How to identify the beliefs that hold you back

In my coaching practice I meet women when they’re at a crossroads in their lives. When the life they’ve been living for a long time – and the goals they’ve pursuit – don’t work for them any more. When I ask these women what their big dreams are I’m often met with silence. Many of them simply don’t know. Or if they do, their big dreams often come with a big list of why they’ll never achieve them.

From personal experience, and listening to what these women tell me over and over again, I’ve learned that one of the main blocks to overcome in order to dream bigger are the beliefs we hold true for ourselves.

We live in a world full of rules and regulations about who we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to want. This is especially true as women. We’re expected to be a lot of things. Most of them in service of others. These unwritten rules or social expectations are often disguised as internalized beliefs. It’s simply the way culture works.

Being a good daughter for instance might mean you believe you need to listen to your parents when they give you advice about your career choices. Perhaps they want you secure your future by staying in a job you dislike, or earn a degree in a field that doesn’t interest you. The belief that you need to listen to them might make it hard for you to follow your own path, and choose your own career.

The good news is, once we identify the beliefs that hold us back, we can let go of them. We do this by replacing them with new beliefs based on who we are, what we really want, and what we actually belief about the world.

How to identify the beliefs that hold you back?

• Reflect

The best way I’ve found to identify internalized beliefs is to reflect on them. You can do this by journaling about them. Writing down what you believe in can be difficult. What’s internalized isn’t always visible on the surface or conscious. Here are a few prompts that can help you get started.

Pick a dream you’d like to achieve but have trouble getting started or following through with. Start writing down all the associations that come to you about this dream. Don’t edit or limit yourself.

Ask yourself:

• Do I think I deserve this dream?

• What will happen if I achieve this dream?

• Why do I think I won’t make it?

• What don’t I want about this dream?

• Why am I having trouble achieving this dream?

Go over your list and make a note of all the negative things you wrote down. What do they have in common? What do they say about how you see yourself in the world? What beliefs do they bring forward?

If your dream is to become a freelance writer you might think that pursuing this dream is risky, or that you can’t because you don’t have the right degree. Both of those things – risk and degree – are beliefs you have about who can, and can’t start a business.

The question is: is this really true? Do you really need a degree to become a freelancer writer and is it really that risky to work for yourself? Spoiler alert: it’s not! You only believe it is because you’ve been conditioned to.

• Listen to your inner voice

We all have a mean inner voice. It’s the one that tells us we can’t do something, or that we shouldn’t. She’s always there with an opinion about everything. Guess what? That opinion are your internalized beliefs.

By listening to your inner voice, especially when she’s being critical, you’ll be able to identify the beliefs that hold you back.

My inner critic has a tendency to tell me that I’m not good enough, that I don’t have what it takes to succeed at my dreams. For a long time this held me back from doing what I really wanted to do, and forced me to stay small. Once I realised she wasn’t telling the truth I was able to let go and make decisions without listening to her or my internalized beliefs.

• Question your inherited beliefs

Inherited beliefs are the beliefs that are passed down to us in childhood. A lot of them come from our parents, the school we went to, the social circles we grew up in. They’re closely related to our inherited dreams, something I resist and fight against in the work I do with my clients.

We have inherited beliefs about everything. Most of them came from the people that had the most influence on us, that we cared the most for or that we looked up to the most.

Questioning your inherited beliefs is an exercise in reflection like the first tip above. The difference is the focus of the question. Instead of asking yourself what you believe about something, you focus on someone else: your mom or dad, your siblings, a school teacher maybe. Anyone that had an influence on you growing up.

Ask yourself:

• What did my mom teach me about money?

• What did my dad teach me about work ethics?

• What did my fifth grade teacher think about creativity?

• How were my parents raised?

• What did my parents believe in?

These questions will help you to identify the beliefs that you’ve inherited. Once you have I invite you to ask yourself if they’re true and relevant to you. If not, don’t be afraid to change them to alternatives that work better for you. Your big dreams will thank you.

How to enjoy the journey as you move closer to your goals

When working on big dreams it’s easy to get caught up in them. We get so focused on the end result that we lose sight of all that we already have. I know this is something I used to deal with a lot, and that I still need to be careful of.

It’s great to want things, and work toward them. But not to the extend that you’re unable to enjoy where you are right now, or what you’ve already accomplished. In fact, I believe you’ll have a better chance at achieving your goals if you find joy on the road that leads to them.

There are a few reasons for this, but the most important one is that the happier you are, the better you’ll be able to work on your goals.

You’ll have more energy, greater creativity and problem-solving skills, less stress, and more resilience. It will be easier for you to stay on track, focused, and to see things through when they don’t turn out as you’d planned.

How do you enjoy the journey?

There are many ways to enjoy the present moment, big and small. Here are three that I’ve found to be most helpful to me. They might be helpful for you too.

• Meditate

Having a daily meditation practice has changed my life. When I signed up for a transcendental meditation initiation I had no idea I needed it so badly. I remember the teacher talk about the benefits of TM to ground yourself in the now, to find more inner peace, to reach a state of bliss. I believed in the benefits of meditation, but I was still skeptical.

After about a month of daily practice (two sessions of 20 minutes each, one in the morning and one late afternoon) things started shifting. I became more aware of myself, and my surrounding. My perception of time changed. Where I was always in a rush before, I suddenly had more than enough time for work and play. I started looking at productivity in a different way. The relentless pursuit of productivity, a byproduct of the dominant economic system based on never-ending growth, didn’t work for me anymore. I wanted – and needed – a system where work was fun, sustainable, soulful. One that would take me into account, without being only focused on the end result.

If you never meditated before, I want to invite you to try. There are plenty of apps and websites out there that will help you get started. Even five minutes a day will make a difference. If you do have a meditation practice, or if you’ve tried it before I want to encourage you not to give up. It took awhile for meditation to become a daily practice that I enjoy, but the benefits absolutely outweighed the effort.

• Take a break

Sometimes what we need to find our way back to the present moment is a break from our dreams. Yes, I know how this sounds 🙂 But I’ve done it a few times over the years, and it works.

Especially as multi-passionate creative women it’s so easy to fall in the trap of busyness, to ambitiously and relentlessly keep working towards what we want to achieve. The more we work on something, the more new ideas we have about all the other things we want to do. Soon enough it feels like we have no time left, the urgency sets in, we get overwhelmed.

When this happens, take a break. In the end, you don’t need to do anything. I repeat: you don’t need to do anything. There is no outside force pushing you to achieve the goals you set for yourself. The pressure you’re feeling comes from within. So give yourself a breather. Drop everything. Convince yourself that you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to (which is true by the way). Take some time to relax, have fun, enjoy the present moment. Soon enough you’ll be back on the saddle (you can’t help yourself) and slaying at those dreams again – in a more mindful way. I promise.

• Count your blessings

There’s no better way to enjoy the journey than to be grateful for what you already have. So much has been written and said about gratitude. There’s a good reason for that. Having a gratitude practice shifts your mindset over time. By giving yourself a few minutes to feel grateful every day you’re allowing positivity into your life. These few minutes add up over time, and ripple into every other aspect of your life.

There’s plenty of ways to be grateful. A popular one is to reflect on three things that made you happy at the end of the day. I’ve had that practice for a long time, but eventually found myself repeating the same things a bit too often. My gratitude practice now includes a few minutes of deep breathing, smiling, and thinking about one thing that makes me happy in my life or my business. Sometimes I’ll pause and do it a few times a day (the endorphin release is addictive!), other times I’ll pause when I’m walking down the street and feel the warmth of the Sun on my face. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you make it a conscious and consistent choice.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to make a plan and stick with it

Being a multi-passionate creative women that has coached and mentored so many other multi-passionate creative women I dare to say that I know a thing or two about how we’re wired, and what we’re made of.

When it comes to ideas about all the things we want to create, we have plenty. In fact, until we learn to organize them in a meaningful way, our minds can be extremely crowded places. When it comes to taking action, we’re hard workers, ambitious, tenacious. There’s no question that when someone else hands us a plan, we put all our multi-passionate creative skills to work to make it happen.

But here’s the thing. So many of us do this for other people, but not ourselves.

We clearly have the talents to turn our own dreams into reality. Why then is it so hard for us to work on our own goals successfully?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times. I struggled with this issue for many years. Everyone that knows me will tell you that I’ve always been ambitious, hard working, passionate, creative. I’ve always had plenty of ideas too. Things I would learn, art I would make, products I would create. There was never a lack of inspiration. But I never acted on it. Or if I did, the momentum would quickly fade away, and I’d lose interest (or so I told myself).

The truth is, I didn’t have a plan. I’m not saying that planning is the only struggle multi-passionate creative women need to overcome – we’re much too complex for that – but what I am saying is that having a plan is a powerful step to turn our creative ideas into more tangible things, and eventually reality.

How to have a plan?

Planning is a multi-layered process that can be done in many different ways. To be effective I believe that your planning system does needs to have at least these three components.

• Write it down

A dream without a plan is just a dream. For the plan to come alive you need to write it down. It sounds trivial but I’ve seen it so many times. Multi-passionate creative women explaining all their ideas to me in so much detail and excitement, yet never actually writing them down – or acting on them. As soon as something finds its way onto paper though, unconscious processes get fired up and things start to materialize. I’m still amazed by it, but it works.

The way I encourage my clients to plan is first to get clear on their goals, then to take out a yearly calendar and map out when they’ll do what. This requires them to think about the steps, resources, time they’ll need to achieve their goals which – honestly – is the first step to achieve anything.

So find some time today to write down what you’ve been yearning to create. Then take out a calendar and map it out. You’ll be one step closer to your goals.

• Make it a habit

Planning is not a one-off thing. It’s a habit. Writing down the steps to achieve your goal on a calendar isn’t enough. You need to go back, cut the steps up into smaller, more actionable pieces, plan those pieces out in your monthly or weekly calendar, etc. Planning is the journey to the destination, it’s that big middle part between starting something and getting to the finish line. That’s why it needs to be a habit, and why you need to be consistent at it.

My planning habits include sitting down on Sunday afternoon to plan out the week ahead in my planner, a morning review of my todos for the day, and monthly reviews to make sure I’m on track and haven’t strayed from the path too much.

My habits might work for you, or they might not. One thing I know about the creative mind is that it doesn’t conform easily. You’ll have to find out what works for you. It might take you a while to get there. Even if you don’t have a planner, or hate your todo list, try to carve out some time every day to think about what type of planning might work for you, and try things out.

• Be flexible and gentle with yourself

There’s one big caveat to what I wrote above. When you’re working on creating a planning habit, be flexible and gentle with yourself. Don’t stockpile a million things on your to-do list every day. You’ll never get to the end of it, and will feel guilty for not getting there. Believe me, I speak from experience.

Planning isn’t about the amount of things you do (that’s productivity, we’ll get to that later in this series). Planning is about doing something consistently. One action every day, or every week. It’s about learning how your creativity works, and what she agrees to in terms of preparation. On my weekly planner for instance, I have two open days. Those are days I’m free to work on anything I want. I need that freedom in order to be able to sustain working three days based on a predefined schedule.

Find out what your creativity needs, and plan accordingly. But always be flexible, and gentle with yourself. The last thing you want is to feel guilty while working on your dreams.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to get the support you need to achieve your dreams

How to dream bigger when everyone around you isn’t? It’s a question I get asked often. Contrary to what you might think, the culture we live in is not one of big dreamers.

Most of us are raised in societies that aspire to success yet fail to equip us with what’s needed to get there. If you’re not part of the dominant group that sets the rules you’ll get mixed messages about your personal success – at best. As women this often translates in doubt, lack of confidence, perfectionism. The belief that we have to be and do it all before we can even speak about success. Even if we’d attain the impossible we still wouldn’t brag about it. We’d remain good girls and not shed too much light on our achievements. Sound familiar?

It certainly does for me.

From the start of my career when I was 21 until well in my thirties anything I did was never good enough. Fresh out of uni I was sitting at the table with decision-makers from major corporations, building innovative projects with passion, and dedication. I didn’t feel good enough. I went on to build my own web agency. I grew it with passion, and dedication. Still didn’t feel good enough. In 2013 I sold it to a bigger player on the market, and started consulting on a freelance basis. Again at the table with decision-makers from renown corporations, and institutions. Nope. Still didn’t feel like I deserved to be there.

By the end of 2014 I’d had it. I left the white-collar world to do the stuff I’d always wanted to do: pursue my big dreams.

As a multi-passionate creative woman I’d always heard the call, but systematically failed to act on it. I bought into the status quo. Thought I had to do things “by the rules”. Add a dash of perfectionism, people-pleasing, and lack of self-worth to the mix and you’ve got a beautiful recipe of unhappy compliance. Along the way I healed myself. Worked my way through limiting beliefs, re-framed things for myself. But looking back one of the main reasons I didn’t go after my big dreams sooner is because I wasn’t surrounded with the support I needed.

Everyone in my life followed the same rules. We were all oblivious. To the status quo, the unwritten rules, the expectations. All of us expressed the same wishes for material things, the same ideas about how the world should be and our place in it. Whenever I strayed off the path and expressed my deepest desires I was met with worry, disbelief or – my all time favorite – the friendly advice not to think so much.

When I realized it’s wasn’t me, and that my big dreams weren’t crazy, I went out to find the support I was craving for. It felt like I was born again. This time my big dreams were born with me.

How do you surround yourself with support?

• Read biographies

With so many naysayers around me I had to convince myself I wasn’t crazy for wanting what I wanted. One way I did this was by reading the biographies of people I looked up to that went after their big dreams.

Reading biographies helped me believe in myself, and my dreams by realizing that everyone struggles with well intentioned people who simply don’t get it. That there’s no overnight success. That all roads are paved with challenges. If you’re looking for some inspiration, here’s a couple of juicy ones that will fire up your dream brain:

All Things at Once by Mika Brzezinski
Chanel: A Woman of her Own by Axel Madsen
Never Tell Me Never by Janine Shepherd
The Road to Someplace Better by Lillian Lincoln Lambert
Suits: A Woman on Wall Street by Nina Godiwalla

• Create your own support network

It’s great to have role models but it’s certainly not enough. Big dreams can’t be built alone. We all need a support network to help us achieve our goals.

The good news is, you can create one for yourself.

Surrounding myself with like-minded people, mentors, coaches, friends who support me, and believe in me is one of my priorities. The more of these positive influences I have in my life, the better I do. With my goals. But with myself too. Go out in search of the support you need, and ask for help. To keep you accountable, to learn, to grow or simply to be heard, and loved. It works!

• Remember you get to choose

When we’re stuck in the status quo it’s easy to believe there’s no other way. That the people we’re surrounded by are it for us, and that we’ll simply have to make it work. The truth is: you get to choose. Who you allow into your life. What your boundaries are. The kind of help you want and need.

Remember you’re free to choose – and chase – your big dreams. Whatever anyone tells you.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to start small to finish big

When we dream big, it’s easy to get caught up in the dream and become overwhelmed. Huge goals often feel like mountains that we’re not equipped to climb. I believe this is one of the main reasons why so many big dreamers never act on their goals. The vision is so big that they fail to see how they could ever make it their reality, so they do nothing.

In order to achieve big dreams it’s important to start small: plan small, take small steps, move forward in an achievable way. That way the path that leads to your dreams feels more manageable, and you’ll be more likely to remain motivated and in action.

How do you start small?  

• Put action steps on your to-do list, not goals

Last week a client told me about the “goals” she’d been stuck with on her to-do list. When I asked her how long they’d been on there, her reply was: “Forever”. I wasn’t surprised. I see this so often in my coaching practice. When we fail to turn goals into actions steps when putting them on our to-do lists, not much gets done. Who can blame us? Goals could take weeks, months, years to accomplish. Having them as an action step on our daily planner inevitably will cause overwhelm.

Keep your goals and dreams on your vision board and use your daily planners for the actual steps you’ll take to achieve them.

One way to do this is to break down each of your goals into all the steps it’ll take you to accomplish them. Then use this master list to put together your daily, weekly, or monthly to-do lists, starting from the actions you can take right now. If your goal is to start an online business for instance, steps you’ll need to take range from figuring out your website software, domain name, hosting provider all the way to writing content, defining your offering, and putting together your marketing strategy. Not all of these steps can be taken immediately. But some can, like researching website options, or brainstorming domain names. Those are the steps you need to get started with first.

• Make sure you can complete each step in one sitting

It’s not enough to turn goals into action steps. You have to make sure you can tackle each of them in one sitting. What I mean by that is that you have to be able to complete any action step in 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on the time you’ve allocated for it on your daily schedule. If not, the action step is not small enough and probably looks more like an intermediate goal that needs refining.

When I put together action steps I like to revisit them a few times to make sure they’re the smallest they can be. When I review them I always ask myself the same question: “Is there anything else I need to do to complete this step?”. If the answer is no, I know I have a good action step. If it’s yes, I break it down further.

• Plan ahead weekly

Once you have a master list of action steps for each of your goals it’s time to plan. I love to plan ahead of my week on Sunday. It’s the most peaceful day of the week, with the least amount of distractions. At least for me  I sit down with my list and fill my weekly planner with the steps I’ll take that week. It not only helps me to stay focused, but I consistently achieve more when I plan ahead like this.

One thing that has helped me throughout the years though (and that I’m still working on) is to limit the amount of things I put on my list every day. It’s so easy to overestimate the amount of time we have available, and to stress ourselves out with too many things we think we “have to” do. When we do, it’s as if we’re adding the goals back on our to-do list: we become overwhelmed, and our momentum fades away. Make sure to give yourself enough time each day to complete the actions steps you’ve set yourself, and limit how many you’ll do each day.

Remember there’s a whole world out there. While you’re building your big dreams make sure to experience, and enjoy it. In the end, now is the only time we’ve got.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to take care of yourself without neglecting your priorities

Back in 2010, when my journey toward dreaming bigger started, one of the first things I learned was how important it is to take care of ourselves. Whatever you want to achieve; making sure the body, mind, and soul achieving it are nourished in a meaningful way is essential to succeed.

As women we’re conditioned to put everyone else first. Many of us are taught to be good, quiet, not too demanding, and certainly not selfish.

We’re expected to do all things without complaining. To bring children into the world, to care for our families, to look gorgeous, to be exemplary daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, and mistresses. In recent times to be wildly successful at our careers and businesses too.

The result is an epidemic of over-extension and overwork. Of perfectionism, people-pleasing, and dieting. Of trying to live big lives while keeping ourselves small, exhausted, trying to do it all.

It doesn’t work.

You cannot dream big while trying to please everyone. You cannot see the possibility in everything when the only way you believe you can be is perfect (read white, thin, and young). In order to achieve your goals you need to nurture yourself, and put yourself first.

Because pursuing big dreams is a marathon, not a sprint. So you need to be in optimal physical and emotional condition to keep at it over time, and to get to the finish line.

How to take care of yourself?

• Self-care is not selfish

One of the first things we need to unlearn as women is the belief that taking care of ourselves is selfish. It’s not. Putting ourselves first is smart. It’s necessary. Even taking care of others works better when we take care of ourselves first. There’s no need to feel guilty, ashamed, or not good enough.

• Self-care can be anything

The media easily associated self-care with spa days, and massages. Or time off in the Sun on a tropical island. Sure, those are great ways to take care of yourself but not the only ones. They’re also costly, and time-consuming which makes it harder to fit them into your life.

If we look passed this limiting picture of self-care a whole world opens up. Self-care can be anything. It can fit into any amount of time on any day of the week. It doesn’t need to cost anything. It can be a phone call to a friend, going to bed early, a babysitter on a Wednesday afternoon, five minutes of stretching in the morning, clothes that fit you perfectly. Self-care is about filling your cup, doing what you need to be nourished, strong, happy.

• Self-care is a practice

Giving yourself some me-time when you’re about to give up or break down is always a good idea. It will help recharge your batteries, and pick you up so you can keep going. But to reap the long-term benefits of self-care, so it can help you achieve your biggest dreams, it needs to be a practice. Something you do regularly, if possible every day.

Over time, five minutes of self-care every day will be life-changing. It will bring you closer to yourself, help you identify your needs, figure out how you operate from the inside out. You’ll learn to recognize when it’s time to focus on yourself, and have plenty of options to choose from.

If you want more Dream Bigger Tips, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to get enough sleep during the night to achieve more during the day

When you’re working on your dreams, it’s easy to get stuck in action mode. This might come as a surprise, especially since procrastination is one of the main reasons clients seek out my help to achieve their goals, but too much doing can keep you from getting what you want.

Too much of anything is never a great formula. With the exception of love. I don’t think you can ever get enough of that. But when it comes to working toward your goals, being in action too much, wanting it too much, thinking about it too much can produce the adverse effect. The way this “too muchness” will show up is different for everyone.

What I’ve found – in my own life as well as that of many of my clients – is that it often translates into not enough sleep. We get so excited about our new idea that we slay at it for hours on end, or it keeps us up at night. We fall in the trap of thinking we have to be first, so we keep on going. Relentlessly. As we do, we stop listening to our body, we neglect it. The result? We become less productive, our creativity takes a hit, eventually we end up exhausted.

None of this is good for your dreams. It makes it harder to stay on track, to enjoy the process, and even to believe in them.

So make sure you get enough sleep. A rested body, and a replenished mind are your best tools to achieve your goals. It’s an illusion to think you’ll get there faster if you only push yourself hard enough. Achieving big dreams is a marathon, not a sprint. Small steps over time will yield more results than unsustainable burst of too much action.

How to get enough sleep?

• Listen to your body

Our bodies are incredibly complex systems with even more intricate operating systems. Not a computer in the world can do what our bodies can. Our bodies will tell us when something’s wrong. Because our minds have such powerful processing power too it’s easy to discard the signs. Mind of matter is a thing, and a good one for many reasons. But not when sleep is concerned. In order to function optimally, to be happy and feel good in our bodies, we need to sleep.

You might feel tired, experience some aches and pains, become more irritable, have trouble organizing your thoughts. These could all be signs that it’s time to stop and get some rest.

• Remember you’ve got plenty of time

Most of us overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can do in a month. The same goes for longer period of times. It’s easy to overestimate where we’ll be in a year, and underestimate what we can actually accomplish in five. When you’re working toward big dreams it’s important to remember you’ve got plenty of time. It might feel like you have to do it now because you want it so badly, but you do have time.

I see it so often: it’s the small steps over time that produce the most results. Creating something new is a process that can’t be rushed. The journey is part of it. When we start it’s easy to think there’s no journey, just a destination. That’s when we rush into things, demand too much of ourselves, neglect to sleep. It’s unsustainable and simply doesn’t work.

When it’s 11pm at night and you find yourself yawning more than you’re thinking… remember you’ve got plenty of time. And go to sleep.

• Visualize your dreams as you fall asleep

One of the things I love to do when I fall asleep is to visualize my dreams. As I close my eyes, and rest my head on my pillow I imagine I already have everything I’m working toward. I do this for two reasons.

First, I believe in the power of visualization. Whatever we focus our energy on will eventually manifest itself. Not because elves and fairies will magically make it true but if it stays on our mind we’ll think about it more, come up with creative solutions for the challenges we encounter, and eventually believe it can happen.

Second, because there’s no better way to fall asleep. Focusing on your dreams in a positive way pushes away worries, and negative thoughts that can keep you up at night. When I do it I’m gone to lalaland in a few minutes, with a big smile on my face!

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.