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Following through is an Art, not a Discipline

While you think you might need to work harder,  have some forced discipline by beating yourself up, some magic wand of inspired focus so you can take action and be persistent — these often lead to feeling depleted, burn out with your adrenals tanked & cortisol high & chronically stressed internally and leads to giving up. 

Start believing  you are the person you desire to be NOW, not WHEN

—> the successful 100k entrepreneur

—> the 30lb lighter person,

—> the financial fit person, 

—> the established leader, 

 

🏆 the person that actually follows through on her goals🏆

AND, it doesn’t matter your goal 


Your follow-through is completely different along the journey 


when you are her NOW.


You’ll put to rest of the constant start, stop, start over every single day,  week or year with the same damn goals. 


You’ll gain clarity from your actions, learn from your mistakes, start working on the right problems to solve.


Instead of constant doubting yourself, learning more but still not implementing fully, feeling insecure, confused & overwhelmed in the process so you wind up changing your mind a gazillion times 


afraid to be wrong or not being good enough with a tendency to strive for perfection as a way to fill that never ending sense of inadequacy — 


You’ll be spinning at the door of success and might even be in the Cycle of Resistance.


And, if you are in that stage you’ll feel a lot of anxiety trying to overcome those strong emotions but you’ll be stuck because the resistance will win because your body just is trying to survive.


You’ll work on things that have temporary fixes for your self-esteem issues 


When you give yourself permission to step into her now, not when, you’ll gain solid self-belief, free from the influence of past experiences & you’ll let go of the unquenchable thirst from your ego and void you feel. 


Believing is a decision you make. 


You start there.


Goals are for measurement only. 


Only we’re are taught you have to wait and earn that title before you BE it.  


And, it’s actually the opposite.  You must be that person now, all the way through. 


Because that is how you get there.  


So who are you BEING? What’s fueling you?


If you want to fuel yourself with with determination, courage and resilience instead of indecision, regret and a bunch of “shoulds”


BE her NOW, not withholding that identity until you get there. 


The 100k Successful Business Owner —  who didn’t beat herself up all the way through


The 150 lb Woman — who loves herself when she was 180


The Financial Fit Person — who didn’t make debt or their bank account mean anything about themselves


The Established Leader — who didn’t wait till she felt confident enough to be & do


Don’t wait to give yourself permission for your “earned” identity. 


Give yourself permission today.


Goals are often taught that you must earn it in order to be it. 


When I make $100k, I’ll finally be successful, when I lose 30 lbs, I’ll finally love myself/body.


Stop!


If you want to hit your goals, you have to change the way you think about yourself, now, not when:


When you make decisions from “being that person now” you’ll actually find yourself making different decisions.


You won’t be beating yourself up along the way and constantly proving yourself right.  That’s how our brains work. 


Instead: 

  1. Decide what you want to think about yourself. 
  2. Think on purpose now, not when. 
  3. Make your decisions from your future self.
  4. Find yourself following through, hitting your goal, being and doing because you are her NOW, not when


Let’s let go of all the drama your brain likes to drum up and you not giving yourself permission until you accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish.  The journey getting there is so much different. 

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Embrace Imperfection: The Path to Reducing Anxiety

When you stop perfecting, constantly doubting & changing your mind,

you’ll lower your anxiety.

But how do you do that when you keep finding yourself in doing it?

It’s a decision you make in your mind.

Perfectionism is not a trait that really serves you.

It holds you back, from finishing or accomplishing at least in a timely manner and sometimes ever.

It keeps you spinning.

It confuses you.

It will play tricks in your head to try to make it better.

It just keeps you stuck — unnecessarily.

You can decide there is no such thing as perfect and 80% or even 70% is good enough.

To your brain, it feels like it’s going to die

— literally it would rather keep you in indecision, doubt and confusion than making some decisions and see what happens.

so it keeps you doubting, perfecting

which ironically actually feels more comfortable in your body (even though you might not think anxiety feels great ha, ha)

But it’s actually saving you from feeling:  embarrassment and shame!

There is a fine line between the resistance you feel and perfectionism.

They both feel pressure and heavy but they keep you away from what you desire. 

You won’t recognize the resistance if you are new to this work,

you’ll keep believing your brain when it tells you it’s not good enough, that you’re not good enough — and it’s likely subconsciously hiding under your radar, even if consciously you are telling yourself you are good enough.  

The resistance you feel will pull you away and have you doing something else so be careful. 

You might even think you have a focus & procrastination problem.

When you recognize it, you can change it.

And, you don’t even need to go down a complete rabbit hole of your past — I’m going to save you time right now.

When you tend to be a perfectionist…

  • you might be afraid of what others think, even if you tell yourself that’s not the case.
  • you think you have to have it perfect, it’s the only way.
  • you will convince yourself, it’s not ready, it could be better.
  • you love the outside recognition it gives you when you are finally ready to put it out there, you’ll use it to feel good about yourself.
  • you can’t wait to finish so you can finally feel proud of yourself after it’s completed — one for the books, for the accomplishment even if it took you years (or 10 more hours than it actually should of) — no shame either way ;).

Your brain actually can finish things when you give it a specific time to do it in. 

The result you want.

So next time you find yourself in a pickle of trying to do something perfectly,

and you are procastinating, doubting or just getting anxious when it doesn’t feel perfect

try this:

before you even start, give yourself a specific amount of time to do it in. 

Your brain will figure it out.

If you are good at it (no pun intended) you’ll know exactly how much time you’ll need ahead of time.

You might fail the first few times at the allotted time but I promise you, you’ll get better at estimating without allowing the crazy pressure you put on yourself to perfect it. You brain will now know what to expect from you to.  

It decreases decision fatigue because you decided ahead of time instead of giving yourself 2 weeks for a project when it really required 2-4 hours. 

Stop believing your brain when it tells you it’s not good enough or your not good enough, don’t let it derail you, constrain your focus, decide the time and go all in on creating the result you want in that time frame.  It works. 

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Why it’s Good to Feel Bad Even During Covid-19 Pandemic

Why in the World Would I Want to Feel Bad Feelings?

Especially if they don’t feel good.

I know it seems counterintuitive.  But stay with me here.

As a human being, we have a primitive brain that is constantly wanting to seek pleasure.  When you experience discomfort in your body (negative emotion), your brain actually thinks you are in danger (in primitive times this served us) so its immediate response is to find comfort – pronto!

We spend a LOT of time avoiding, resisting feelings and acting irrationally and we don’t even realize it.  It kinda goes under our radar or it exasperates into something worse.

For example:

  • It’s why we look to eat or seek comfort foods even when we aren’t even hungry.
  • It’s why we might want a glass of wine or an alcoholic beverage on a stressful day.
  • It’s why you might find yourself doing a lot of other things besides the things you said you were going to do today.
  • It’s why we use medicine to calm the discomfort in our bodies when we experience anxiety.
  • It might be why you lash out at your partner or kids.

In 2016, Xanax (used for anxiety) was the 19th most prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 27 million prescriptions. 😱

All these things provide a quick dopamine hit to our brains — but what it really provides is a false pleasure that has net-negative consequences.

They may feel good in the moment but it usually doesn’t serve us long term.

We use all these things to escape our feelings.

These last few weeks, with the Corona Virus pandemic spreading throughout our world; anxiety, stress and uncertainty has increased exponentially.  

So let’s talk about why you would want to feel negative feelings in the first place.

Especially the ones that might feel bad like anxiety, disappointment, sadness, anger, frustration, uncertainty and any other negative emotion that comes up.

Actually, right now during this pandemic, is the perfect time to practice feeling negative emotion because it’s processing emotions that will help you actually help you feel better. 

Not wanting to feel negative emotion is like saying something is wrong with the way you feel.

Your brain wants to fix it immediately.

As crazy as this might sound, negative emotions don’t need to be fixed.

They need to be felt!

Even though we go through life thinking they do and we do everything in our power trying not feel them.

So why would we actually want to feel bad?

Because we are human and it’s part of the human experience.

All of it.  The good and bad.

Somehow, we think we are supposed to be happy ALL-OF-THE time.

And, we go through life thinking that is the goal but we will always be disappointed thinking that.

Here’s how we know:

  • Who wants to feel excited when their vacation or big event gets canceled?
  • Who wants to feel happy when their mom dies?
  • Who wanted to feel glad when they lose their job?
  • Who wants to feel excited when their children’s school is canceled?

I don’t know about you, but I want feel terrible when these things happen.

We are here to live the full human experience.  50% negative / 50% positive.

Our brains do not like uncertainty or feeling any discomfort.

It’s constantly looking to solve for certainty.  It looks to the news, as you scroll through social media, articles seeking for answers to solve for uncertainty.

It’s normal.  It’s what our brains want to do.

A desire to be happy all-the-time has a price – it has negative consequences.  It also cuts us off of living a full human experience.

We were born to live the human experience.  That. is. it.  It’s not all rainbows and daisies.

It has never been this way — have you noticed?  It will never be that way either.  Bad things happen.

Our life is supposed to include both negative and positive emotion.

With the Corona Virus pandemic, our brains seems to be hyper-focused on the doom and gloom and has our brains making things up that aren’t even true.

Have you noticed your brain going from one situation like I’m nervous about people not keeping their distance or still going out – being angry about it, then jumping to job loss, the economy, your friend who is a nurse that might get sick then the next thing you are watching the news and they are polling the numbers on the amount of deaths last night.

Stop.

None of this serves you.  Be informed but don’t overwhelm your brain with the negative.

Don’t start thinking of all the negative things that “might happen” to compound your emotion even worse.  And, if you do — then give equal air time to the positive.

Ask yourself what good is going to come from this.  Believe me there is a LOT of good too.

Here’s some:  the world is connecting in a different way (none of which probably would of been possible 15 years ago), some can work from home, kids are still learning online, having more connection with a loved one that you may have been disconnected with, better parenting skills if you have kids at home.

Listen we can think of the bad but we have to also have to give our brains fair play for the good.

So — I’m not going to leave you flat with all your negative emotion and not know what to do with it — as if there is actually something to do with it.   So…

Next time you experience negative emotion your body.

Just notice it.

Take a seat.

Don’t judge it.

Allow it to just there in your body.

How does it feel?  Describe it.

Does it feel heavy?

Does it feel light?

Where is it in your body?

Is it at the pit of your stomach, in your throat, top of your chest?

Where in your body do you feel it most?

Does it feel hard, soft, fast, slow.

If it were to have a color, what color would it be?  Red, green, black or ??

Breathe it in.

Just feel the emotion.

Just let it be there.

Do not react.

Do not resist.

Do not avoid.

Just let it be there.

Breathe.

Just notice that you feeling the emotion is not really harmful.

It’s just a sensation in your body.

That. is. it.

It’s not going to hurt you to experience this feeling.

You are not going to die to experience the feeling.

It’s just there.

You will realize it’s not that bad.

Your brain will calm down.  Your body will relax.  Breathe.

As you continue to process negative emotion you will actually experience less of it.  

As you get good at practicing negative emotion when they arise, you get used to it and you won’t be on auto-pilot to the fridge for food or want a glass of vino to escape it.

Yes, life will still be 50/50 but you will realize the feeling is not harmful.  You will not die.

You will just experience the emotion.  You are human.

You won’t resist it.  You won’t react to it.   You won’t avoid it.

This takes practice.

You might only be able to sit with it for a minute before deciding you want to escape it with food or something else.

However, long it takes, it takes.

Do not judge yourself or ever beat yourself up over “avoiding” it with something to mask the emotion you are feeling (such as eating something you didn’t want to eat, or anything else you do) — that never serves you.

Come from a place of compassion for yourself.

Sometimes the emotion comes along for ride — but as a passenger, not in the drivers seat of your life.

We may still feel it.  It may feel less intense.  Our brain will learn to be okay with it.

We teach our brains we are resilient human beings.

We can do hard things.

You got this my friends.

I’m a certified life and holistic health coach, if you need help with this or know someone that does, don’t let yourself fall through the cracks, set up a free 20 mini-session so you can get the help you need so you can feel better.  Press the contact button for👆🏻a link to my calendar to set your free-mini session.

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