mary always jokes with me saying, “Susie, I can tell you the sky is purple and you will say yes and you’ll go to bat for me. And I do the same for you.” And she’s exactly right. I’m not saying you surround yourself with yes-men, because that’s not a wise idea either, as you do need a good sounding board with different opinions and advice. But you also need to know who truly has your back at the end of the day, and loves you unconditionally, and they are the ones who will fill your bucket when it’s empty. Stay away from energy vampires who either secretly love when you’re as low as them, or who only show up for you when you’re low because they kind of appreciate that you’re struggling. Those aren’t real friends, and you don’t need that negative bullshit dragging you down!
Once you talk it out with whoever you trust, if you’re still feeling overwhelmed, I have to other things I do. I either take the dog for a walk, or I force myself to work out. Feeling the sun on my face, or breaking a sweat automatically makes me feel better. And lastly, get a good night of sleep. There are occasionally nights that I pop a Tylenol PM and just “give it to God and go to sleep” as they say. Everything is immediately better and less overwhelming in the morning after you’ve actually slept well! Lastly, get organized. Clean up that pile of bills that’s been on your counter for months. Put away the laundry that’s been in the hamper all week. Just hammer out tiny shit that is weighing on you so that you can focus on the big stuff! Taking it one tiny piece at a time, one day at a time, is truly the only way you’re going to feel less overwhelmed.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gracebeautyandfbombs.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracebeautyandfbombs/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gracebeautyandfbombs/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-lynn-058654a/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gracebeautyandfbombs
Image Credits
They’re all mine 🙂
