For the last few weeks I’ve been feeling like I’m really on the cusp of something and in this podcast episode I’m sharing why. August was a month full of important realizations and big decisions. It’s been an incredible month of growth for me, particularly in terms of my money mindset, and I’m so excited to be giving you an update on everything I’ve got going on!
MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE
- Perfect Blogger: The Ultimate Blogging Course For Perfectionists
- Get Out Of Your Own Way: A Mini-Course For Master Procrastinators
- Work With Me – 1:1 Mindset Coaching
- Self-Coaching Scholars
- The Life Coach School Podcast
- Rich Babe Academy
- Manifestation Babe Podcast
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 46 of The Smart Twenties Podcast!
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Hi and welcome to episode 46 of The Smart Twenties podcast. My name is Sam Laura Brown and this is a podcast where I share personal growth and life advice and today I am doing my update on August 2018.
So today is the first of September, so I’m fresh from August and I’m just going to be sharing different things that I’ve been working on– different realizations. I’ve had different things that are going well, that aren’t going well, like I do these every month and they’re kind of just like a vlog really, but just an audio version obviously of what I’ve been up to, what’s been going on behind the scenes. It is kind of hard for me to distinguish these episodes from other episodes because I’m constantly talking about what I’m working on and the realization that I’m having, but this is really just having a good look at everything that’s happened for me in the month. Mostly just so you guys can see the personal development work that I’m doing, what my current struggles are, what my current focus in all of that kind of thing. I hope you find it helpful, inspiring, comforting, relatable, whatever– but it’s great for me to do and I’d really encourage you if you haven’t been doing– not like a live update necessarily, but just a little reflection on each month.
It’s great to have a think about or what did I achieve in the last month. Particularly if you are the kind of person. It really struggles to give yourself a pat on the back, which hey, a lot of us are, so it’s a great way to give yourself a pat on the back and give yourself some appreciation and to also just see like the progress that you’d be making because I don’t go back and listen to my previous episodes, not yet, they’re a little too fresh that I still feel like I’m in it, but I just know that I have come a long way since I started doing these updates a few months ago and I have come a huge way since starting my podcast. So documenting your own journey. Whether that’s just in your own personal journal or whether it’s by a blog or a podcast. It’s such a great personal development tool, so if you’re not doing this kind of thing in your own life, may I recommend it? So, I’ve just got a few dot points here. I’m just going to chat about what I’ve been up to.
So the first thing that has come out of August and what I would say has been the biggest realization for me is that I need to raise my standards as Tony Robbins would say. And I think I mentioned this in a couple of previous episodes because I share things as they happen, but I really want to talk about it fully here. So I have been doing a course called Rich Babe Academy, which is Kathrin Zenkina for Manifestation Babe. It’s her signature course and I’d heard about it. I think I really like started getting into stuff around April this year when I started getting into law of attraction and how to use that stuff to achieve my goals. And I found her and I heard about her different programs and things and I really just felt like with my impossible goal, which the update was episode 44 if you haven’t had that on my impossible goal, but I really just realized that I have a lot of money mindset work to do and that intellectually knowing the beliefs that I need to have about money in order to be successful such as money is abundant therefore me having more money doesn’t mean other people have less money that I’m still going to be relatable if I have a lot of money because I’m a human being still and that I’m not going to be completely abandoned by everyone in my life if I have a lot of money in all of these beliefs that had been stopping me from.
Even though I had this really big goal– if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not going to go into it again here because I just spoke about that for a bloody long time if you episodes ago, but having this huge financial goal, which was something that I’m doing to really learn the skill of creating a goal and a goal that I can’t see the how. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but to really set that bar high for myself and instead of doing what I used to do, which was just withholding effort and procrastinating and making excuses and sneakily stopping working towards it to really go all in for a full year, which has been so uncomfortable in such a rollercoaster. But I’ve just really seen from doing Rich Babe Academy and different things that Kathrin spoke about on her podcast that I really needed to.
I don’t know if she actually spoke about it directly, but you know, when you’re listening to someone and you just have all of these other ideas and things click together that you’ve had over the last few years. So I really had that moment for me a couple of weeks ago where it just kind of clicked that and it’s this idea that Tony Robbins, who is someone that Kathrin is really into. So I’m really into Tony Robbins as well, so it’s really helpful to hear it through how he says it and also hear it through her lens because it just kind of. It’s nice to hear things in different ways. So just from that I really got that I needed to raise my sentence and Tony Robbins talks about we get out our musts not our should.
So I had my impossible goal $500,000 in 2018, more than 10x what I’d earned before. I had that as a short and as a desire and as something that I wanted to do, but it was not a must because I’ve been so comfortable. So I’m working in my part-time job. I am really enjoying the kind of content content creation that I’m doing and because I have my part-time job to support me, it’s meant that I can avoid a lot of the uncomfortable business stuff because I don’t actually support myself from my business and actually this month I will be paying myself basically my first dollar ever from my business, which might not be apparent from the outside, but I have been fully supported by my full-time job and then my part-time job and every cent has been reinvested into growing my business. I see my business as like a tree that I have just planted very recently. And like once it comes up from the ground, you don’t rip it out straight away, um, or start plucking the leaves off it, you let it keep you, keep nourishing it, keep investing in it. So that’s what I’ve been doing. But I realized that by having this really comfortable and enjoyable and there’s nothing wrong with it, but being so comfortable, it’s meant that I could so easily wiggle myself out of those uncomfortable things. And so I sort of saw it as having two options. I could either do the mindset work to get myself to raise my standards or I could force my hand basically and create or emulate a situation where I feel that pressure where I have to raise my standards and I’m talking about standards as in we have this level of mastery. Like for most of us, we must have a job, we must pay our bills and you know, we must have a shower everyday. They’re the things we do consistently, the things that are a must. But if you think I should exercise, like for me, I think I must exercise every day. So I do exercise almost every day. Whereas a lot of people don’t have that. They think they should exercise, but we get our musts and not. So I’ve been trying to raise my musts, which was previously my business, my must was to cover my monthly expenses and then have some money to reinvest in the growth of my business. And I’d always have enough, we always get our musts. I’d always have enough to cover my monthly expenses, which are about a thousand dollars to create this podcast for you to run my blog, to do all sorts of things like that to have my website and then I’d have extra money that I’m investing in my personal development, doing different courses like Rich Babe Academy and other things Self-coaching Scholars.
But there was no real consequence if I didn’t meet that and also with my monthly expenses, if I didn’t meet that I was also able to support like to technically loan money to the company from my personal account to cover it. So I haven’t loaned myself any money this year. But previously I was just able to loaned myself money and I still have a loan that I’m paying back to myself from the company. But I just really saw that I either had the choice to do the mindset work to raise my standard and to raise my costs or I could just force myself to do it. And the way that I came up with the help of Steve, is that I like, I brought the idea to him and then he was like, “That sounds great. Why don’t you just do it slightly different?”
So what I’m doing is I am putting all of my money from my part time job into a separate account, which is just the offset account for our home loan. So it’s going somewhere like– but it’s not going to be directly available to me. And so I have to then pay myself, not my mortgage expenses, but at least my living expenses from the company, which means the company has to be making a certain amount of money also because like I don’t just get exactly the amount of money that the company makes– if that makes sense. For example, like what I do, I have, if I get a thousand dollars, I have 30 percent of that. I immediately put aside into an account for tax and I just think that that’s not even my money. And then I put 10 percent aside in a savings account within my company. So I have to make like whatever I need to support myself, it has to be grossed up so that includes the tax and the savings I’m going to make, so I’m at least raising the bar so that I have to be in a position where I’m starting to pay myself from my company and I could have created that by quitting my job and really like slamming my back against the wall.
But because I have a mortgage and I have a responsibility in that sense, I feel like this is a good compromise because I don’t actually get to touch any of that money. And I have an agreement with Steve where I have to ask him if I want to take the money out. Even though I do my banking stuff and I have access to the account and I don’t need his permission at all to get any money out of the account. But it’s more so just an accountability check that if I want to access that money, I have to have a conversation with him that “Hey, I’m not making enough money. I need to get some out.” And he’ll say, “Yeah, that’s fine” but he just knows as well that I’m not going to want to have that conversation because I don’t want to have to be like, “Yeah, this didn’t work out” so it just gives me so much more motivation to actually make the money. The other thing that I have been doing is really looking at everything in my business and I spoke about this in my episode that was my most recent one on 10 Signs You’re A Perfectionist.
Having this full plate of commitments and whether that can be a way that we self-sabotage because if you have a million things on your plate, then there’s an excuse for not doing everything amazingly well. And I realized that I had not only a plan B in my part-time job, but I had a plan c and a plan d because I get money from doing freelance writing. I was getting money from doing Pinterest marketing and all sorts of different things. Basically I came up with anything that– any different way I could make money just to avoid having to make money in the real way that I want to make money, which is from helping women through my online courses and through my one-on-one coaching and so what I did tend to myself this month is that I turned down all of those other opportunities and stopped all of that stuff. So now the only way that I can make money and now like my part time job is off the table mentally. So the only way I can make money is through helping them and through my online courses and my one-on-one coaching, which means I have to actually fully go all in and stopped trying to dance around putting effort into that and it’s just because it feels so vulnerable to really try and have those things potentially fail it. It’s just been easier to add all these other options to my plate and then I can use like I was able to mentally use them as an excuse like, “Well, yeah, my blog would be doing better if I wasn’t spending all my time doing freelance writing and Pinterest marketing stuff” when really I just had to let myself stop.
And it was interesting because I was talking about it with Steve and he was like, “Oh, couldn’t you just like with your freelance writing, couldn’t you do that in your spare time and all of that kind of thing?” And I was like, “No, I can’t because it’s work and I’m really drawing bloody hard to get that clear line between work and my personal life and if it’s a work thing, I’m going to do it in my work hours.”
But also because that was still leaving them as sneaky little option on the table for myself. So instead I turned down that opportunity and said I’m not going to continue doing that and a few other things as well. I was just like, “Okay, the only way that I can make money,” and I have to make money now because otherwise I’m not going to have money for petrol or food is that I need to actually do the work and promoting my courses, like some of you probably don’t even know like ever since I recorded on 10 Signs You’re a Perfectionist. I was mentioning my Perfect Blogger course and then I didn’t even mention that I have a course could get out of your own way that is exactly about all the things I talked about in that episode and how to really do the personal development work. And I just finished recording it before and I was like, “Oh crap, I didn’t even mention that!” And it’s things like that like I need to get into a better habit of actually sharing all the things that I’ve created to help you guys especially my Get Out of Your Own Way because I get so much positive feedback about it and I just haven’t been sharing that as often as I want to. So it has lit a fire under my ass. I can tell you that! I haven’t even like– because I said to Steve, “I’m just going to have one mom pay for my part time job,” and then from then on, from September basically, which is now I’m going to be just living off my money from my company, which means I need to make a certain amount to be able to cover expenses to be able to continue investing in my business to be able to continue investing in my personal development and to pay myself.
So I have been so motivated even though literally I haven’t had to do I kind of had to put that money into the offset account or anything like that from that day, like Steve and I went out to dinner and we were talking about it then from that moment because I was originally saying to him like that the tweak that he helped me make, I originally said I’m going to put that money aside and I’m going to put it into my like account within my account. Like I have lots of different accounts and I like having like buckets of money for different things. And so I just said I’m going to put it in my account and have it there untouched, which I’ve definitely been able to do with other things and just not touch it and pretend it’s not there, but he was like, “Oh, but what if you put it in the offset account?” And I was like, oh, that feels so scary because it, even though I can access some money, it just feels like much more out of reach. So I was like, “Oh, that feels scary.”
And I know that that’s the good kind of fear because it’s literally, it just– I could feel it, raise the bar on my musts. And that was, I want to say two weeks ago now. And I have just been so motivated. Like I was saying to Steve the other night, I have felt like now when I wake up, my alarm goes off my, “Oh God, get out of the bed!” Like I’m just so motivated because I have such clear direction now. Whereas before there are a million different things that I was doing and I didn’t like making money and having my business grow and be more successful wasn’t actually that important a goal. Even though consciously it was, it was like I was more so acting so that I could be more comfortable. Whereas now I’m like, “Shit, I got to get stuff done!” And I’ve just been so motivated and I was saying to see like in the morning if I feel tired, it doesn’t even matter because my motivation is overriding that and they also call this the baby effect, I’m not pregnant just a disclosure, but they call it the baby effect because when people get work– when someone gets pregnant, either themselves or their partner, they will just actually start getting super real and we’ll get that laser focus because their must has been raised. Now they have another human being that they have to look after so it’s not an option to not succeed and that’s what I’m creating for myself. Not through pregnancy but through putting the money from my part time job completely aside so that I have no choice but to be successful and if it all goes to shit.
Like I’ve still got my job and all of that and at some level in the back of my mind I know that. So maybe that’ll make me less motivated than if I completely quit. But at the same time, I think it’s like, it’s a really good thing to experiment with– I’m feeling really good about it, really scared in a good way because it’s really forcing me to raise the bar on myself and what I’m contributing to the world and how I’m showing up in my own life. And so I’ve been getting really serious about my routine in the sense that I’m doing it very consistently. I’ve found such an amazing groove in my co-working space, like having that be part of my routine. So for the last few weeks, particularly since making that decision, I have been waking up, I’ve been experimenting with waking up between 5 and 5:30.
I’m kind of finding that because I’m still hanging out with Steve after work that if I wake up at five, I’m not quite getting enough sleep and that adding that up over the week, I’m more exhausted at the weekend. So 5:30 based on when I go to sleep, which is usually I’d say like 10:30 if I’m doing my best, then that really helps me just having that extra half an hour. I’m really trying to be responsible with my sleep which is something I used to not do at all. But after having been someone who used to believe they can function off five hours of sleep and now that I’m someone who will often get a full night’s sleep, I’m like I can’t even– how did I even function before? And people used to say to me like how do you even do it? And it was just because I was so used to having a completely hazy mind all day that, you know, you’re like a fish in the ocean, you don’t actually realize you’re in the ocean because it’s so constant. And so I didn’t even realize it was a thing. But now once I’ve been a lot more responsible with my sleep and looking after myself, I have really seen that you don’t actually have to feel like you’re in fog all day long.
So I really have been making an effort with that, but just experimenting with that I’ve been eating really consistently as well and just also getting like one thing that I don’t know if I mentioned this in another episode or not, but one area that I feel like I’ve let myself not reach my full potential and this might sound contradictory to what I spoke about in my episode on fitness because I was saying that the thing that really helped me was not focusing on my appearance, but I feel like every summer. So it’s September now. Oh, this is my favorite month weather-wise. I love September in Brisbane. So, every summer I like, I don’t have a horrible body, but I feel like I’m not as fit as I could be and I always just feel like I wish I’d actually tried harder to get my fitness up. Not just for summer, like for all year round, but it’s much more noticeable in summer because I’ll often be at the beach and it just feels like more uncomfortable when you’re heavier and all sorts of things. Anyway, I was like, I’m actually going to go all in on myself and I just felt like I was like Steve and I have this drawer in my bedside table just full of lollies and chocolate. It was a thing we got started two years ago now because we started it on Steve’s birthday two years ago and it’s his birthday this week. So I went to a worse and I bought like every, like one of everything in the chocolate and lowly if you’re not Australian lolly is candy, the chocolate and lolly I bought like one of everything and we just had this huge, like, like we were in a candy shop when we were watching Netflix and we just let ourselves think, eat everything that we wanted and that just became like a tradition and we just both would keep stuffing this thing up and it like would eat through a ridiculous amount of junk food. And I just lately I’ve been like, I can’t let myself do that every night. Not just because of how I want to look, but also because of how I feel. And also because when I’m eating like the fifth cookie, I’m know I’m just going unconscious because I had the taste in the first cookie in the first bite actually. And by the time I’m at the fifth one, I’m just completely unconscious.
I know from experience that I’m not any happier when I’m eating junk food. Like I know that advertising is great and has convinced us that life is happier when you’re eating junk, but I personally find I get a lot more satisfaction from feeling not like physically gross. So I have gotten more. I’m just more focused with my what I’m eating and it’s been so easy because I’m just in such a solid routine. So getting back on track to what I was saying, I’m waking up at typically 5:30, I get ready, get fully dressed and I make my breakfast and then I drive into my co-working space. It’s about a half hour drive. I love listening to– oh, I forgot to– I need to talk about this! Let me just quickly write this down, but I’ve only been listening to podcast this month, which is what I want to talk about in a bit, I won’t go into that now, but I’ve had an exercise and constraining the number of things I listened to, which has been so powerful.
So I’ll listen to something. I get to my co-working space at about seven, between 6:30 and 7, and then I will wait. Yeah, that’s right. No, between 6:45 and seven. Then I do a bit of personal development work. I write down a thought download. They can get all my thoughts out of my head and onto a page and then I write down my affirmations, which at the moment, I get highly paid to be me. What’s the other one? Oh, it’s safe to be a wildly wealthy woman because that’s one that these are, those are two ones that I’ve got from Kathrin Zenkina from her podcast and from her course because I have realized you’re doing a lot of money mindset work that this underlying belief for me is that if I make a lot of money, I’ll be abandoned like that people will leave me and maybe there will be some people in my life who don’t want to be in my life anymore when I’m more showing up as myself and that’s fine, but subconsciously I have this belief that like people are going to leave me, so I have those two affirmations that I write 15 times and I also, for August I was writing thank you for my $15,000 a month and in August instead of focusing like previously I was focusing on making a certain figure in my business and kind of ignoring all the money that I was making from my part time job and being really strict about like how money should come into my life and something that I’ve learned from Kathrin and I’m going to do a whole money mindset thing because there’s so much stuff I’ve learned, but I’m halfway through her course.
It’s a six week program and it’s. I’ve just done a week four. We’ll start tomorrow because I’m going to. Once I’ve gone through all of that, I’m going to do like where my money mindset was at before and after and what I’ll be continuing to focus on, but I do want to mention it because I had been focusing on it, but I realized that I was being too specific as to the how and a really important thing in manifestation and in goal setting. Like this isn’t just a woo-woo thing if the word manifestation just makes you feel like you’re trying to be a witch or something. It’s not like so many people like Tony Robbins and everyone talks about you set a goal but you stay open like it’s be what’s Tony Robbins quote, be stubborn about your goals, but flexible about the method and all of that kind of thing, which is very something that almost everyone in the personal development world says that you create a goal and then you need to stay open for the different ways for it to happen.
So that’s something that I’ve started doing with money. Instead of being like, “I need to make this certain amount in my business” I’ve just now gotten to saying like I’m going to like receive, not just from income but from all different ways to get money. I’m going to receive this amount of money in a month and I’m open to it coming, not just from my business, but from completely random things like this last month, I got a tax return that I wasn’t expecting and I’d also been putting aside some of my income because I thought I’d need to pay some of my student loans back because I was doing– sacrificing different things I don’t really need to go into. And I found out like I actually was getting a refund and I didn’t know any of that money that I’d put aside, which was awesome and just different things like that, like being open to receiving money in ways that I hadn’t even considered and just appreciating all the money that I have.
So a lot of us only get really excited when we receive large amounts of money and we’ll dismiss really small amounts and now I’ve been getting excited and like appreciating every amount of money and my mindset around money has shifted so much in only a few weeks, which is why I’m really excited to continue doing the course and to then at the end of it, share what I’ve learned but like I had a scratchy, I think I got it for my birthday or for Christmas and I won $5 and I was like, “Oh, it’s only $5…” like I’m not going to– oh that’s another thing! As I’m talking, I’m just remembering other things that I’m doing. Um, so I hadn’t cashed that in because like it’s only $5, but I’ve been like– I went and I got that $5 and just actually appreciating.
It’s like, if you don’t appreciate small amounts of money, you won’t get large amounts of money and just that kind of thing. And I found it really helpful. Another thing that I have been doing is I have been doing what Kathrin calls the 10-10-10 Rule. So as I mentioned before, I have a certain thing that I do with money that I get in my company, which is I have an account for tax which I actually call community because I like to think of my tax since I’m going to have to pay it anyway, I find it more helpful to think of it as in I’m helping build the roads. I’m helping to pay for people’s education. I’m helping to pay for people’s healthcare. So I think of that as like a community donation rather than tax. It just makes me feel better about it. And since it’s one of the inevitable inevitabilities of life, I think it’s helpful to just think about in a way that serves me. And then I have 10 percent that goes into a savings account, which I just have it labeled as abundance and it’s just to help me as well get used to having large amounts of money just sitting there, not in a hoarding way in it. And if it gets to a certain point, I will start investing that money and not just have it sit in a bank account. But just to start getting more comfortable with having money in the bank and not just following money for what it can buy, but valuing it for, like actually having it. Um, so I do that with my company money, but I’ve been doing a thing called the 10-10-10 Rule with my personal money and I found that I think this is the thing and she doesn’t, she talks about it in the course briefly, but she’s talks about on a podcast and there’s some episodes on it and I’m in her book that she has as well.
But I’ve just found this has been so helpful. So what you do is you get your money and I get my money from my part-time job is post-tax, so 10 percent. And if I wasn’t like when I’m going to be paying myself, I’m still going to do this, but I’m going to put the tax aside first and then do the 10-10-10 rule just because insolvency accounting has taught me to be responsible with tax. So I have a 10 percent which goes to a savings abundance fund, which isn’t like saving for a rainy day and Kathrin has taught me a lot about like don’t label an account and emergency fund because then you’re like, it’s like– it just sounds like semantics and this might sound ridiculous, but it’s like you’re actually preparing for an emergency which means that an emergency will happen, which we don’t want, so instead call it like an opportunity fund or something like that.
So I’ve gone through and renamed all my bank accounts to like different affirmations and things. So I have a fund that’s just called The Abundance Fund, which I have in both my company and personal accounts and that’s just like accumulating money and creating that feeling of abundance because I can see that money sitting there. The second 10 percent is to donate money. And that was something like when I was doing my taxes for 2017- 18, I like my accountant asked me if I donated any money because I hadn’t sent through adding receipts for anything like donation receipts. I was like, I didn’t actually, I made one donation from my company, but I didn’t actually make any donations of money into two thousand– whole year. And I was like, well, and it seems so counterintuitive and often we’re told like, you know, get enough for yourself and then invest like donate once you’ve got enough for yourself. But I think that donating is such a really powerful way to impact others and it also has that selfish benefit that it helps create this mentality that you have an abundance of money because you have enough to give to others and I know that when I’m making even more money I want to be making a contribution so I need to start doing it now and get myself into that habit. And so I have been donating 10 percent of my income, which hasn’t felt comfortable. But now I’ve actually done it like a few different times. It’s actually been really fun because I’m not just donating it to any random charity. Like each time I go in and I’ve donated to a different charity each time and I just do some research and figure out what I want to support. I’ve donated to a charity this month called Mummy’s Wish, which help support kids of mothers who have breast cancer and like help support the moms, which is something that’s really close to my heart.
I also donated to a charity that helps indigenous entrepreneurs because I just like– I don’t think they had enough support, so I found a charity that would support that. I also donated to Orange Sky, I think they’re called Orange Sky Laundry, which I think is the coolest charity. They drive a van around Australia and do loads of washing for homeless people and talk to them while the washing’s going so they get that social interaction and the relationships. So I donated money to them and it’s just really helped me create this feeling of abundance. And basically I was like, well, last year I didn’t do any donating and I wasn’t like, that didn’t seem to help me. So this year I’m going to really try it. And it was so interesting when I was telling Steve about it and he has his money beliefs and he was like, “Oh, you know, I think like, why don’t we put that in that house account” and all of that kind of thing. And I was like, and I just decided and he does, my guys, I’ve actually suggested that he listens to my podcast when he has trouble sleeping after night shift, so he might actually start listening to it just because the sound of my voice seems to put him to sleep but what I was going to say is I just decided if he listens to this, he can find out. But what I’ve decided is basically the gist that I’m just going to donate and not like be like, “Oh, this is what I did. I’m just doing it for me!” Like no one needs to know about it. And that’s such a great thing as well. So often people donate and want to be like, “Hey guys, look at me. I just donated money. Did you know I donated money? I’m so good. I donated money!” And we get this drill from like being seen as someone who donates money and people going like, “Oh my God, that’s so generous of you!” but I think there’s so much power in anonymously donating money and donating money without anyone else knowing about it and yeah, I just think that it’s a really cool thing to do. So I’m not actually telling anyone except everyone who’s listening to this but I thought it might be helpful to share different things that I’m doing. So I thought I mentioned this, but I have found it’s really helped me create more of an abundance mindset around money and I do it as soon as I get the money. So I do this 10-10-10 rule. You don’t do it after you see what’s leftover. You live off the 70 percent. So this is what you do with the 30. So 10 for abundance, 10 for donating and then 10 for what Kathrin calls like being high-fived.
So it’s basically spending 10 percent on something that really gives you that feeling of abundance. So like for me, what I’ve started doing with that 10 percent with some– it’s actually been hard for me because normally like there are all these things that I want to buy, but I’d be like, “Oh, I don’t have enough money for that!” And now that I have money set aside for that kind of thing, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t actually know what I want!”
It’s kind of like you want what you can’t have, you can have it. You’re like, “Wait, I don’t actually want that thing!” Anyway. One thing that I love doing and that I’d stopped doing was getting my nails shellacked and I thought it was because like part of the reason I stopped was because it was ruining my nails. But I was speaking to one of the girls at work and she was saying it’s actually just because of the way they were taking it off my nails. It was damaging it which I was very excited to find out that it wasn’t actually potentially the shellacked not that it’s amazing for nails. But I spent all day long looking at my hands because I am constantly at a computer and I just feel like I’ve got my shit together when I’ve got my nails done, so it’s like $40 to get it done.
And that’s one of the ways that I have been spending money on myself. And when Kathrin was talking about like why spend this money on yourself? So many financial gurus are always like, “You know, if you’re saving money, like put everything you’ve got into your debt or into your savings” or whatever it is. But then so many people have this real sense of deprivation that then when they do get money, they just spend it all super quickly. Whereas this way, like I feel like it’s– I don’t want to sit– I want to relate it to being like a cheat meal if you’re eating healthy and of course as mindset where he can do that. You don’t feel deprived even if you’re eating a hundred percent healthy. And even if you’re saving 100 percent of your money. Because if feeling of deprivation literally comes from the thought like I want something that I can’t have and those kinds of different thoughts, so there is definitely a way to do the mindset work so you don’t get that deprived feeling.
But for most of us, a really great way to kind of get the same effect is to give ourselves like some kind of just way to keep– like for the money example, like just a way to really create that feeling of abundance and making sure like something I’ve been doing, I’m not just like buying whatever I want with that money. I’m really focusing on buying things that give me that abundant feeling and getting my nails done. Even though it’s something that’s cheap relatively to other things that I want to buy. It’s something that has such a big impact on my day because I’m looking at it all the time. So say like maybe I could get a new dress, but I’d wear that like once every two weeks and that would be it then it’d just be sitting in my closet. Whereas getting my now sound like it’s something that I’m constantly seeing it’s really helping me. So I’ve been enjoying doing that and just thinking of different ways that I can get myself into that high vibeness.
Another thing, like all of this doesn’t have to be expensive. Like an example could be like normally tell yourself that you can’t afford Avocados because they’re too expensive, but maybe you actually stopped buying yourself Avocados, even if they’re like $3, like it’s cheap in the scheme of things, but sometimes there are things that are really inexpensive that we’ve just said, no, that’s, I can’t afford that. And it’s just actually letting yourself be the kind of person that could do that kind of thing and it helps recreate yourself image. So I’m not an expert on that topic of 10-10-10 or anything like that. But I know the dog’s barking, but I really just find that like it’s something that I’m learning and I’m applying. And so I just thought I’d share it with you.
So that’s really what I’ve been doing in terms of money mindset stuff. I could go on all day about it, but I’ll just leave it there for now. But this was all a very big tangent on the side of my routine that I was talking about. So, I do my personal development work in the morning I write my affirmations, which I was just sharing and September, I’m going to be saying thank you for my $18,000 a month. And in August I did– I was writing, “Thank you for my $15,000 a month!” And then when I went through and added in all the money I’ve made for my business or the money I made from my part time job or the money that has come in from like my tax refund and the scratchy and all different things, no matter how big or small that all came to just over $15,000.
So one thing I’ve learned from Kathrin is to really incrementally– and I spoke about this more in the episode on my impossible goal– but to incrementally create that new belief instead of just trying to believe that I can make $500,000 now I’m believing it like in increments. So I can believe now that I can make $15,000, I have $15,000 come into my life in a month because it just did. So, for September I’m focusing on 18,000 because it feels like more of a stretch, but it’s still close to what I’ve achieved that it’s just kind of incrementally– and then also being open to the how, because my brain’s so like, “I don’t know how that’s going to happen,” but just not getting caught up on that and just really focusing on the belief.
So, I do my personal development work and then I spend, I think it would be, I usually start work at eight, so 8, 9, 10, 11– so I do about six hours of work. I work until maybe it’s five hours. I work until 1:30, so five– six hours. And I then go to the gym, so now that I have that just 8 to 1:30, I have to be really clear with what I’m doing and I don’t go to the co-working space on Monday because I’m at my part time job and I have Sundays off and now I’m at home on Friday and Saturday doing coaching calls and recording my podcast episodes and being interviewed for other podcasts. So I really only go into the co-working space Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So I have to be really damn specific with what I want to get done in that time. And that has been so powerful just having that really clear distinction around the time that I have to work because I’m like, “Oh shit, I hardly have any time. I have to make sure I’m making the most of it.” Whereas before, when everything, like every hour of the day was an option, I didn’t actually have to have that specificity and it meant that I got not nearly as much done.
So then I go to the gym, I go to The Good Life Gym that’s at– right near my co-working space. So, I do that for an hour and a half basically, like it takes me an hour and a half. I get there, I get dressed into my workout gear and then I’m doing Kayla Itsinis’s Sweat App. I’m doing the Power Program that’s on the app and then I spent either 20 minutes at the moment doing cardio or doing foam rolling stretching, which I find just to be like really enjoyable and painful but enjoyable just to roll across the foam roller and then I go to my part-time job. I work there from four to eight and then I come home and hang out with Steve. So that’s a routine that I have been finding has worked super well for me and I’m just really loving having the routine of that basically from Tuesday to Thursday and then I’d try to carry that routine over to Friday and Saturday and do a similar thing, but from home and then Sunday and Monday are my no-work day.
So that’s been going really well. What else have I got here? Oh, I just wrote down on my list, like my self image is really starting to change around being an entrepreneur. I spoke about this in previous episodes, but I really had this belief that like I wasn’t successful enough yet to be able to see myself that way and to see myself in the same league as other people and just through– I think like I’ve been consciously creating that belief, but I’ve also been acting as if it’s true that I am an entrepreneur and that I can be on the same level as other people that I look up to. And that– like creating that belief before it was necessarily reflected in reality has meant that like reality is kind of caught up because I’ve been acting as if it’s true. So then it does become true because I’m taking the action. So that’s been really powerful. It’s one of those things– self-image it’s such a– like a gradual thing that I feel like this month I’ve really just been like, “Wow!”
I am starting to see myself as capable of so many things that before I just didn’t even see myself as capable of achieving and it’s just been such a gradual day to day shift, but now it’s been enough months that is actually starting to be a bit more tangible to me. A couple of other things I worked on this month, so I did a three blogging workshops for perfectionists in June, July to Start Your Blog, Grow Your Blog and Promote Your Blog workshops. And this month I put that together into a course called The Perfect Blogger and it has all the bonuses in it. I’m so pleased with how everything’s turned out because there are so many blogging courses that are like, “Do this course of mine, and this course of mine, and this course of mine!” and with my blogging stuff, because I don’t want to be a blogger who blogs about blogging. I love personal development and the reason that I’m sharing blogging advice is because so many of you want to start a blog or wanting to start your own business and a blog is such a great way to do that and I keep getting so many questions that I was having to just refer everyone to all of these other bloggers and so I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to share my advice,” and no one’s sharing this advice for perfectionist, which I can’t find. Like I haven’t been able to find a blogging course for a perfectionist. So I made my course The Perfect Blogger– the ultimate blogging course for perfectionist, which is really focused around not just the technical side, that’s all included and like I share everything that I’ve learned from five years of blogging and thousands of dollars of blogging course and blogging courses and personal development and trainings and seminars and thousands of hours of podcasts. It’s all condensed in a super simple like step-by-step way, but I’m just so pleased to have all the mindset stuff with it because I know for sure that when I was starting, I just thought there was something wrong with me because everyone was like, “Just promote it to all your friends on Facebook!” I was like, “What the fuck? I don’t want to tell anyone about it in my real life!” And just feeling like there was something that was different about me when really I know there are so many people who feel the same way like now, but I didn’t know that then.
So you can find out more about that if you’re interested at the show notes and on my blog so you can go to smart-twenties.com/episode46. So that is something as well, like I had been so indecisive about what I was going to do with those blogging workshops. And I actually spoke with a friend Brooke who has a podcast Success Babe Radio. And we had a Skype call just to catch up. And I was just like, “I had been just confused about what I should do and like keep the workshop separate or how to use it going forward,” and basically just telling to her I just made a decision and then once I made the decision, like it was just so like I could just really quickly act on it. It took me maybe like a week and a half from having the discussion with her to having everything done that I needed to do.
So that was really cool to just see that, you know, I was just so stuck in like, “I got to figure out what I’m going to do,” but I hadn’t actually put it in any time and effort to figure it out. It was just constantly in the back of my mind, “I need to sort this out,” like I need to figure out what to do so I can move forward with it. And then I just had that discussion in that discussion. I was like, “I’m just going to make a decision about the date that I’m going to launch it and what I’m going to do. And the pricing and all of that,” though, I think I’m actually going to increase the price, just a little hot tip if anyone’s wanting to invest in it because once I put it together I was like, this is just insanely valuable.
So I might be increasing the price going forward. But yeah, if you’re wanting to invest in, definitely do it sooner rather than later. So that was something that I put together this month and it just really showed me the power of making a decision. And then once you’ve made the decision taking all of the other options off the table. So instead of being like, “I’m going to just like making the decision I did about, I’m going to merge it all into one course,” instead of doing that and then being like, “Actually maybe I should keep them separate, maybe I should do this.”
When I decided that I was like, okay, that’s, that’s it. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to indulge in any other ideas, that’s just what I’m doing. And with that kind of clarity, I could just get so much done so quickly and I was just so proud of myself for really putting that effort in and getting it done. And yeah, I was really excited to get it together once I’d actually decided. So if that’s something you’ve been feeling confused about, making a decision is just so crazy powerful and yet that had been such a great lesson.
And reminded this month I also started working with one-on-one clients for my Mindset coaching, which is like a dream come true to me. I can’t believe I put it off for so long. It is something that I absolutely loved doing and just working with women one-on-one to help them really see themselves, to help them figure out what to do with their life. I particularly how women who like identify with having this perfectionist mindset. So if you can relate to what I talk about, that will be you and who are in a job, that’s not a horrible job, it’s just okay. And like life looks great from the outside, but they’re just really longing for more and they know this capable of so much more than what they’re currently doing but just can’t seem to get themselves to either figure out what they want to do or if they have figured it out to actually take action.
So it’s been so powerful for me to be helping people one-on-one and like do a deep dive into all the stuff I talk about on the podcast. Like helping them apply it to themselves and just seeing the results that some of them have had in such a short amount of time like it feels like I’m talking to a completely different person than the person I was speaking to an our first coaching call. For me, that is so crazy fulfilling and I love doing it and I could do it all day for free. But again, with money mindset work, I have really had to do the walk around not making it free or insanely cheap. So it is an investment to work with me and I have loved working with the clients that I’ve worked with so far.
If you are wanting to work with me, if you’re wanting to hit the ground running for 2019 and really start reaching your full potential, you can find out more at smart-twenties.com/coaching. But that has been something for me that has just been such a powerful new thing in my business, not just in terms of making money but in terms of really feeling like I’m making such a difference and I know that it is also completely helped me step up the way that I share in this podcast because when coaching clients keep presenting to me with the same issues and thinking about things in a certain way, then I can share that on the podcast because I know a lot of you will be feeling that very same way.
And so it’s really given me so many ideas for content and what to share with you guys of what will be helpful. So that’s been amazing. I would say that in summary, August has been a really great month for me, just in terms of getting out of my own way, really. I feel like I have made quite a few significant advancements in terms of like– getting out of my own way is the best way to say it like actually giving myself permission to really go all in and then setting myself up so I’m really going to have to live by that standard and go all in. It feels like an accomplishment just to do that because I know that before, like I’ve been way too scared to even try to go all in and I’ve constantly just like in such sneaky in unconscious ways, but let myself have all of these other distractions.
So I had an excuse for not being as successful as I wanted to be and this month I’ve been just like, “Fuck it, I’m going for it!” And it feels different and I just feel like I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I feel like I’m really on the cusp of something. I don’t know if you can relate to that feeling, but I just really feel like big things are going to change soon in a really positive way that hasn’t come about yet in reality, but I feel like even just having that thought is what’s helping me create that.
So having the belief that you are on the cusp of something like I know that a lot of you will have that feeling of like something’s about to happen, but I think when we have that belief like something amazing is about to happen and then we act from that place as something amazing is about to happen and we create that amazing thing through our actions. But who knows? I will keep you updated and my monthly update podcasts. I hope you find it enjoyable and helpful but I really just have this weird sense that I can’t even describe what it is, but I just really feel like I’m about to really step up in a big way and I can feel my mindset has shifted so much this month, particularly through during the Rich Babe Academy course. But I think like the course is great, but it’s not like there’s anything particular in the course, like I say this about everything, like all the personal development stuff that I’ve done, everything’s good if you just apply it like, and often paying for a course or paying for coaching actually just forces you to really apply it and do the work and not be so passive and not just listen to inspiring things and then not do anything about it.
So I find just from having invested into Rich Babe Academy and different things that I’ve done, like my mindset has really started to shift. I’ve had quite a few different breakthroughs around my money mindset, that have just been really amazing and I’ll be sharing more about them soon and I’m still working through all of them, but I’ve shared a lot of them as well already.
So I just feel like I’m really on the verge in a really good way. Who knows if that’s true? But I like believing that it’s true and I just have this kind of sense that like things are starting to click into place. And I’m just actually starting to let myself finally be seen and show up as I really am and I’m starting to get more and more friends and I did an episode on friendship when I started my podcast, but I feel like I’d have a lot to add to that because in the past year, particularly this year, I have really made more of an effort to make friends and the proportion of my friends now who have online businesses and are doing their own thing has greatly increased whereas before a lot of my friends were in more traditional jobs and have my friends from school and my friends that I love daily, but they can’t relate to a lot of what I’m struggling with. And so when I talked to them about business, they’ll just be like being like, “Yeah, that sounds great. Oh, that sounds hard.” But like I love having people that can be like, yeah, oh, this is what I did in that situation and what about this and what about that? So I’ve really been like putting myself out there more and meeting more people and like doing podcast interviews on podcasts, which is such a great like– I just love chatting about all this stuff and so actually talking about it with other people has been amazing.
And one thing I want to mention as well, I have been thinking about doing interviews on the podcast but I also at the moment like the convenience of having it just like, “I can record this whenever the hell I want,” and I don’t then have that extra like having to pitch to different guests and having to like do– there’s a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into having an interview show, an interview podcast. And for now, I really want to go all in on having it just be the recordings that I’m doing by myself.
And for now I’ve put it off the table that I’m going to do any interviews in 2018 on my podcast and I’m not letting myself consider that again until 2019, which is four months away. But for me, I know that like– well who knows, hindsight might tell me better, but for now it really feels like if I was doing interviews it would be because that’s what everyone else seems to be doing, that’s what I should be doing. And also it just seems like a sneaky way to add something extra to my plate so that I don’t have time for coaching clients and I don’t have time to create new courses and all of that stuff which is where I’m really trying to focus.
So I’m loving doing these episodes means by myself. I hope you guys are enjoying them and get a lot of positive feedback. So I also find that I personally, my favorite podcasts of all time are the podcasts where people do solo episodes all the time or whether they do them quite often. Definitely like long form, solo episodes. I never listened to anyone who does like a five minute episode, just a personal preference. Nothing wrong with that. But I actually like, I want the meaty, meaty good stuff. I want to get into things. So that’s something as well. He just thought I mentioned because it’s something I had been thinking about.
Oh, there’s one more thing I haven’t mentioned yet! I kind of did, but for August, I decided to constrain myself, so I was listening to so many podcasts which you guys have all heard the names of before because I talk about them all the time, but lots of different interview shows as well and that is great and so inspiring. But what I like to do is like for a while, I’ll listen to lots of interviews and lots of different things and then I’ll go deep and listened to only a very narrow topic and then after awhile I’ll go back out and then I’ll narrow in on something else and I like to alternate between the two because I get so inspired by people who are working in all sorts of industries and they’re doing all sorts of things and just hearing. It’s also just so comforting. Hearing different people’s stories and that they’ve had their failures and how they overcame them and how they’ve kept going and built the resiliency and all of that. I find it incredibly inspiring and I love it and so to decide that I’m just not going to listen to like the Tim Ferriss show for a month, which is one of my favorite podcasts and stuff.
It was a hard decision to make because I’m like, “Oh, what if I miss out on something,” but they’re all– all the episodes of still be there. So what I decided to do is I was just going to listen to manifestation babe and the life coach school podcast and the reason I chose those two podcasts is because manifestation babe. I’m doing the rich Babe Academy course. So that was a really good fit. And I’m doing Brooke Castillo’s self coaching scholars course, which is an ongoing monthly course and I haven’t been as active doing that in the month of August, but I have still been watching. She coaches people live. I watched the replays because of the time zone difference, but she coaches people live in her course, which I have so many breakthroughs. Watching people get coached about all sorts of things. Plus, it really helps me as a coach myself and she hasn’t asked Brooks section my people again, like people ask all sorts of questions and she answers, so I find that even if I’m not doing the day to day work that it’s so valuable for me just to get that.
And also because I’m Kathrin and Brooke, Brooke does a few interviews but both of them don’t really do interviews, so instead of getting all of these competing ideas, I’m just getting Kathrin’s views on things and brooks views on things and they’re really nicely complimentary because Kathrin’s a lot more spiritual and it’s a lot more focused just around money mindset. but also a lot of business stuff, but it mainly comes back to the money stuff and Brooke teachers a different kind of thing. But there are a lot of what they say is very cohesive. It fits together. I’m not getting one piece of advice from Brooklyn and completely opposite piece of advice on Kathrin. I’ve just found them to be a really good fit. Even though on the face of it it probably doesn’t look like they’re saying the same thing. I think that at the end of the day they are, and they’ve both been like heavily influenced by Tony Robbins and the same kind of people.
So I’ve just found that really helpful and this month basically, and because I’ve listened to all the podcast episodes before, so I kind of just have gone through and been really listening to all their podcasts episodes and I don’t listen to business and personal development podcast 24/7. I listened to the Hamish and Andy podcasts when I’m working out. I’ve also been listening to the At Home With podcast which is by Lily Pebbles and Anna from The Anna Edit who are Youtubers. And that’s kind of cheating in a way because– interviewing different people, but because it’s not really focused, it’s more of a like chatty kind of conversational thing rather than like strategy or anything. So I just let myself listen to that if I’m going for a walk or something. But when I’m listening to something for business or personal growth, I’ve just been listening to Manifestation Babe in the Life Coach School podcast and I have found it to be incredibly helpful.
Just to have the repetition instead of getting 20 new ideas, I’m basically hearing the same idea 20 times and that is really how you train your brain to get into a new belief to just hear it again and again and again and again and because they’re kind of saying the same thing but in different ways. I’m hearing it one way in one podcast episode, but the same thing a different way in another. So it kind of, you eventually just here in all the different ways and at least a few of them click, if that makes sense. So I have found that to be incredibly powerful and at this point in time and we’re going to continue doing that through September as well. So I had just told myself, and this is a great thing to do if you’re wanting to try something and instead of being like, “I’m only going to listen to one podcast at a time forever,” just be like, “Okay, for the next 30 days I’m just going to experiment with this.”
So that’s what I did. Just a little experiment. I found it to be really great for my personal development and just for really solidifying things and I find it so much more helpful to listen to one podcast episode five times in five different episodes once each. So I’d listen like if I found a really good episode from Kathrin or I found a really good one from Brooke. I just listened to it multiple times and every time I’d hear something I didn’t hear the last time. So that’s been really great. Another thing that just reminded me as well is that this month I went through and I muted everyone basically on my Instagram account and except my friends, and my coaching clients. So basically everyone else I have muted, not because I don’t care about them and not because I’m selfish, but because I just found that the feed on Instagram, like it’s designed to get us to want more and more and more.
And it’s basically the same way that the poker’s machine works it when you’re gambling, like it’s driven by this idea of like, “What’s next? I don’t want to miss what’s next, what’s next?” So five years ago on Facebook, I basically did the same thing and it completely removed any kind of addiction to Facebook because when you’re checking a feed that doesn’t exist, your brain’s like, this is bloody boring. So I’ve done that on my Instagram account. Did you know that it actually tells you that you’ve caught up when you’ve seen everything? I didn’t know that until I’ve done this and it actually like almost every time I log-in it says you’ve caught up and my brain is now like– I’m checking it less naturally without even having to do anything because my brain is like, “This is so boring to keep checking something and there’s nothing there.”
So that’s been really helpful because I just was finding that I was just looking, especially like I get a lot of inspiration from other people but I was spending so much time trying to gather this inspiration and just also mindlessly scrolling that I wasn’t spending time on the important stuff. So it’s been really helpful so far and I’m actually not like I’m just much more intentional with, with Instagram now. And it means that if I’m like, “There are so many people I still want to get updates about,” but it just means that I’ll actually just go to their profile and see what they’ve been doing and I was finding I was getting so sucked into stories. and I was just watching like an endless stream of stories and they designed this story saying the same way where you’re just tapping next, next, next, next like it’s just they make it so engaging that you’re not even like passively just watching it, you can just be there like next, next, next. So I have stopped doing that but I still definitely go and look at a lot of people’s profiles and all of that kind of thing. But I’ve just sold that. That was something that like the negatives were outweighing the positives and there were other ways I could get that inspiration without actually needing to waste all this time on Instagram. And I love Instagram, it’s a huge part of my business, but I don’t think that being on it like mindlessly is helpful for me.
So that’s another thing that I did in the month of August and I think I’m going to wrap it up that also complete side note, but I saw the Mission Impossible movie and I like the newest one and I think I’ve seen all the other ones at some point, but this was like the best action movie I’ve ever seen and I’m not super into action. I love my romcoms, I love thrillers. I hate horror. I can’t handle any suspense, some thrillers as well, I really struggle but Steve wanted to see it and I was like, “Okay, I’ll go and see that,” and I really enjoyed it. So if anyone’s been thinking of seeing it, it was actually like a very good movie. I like left that on a high and normally an action movie, I’m like, “Oh, can we at least have like a decent story happening here?” And they just had a really good story and I was– I really enjoyed it.
So that’s something else that happened in August on a slightly different note and I’m just quickly racking my brains if there’s anything else. But I’ve been talking for a long point, a long amount of time at this point, so I’m going to wrap it up here, but you can find anything that I’ve mentioned, if you go to the show notes, which will be at smart-twenties.com/episode46. If you would like to work with me one on one and really just do a deep dive into everything and take your life to the next level, you can find out more at smart-twenties.com/coaching. I also have my online course, get out of your own way if you’re wanting to do that kind of stuff too, but in a more self guided way and for less of an investment. So all of that will be in the show notes for you. I hope you are having an absolutely magical day and I will talk to you next time, bye!