Author: Carol Williams

Be true to yourself: juggle yet enjoy

After a week off on a beautiful full-on summer vacation, I am ready to talk to you today about why time management in the summer is not bad for you. 

You may be feeling as I feel sometimes – an overwhelm regarding summer. Why is this? Well, summer can produce a lot of new emotions that result in what I’ll call ‘squishy time’.  Time where you want to allow a lot of time to relax, a lot of time to do projects, a lot of time to visit friends, go on vacations and travel quite a bit. As a result, this can create overloading. Squishy time can create overloading. In this case, traditional time blocking is not the answer, however, we believe it is. Since we believe time blocking is the answer, we try to have rigid time blocks. However, they don’t work, as they are undermined by our true desires.

I had a client with these beliefs. The beliefs sounded like this. “I want to do ….” and then they listed off 10 or 20 things.  Iit was not possible for them to do these 10 or 20 things and have the level of relaxation and traveling and all the other stuff that they wanted to do. 

The above does NOT work. Here is what does:

1. Out of the gazillions of things that you want to do, you must remove 80%. Yes, 80%! It’s the 80/20 rule. Remove 80% of what you believe you want to do. You don’t have to erase it, just move it over. Why is that important? Less is more, and if you don’t believe me, just keep on trying to do what you’re doing. The client I’m describing has been continuing to try to do it, and you know what? It’s not working. You MUST get rid of 80% and once you get that done (the 20%), you can go back to that 80%. You have got to get rid of that 80% first, however, for your brain to be able to focus.

2. Leave white space. You may think once you have white space that you can bring some of that 80% back in.  Do not make that mistake. That’s what’s keeping you in overwhelm, and that’s what’s keeping you ill at ease with trying to do all these things. You may be thinking, “All I need is some time blocks” and it’s not true. You have to allow the white space because life will come in. For example, I’m now taking care of my aging parents.  That was not part of my project just a couple of months ago.  People call me regarding help and services and there’s a gazillion and one decisions to make. I need space in my life for that, and if I don’t have space in my life for that, then I get a headache and I get resentful and I certainly am not going to achieve my goals because I’ll just be so busy and exhausted and overwhelmed. 

3. Prioritize. Just keep it simple. Get that 80%, leave the white space and then prioritize the 20%.  What is the one thing you want to achieve today, no matter what? For example, today, I definitely, no matter what, want to be done at three o’clock because last week I was on vacation. This week I’m on partial vacation at three o’clock.  It’s nice out and I’m going to go into the lake, then after that, get ready to go out, which is great. Summer is short in the northeast, and this summer is especially short because we’ve had so much torrential rain, we’ve had flooding,we’ve had extreme weather conditions. So if I get a summer day I’m making that a priority, because tomorrow we’re going to be back to rain again!

In summary, those are three ways to have that time management in summer. Is time blocking important? Absolutely. Know what your appointments are, know what you need to get done.  But time blocking is not the answer – it is only part of the answer. You’ve got to do those three things first, namely…

1. Reduce your overall by 80%
2. Allow white space
3. Prioritize. 

Now you may be saying, “okay, then, how do I now block time?”

I’d be more than happy to speak with you personally on this topic. I want you to have a great rest of your summer so that you can set yourself up for the fall. In the fall, we generally feel like we want you to start getting things done again.

Right now it’s so beautiful you, I’m gonna just relax for a change. How about you?

Balance your time this summer, step by step

Summertime! Shifts. 

There’s gorgeous greenery around me, even though right here in New Hampshire where I live, it’s been pretty rainy lately. We do get beautiful moments of sunshine, which I very much enjoy. So if you are like me, summer brings shifts. Those shifts bring different ways to manage our time, especially as entrepreneurs, and particularly when you are an entrepreneur who considers themselves periodically scattered. It’s easy to get pulled in one direction or another direction. 

Summertime! Push and Pull.

There’s kids, and there’s this idea that you have some fun in your summer, but yet you need a plan for the fall, and you still need to create revenue for yourself during the summer.  Most of us can’t just go two or three months without having money come in so there’s this ‘push and pull’ and worry. And now that Covid is done, (thank goodness, right?) there’s a lot more opportunities and kind of a continued pent-up desire to do these things that in 2020 and in 2021, for the most part, we really just couldn’t do. 

What is behind the feeling of push, pull, lack of “discipline” and feeling of inertia?

All these “pushes and pulls and things you have to do” does get overwhelming, right? On Monday, June 12th, at my complimentary Wisdom Warriors Group Coaching, we had a lot of people to gather around and start to talk about this exact issue.

What we uncovered was that deep down below the ‘push and the pull’ and the stuff that’s happening are three things that were below the surface, not allowing us to stay focused on what we want. They are:

1. The belief that we won’t succeed in anything – in work, or in play.  
2. Difficulty in decision making:  At the core of some of the decisions is the belief that if we make the wrong decision, we won’t succeed. What do we say ‘no’ to? For example, I have a client and one of the very beginning conversations I had with this person was, ‘you’ve got a lot going on here. How about we just take a hard look at what’s going on and just stay with 20% of the most important stuff and take that other 80% and just push it to the side for now’. This person had a really hard time doing that, and as a result is still actually struggling with managing their time, but slowly we’re getting there.  
3. We don’t want to proclaim what is holding us back. That’s big. Now these things do take time, of course, and in one hour we’re not going to figure all of that out – but in that one hour we had on Monday, we really did go deep and figured out what was wrong. 

My own dilemma with decision making and FOMO (number 2 above, with a little mix of 1 and 3)

Here’s a little story about myself and my children. One of them has left home now – he’s on his own, and then the other one is a teenager and he’s doing pretty well, but I do still need to parent him quite a bit.  When my kids were small, and I was a single mom (certainly for a longer time than I was a non-single mom) I really wanted that downtime but yet I never took it from myself. And I said I wanted it, but yet my actions didn’t equal what I said I wanted. 

Unless I got to crisis level, I wouldn’t take my downtime. I’ll tell you the truth, this is still something I’m working on, and I am so much better than I used to be. It’s a work in progress.  I didn’t realize most of the time that I was doing too much. I didn’t realize that, especially in the summertime, I had so much FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I wanted my kids to have all the experiences, to do all the things, and you know what the belief was? 

The admitting, the proclaiming what’s holding me back took me years to figure this one out. I really believed that I would not be a good mother if I worked too much, and if I didn’t allow them every single experience that I thought other people would be giving their children.  I did not think about that consciously; it was very much on a subconscious level – that was a belief. These beliefs are no joke and they are part of the equation. 

This all brings us to….

Five steps to make sure that your summer is not overwhelming.

I bet you never thought I’d get to this part of the article. Here they are!

1. Get clear:

DEEP INQUIRY: What do you want? What is getting in the way?

2. Map it out: 

PUT PEN TO PAPER: Create milestones for each month and times on the calendar to save space for your priorities

3. Stick to your plan 

PREPARE FOR THE INEVITABLE: Be wary of that push and pull…it’s sneaky!

4. Create Accountability

HERE’S YOUR INSURANCE! Buddy up with a friend or group

 5. Celebrate

OFTEN OVERLOOKED: The small wins count! Don’t ignore these!

The first step-  identifying what is what you want and what is getting in the way, was done on Monday at Wisdom Warriors..  However, because we didn’t get to the calendaring, prioritization, creating those milestones, or doing the time management part in time that we had, I am offering a pop-up workshop that you cannot afford to miss. It will be a beefy 2 hrs and packed with gold nuggets to carry you through the summer.

IT’S TOMORROW- Monday June 19th 

12 noon to 2:00 PM Eastern. 

So if you’re in Eastern Time, all you have to do is take an extra hour of your lunchtime, it’ll be well worth it for you. I’ll be sharing with you the ‘Anti-Overwhelm Solution’ as part of the 5 steps above.

What will the Anti-Overwhelm Solution do for me?

You will stop feeling overwhelmed at the idea of work and preparation, fun and the beach, and kids and childcare and that they needed some downtime – but hang on, ‘what about my business? How do I plan for these things? And how do I still feel like I can maintain that free flow?’

I believe in you. I know you can create exactly the life you want. I know that it does take a step by step by step approach and you want it all to be done in 30 minutes or 60 minutes – but the truth is that in two hours, you can really get moving. 

You are maybe also thinking ‘well, heck, I didn’t go to Wisdom Warriors, so I’ve already missed that part’, right? Here’s what I’m going to do for you. I’m going to take the teaching part of that session and I’m going to go ahead and include it in your package so that when you sign up for the workshop on the 19th, you’re also going to get that recording of the teaching, which is 15 minutes, so you are right up to speed with everybody else and so that you hit the ground running.

It’s 12:00 PM Eastern, on Monday 19th.  Rock on and sing with the birds, allow the beauty, have the wind in your hair, have the sun in your face, and enjoy your summer. You deserve it. You can have it all just one step at a time. Remember that I believe in you- and I will see you Monday. 

It’s just about summer, and what I’m hearing from some of my clients is that it’s a little hard to stay focused on their goals (aka what they “said they wanted to do”) because it’s so beautiful out. I really can resonate with that.

I remember, especially at the beginning of my business, 14 years ago, I would find it difficult to really stay focused on my work, and business. I realized that it wasn’t so much for me that it was summer, but that I wasn’t as dedicated to it as I needed to be for it to be successful – and I probably had some limiting beliefs around whether I could be successful or what I should be doing instead.  

To that end, I am going to bring you through a process. You will identify what you said you wanted, (or perhaps you haven’t even said what you wanted, but you’re getting distracted) and maybe the distraction right now is how beautiful it is out.

Read on or watch the video

As I’m recording the video which goes with this blog, there are beautiful flowers behind me and the birds are singing.  It’s a beautiful day out today here in New Hampshire, and that would warrant anybody to want to play hooky, right? When you have your own business, you really can, and so that’s hard sometimes. 

The process starts with the Unscatter Your Life guide, which is available on the front page of my website (download it and go to page four). Page 4 is about how this is all going to come down to your decision and how to stay non-distracted, and is called the Wheel of Entrepreneurial Life. The Wheel is a way for you to decide what area of your life you want to focus on to change – because we can’t change everything all at once. We want to, and we try to, and we fail – so the way to make progress is just to pick one area and pick the area that’s really calling to you the most and decide what you want and how badly you want it and where you are right now. I’m not going to go into all those details because that’s all in the guide.

Guess what! I’m going to add a bonus here. The bonus comes from the workshop I did in early May, which was called ‘Spring Into Your Breakthrough’. Once you decide what it is you want and set your goal, you will take an Extra Powerful step from the spring workshop.  Example…you want to be closer to your children – that’s your goal.  You are in the ‘family’ part of the Entrepreneurial Life Wheel.  Let’s say your children are early-teenagers and they just don’t need you or want you the way they used to (it’s hard, I know as I had two of them. One of them’s gone, and the other one right now is getting to be more of a mid-teenager!). So then you want to ask yourself:

1. ‘What is a challenge for me?’ And you’re going to say something along the lines of, ‘Well, a challenge for me might be my sadness that s/he doesn’t want to play games anymore’. So you write that down. 
2. ‘What else is a challenge for me?’ And you might have another answer such as ‘s/he’s so busy hanging out with her/his friends that there’s hardly any time left for me.’ So you go progressively deeper. 
3. ‘What else is a challenge for me?’ And go a little deeper.  What’s really going on for you? Maybe when you start looking at the inside like that, there are fears there. ‘I fear that s/he might get into drugs and alcohol because I’m not there all the time’. or ‘S/he might start hanging out with the wrong people’. I don’t know. 
4. ‘What is the real challenge?’ This is where I really want you to go very, very deep.  

I did this (asking progressively deeper challenge questions) recently one-on-one with one of my VIP clients, and that client came up with his answers  – to really dial into fear of failure and fear of success.  If your answers are anything that can be connected to fear of failure or failure of success, then you are going deep enough.  In this example, it might be that you fear failure as a mom/dad.  That could be what’s at the root of it. That fear could be saying ‘What will you do with your life?’ Or it could be saying, ‘If you have more time to work / work on your business,  that will mean you need to redefine who your are’. 

Redefinition, even though we say we want it, is really a big deal. It’s no joke to redefine yourself. As long as we’re in the loop of saying ‘I want, I want…’  we get to have that as a crutch. If there’s actually something that we like, we can actually really get it,  our whole bodies are like ‘Whaaat? Alert, alert! I didn’t really want it’.

That reminds me of a little story (I’m going off on a little teeny weeny tangent and then I’ll bring it back)

When I was small, maybe four or five years old,  I wanted an inchworm for Christmas. The inchworm was one of these toys that you rode on, you sat on it and bounced and it moved forward.  That seemed so magical and far away from me. I remember going downstairs on Christmas day and seeing that inchworm in front of the Christmas tree … I couldn’t even speak, I was so dumbfounded that I got the thing I wished for, and my parents were looking at me…they can’t wait. They got the cameras ready and they’re ready to go. I was frozen; paralyzed with fear. I remember saying, “I just wanted to pull it”. And that’s all I could do. I could just pull it because the manifestation of the thing that in my head was unretrievable – I couldn’t manifest it to get it. It had shocked my system. 

It’s quite like that for us. When we say we want something and we’ve been wanting it and wanting it, we get addicted to wanting it. And in fact, if you really dial down and dig deep underneath all of this stuff, you’ll realize that that’s what’s there: the Wanting Addiction. Through the process of asking the Challenge Questions, you are empowered to decide, is this really and truly what you want? And what do you need to overcome? What kind of fears do you need to work through and get over to truly achieve it, or- perhaps the process has allowed you to determine that you don’t want it at all. 

So that’s why I love the guide, because if you download it and you really do it, it can be in and of itself transformational. And then of course there’s an option to talk to me- send me a little message saying ‘Hey, I want to talk to you about this’ – there is a free session waiting for you because it’s important – and especially at the beginning of the summer I want you to be able to enjoy your summer, and I want you to be able to do the transformation your way in a way that is so meaningful for you. 

So download the guide, ask yourself the challenge questions, set up your follow up call and, and tell me – what do you really want? Has it changed since the beginning of the year or maybe since the beginning of the quarter? What area of life does it relate to? 

I can’t wait to see you on the other side.