Career & Business Coaching Blog.
Inspiration and tips for multi-passionate creatives & entrepreneurs.
How to believe your dreams are possible
Have you ever dreamt about something really, really big only to find yourself a few minutes later deciding that you’d never be able to achieve it? If you did, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve been through this with my own dreams, and I’ve helped so many women that experienced the same thing with theirs.
One of the main reasons why we don’t achieve our big dreams, is that we don’t really believe we can achieve them. Of course, the dynamics at play are a bit more complicated than that, but the bottom line remains the same: we don’t pursue what we don’t believe in.
So in order to achieve our dreams, first we need to truly believe they are possible. Here are three tips that I’ve used to believe in my own dreams, and that many clients, and friends have successfully applied to believe in theirs.
How to believe in your dreams?
Don’t censor yourself
When you dream big it’s important not to censor yourself. Don’t think about how you’re going to achieve something when you’re dreaming about it, but instead focus on what it is that you want. Planning can come later, for if you start questioning the plan at this stage, you’ll never get past your own doubts.
Visualize yourself achieving your dreams
The bigger the dream, the harder it is to imagine yourself achieving it. One way to help you believe in your dreams is to short wire your brain into believing you’ve already achieved them. To do this you must visualise yourself already there, and keep the picture of your dreams in your mind as much as possible. I love creating vision boards on Pinterest to help me do this. Every morning I’ll do a quick browse through my boards. It helps me remember what I’m going for, and believing that I can achieve it!
Keep track of small wins
The road to big dreams can be long. Even if you start out believing in your dreams, the longer a dream takes to achieve the bigger the chance you might lose faith along the way. That’s why it’s important to keep track of your small wins. I keep a list close by with all the tiny milestones I’ve achieved for each of my dreams. When I feel doubt creep in I take out my list and I review it. It reminds me of where I started, and how far I’ve come. This helps me to stay motivated, and to keep believing I will eventually get there.
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.
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.
How to figure out what you want (what you really, really want)
Dreaming Bigger starts with figuring out what you really want. How else will you achieve it? Of course, this is much easier said than done. I know, believe me, I’ve been there. With a million ideas swirling in my head, stopped in my tracks not knowing how to start, or what to get started with first.
That’s precisely why it’s so important to know what you really want. For indecision is a dream killer. It will keep the most ambitious, creative change makers on the side lines procrastinating instead of taking powerful action. It will make us believe that we can’t do it, that it’s not meant for us, or that we don’t really want it after all (the worst one of all!).
So to dream bigger you need to gain clarity about what you want. There are many ways to do this, some easy others not so much. Below you’ll find 3 exercises that I have my coaching clients do, and that have proven to be successful time and time again.
How to figure out what you really want?
Write Down Your Ideal Day
Whether you’re looking to achieve big goals in your career, business or personal life write down what your ideal day for each one that is relevant to you. If you want to figure out what career path to follow for instance, think about how you want to feel when going to work, what your environment might look like, what would bring you joy. Don’t be afraid to be specific. The more detailed your ideal day, the more clarity you’ll get about what it is you really want.
Write Down a List of Things You Don’t Want
I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s often easier to identify what we don’t want instead of what we do want. The format doesn’t matter. It can be a bullet list of things, a journal entry, even a Pinterest board of things that you want less of in your life, career, or business. Once you’ve identified what you don’t want, come up with the opposites, the things you want more of. If you wrote down that you want less time commuting back and to work for example, ask yourself how you’d love to spend that extra time. This will guide you to the things that really matter to you.
Connect With Your Feelings
The third, and perhaps most powerful tip, is to connect with your feelings. I believe that deep down we know what we want, even if we’re unaware of it. By connecting with your feelings throughout your day at work or at home you’ll get a sense of the things that light you up, and those that don’t. The more you do this, and the clearer you become about what brings you joy, and happiness, the closer you’ll be to figuring out what you really want.
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.
The greatest love of all to love yourself
I watched the Whitney Houston documentary on Netflix yesterday. I cried. A couple of times. Her story is sad, and tragic. Obviously I shed some tears for that. Witnessing the rise and fall of one of the most beautiful voices of our time will not leave you undisturbed.
But to be honest, mostly, I cried for me.
Over the years I’ve honed the craft to become inconsolably melancholic in a split second, especially when I’m reminded of my life through my senses: the gentle smell of coffee filling the kitchen from my childhood home, a return visit to the neighborhood I grew up in, or in this case songs I used to play over and over on my Walkman as a 15 year old.
It’s hard to imagine, knowing how much I played those songs, that I’d forgotten about the huge Whitney Houston fan I used to be. And maybe less so about the huge mistake perm I convinced my mom I needed to get in order to fit in at school. Biggest lesson of 1990: hair grows very slowly.
It’s incredible what the mind remembers. It never stops to amaze me. Given the right cues drawers of memories open up to us, giving us a chance to poke our noses into the many moments that make up our pasts. The best part is, we never know what we’re going to get. Or when it’s going to happen!
Like yesterday. As I was settling into the documentary a strange feeling of déjà vu came over me.
I couldn’t quite place it at first, but halfway through the thing it hit me: I’d seen this footage before! Not in another documentary or randomly. No, what I realized was that I was recognizing what I was seeing.
I always get a bit weird when that happens. I also like it a lot because it brings me into a somewhat altered state of being. Perhaps it happens to you to sometimes too. You’re looking at, reading, or listening to something then all of a sudden you realize you were a witness to it before. You were present during the actual moment of creation of that thing. In other words: you were there!
Coming to this conclusion always brings me back to the limits of my own existence. Which in and of itself is a spiritual experience. That’s why I like it so much. It reminds me of what’s important.
Through the old footage, the inevitable clip from The Bodyguard – I was 17 when that movie came out and totally smitten with Kevin Costner (sadly the romance ended when he grew gills and decided to go live in the ocean) – and the many, many songs…
I remembered.
Who I used to be. My teenage years. The dreams, and goals of a 15 year old. The heartbreak that followed my first love.
The things I stood for, cared about, and believed in before I convinced myself I wasn’t good enough. That I needed to be someone else. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that the Whitney Houston documentary is called “Can I be me?”. Is there even such a thing as coincidences?
Being taken down memory lane like that has a different effect on me depending on how I stand in my life when it happens.
Often though it will make me wonder: Where have all the years gone? Yesterday was no exception. I asked myself that question. To be honest, I’m not sure. I spent so many of those years trying to please everyone around me, trying to not have the anxious thoughts I had, trying so hard to mold myself into a perfect version of who I thought I needed to be… It’s all a little blurry.
There’s one thing I do know.
When I was 15 I was awake, in love with life.
Then at 35 I woke up again, when I finally remembered that the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself.
3 mindset shifts for greater confidence
I have absolutely awesome clients. Not only do they achieve the most amazing things, they are my greatest teachers, offering me the most valuable lessons. Often those lessons come in the form of questions. Like the one I got from one of my business mentoring clients last week, a creative entrepreneur who will soon blow your socks off with her amazing audiovisual work.
When faced with the prospect of landing a big client, she felt a lack of confidence that made her doubt herself, as well as her capacity to do a good job. So she asked me how we can appear more confident in cases like this, you know when we don’t feel like it. I’m sure we’ve all been there. At least, I know I have. The bigger the opportunity, the smaller we feel.
I believe there are two ways of looking at this question.
The obvious one is to take on an external point of view. What can you physically or verbally do to appear more confident? After a quick search online it’s clear this is the way most people understand, and answer this question. The problem with this is that it doesn’t improve your confidence at all, it only emulates it for a limited amount of time.
I’m not a fan of fixing symptoms. I’m the kind of person that loves to dig a little deeper to fix problems. That’s why I think there’s another, more interesting way to address this question: what mindset shifts can help you be more confident in yourself? Because once you’ll feel more confident you’ll most likely appear more confident as well. So here are three mindset shifts to be more confident in yourself:
#1 People don’t see us the way we see ourselves
The way we think we behave when we lack confidence is not per definition the way others perceive us to be. We might be sweating, or feeling like our knees are made of cotton. Although that might be uncomfortable to a point that we’re unable to ignore it, it doesn’t mean that anyone else is aware of it.
Often (if not always) we feel afraid or insecure but it’s not showing at all. Keeping this in mind helps to relieve some of the stress we can experience when in an interview, a difficult meeting or important sales conversation. So remember that what you’re feeling or experiencing, even if it’s extreme anxiety, will probably not show.
#2 What type of confidence are you modelling?
This is a big one. When I started out with my first company I thought I had to appear as big, and as strong as the big boys in the industry. But of course I wasn’t. As a result I would feel less than when going into sales meetings, fearing that the potential client I was sitting in front of would see right through me.
The thing is though, there’s no rule saying a freelancer starting out, an online entrepreneur, a startup needs to be identical to bigger, well-established companies. In fact it’s quite the opposite. It took me awhile to get it, but once I figured that my differences were my strengths, I never pretended to be bigger than I was anymore, and I gained a lot of confidence from that. In other words: don’t model your confidence off anybody else’s. Instead be authentic, own who you are.
#3 Let go of the outcome
We’ve all heard this one before. Although I’m a firm believer of not clinging to the outcome of anything, in this case my take on it is a bit different. As I mentioned above, I believe our lack of confidence can come from how we think others perceive us, and how we think we should be perceived by others. Getting clear on this can help you to make powerful mindset shifts to become more confident.
There’s a third way we undermine our confidence in ourselves that I think deserves to be mentioned. It’s one that I believe is often overlooked, but that many of us deal with. It has everything to do with how we look at opportunities. In the light of opportunities it’s easy to link lack of confidence with a fear of failure. But what about big opportunities and fear of success? With the fear of success, rather than letting go of the possible big and successful outcome (which I would advice people with a fear of failure to do), my take is to downplay the outcome altogether. Hang on to the outcome if you want to, just make sure you see it for what it really is. What I mean by that is that too often we blow things out of proportion, make them so big that we can’t imagine what would happen if we actually achieved them.
But the truth is no opportunity will open all doors at once, propel you to super-stardom overnight. Big opportunities might be big wins yes, but there’s probably an even bigger road ahead of you before you get to where you think this opportunity will take you. Your life won’t change overnight, so there’s no reason to be afraid it will.
I hope these tips will help you to be more confident about yourself. In the comments below I’d love to know what your tips are, or what you’re struggling with when it comes to being confident. So let me know.
How to overcome the pain of bad decisions
During my monthly session with my spiritual mentor, I shared with her the excitement and fun I’ve been having from working on an upcoming talk I’m preparing for, but also the emotions this work has brought up by forcing me to dig deep into my childhood memories.
As a speaker I know how important it is to connect with your audience through personal stories. So when I first sat down to write the draft of this talk, I ventured into my memory vault in search of fitting memories for the subject I’ll be talking about. It’s incredible what we can remember when we sit down and intentionally try to. Very soon a number of fun and happy memories surfaced, some of which were so perfect for my talk that I immediately decided to include them. But when it comes to the thoughts that pop into our minds, as you’ll probably know, we’re not always in control. So with the fun memories that surfaced, a plethora of not-so-fun memories made their way back into my mind as well.
Painful experiences, moments of despair, accidents. And bad decisions. Aching, heart wrenching, stomach twisting bad decisions.
Before I would have ignored them, buried them back deeper than where I’d found them. But that’s not me anymore. I love myself to much to do that now. I’m too curious about who I am, and too eager to learn more. So, instead of pretending I wasn’t feeling anything, I decided to open myself up to what those bad decisions desperately seemed to be want to tell me…
The first thing I came across was regret. A universal feeling when it comes to bad decisions: the regret of a missed opportunity, of a chance we didn’t take. Or worse of a chance at something great that we turned into a failure, something that we’re ashamed of even to think about.
So with regret for bad decisions often comes shame. Because a bad decision reminds us that we’re not perfect, that we’re flawed. Most of us don’t like this part of who we are. And would can blame us? Everywhere we’re bombarded with messages about our flaws, and how to fix them. No wonder we feel shame. Or a heap of other negative emotions.
Which brings me to guilt. Another emotion that quickly made it’s way into my heart when I remembered the bad decisions from my past. I felt guilty for the people that I hurt in my life, but also for allowing others to hurt me. Like when I stayed in toxic relationships for too long, knowing they weren’t good for me, but unable to make myself stand up and leave. There’s no such thing as not making a choice. Doing nothing is always doing something. So in my book that counts as a bad decision too.
Once I’d gone through this whirlwind of emotions, and thanks to the beautiful conversation I had with my mentor, I started to look at those bad decisions in a different light.
Bad decisions are part of life. Just like we’re not perfect, our decisions can’t be of service to us all the time. We’re bound to make mistakes, and in fact it’s what makes life so worth living. But what interested me most was to find ways to make the pain go away. I wanted to get rid of the heavy weight that I felt pressing on my heart.
First I met the obvious: you can’t change the past, so why feel bad about it. An absolute truth, if truth there ever was. But in my opinion useless knowledge when you’re trying to relief your heart from sorrows from the past.
So what if I cannot change what happened? That doesn’t change how I feel about it now.
I believe that only transformation can do that.
In order to change an emotion, or to accept the parts of ourselves that challenge us, a transformation needs to take place. We cannot simply convince ourselves that there is nothing more we can do so that we might as well forget about it.
I used to be really good at doing that. But last week those memories resurfaced. I guess I wasn’t all that good at it after all.
So how do we overcome the pain of bad decisions?
First we forgive ourselves. We face the guilt, the shame, the regret and we accept what we’ve done. This is a true act of self-love in which we’re not only accepting that part of us that is “flawed” but also accepting ourselves for all that we are. We do that by saying to ourselves: “Yes this is me. I’ve done that. But I love myself just the same. And I forgive myself.”
Then we allow ourselves to expand. A turning point in my life has been when I decided I wasn’t going to ignore the hurtful parts of me anymore, but that instead I was going to incorporate them into who I was. Which is precisely what I’m talking about today. Growing means expanding. It’s not just about nurturing the good parts of you, it’s also about allowing you to experience the human condition in all of its aspects, including it’s more painful parts. We do that by saying: “Yes this is me. I’ve done that. But that’s how I grow. And expand as a person.”
And finally we make up for it. Once we’ve forgiven ourselves, and expanded by integrating our bad decisions into who we are, we can finally give back. We’ve learned something, Been through something. Felt something. We looked deep into the eyes of our human condition. We can help others because we understand. We’ve felt their pain, we know their shame. What a gift this is.
That’s all I wanted to share today. If you have a heavy heart right now, or know someone who does, I hope this post will help you move through it. And in the comments below, feel free to leave me a note, and let me know how you’re doing. I’d love that.
5 mindset shifts to help you stop being a good girl (and harness your inner badass instead)
Over the past few months, as my coaching business has really started to take off, I’ve found myself coaching and mentoring more and more women to help them go for what they want in life, and grow their businesses. While I’ve witnessed the incredible results these amazing women have created for themselves I’ve also taken note of what I believe is a deeply ingrained pattern common to almost all women: our need to be good girls. Something I believe is holding many women back from going after their most cherished dreams, and creating amazing lives for themselves.
I know this pattern very well because for the biggest part of my life I was a good girl too.
When being a good girl sucks
Whatever the situation, I would always be more concerned about the well-being of others than my own, worrying about what other people thought of me but certainly not about what I really thought of them! I would feeling inadequate, never good enough, and I would put myself under exhausting levels of stress by setting unattainable standards of perfection for myself.
As a result…
I lived a big part of my life for others and not me,
I struggled with severe anxiety, worry, and fear,
I missed out on a lot of things I wanted to do,
I attracted the wrong people into my life,
I didn’t love myself.
Good girls are bad for business
But those are only a few of the many issues I experienced from trying to be a good girl all the time. Because to be a good girl you’re forced to suppress your authentic self, and your desires there are many more downsides to it. Like losing sight of who you really are, of not having any boundaries. And that’s without counting all the struggles I had in my career, and my businesses. And that perhaps you’re experiencing too. Like:
Earning way less than my equal male counterparts because I simply didn’t ask for more,
Letting interesting contracts slip my fingers because I didn’t want to look greedy,
Unhappy clients because I failed to set clear boundaries,
Hiring mediocre team members because I believed I didn’t deserve better,
More than 15 years building a career, and businesses I didn’t really like.
Whether you’re struggling with being a good girl in your private or professional life doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day trying to please everyone never works, and it will end up making you feel miserable.
There’s an inner badass in all of us
It’s hard to chase your dreams, and go after what you want when you’re always putting other people first. It’s even harder to build a career, or a business. Believe me – on all accounts, I know. I’ve been there. Being a good girl keeps you from having what you want. That’s why it’s time for a mindset shift so that you can harness your inner super woman instead. She’s the one you want making decisions in your life, because she’s the one who has your back, isn’t afraid to speak up, and knows what you truly want.
So in what follows, I list the five main mindset shifts I made to go from always trying to be a good girl to become the much more at peace, self-loving, and self-confident woman I am today.
With those mindset shifts I became much happier, and fulfilled. Absolutely. But they were also instrumental for my career, and business success. Through them:
I fell in love with myself, and my message,
I created new, heart-centered, and profitable businesses that work for me,
I attracted the right people in my life,
I set strong and clear boundaries both in my private life, and in my business,
and I became very clear about who I am, what my desires are, and what I stand for.
Mindset shift #1:
Turning not feeling good enough into I am more than enough – and stop the hopeless strive for perfection
When you’re a good girl, it’s easy to feel like you’re not good enough. In fact, that’s precisely what being a good girl does for you. You have your own dreams, and desires but the world keeps telling you to be a totally different human being, with wants and needs that are not your own.
The truth is, we all think we’re not good enough sometimes. It’s one of the most basic fears we all share – women especially. A mindfulness teacher once told me that I am not my thoughts. An absolutely liberating concept for me, that’s been helping me to put things into perspective ever since.
So first recognize that what you think does not define you, a.k.a. that you are not your thoughts! Accept that you have desires of your own, and that you are worth pursuing them. Then try to shift your focus outward instead of keeping it on you. Whatever it is your undertaking, think of what good it will bring into the world, the people you’re helping with it, the difference you will make instead of thinking you might not be up for the job. What you’re creating is the proof that you’re more than enough just as you are. And finally, choose progress over perfection. If you wait for that absolutely perfect moment where you’ll feel totally ready before doing anything, you’ll end up waiting for it your entire life. That moment will never come, simply because perfection does not exist. We all know this, yet we have such a hard time acting on it. But once you do you’ll have a much easier time believing you’re more than good enough, which in turn will help you overcome your need to be perfect all the time.
Mindset shift #2:
Moving from yes into no – and finally have a clue about healthy boundaries
When you’re a good girl, it’s hard to know where you start, and where you end. For a long time I didn’t have a clear set of boundaries. Not in my private life, and not in my businesses. The result of that was that I often pushed myself outside the limits of what felt comfortable for me in my relationship with others, and that I accepted way more than I should have. In my personal life this caused a lot of heartache, in my business it was exhausting, especially with demanding clients.
Once I embraced saying no rather than saying yes, really became clear on the things I would not accept, my life became so much easier, and my businesses really took off.
Mindset shift #3:
Ditching your fear of conflict for a passion for collaboration – and finally stop being afraid to upset anyone
When you’re a good girl, conflict is the last thing that you want. Because if anyone is mad at you, that means you’re not being as good as you’re supposed to be. So you try your hardest to avoid upsetting anyone, even when it goes against your own best interest. But because of this you’re not living up to your own dreams, and certainly not getting what you want.
The point is that all relationships you’ll have with other people will at some point include conflict. We’re all different, and come with our own set of beliefs, values, things we want to achieve. So when you’re looking after yourself, upsetting someone else is bound to happen at one point or another. The trick is not to avoid conflict (like I tried to do for so long), but to embrace it, then transform it. To do that you need to show up as your authentic self. Because when you come from an honest, authentic place, meeting the other person in the middle, there’s a much better chance you’ll both get out of it without being upset.
Of course this is not something you’ll learn to do overnight. But the more you practice standing up for yourself, and expressing your needs, the more it will start to feel a natural part of you, and the less guilt or shame you’ll feel when stepping out of the good girl persona.
Mindset shift #4:
Transform putting everyone else first into becoming your own champion – and never putting yourself last again
When you’re a good girl, it’s easy to forget your own needs in favor of the needs of everyone else on the planet. No wonder, since that’s exactly what being a good girl is. The problem is that by always putting yourself last, it becomes much harder to achieve anything. Because there simply isn’t any time, or energy left to do so.
Rita Pierson gave a beautiful talk about why every kid needs a champion. I totally agree with her. But I also believe that every good girl needs to be her own champion as well. Good girl Uni teaches women to care for others, but not for ourselves. It tells them to root for the success of everyone, except their own. Or worse, to find satisfaction in the success of others, but not their own. The only way for good girls to abandon that mindset is to start championing themselves.
Learning to give yourself the attention, the care, and the love that you so freely give others is essential to harness your inner super woman. Again, she’s the one who’ll help you reach your goals, and achieve the success you want. Not the good girl.
Mindset shift #5:
Going from never expressing what you think to saying what you really want – and finally knowing what that is
When you’re a good girl, you learn early on that saying what you think is a big no-no. You’re thought that there’s things to say, and things not to say. That accommodating others is more important than expressing what you really mean, because you don’t want to offend anyone right?
So the final mindset shift I want to address might well be the most important one: saying what you really want. Even if you set healthy boundaries for yourself, learn to say no, believe deeply that you’re good enough… if you’re unable to express what you really want you won’t actually get it. I know that saying what you stand for, expressing your thoughts can be really scary, especially if you’re used to being a good girl. It took me a long time to get there, and I still struggle with it sometimes. But I’ve come to believe there’s not really any other way to be, if you want to harness your inner super woman. It takes practice, and a bit of courage too. But the more you do it the better it will feel, and the more rewarding it will be.
That’s it for this one. Now it’s your turn. In the comments below let me what mindset shifts have made a difference in your life, and career or business. What big a-has do you live by? I’d really love to know.