In June I decided to take a step back from everything I’ve been doing in my business and figure out where I should be spending my time. To do it, I asked myself a question that came from The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss – “What are the 20% of activities that are yielding 80% of my results?”.
After having a good look at everything I was doing, I realized that a few months ago I decided to make my content creation process more time intensive. And while I do love spending time making content, I didn’t make this decision for the right reason – although I didn’t know it at the time.
I was self-sabotaging.
By keeping myself busy with the easy stuff, I didn’t have enough time to do the challenging stuff. The put myself out there stuff. The risk rejection stuff. The grow my business stuff. And I’ve realised that if I want to achieve my impossible goal, I need to make more room in my calendar for the activities that will lead to that.
Since I get the most love from you guys about my podcast and my Instagram account, that’s where I’ll be spending most of my time. At least for the next few months while I test out a new way of doing things! But the good news is that I’ve decided to do more podcast episodes. And, because I’m no longer doing my daily vlog, I thought it’d be fun to give you guys a monthly update in podcast form. I hope you enjoy it!
MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE
- The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield-Thomas
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees
- Tim Ferriss Fear-Setting Exercise
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 34 of The Smart Twenties Podcast!
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hi, and welcome to Episode 34 of The Smart Twenties Podcast. My name is Sam Brown and this is a podcast where I share personal growth and life advice for women in their twenties. And today, I thought I would just give a little monthly update actually. I don’t know how little it will be because I really seem to love chatting on this podcast and I know that you guys love it too, so I’m just going to be going or I, I guess the things that I have done in the last month what I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been working on personally, what’s been happening, and I also decided to do this because I am not going to be doing my daily vlog and I’m going to go more into that in a second, but I love giving these kinds of updates and I just thought it’d be fun to do it on the podcast each month since I won’t be doing it over on YouTube.
And so I guess the first thing I’m going to start with is what I was saying, my decision not to keep going with my 365 days of personal growth vlog. So, I started that in September last year. I’m so grateful that I did. I really learned so much from doing that, it really helped me get out of my own way in a lot of ways. And what happened was that when we moved our internet here is so, so shitty, and it started to become a struggle to upload each day because I had to go to Steve’s parents’ house to upload otherwise it would take like two days to upload something here and I was doing that for the first month and then I just let it slip- it’s one of those, like slippery slopes that you’re doing a daily vlog and it’s going up every day and you’re really making sure- I was really making sure that it would go up every day and then I miss a couple of days. And it’s like you know that negotiation with yourself be like, “Oh, if I miss a couple of days, one more day won’t make a difference” then it got to a point that it had been a month behind and then that slipped into being a few months behind is actually, more than thirty videos that I have uploaded in YouTube just without their own thumbnail and description, but I have decided that I’m not going to be focusing on that.
And that was in the back of my mind for the last few months, as something that was just looming over me is something I hadn’t completed and I’ve just decided that I’m going to be focusing on my podcast, this podcast because it’s my absolute favorite thing to do. It’s also one of the easiest things that I do in a sense that I just sit down and chat… I love it, and then it just gets uploaded and you guys tell me that it’s also the easiest thing for you. You can listen on your grocery shopping, you’re at the gym. It’s the reason that I love podcast is so easy. Whereas for YouTube, a lot of people, a lot of you guys are telling me that you actually just listen to my vlogs as if they’re podcast episodes.
So I thought, “Why not just make it all on the podcast?” and that way it’s easiest for everyone. So a few months ago now, I decided that I was going to create really in-depth content which I love doing. But what actually happened was that when I was doing that I was using it to get in my own way which I couldn’t see until very recently, but I wasn’t doing it in a way that was organized, so all of my time was filled with creating my weekly series and it meant that I wasn’t able to do things that would help me grow my business and actually the things that would make me feel really uncomfortable in the best way uncomfortable in the way that I would be growing.
So I had filled all of my time with creating this content and that’s because it’s very comfortable for me to record podcast episodes and do YouTube videos and all of that, and it’s not comfortable for me to create products to pitch myself to other podcasts, to be an interview. All of that kind of thing is way less comfortable. And I had been using all of my comfortable tasks as a way to avoid doing that so I’ve decided to focus on my podcast primarily, and also, my Instagram account. If you’re not following me on Instagram yet, my account is @smarttwenties, all spelled out. And it is one of my favorite things to do, the quotes that I have, that I write and share and I’m definitely going to be keeping on doing them.
So if you’re not following me on Instagram yet make sure you do. I also write long captions which I think about as being a mini blog. So that is what I am going to be focusing on. I did have like a few days of being like, “Oh my god, what the hell am I going to do” it was actually when I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss which I am going to be doing an individual episode on. But that book really has some great clarifying questions on how to spend your time. I’d also realize that I stopped having my day off every single week and last year, particularly, I really was strict with myself in the best way that I forced myself to have a day off every week, a day off blogging and that had kind of just slipped at some point I just decided that I’m just going to be working every day and I was only really having time off when I was catching up with a friend. And I do my blog, and I also have a part-time job, so I was having very little time to myself and even though I love this stuff, I don’t think that means that I should be doing it 24/7.
I really want to have a full life that has other aspects to it, that has relationships with the people in my life, where I have hobbies, that I don’t have to share with every person that are just for me. And blogging used to be that hobby, that was really just for me because… no, it was really my blog for the first three years, but once people started reading it then and now it’s become my business and in a sense my job, I need to find other things.
So I’ve been really working this month on having that day off every week. I’ve also made it a weekend, and because last year when I was having my day off, I was having it on Friday, but I was still working at my part-time job in the afternoon, so it meant that I wasn’t actually having a full day off. And even though I do I want it to sound like it’s a good thing that I’m trying to work all the time. I really think the reason that I have been trying to work all the time, is because I haven’t taken the time to develop my life outside of my business, and that I can’t think of anything that I’d rather do so I just end up blogging, but I want to have other things I want to take the time to have those other things in my life and have other interests.
So what I have been doing, I’ve been reading The Curated Closet by Anushka Rees and I started reading that in October last year but then just didn’t actually end up doing all the work that is required. So I have been doing that the last few weeks. I’ve been thinking about what I want my personal style to be and the issue as well, is I just constantly feel like I have nothing to wear and I don’t actually have very many clothes but I think to just buy clothes without really thinking them through and I don’t seem to spend much time gathering basics and I just have a lot of things not that many things, but I have things that don’t necessarily go with each other, and I’m just missing a few really basic pieces that would bring it altogether.
So instead of just going out and buying things that I’m like, “Oh yeah, I really like that. I’m changing my criteria from… I really like that, to that fits my personal style that would be great in my wardrobe, it’s high quality, it’s going to last” all of that kind of thing.
Her book is amazing. And I’ve just been really enjoying doing that. I went last weekend on Sunday I have my day off and I went to Chermside and did one of the tasks in the book, which is to just go and try on heaps of styles that you normally wouldn’t try on. I actually tried on these long flowy culottes that I normally wouldn’t, but I was like, “I’m just going to try all these random things” and I did find quite a few things that I really liked when they were on that I haven’t, like when you get in a habit when you’re with your clothes that you just go towards the things you always go to… so that’s been really fun.
I’ve also been doing a few different projects around the house with Steve, and we have both- we both spent a lot of time talking about our house and all the changes that we want to make to it, like creatively, all the things that we could do. I’m not sure exactly when we’d be doing any of these big changes but we’ve been drawing floor plans and it’s just very fun to think about it from a really creative point of view. He’s a very creative person as well, so that’s been really good.
I’ve been watching different YouTube videos and looking at Pinterest a lot, and doing all of that sort of thing. I’ve also been making an effort to read a lot more and I think I spoke about this in another podcast episode, but I really realize that me telling myself I don’t have enough time to read is just complete bullshit, especially when I had been spending a lot of time checking Instagram, and doing things that weren’t really giving any value to my life. Like, you know what I mean, scrolling mindlessly through Instagram to the point where you’re like, “I don’t even know what I’m looking at, I’m just wanting to see what’s next, what’s next.”
So, I have re-jigged some of my time to make sure that I have time every single day for reading and I also sign up for a co-working space. So when I was doing the exercise that Tim Ferriss recommends in The 4-Hour Workweek, he has his Fear-setting Exercise which he also has in Tools of Titans and I love that exercise, it has helped me make so many decisions. Well, it has really helped me get out of my own way a lot of times.
And I have been talking about signing up for a co-working space for like a year. When I’m talking about my blog with people and talking about working from home, I’m always like, “I would really want to work from a co-working space” and I’ve looked up the co-working spaces, and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, but I just always had in stopping me from pulling the trigger and when I did that exercise, I realized it was because I just…. the image I had of myself, I just felt like if I went to a co-working space, then I didn’t somehow deserve to be there. I hadn’t even realized I was thinking that way, but as soon as I did that fear-setting exercise which goes through what’s the worst case scenario, which is, I guess for me, it was that I wouldn’t be able to afford it somehow. My business would go under, and I wouldn’t be able to afford it, and everyone would think I was a loser, all these ridiculous things. And then it’s… what are the more probable outcomes which is that I will be able to create a boundary between home life and work life, that I’ll meet people, that I’ll be surrounded by like-minded people who are doing similar things, and just being that atmosphere, that I’ll get to have that feeling back of actually going to work and being at home.
I am still at home when I’m recording podcast episode. So right now, I’m in my office at home, and I had even a few weeks ago, bought a monitor for my desk so that I could be looking not at a tiny screen but I still decided anyway to sign up for the co-working space just because I’ve been feeling, like when I’m at home, I’m constantly thinking “I should be working, I should be working” or it could be… and finding that if I’m not very intentional with my time that I kind of just slip into doing blogging stuff and I want to actually be able to relax at home, and to feel like I’m not at work when I’m at home, and when I’m at work, when I was working from home, I was doing a load of laundry constantly going out into the kitchen wandering around whatever I would be met with a challenging task, it was just so easy to find a way to avoid it.
And of course, that’s a matter of self-discipline and not necessarily just changing the external circumstances but I’ve just found that when I’m in a co-working space, it’s just easier to get into that work mentality. I know a lot of people think that working at home sounds amazing, for some people it is totally amazing, but I love being surrounded by other people and it has made a big difference. I’ve been there for two weeks, and even though I’m not really talking to anyone, that I’m just sitting there doing my work, it just is different to be in an environment where other people are doing the same kind of thing was, if I’m at home, often everyone else is just chilling, watching TV and I’m in my office and it’s just a different vibe.
So I signed up for the co-working space, it’s in the Valley, which is about a 30-minute drive away from me and I’m just at the moment still fine-tuning my new routine because it is going to be a big change to routine and at the moment, I am driving there early because the street packing fills up really quick so I need to be there before 7:30, which suits me well and then working there until about 2:00, 1:30 to 2:00 and then going to the gym before I go to my part-time job.
I used to love going to the gym in the middle of the day, something about it just really helps me be there at that afternoon slump and really helps me break up the day, so I’ve been doing that and driving to my normal gym, which is really out of the way so I’m going to be trailing the gym that’s really close to it. Now that I’m sure that I definitely want to continue at the co-working space. I just gave myself a couple of weeks to see if it was going to be a good fit. I’m just on a month-to-month contract.
So there’s no issue with it not being a good fit and not being able to get out of it, so it’s super low risk in that sense, and I’m really enjoying it there and they just have so many amazing plants, you guys probably know I’m obsessed with plants, indoor plants particularly.
And in my self-image podcast that I did, I was saying how I was working on changing my belief from like “I’m horrible at keeping plants alive” to “I’m really good at keeping plants alive” and it has made such a big difference. I have- instead of waiting for me to be good at keeping the plants alive and then believing it. I just started telling myself, like, “I’m actually really good at looking after indoor plants” and then I just started watering them all the time, like not all the time, when they needed it, and not waiting until they were dead until I had watered them and it’s really enjoyable when they’re all thriving.
So I’ve got a lot of plans at home, but it’s also lovely to just be surrounded by the greenery when I’m at my co-working space as well, so that’s probably the biggest change that I’ve made in the last month. And when I was doing that exercise the fear-setting one where I realized what something I’ve been putting off out of fear, and I was like, “Well co-working because there’s no logical reason not to do it yet” I haven’t actually done it. As soon as I did that exercise, I went online and I booked an inspection at the one I’d been thinking of working at which is dog-friendly because we’re going to be getting a dog soon and I want to have the option of bringing the dog along.
So I went and inspected it and signed up that day, like sometimes, it really doesn’t take long to make a decision. It’s just really getting over all that fear and stuff. So I have done a blog post about the fear-setting exercise and a YouTube video as well, going through all of it. So I make sure you check that out. I’ll have that link in the show notes for you, as well if you’re interested.
So I’m just getting into a new routine this month, trying to find some hobbies and really create some things that I enjoy doing that aren’t related to blogging just so that my identity isn’t wrapped up in the success of my business and that I can just be Sam and just be at home and be relaxing and not thinking about blogging stuff.
And I found that, really forcing myself to have that day off every week has not only encouraged me to really find things that I’m interested in and I’ve got a long way to go that I feel, but it’s just like my brain’s still warming up to this idea that there are other things that are good use of my time. I have struggled with wanting to be productive all the time, and I feel like that’s really come from a place, especially before, I’m a lot better with it now, but thinking that if I’m just more productive and if I just achieved more than I’ll be worth more I’ll be like more valuable, more people will like me, like all of the wrong reasons to be productive, so it’s helping me go of that need to be productive all the time, and it’s also making me so much more productive when I’m working, because before, when I wasn’t having the day off, it was so easy for things to just spread out and take a lot of time because I didn’t have any end to it, and it was… it’s really hard to work very intensely for a long period of time, but when I’m like, I’m having Sunday off, so I’m going to really just get into it now and then I can enjoy… that makes a huge difference also knowing that if I don’t get this done today, I’m not going to have tomorrow to do it.
It’s just been so helpful, and a few of you guys have emailed me and said that it’s something you’re thinking about doing, as well. And that a few of you are not up to having a full day off but it really- it’s a great tool to actually force you to make better use of your time unless you are very skilled, very, very skilled at time management, which a lot of us aren’t, we like to think we are, but we aren’t.
Then you’re probably spending a lot of time like you’re busy all the time, and you need to be busy or the time but you’re not actually being productive or you might be being productive, but you’re not being effective, which is what is really talked about in The 4-hour Workweek which is, what are the 22% of tasks that you do that produce 80% of your results and really focusing on them and letting a few things not get done so that you can get still like 80% or 90% of the results, but only spent a fifth of the time. And in that book as well, Tim Ferriss talks about filling the void because of this exact problem that I’ve been having once you have more spare time.
A lot of people, if you’re just so used to working all the time, it’s just so easy to slip back into work, unless you’re very intentional. So he’s got some great exercises in that book to help you figure out what you might like to do with your life that isn’t “productive”.
So yeah, that’s been really good. I’ve finished Think and Grow Rich, and I’m currently reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius which is… he wrote all these things to himself like, I don’t know, hundreds of years ago and people have translated them and turn them into a book. And they were never intended to be published. He’s a stoic philosopher, and it’s a really great book but that it’s really hard to get into because it’s written in a different kind of language and I’m finding that, if I read it first thing in the morning, I really struggle, but if I read it after I’ve done a few things then it’s much easier to be in that mentality.
And he says a lot of very interesting things in that book, and I’m really enjoying it, but just, it’s not an easy one to pick up at certain times. I’m also reading Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield-Thomas. I saw her speak at the Solopreneurs event that I went to in February, and I really loved her she talked about manifestation and money and mindset stuff, and I had been following her since hearing her talk and then when I was at the bookshop, the other week, I saw the book and I was like, “Yeah, I actually really want to read that book.”
She also has… I think it might be Get Rich, Lucky Bitch. The one specifically about money, but I just find her approach, like it’s very similar to Think and Grow Rich, but she’s just talking about how she manifested this six-month trip where it sounds so bloody amazing. The six months trip, where her and her husband went and tested honeymoon locations, like went all around the world got paid a salary to go and see these luxurious places for six months. And it’s really just a great application of all of the principles in Think and Grow Rich, even though in the book she talks about reading Think and Grow Rich but not really getting it.
And I don’t know if it’s because she read Think and Grow Rich like I read it the first time, I didn’t really get it and when I read it, just before I was like “Holy crap” and now that I’m reading her book, you’re literally saying exactly the same thing, but it’s a really great application and she doesn’t just talk about how to manifest that but it’s really about how to create the right mindset and take all the actions.
She took so much action, she didn’t just sit at home praying to win this, she really created the circumstances for it to happen by first creating the right mindset and then from that mindset, taking massive action to make it happen. And I’m only about a quarter into it, it’s a super easy read. She writes in a really conversational way, so I’m really enjoying that as well and just to hear about all the different mindset things.
Something else had happened that was really nice when Steven and I celebrated our 11-year anniversary a couple of days ago. We have been dating since 2007, so crazy, and we were 16 when we started going out in high school. And it’s just, it’s so nice that we’ve just grown together and that he’s just still like the most important person in my life. So we just had a really chill day, we went out to brunch and then we went and drove around and looked at houses. We always do this after we have brunch and we went to a suburb near us called Bunya. They have a whole new development in there and some amazing houses I didn’t even know where there, so Steve knew about it. And we just drive around and we’re like… “I like this, I don’t like that. Yeah, I’d live there, I wouldn’t live there” and just choosing all the features that we like and really imagining ourselves in the homes. It’s not like a manifestation kind of thing. And Steve would probably cringe if I ever said it in that way, but I just think it’s so lovely to do it. And we both, as I was saying very creative, very interested in design, and creating a home that we love. So that was really fun.
And then we’ve been planning to go to IKEA for a while, for a couple of months, and it just didn’t happen because Steve was sick, I was like, “Oh you know, we could go to IKEA today.” So we went to IKEA and I was saying to Steve after, it was funny because the first quarter of it, he was just really not keen on it on being there and the last quarter he was over it, which I was by the end too, but the half in the middle, he was just so into it, like he was leading the way and we were just- it was just really fun and we ended up buying a few mirrors that we have put in our bedroom over the dressing table.
We actually don’t have a lot of stuff on the walls at the moment, in the house, which is kind of still making it feel like we don’t live here. So I was really keen to get stuff on the walls. And so we did that, and Steve thankfully, hung it up when we got home and the… I went to my part-time job but we watched some Grey’s Anatomy that night and just chilled and it was just really nice and we decided that we weren’t going to get each other anniversary presents but we’re just going to buy a few things for the house.
So we bought a fiddly fig a few weeks ago, which was Steve’s suggestion and for months, I think I wanted a fiddly fig and Steve’s like, “No it’s like too trendy. We can do better.” And I’ve just been planting that seed and he was like, “Oh you can get a fiddle leaf” and I really want to get a mirror to put somewhere and yeah, so that was really fun.
We also bought a heap of fruit trees, avocado, mandarin, orange, lemon and lime, and planted them and had been doing some gardening, and all sorts of things, so that’s been good. And what else have I been doing? Mainly that, mainly just getting into a new routine.
I’ve been working from home for a year, so it’s been interesting to get back into the routine of having to prepare… the things I’m going to take the next day the night before and just getting into a routine of like what time am I going to leave and when is the traffic good and all of that sort of thing.
But I’m finding that there is so much time in a day. I was talking about creating that belief in my video, not video, what am I saying? My podcast episode about how to read more books that I’ve really been working on creating this belief that there’s so much time in a day and the more I think that thought, the more, I realize, time can move really slowly in a great way.
This morning when I sat down, it was 8:30 and I found… it’s so… like thoughts are often not true! And I had that thought like, “Oh I’ve already wasted some of the day” because this morning I felt sick, so I’ve had a runny nose and a cold and I just don’t want to get sick, before the Grow Your Blog Workshop that I’m doing this weekend, so I decided to sleep for a couple of more hours just so I’d feel better and not be sleep-deprived and all of that. And I was at 8:30 being like, the days are already getting away from me, then I had to catch myself because I have this post-it note in front of me that says, “There’s so much Time In A Day” so you hang on, it’s 8:30.
And I just got myself back in that mindset of time not being this thing that’s slipping through my fingers, I am in control of it and it doesn’t just have to get away from me, and that if I have that thought, there’s so much time in a day, I get so much more done than when I’m like “There’s not enough time, there’s not enough time, I have to get things done” when I’m in that mindset, I just procrastinate like hardcore.
So that’s really what I’ve been doing. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Jim Rohn. My dad sent me a video- I sent it at one of my weekly emails. He sent me a video that’s just on YouTube. He’s passed away now, Jim Rohn, but it was one of his talks, that he’d done, and then I was kind of hooked. I had listened to some of him before, but never fully.
So I spent a lot of this month listening to him and also listening to Zig Ziglar, who if you guys haven’t listened to- they’re both great, they’re both like OG self-development, and it’s just nice to hear self-development stuff where people aren’t talking about social media, it’s all before that time and they’re really talking about books, and it’s just funny because they talk about… you can have your cassette tape in your car, and make it like a library on-the-go, and that kind of thing, and it’s like, “Well, now you have podcasts to do that” but then you had to have a CD or not even a CD, a cassette tape. So yeah, that’s what I’ve really been doing for the month of June.
And I have also been continuing to work towards my impossible goal, which is to make $500,000 in 2018 and as it gets closer to the end of the year, there’s still… I have to… the same thing at the time, I have to be like, “there’s still so much time” we’re at the halfway point of the year and I find my brain being like… “No, there’s no way you can have them by the end of the year, we may as well just not try” and I have one so much doing this impossible goal. I’ve spoken about it fully in earlier episodes.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go and listen to my one where I set the impossible goal, and then also my update. I did about a month or so ago, but it’s just been a marathon. Even though it sounds simple, you can definitely see what people really struggle to stick to a new year’s resolutions. A year is a long time to be committed to something, especially when there’s no immediate payoff but I am determined that even if I don’t achieve my impossible goal that I get as close as I possibly can, because I can feel myself wanting to pull back and withhold effort so that when I don’t achieve it, if I don’t achieve it, I can comfort myself with the belief of like, “Oh well, you didn’t really try your hardest.”
Because that’s a pattern that I’ve really had in the past, but it’s not one that I want in my future and I want to be able to say, “If I didn’t achieve it that I didn’t achieve it but I got as close I could, I put an effort until the very last day of the year, I never gave up on myself” so yeah, that’s something that I’m really working on. It takes a lot to create such a belief that’s so far out of your comfort zone, but I couldn’t recommend this enough if you want to grow as a person.
I know it for sure already that I have achieved more this year than I would if I hadn’t been working towards a goal and it’s just such a great lesson in being willing to fail and to just watch… I’ve just been watching myself try and get out of this goal in so many different ways, and it’s really just showing me all the great creative ways I come up with to self-sabotage and keep myself small so that I don’t have to fail. So that’s been a big focus as well.
And I’m really just at the moment focusing on like, “What is my plan to make that money going forward and to make the money I need to provide the value” So what is my plan to provide that amount of value to the market to you guys over the next half of this year? And it’s been interesting because I find that I can get really stuck with it and just get caught of thinking like, “No way, there’s no way” but then I can also go the other way and I’ve been seeing a lot of time looking at income reports of bloggers who are making that amount of money and just looking at the language that they’re using to talk about it and just really reminding myself that it is possible. People have done it, and it’s not because they’re necessarily smarter than me, or have something that I don’t have. It’s because they put in the effort, and they were just willing to keep going, they didn’t withhold effort when it looked like they might not achieve their goal just kept trying and trying and trying until it worked.
A couple of other people, just so you know, that I look at… One is Kathrin Zenkina of Manifestation Babe, she basically, literally achieved my impossible goal. She went from 10,000 revenue in 2016 to 600,000 in 2017. So it’s very, very close to what I actually want to do. And just seeing that she did it, really encourages me and she puts up income reports and has a podcast and is really great at sharing her journey in a really real and authentic way, all the ups and downs, not just the successes.
And she talks about… even though she had that amazing growth, she spent about six weeks, I think to two months just completely freaking out and in a bit of a slump after it. Just like, I feel like it’s like the hangover from the growth, you’re just re-calibrating. And she was wanting to quit and all of this stuff. And it’s just a nice reminder. Not that I want to experience that, but just that it’s part of it, and just that… yeah, it’s not like, there’s happiness on the other side of it. How you feel can be created in any moment by what you think, but it is amazing to have that growth as well and to really increase your contribution.
And I just want to achieve the goal, just to show myself that I am capable of so much more than I’ve allowed myself to achieve and just be willing to fail, to learn how to just keep giving the effort and not withhold it right up until the end. So Kathrin Zenkina of ManifestationBabe.com is one of my go-tos.
I also love reading the Income Reports from Melyssa Griffin. She hasn’t written one for about a year or so now, but she also had a very similar journey, back in her earlier days. So, I love just seeing that growth as well and also making sense of cents. It’s like making sense, sense of cents… C-E-N-T-S. She said, she regrets making a name, her blogging name because it is a hard one, but she makes six figures a month and doesn’t spend much time working. She’s definitely doing more of a lifestyle sort of thing, but just to see her talk about it really inspires me as well.
And then there are people like John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire and Pat Flynn of SmartPassiveIncome.com, it really inspires me when I’m doubting myself to go and remind myself that people who have achieved what I want to achieve were on exactly where I am now, so that’s just something I do.
If you are blogging, or on your own entrepreneurial path, then you might find it helpful as well. Also go back sometimes to look at in the Wayback Machine that you can find your Google to see what people’s blogs used to look like. And it’s just really to remind myself that the people who achieved what I want to achieve where once exactly where I am. So yeah, that’s something I’ve been doing.
And I have actually booked a coaching session with Erin May Henry, who has a podcast, The Erin May Henry Show. I’m pretty sure I’ve been following her for a year or so, and the other day I was just like, “I’ve been thinking about signing up because she’s done some similar things to what I want to be doing” and I have been coaching myself, I’m still doing Self-Coaching Scholars, which is Brooke Castillo’s course, but I find that sometimes you just need someone with someone to give you the perspective and just show you what you’ve been thinking.
And I also don’t know where this is going to lead, but I just want to mention it because this is an update and it’s what I’m currently thinking about. But when I was doing fear-setting that exercise, I also did it on coaching, of me becoming a coach because when I talk about my blogs to people I always find myself saying, “I want to be a coach or like one day I want to do coaching” and it’s something that I feel naturally good at, and I did that exercise because I had realized that I’ve been in such a fixed mindset about it, meaning that, I’ve been thinking that coaching is a natural talent that people do and don’t have, and that if I start coaching and I’m not good at it, then it’s going to be devastating to me because I just want to believe that I’d be a really good coach and so I’m constantly keeping it out of my reach, so that I can keep having that belief that I would be good if I did it and I hadn’t really seen that, I’ve just been like, “Oh just do it when I’m in the right place in my business be doing it” but it’s something that I really want to be doing and I keep telling people that and I’m just like, “Why the hell am I not doing anything about that?” And that’s really what I want to talk to Erin about in my coaching session as well. But I just really need to get out of my own way and to do it because it’s a skill, like if you’re in the growth mindset about something, you believe that it’s a skill that can be developed and to be in the growth mindset around coaching, I just need to start creating the belief consciously that coaching is a skill, and I know that intellectually, but on a subconscious/unconscious level.
I’m still believing people either naturally good at coaching, or they’re not naturally good at coaching, and if they’re a good coach, it’s like, evidence of whether or not they’re good enough that sort of thing. So, I’m wanting to get into a growth mindset around coaching because I do intellectually know it’s a skill that can be developed and while some people might be naturally better at than others, it’s still something that anyone can learn.
And I’ve just been scared that I’ll stop coaching people, and they’ll be like, “You’re shit” and I don’t think that that would actually happen but it’s just a fear that I’ve had and to deal with that, I’ve just constantly put it off into the future. I’ve been talking about doing that for like two years at least, but never actually doing anything about it.
So yeah, that’s something that I am working on at the moment. So I might be offering coaching soon if it all goes to plan, and I know it’s something that I love doing like I find myself any excuse I can use to do it in real life. I do, like I always try to coach people and I know it’s not always good to coach people because some people don’t actually need coaching or want coaching but I’m just excited to start exploring that and to get out of my own way in that area of my life, of my business.
So yeah, I think that’s all I have to update you guys on this month. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You can find all the things that I mentioned at the show notes which will be at smarttwenties.com/episode34 and if you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot and send me a DM on Instagram, or an email. I love hearing from you guys when you enjoy my Podcast, it means the world to me, and I appreciate each and every one of you and I hope you’re having an amazing day, bye!