Career & Business Coaching Blog.
Inspiration and tips for multi-passionate creatives & entrepreneurs.
3 inspiring women who achieved their big dreams
When I think of women with big, ambitious, crazy dreams they’ve achieved, I can’t overlook J.K. Rowling or Oprah Winfrey. Their stories inspire the world.
J.K. Rowling said of the time when she wrote the first ‘Harry Potter’ book that she was as poor as someone could be in modern Britain without being homeless, her marriage had imploded, she had a daughter to care for, and all she had was hope, a big idea, and a typewriter. Failure didn’t break her, it helped her discover who she was:
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.
Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty. She was sexually abused as a child, ran away from home, and had a baby who died soon after birth when she was just 14. Her first boss told her she woudn’t make it in television because she was too emotional. She started her own TV show and it became the highest ranking TV show in America.
People refer to me as a brand now – the Oprah brand. I never knew what a brand was when I first started out. I became a brand by making every decision flow from the truth of myself. Every choice I made, for every show that was going to be on air, I made based upon ‘does this feel right?’, ‘is this gonna help somebody?’
J.K. Rowling and Oprah Winfrey are highly visible big dreamers, but they’re not the only ones. There are many other big dreamers, just like you.
I love to go in search of inspiring women like you and me who achieved big dreams. It helps me to keep going, and to know that I can do it too. The 3 women I want to talk about today aren’t global celebrities. They’re real, normal people, living normal lives. But each of them had a big dream they went after without giving up. Here are their inspiring stories.
Tahera Rahman
Tahera Rahman worked for WHBF (a local TV station in the USA) for two years as a producer before finally getting the chance to turn her big dream into reality.
Tahera always wanted to be a TV reporter, to bring the latest news to people’s homes, but even her mentors would tell her that it was unlikely she’ll ever get to do that. Why? Tahera is Muslim-American and wears a hijab.
The lack of Muslim-American women who wear a headscarf on camera was obvious — I was very aware of that fact — but I never considered this something that was impossible.
On February 8th, 2018, Tahera’s dream came true, as she became the first full-time broadcast TV reporter in America to wear a hijab on the air.
How did she do it? She worked hard and didn’t get discouraged, not even after multiple rejections. When she learned the station she was working for had an open position for an on-air reporter, she applied and she did everything that she could to become the perfect candidate for the job.
Montana Brown
At 24, Montana Brown became a pediatric nurse, fulfilling her big childhood dream. Montana met amazing, kind pediatric nurses during childhood, when she had to fight for her life and beat cancer, not once, but twice – first at age 2 and then again when she was 15.
On her first day working as a nurse at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta she wrote in a Facebook post:
Never in a million years did I think that at the age of 24 I would have achieved my biggest and wildest dream – to work at the hospital I was treated at as a child/teenager. It’s amazing and crazy and awesome and I’m SO excited to work with such an inspirational organization!!
What we can learn from Montana is that our big dream isn’t always about us, it can be about helping others and giving back some of the love and care we received when we needed it most.
Isabel Conde
Isabel Conde knows how to make a dream come true. She achieved hers at a young age through the power of determination, showing the world that where there is a will, there is a way.
Isabel’s big dream was to visit Peru and discover its magical mountains and nature. The obstacle? She had no money for the trip. So, the 18-year-old made a vision board of Machu Picchu and Cusco, Peru, and started working. Hard. For 6 months, she worked 3 jobs, sometimes starting work at 3 AM and finishing at 11 PM.
After those 6 months, she had $7,500 for her trip to Peru and $1,000 saved for college expenses for when she’d be back. Her dream was about to become reality.
She didn’t know anyone in Peru and she traveled alone. In the beginning, she had doubts about what she was doing, but as soon she saw the mountains, she knew she achieved something amazing. By making this dream come true she offered herself a unique gift, one that will stay with her for the rest of her life.
There isn’t anything you can’t do if you plan enough. A positive attitude, work ethic, and a plan are the only requirements to make your travel dreams come true. Even if you don’t have the money to travel now, with enough planning and dreaming it’s all possible!
What’s your big dream? Let me know in the comments below.
7 best planners to stay organized
A dream without a plan is just a dream, right? So here’s the list of my 7 top picks of planners to get organized – and achieve your goals!
When I choose a planner I’m always on the lookout for specific features, such as: great monthly, weekly, and daily overviews; space for to-do lists and notes, smooth paper to write on, enough writing space, inspirational quotes or prompts, and most importantly an interesting layout or structure that helps me to stay on track, and achieve big goals!
Based on those criteria I’ve put together a list of what I consider to be the 7 best planners to get organized.
The Erin Condren Life Planner is one of my all-time favorite planners. I included it in last year’s top list, and I’m including it again this year because this planner has every feature you could ever dream of.
First, it’s a full blown planning tool. The Erin Condren Life Planner helps you set goals, get clear on what you want, and take leadership in your life.
What makes the Erin Condren Life Planner so unique is the extensive level to which you can customize it:
You can choose between a colorful or neutral theme. You can pick a cover (floral, artistic, neutral, colorful… you name it, it’s available!), or purchase different beautiful laminated covers so you can interchange them throughout the year for more variation.
You have 3 options for your weekly layouts: vertical, hourly, or horizontal; and you can choose between a 12 or an 18 month option. Every new month has a beautiful internal cover page to collect ideas or notes. It also comes with inspiring quotes and words.
The weekly spread runs across two pages from Monday to Sunday, with a note section on the side and below every day of the week.
The Erin Condren Life Planners comes with a set of stickers to highlight important moments throughout the year: birthdays, vacation time, days off, and so on.
The planner also comes with year-at-a-glance pages. An overview of 12 squares (one for each month of the year) that runs across two pages. This spread is perfect for writing down, and keeping track of your monthly goals.
All of this makes the Erin Condren Life Planner one of my favorite planners. I find it easy to use, very practical, and beautiful and unique at the same time!
#2 Self Journal
What I like about the Self Journal is that it combines day-to-day to-do lists with your actions goals. Another one of it’s great – and unique – features is that this planner is date independent, meaning you can start using it at any time.
Some of the features of the Self Journal that I love include:
Space in the journal pages for daily morning and evening gratitude.
An evening routine that helps you reflect on your daily wins, and lessons learned.
Daily targets to help you focus on the 3 top tasks you want to accomplish that day. I’ve found that focusing on only 3 top things to accomplish everyday works wonders in achieving goals, big and small.
Weekly prompts to reflect and track your progress.
The length of the planner also differs from most other planners: 13 weeks instead of the usual 12 or 18 months. According to the creators of the Self Journal, they’ve chosen this time frame based on the science that 13 weeks – approximately a 3-month timespan – is the ideal time frame for goal setting. This 13-week roadmap is one of the power tools of the Self Journal, and a one-of-a-kind feature that I haven’t seen in other planners!
#3 The Planner
This planner, created by Carrie Green from the Female Entrepreneur Association, is the ultimate business planner to keep you inspired, focused & dreaming big.
The Planner is a limited-edition daily planner that covers an entire year of planning, and goal setting. When you’re flipping through the soft pages of this planner, you can’t help but think it was created by someone who knows A LOT about effective goal setting, and has a great sense of style.
The Planner has a luxurious powder pink & gold foiled cover, gold accented corners, and gold wire binding. The first pages of the planner are for yearly planning, and asking yourself powerful questions about what you want to achieve.
I absolutely love the monthly calendar spread, weekly planner pages and daily pages of this planner. On the daily pages you have space to list your 3 top goals of the day, a schedule from 7am until 10pm, and a section for notes. At the bottom of each page is an inspiration quote.
All of this, together with the free online course and monthly bonuses that come with The Planner, make it one of my top picks of the year!
The Daily Greatness journals, and planners remain some of my favorite planners! To me they are a beautiful mix between goal setting workbooks, to-do lists, and more common daily or monthly planners. The reason I love them so much is because they offer a ton of incredible tools to gain clarity about what you want, work on your goals, and achieve more by tracking your progress!
I particularly love the Business Planner, and the Daily Journal. The Business Planner is everything you need to be launch your business, or elevate your current one to the next level. It’s so good, that I recommend it to almost all of my business coaching clients! The Daily Journal offers the same mix of goal setting, planning, and progress tracking but for your personal life.
Daily Greatness also has a Training Journal, Wellness Journal, Yoga Journal, and Parents Journal. Worth checking out if you’re looking for more structure, and successful action-taking in your life or business.
The Ultimate Life Binder by Michelle from Secret OWL Society is one of the most complete, and versatile life planners available. Michelle is a multi-passionate entrepreneur who first created this binder when she discovered that she had lived the same year twice and that it had been a mediocre one.
The Ultimate Life Binder grew out of her desire to take 100% responsibility for her life and have her dreams, projects, and progress “all in one physical location”.
I’ve had the pleasure to talk to Michelle and she told me that the Ultimate Life Binder helped her to live her life on an upward spiral. She’s now at the 4th revised (extended) version of the binder and has sold more than 2500 copies all over the world.
What I love most about the Ultimate Life Binder is that it’s as if Michelle has thought about everything. And I mean – everything! Having it as a planning tool really makes you take 100% responsibility for your life, the tagline of her planner.
Within the binder you’ll find:
Yearly overviews, goals overviews, monthly overviews, prompts to help you focus on a weekly and daily basis.
Handy daily to-do pages with space to reflect on how you want to feel, what you’ll do to take care of yourself, and what you absolutely need.
Fun lists for books you want to read, things you want to buy, courses you’re taking but also more practical overviews like password sheets to record your online passwords for safekeeping, goal breakdown worksheets, and even budgeting tools.
Social media and blog post scheduling, and even travel planning sheets.
What’s so powerful about the Ultimate Life Binder is that Michelle has created a binder that addresses the important stuff, even when it’s not that sexy, like tracking your financials, or getting clear on the habits you need to build (or change) in order to be successful.
If you’re looking for the more intuitive planner, with different focus than traditional planners, it’s definitely worth checking out!
Rifle Paper Co. offers 12-month hardcover agendas and 17-month planners. I’m including them in this list because I still love myself a traditional agenda (call it melancholy), and because the ones from Rifle Paper Co are the perfect combination of a classic bestseller with the more contemporary take on planners we have today.
My favorite is the hardcover agenda. It’s a book cloth agenda, featuring a gold foil cover, illustrated end pages, and calendar and weekly views. It’s a classic design that never fails. At the beginning of the agenda there’s a section for important dates, organized by month. At the end of it you’ll find a contact listing (so old school, I love it!).
Each separate month comes with its own monthly overview spreading across two pages. This planner has a weekly spread format, so no daily pages here. However each day of the week has enough room for writing down your most important tasks, to-dos, and goals.
This hardcover agenda comes with an inside floral print on front and back cover pages. If you’re a fan of classic, timeless planners like I am, you want to check them out.
#7 Day Designer
The Day Designer is one of my favorite planners because it’s a real work of art. Not only is it a beautiful and intuitive planner, it’s also very spacious! My favorite look is still the classic one. How can you say no to a black, white, and gold combo?!
The Day Designer is a mix of worksheets, prompts, planning tools, and note sections. I love how the first pages of the planner offer different worksheets, each designed to help you find out your strengths, values, personal skills, vision, and passions. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that knowing yourself well helps to achieve your goals!
The Day Designer has a separate page for each day of the week, except for the weekend, where Saturday and Sunday share one page. Weekly schedules start on Monday, and every day has runs from 5am to 9pm. On the daily pages you’ll find prompts for your top 3 to-dos, inspirational quotes, a checklist, a gratitude section, space for dinner planning, and more.
The Day Designer also comes with a monthly calendar, a notes section, and space for projects and deadlines. What I like most about this planner is that it’s a little treasure chest where you can organize all of your ideas, tasks, goals, thoughts, and even memories!
Now it’s your turn. What planner are you currently using? And what do you love about it? Leave me a note in the comments below, because I’d really love to know.
3 tips to get started with almost anything – immediately
Last week on the blog I wrote about 5 ways multi-passionate, creative women such as yourself can declutter their minds for success. While the tips I mention in the post are pragmatic, and actionable, there is one thing that remains absolutely necessary in order to achieving anything – success included, and that’s to get started!
After spending years overcoming the fears that kept me from doing what I wanted to do, and be who I wanted to be, I know how hard it can be to get started. Much harder in fact than many things that come after it.
One of the things I procrastinated the longest on was putting myself out there. Spreading my message. Articulating my ideas. Sharing my beliefs. Now that I’ve sort of come out on the other side of that fear of being visible, it’s easy to forget what it took to get here, or how I felt before. When I think about it hard enough, like now when I’m sharing this personal story with you, I remember the hard work that was involved, the fears I had to overcome, the questions, doubts, and insecurities that I’ve worked through…
But what I remember most, and what stands out as an act of personal bravery in my book, is that I got started. Whatever came after, all the successes (and failures) I’ve had until today, none of that would have happened if I hadn’t taken that first step.
You wouldn’t even be reading these words.
That’s why today I want to share 3 tips with you that I’ve used successfully to get started with almost anything – immediately.
The beauty of these tips – as you’ll see below in just a minute – is that you can practice them anytime, anywhere. And what they’ll teach you is how to put the powerful mantra of “do first, think later” into practice for you. Something that has been instrumental in helping me get started on so many of my projects in the past few years.
#1 Ignore (silence) your inner critic
The whole point of doing first, thinking later is that you don’t think but do. Duh! Now listening to your inner nasty doesn’t count as not thinking. However unconscious or subconscious the listening may be, there’s a mental process going on that is keeping you from taking action.
Working my way through my own procrastination, I’ve found that silencing that inner voice really helps to get me moving. One of the ways that really works for me is to acknowledge her, then challenge her beliefs using questions such as “So what?”, “Who cares?”, and “What’s the worst that can happen?”.
#2 Focus on one small step
Failing to take action often comes from wanting things that seem way too big. You’re in a job you hate, single while you’d love to have a relationship, you don’t make the money necessary to live the lifestyle you desire, you’d love to start a business, be fluent in another language, bake cookies for a living… but when you look at where you are right now, you can’t seem to imagine you’ll ever get where you want to be.
I’m here to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with your dream, and that you can achieve it, I have no doubt. But you need to forget about the dream, already! That’s right, in order to work on your dream you need to forget about it so you can focus on one small, and simple step. Nevermind the flourishing business you want to have, the fluency in which you want to speak a new language, or the tons of delicious cookies you’re eager to delight children with. Instead ask yourself what the first step is that you can take to start your business, learn that language, bake a cookie today.
#3 Let your body lead the way
Finally, and this is the tip that really brings all of the above together, let your body take over. To get started we need to physically move our bodies – always. When we imagine doing something we’re firing neurons through our brain, sending signals to our body that something’s about to happen. The body’s reaction is get into motion.
This is not only true when we want to get a snack out of the kitchen, choose a show to watch on Netflix, or grab our laptop to Google something. This is also true when we tell ourselves we should email that accountant about that business we want to start, or pick up that language book and start with that first lesson, or get our ass into the kitchen so we can bake some cookies! The best way to get started is to let your body lead the way. When you’re feeling the body’s readiness to get into action to go and grab that book, let it lead the way.
Before you know it, you’ll have started working your way towards your dreams.
In the spirit of taking action right now, and letting your body lead the way… in the comments below let me know what your big dream is that you’re finally ready to take action on! And if not yet, what’s stopping you from doing it?
7 best planners to achieve your goals
The new year is just around the corner, the best time to start setting some new goals for yourself. Making the decision to do something might be easy, but sticking to them throughout the year is always the hard part. If you want to get closer to achieving your dreams this year, you need to get organized. And the right planner can make you to do just that.
When I choose a planner I look for a number of specific things, of which the major ones are: clear overviews for months, weeks, to-dos and task lists, great paper quality, enough writing space, interesting prompts, and most important of all systems that help me to create, and achieve really big goals!
Based on those criteria I’ve put together a list of what I consider to be the 7 best planners to achieve your goals in 2017.
The Clever Fox Planner is an agenda, daily planner, gratitude journal and goal-setting tool all rolled into one. That’s why I feel it deserves to be #1 on this list. According to its designers – a team of five passionate online entrepreneurs – this planner is the solution for anyone looking to boost their productivity and hit their goals while also increasing their happiness through self-development.
Vitaly, one of the creators of this unique planner, explains:
We are all about productivity and personal development, so we knew we needed a system to track our goals and to help us increase our performance (and overall quality of life). As true believers that pen and paper works wonders to program our subconscious mind, our quest lead us to paper planners.
Vitaly and his team tried out several productivity planners on the market, and although those were great, they knew something was missing. Either the planners were only for 3 or 6 months (while they wanted a 12 month planner), either the planner lacked some very important features (such as a habit tracker or yearly goal focus section), or they did not have enough space for notes, to-dos or goals. In the end, for lack of finding the planner that would 100% satisfy Vitaly and his team’s needs, they decided to create it for themselves. That’s how The Clever Fox Planner was born.
I love The Clever Fox Planner for many reasons. The most important ones are that you can start with this planner any day of the year thanks to its unmarked calendar, that each weekly overview comes with its own habit tracking section, to-do list, main goal and priorities overview, and room to reflect on your week’s wins and lessons learned.
At the beginning of the planner you’ll find a gratitude and self-awareness section, a page to add your daily rituals and affirmations, a double-sided spread to create a vision board. The planner also included a double spread for your life and business goals followed by an overview page to list your five most important goals of the year, and a mind map section.
I also have great news for bullet journal fans (and note takers like moi). The end of the planner has a large section of dotted pages. Perfect to bullet journal, keep notes, organize your thoughts, track ideas and so much more. A must-have for any planner lover if you ask me!
This structured planner is designed to help you navigate your passions, transform them into reachable goals, and define a roadmap to achieve them.
Founder and designer of the Passion Planner Angelia Trinidad says:
I wanted to help people overcome that feeling by making a tool that sat them down to clearly define their goals and dreams, break them down into more actionable steps, and then write them in a place that they would see and use everyday.
Angelina shares her story about the planner here.
I love the Passion Planner because it really delivers on its promise. It has super simple directions on how to use it and why, a monthly calendar view for each month (which I cannot live without!), and pages for reflections. The reflection section is what makes this planner really unique. And I love that on the right side there’s a blank area for you to get really creative – brain dump, draw, create a mind map, write notes. Anything you need to achieve your goals!
#3 Day Designer
The Day Designer is really a work of art. It’s beautiful, intuitive, and has so much space for everything! I like the classic look of this planner (how can you say no to a black, white, and gold combo?!)
Whitney English created this planner because she saw a void in organizational tools for fellow female entrepreneurs. You can check the Day Designer story here.
The first pages of the Day Designer offer different worksheets, each designed to help you find out your personal skills, values, vision, passions, and strengths. Yes, it’s very important to understand yourself in order to achieve your goals!
The planner gives each day a separate page, except for Saturday and Sunday, which share one page. Each weekday, Monday through Friday, has an hourly schedule from 5am to 9pm (great for early birds!), op 3 to-do prompts, a general to-do list (checklist), an inspiration quote, dinner planning, a spot to record daily gratitude, notes and more.
The Day Designer has a monthly calendar with beautiful tabs and daily pages for your appointments/meetings, a to-do list, and a section to remember your projects and deadlines. This planner is an extremely helpful tool to help organize all of your goals, ideas, tasks, thoughts, and even memories!
I love the Daily Greatness journals, and planners! They’re between Leonie Dawson’s workbooks, and more mainstream daily or monthly planners, and offer a well of incredible tools to gain clarity, work on your goals, and achieve more!
I particularly love the Business Planner, who has literally everything you need to be launch a new business, or elevate an existing one to the next level. It’s so good, that I recommend it to almost all of my business coaching clients!
This year, Daily Greatness came out with a new Yoga Journal, and Parents Journal. Absolutely worth checking out if you’re looking for more structure in your life, business or both.
#5 Inkwell Press LiveWell Planner
The Inkwell Press Livewell Planner is an absolutely delightful planner. My favorite part of this planner is the focus on goal setting and productivity. At the beginning of the planner, there‘s a section for planning your yearly goals. Every month has a mission board for setting new goals in areas such as Personal Goals, House Plans, and Health and Fitness. Each month also comes with note pages, and you can reflect on the past month and plan for the next.
There are also some fun features at the back of the planner: a gift list, travel records, a books and/or movies list, a monthly bill tracker, and a section where you can record important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.).
The Inkwell Livewell Planner is a colorful, playful, and very feminine planner.
#6 Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map Planner
Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map Planner not only helps you plan your to-do list, but also inspires you to feel the way you want to feel. This is soulful planning at its best, and a core piece of setting goals successfully!
The Planner was created by Danielle LaPorte. Here’s what she says about the planner:
I’m going to say something a bit audacious and salesy-sounding. Here goes: The Evergreen Desire Map Day Planner could totally uplift your life. Because being mindful, reflective, honest, optimistic, on time, and at least a bit organized — is a daily deal. The inspired and “together” life you dream of has got to have practical applications. This is it. A Day Planner that incorporates your soul and your to-do list; your core desired feelings and your goals; your gratitude and your plans for change.
The Desire Map Planner leads you to focus on your soul, life, and goals. The planner will help you to keep track of small and large intentions in your personal and professional life, take better care of yourself, focus on your mindset, creative ideas, and feel grateful throughout 2017!
Are you looking for a planner that can do it all?
Erin Condren Life Planner is full of tools you can use to plan your year. This planner is created to help you set goals, figure out what you truly want and take charge of your life.
What makes the Erin Condren Life Planner (even more) awesome is that you can totally customize your planner to make it unique:
You can choose between a neutral or colorful interior. You can pick a cover, or interchange them by purchasing different beautiful laminated ones and change them depending on your mood.
You can decide between different weekly layouts ( vertical / horizontal / hourly) and 12 or 18 month options. Every new month has a beautiful internal cover page with inspiring words.
Once you open the planner, you’ll see the year-at-a-glance pages. There are 12 boxes that are perfect for writing (and keeping track of!) your monthly goals.
An entire week is spread across two pages (from Monday to Sunday) and each day features a lined section. After all of the monthly/weekly spreads in the planner, you will find the notes section.
You will also get two pages with stickers (birthday, vacation, days off, and so on). Another feature is the Perpetual Calendar where you can write down all important dates, and it’s really great because you can take it from planner to planner.
All of this makes the Erin Condren planner very easy to use, super functional, and absolutely beautiful and unique at the same time!
Now do tell me. Do you use a daily or monthly planner? What’s your favorite, and why? In the comments below, share how you plan and organize your days. I’d really love to know.
How to stop making excuses for yourself
I was talking to a friend last week about how hard it is for her to stay on track with her goals. She came to me desperate to find a schedule that would work for her, claiming she never has enough time to work on her goals.
But more than that, during our conversation I noticed how she kept making excuses for everything that she was unhappy about in her life: the way people treated her, the promotion she didn’t get, the neighborhood she was living in, the bills that kept on piling up. Pretty much everything in her life has nothing to do with her – or so she tells herself. What I told her is that it was time for her to stop making excuses for herself, and time for her to start achieving her goals instead.
We all love making excuses for ourselves
My friend is not alone in this. In fact, we all love to make excuses for ourselves. It’s our go-to habit when fear sets in, keeping it at bay comfortably by convincing ourselves that – although it’s not our fault – we simply cannot do, have, or achieve what it is we claim we so dearly want.
The reasons we rely on excuses may vary, but the results always remain the same: we don’t move forward with our lives, we don’t achieve our goals, we keep ourselves small.
Our excuses make it so easy for us to stay in our comfort zones
As I mentioned above, the reasons why we fall back on excuses may look different, but there is one thing almost all of them come down to: fear. When we start digging into the reasons why we love excuses to much, fear is almost always where we end up at:
Fear of failure
Fear of success
Fear of not being good enough
Fear of being made responsible
Fear of the unknown
Fear of making mistakes
Fear of change
Fear of (fill in the blank)
In my own life, I know I’ve kept myself small for so many years because of, well… all of the fears above, and more! I was even afraid to feel fear, and made a point out of avoiding anything that could make me feel uncomfortable. As a result, my comfort zone kept becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
Until one day I realized that anything that remotely affected me with fear – things I had loved doing in the past, like going to amusement parks, or skiing, or even boarding a plane – had unconsciously made it from the fun list to the fear list.
Little by little I had shrunk my comfort zone to the point where it fit into my own pocket. I was devastated.
Our excuses and our fears love to work together
When I realized what I had done, and how much of the goals I wanted to achieve where unattainable for me considering where I was, I started to see a steady pattern between fear and excuses. I came to the conclusion that they love to work together!
Fear will ignite the excuse-o-meter, while our excuses are based on all the false ideas and beliefs we’ve gathered throughout our lives about what it is we can or cannot do. After a while – as I discovered through my own fears – this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: fears lead to excuses, and the more excuses you use the more fearful you become.
Overcoming your fears is the first step to stop making excuses
In order to break the cycle then, you need to work on overcoming your fears. Because the less fearful you are, the less you’ll hide behind excuses. If you don’t, you’ll not only keep yourself from achieving you full potential, and best life, you’ll also have a heap of other issues besides not achieving your goals:
You’ll start believing so many excuses that there won’t be any room left for creativity and risk in your life
You’ll reduce your comfort zone until it fits in your pocket
You’ll become self-centered, and probably very pessimistic
By relying on excuses you’ll reject taking responsibility for your own life, and actions
Eventually you’ll probably regret not having taken more chances in your life
Recognizing you’re making excuses is the first step to overcoming your fears
As with most things we do to ourselves, recognizing that we’re doing them is the first step toward change. With excuses it’s no different. But recognizing you’re making excuses for yourself can be difficult, and something that can meet a lot of resistance. With me, it’s definitely been the case. I kept myself small, and kept telling myself why things couldn’t be different, but I never questioned my beliefs.
My daily inner chatter, when thinking about the big dreams and goals I had for myself, would usually sound something like this:
I don’t have enough time to do it
I’ll be able to do it when…
I can’t do it, people will hate me if I do
I’ll never be able to make a living out of it
It’s not meant for me
Eventually I started noticing my inner talk. Then one night, when I was contemplating the big dreams I had for myself yet again, she said: you’ll never do it anyway. It was a defining moment in my life.
Redefining excuses as opportunities
That night, I made a list of all the things I had dreamed of doing but never actually done. Or started, but never finished. The list went on and on. Then I made a list of all the things I knew my parents dreamed of doing, but also never did. So I made a pact with myself, and decided to become the watch guard of my goals by noticing when I was making excuses, figuring out what my fears were, then redefining my excuses as opportunities instead:
#1 Ask yourself what kind of excuses you’re telling yourself
What am I telling myself so that I don’t have to do this or that?
What kept me from doing this or that?
I know I want to do this or that, so why am I not doing it?
#2 Identify what fears your excuses are expressing
What am I afraid of?
What do I think will happen if I do this or that?
What does fear look like for me?
#3 Redefine your excuses as opportunities
“I don’t have time” becomes “I have as much time as anyone else”
“I can’t do it, people will hate me if I do” becomes “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I’ll be ready when” becomes “I’m ready now” or – my favorite – “I’ll never be ready, so I might as well do it now”
By redefining my excuses into opportunities, and always being on the lookout for the ways my fears love to express themselves to me, I’ve been able to overcome so much, and to make so many seemingly impossible things happen in my life.
That is what I want for you too. Don’t let your excuses stop you from achieving anything in your life.
Want to achieve your goals? Make sure they feed your soul
Every year I do the same thing. Come November, I start thinking about what goals I want to achieve in the following year. And from that moment on until early January, I dream big, and write down everything that my heart desires. And what I’ve learned doing this is that if you want to achieve your goals, you have to make sure they feed your soul.
To stay on track and in action I use a systematic action-setting, and goal-review system that I’ve worked out over the years. As part of that system, by this time of year each year, when we’ve passed the six-month mark into it, I do a thorough mid-year goal review.
And every year, no matter how well I’ve planned in advance, I catch myself doing the same thing again. Because every year, six months into working towards my goals, I always find the odd one or two in the list that don’t work for me. I’m talking about the ones that I haven’t worked on yet, or have been procrastinating on, or have been working on at first, only to find that I’m not able to keep it up.
Before I would really get upset, or feel guilty, or a failure for not addressing these goals properly, or from being so bad at working toward them. But what I’ve learned since my early goal-setting days, is to stop blaming myself and to start by asking one simple question instead: What will achieving this goal really do for me?
And it is powerful, I promise you. By asking yourself this question you’ll start listening to your soul, and learn to connect with your emotions. And when you want to achieve your goals, that’s really what you need to do. Jotting down things on a piece of paper, without wondering how those things make you feel, or why you really want to achieve them, really does not make sense. Yet, we all fall into the trap (sometimes). Even after years of goal-setting, I know I still do!
The question here, of course, is why that is. And the simple answer is, because we go about setting goals the wrong way.
Think of your new years’ resolutions, and what eventually makes it onto paper. It might look something like this:
Lose weight
Quit smoking
Get organized
Travel more
Read more
At first glance, there’s nothing wrong with this list. I’m sure that most of us want at least one or two of the things on it even. Still, there’s an issue. There is no purpose, no emotion, no feeling in a list like that. And without that, achieving goals is that much harder. Because in the end, the only reason why we ever really want to achieve anything, is to feel something, and to feed our soul. And that’s the reason why so many goals fail.
Now, that’s not to say that all goals you procrastinate on are orphan of purpose, absolutely not. There are many different reasons why we don’t achieve our goals, even the ones that really feed our souls. Absolutely. But if that’s not the case, if we don’t feel an emotional connection to what it is we’re trying to achieve, it will be really hard to do so. Or to sustain the effort.
Now that we’ve established that, I’d love for you to look at the example list above again. And ask yourself what you would feel if you where, let’s say, getting organized or reading more.
What would that bring you?
What would that change in your life?
What would the purpose be?
How would that feed your soul?
Getting organized might give you a sense of greater control over your life, or give you a greater sense of freedom. Reading more might be an activity you really enjoy, making your less stressed overall, enjoying things more. Or it might feed your insatiable appetite for knowledge.
The point is… those are your real goals: having a greater sense of freedom, enjoying things more, keeping a sharp and educated mind. And those are the goals that feed your soul.
The goal is almost always just a symptom of the real goal. And that’s were a lot of goals go wrong.
Losing weight is an even easier example. We never want to lose weight just for the sake of seeing the numbers on the scale go down. Ever. What we really want, when we say we need to lose weight – which is, by the way, the real goal we’re setting for ourselves – is always more personal, and more emotional. We want to lose weight because we want to feel sexy again, or because we want to feel wanted, or to feel healthier.
Notice the word feel in the last paragraph. That’s the essential word here. A goal should make us feel something, it should make our lives better, and make us happier. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t feed our soul. And if it doesn’t feed our soul, it’s going to be really hard to achieve. And by the way, why would you even try to begin with, if that were the case?
So if you find it hard to get started with a goal you set for yourself, or if you notice you keep procrastinating on it, I invite you to ask yourself what this goal really means to you, and how it feeds your soul. And if you find that it doesn’t, do like me when I find the odd one out: drop it, and move on.
Beautiful picture by Frederic Frognier – shotbyfred.com
How to get over impatience when setting or achieving goals
I was recently asked what I do to overcome impatience when I’m working on my goals or in the process of achieving them. Because keeping at it for a year – as I do and as I teach, encourage and guide my students to do in my goal-setting program – can certainly leave you feeling impatient at times.
The first thing that I want to address about this question is the concept of impatience. I consider myself to be a rather patient person, and yet, especially when my goals are concerned, that’s not always the side of me that shows up.
And what’s more, I know I am bound to experience impatience at one moment or another this year, and so are you. Just like we’ll all experience uncertainty, fear, insecurity, and perhaps even despair when it comes to achieving our most precious goals.
When you are actively designing your life – which is precisely what you do when you decide to set goals and work towards them – you will need reassurance sometimes that things will work out, and you’ll want things to move faster than they are – I can promise you that much.
Although we’re pretty good at delayed gratification, and although being able to wait for what it is that we want has been one of the key elements for our success as a species, sometimes we simply need to see the rewards of all of our hard work. And to see it now! But isn’t that normal? I mean, when you put a lot of time and effort into something, don’t you want to see results? Of course you do, delayed gratification or not!
So when it happens to you, don’t worry about it or be ashamed of it or to try and dismiss it. On the contrary, when you feel impatient, allow that emotion to exist and flow through you, so that it can pass. And once it does, get back to work.
The second thing I want you to consider is the many sources from which impatience can arise. It might be that the goal you are working towards is necessary for you to get out of a situation that you don’t to be in, like when you start a new business and you’re still working a day job until it’s profitable enough for you to quit.
Or it might be that impatience comes from the people around you, who don’t believe in you. And you want nothing more than to show those people how wrong they are, and how great you’re doing with your goals!
Or it might be that you have doubts and fears, and when results are not what you expect them to be, you start to worry.
In all these cases – and many more, I’m sure – impatience can set in. But when that happens, it’s important to remember the big picture: your end goal.
A great way to do this is to do a review of how far you’ve already come. The reason this helps is because, when we are looking to see results, we’re often so focused on the big stuff that we forget all the little steps we’ve taken already. A big result is often the end product of a long series of very small results. So make a list, recount all the things you’ve already achieved, and all that you’ve done, and remember that list or go back to it when you feel impatience creeping up on you.
Another thing you can do when impatience sets in is do something that you know will show immediate results. Be unreasonable with your goal for once, step away from your plan, and instead of taking another small step, take a bold one this time. This does not mean that you have to quit the day job, but perhaps there’s something that you can do for your goal that you know will have a big impact. Like when you’ve been contemplating to paint that room in your favorite color, but you’re still figuring out what that color is, exactly. Instead of focusing on color, why don’t you clean out the room and get it ready to be painted?
Or maybe there’s something you’ve been scared to do, or been thinking about but feel it’s too soon. Like sharing your big goal with someone, and telling them your vision so that they can dream of it with you. Whatever the case, I invite you to just do it. Calling in results like this will counteract your feelings of impatience – even if it’s not the end point of the goal itself, at least it will be an undeniable milestone that will bring your impatience to rest.
And, finally, it might be that you simply need a break. And maybe you have to do nothing for once, or sit in front of the TV and watch a movie for a while. Sometimes we need fresh air and a change of scenery for impatience to go away. Or we need to get it sidetracked by doing something entirely different. So if you know this is the case with you, take a rest and show yourself some love. After that, you’ll be less impatient and more energized, so that you can get working on your goals again.
But whatever the case, I choose to see impatience as a sign that I’m in action. And when I’m able to remember that, I feel good and proud, even when I have fears or doubts or when I’m not sure about my goals at all anymore.
Because by being in action, I’m the designer of my life, the captain of my ship, and despite impatience, I know I need that to be happy.
Ready to take action too? Why not start with a free 30-minute coaching session? I can’t wait to dream with you!