Author: Carol Williams

You can be flying high one minute, cruising along, minding your own business, and BOOM… something knocks you sideways before you even realize what’s happening.

Suddenly, even the smallest of things can feel huge… every tiny failure can feel catastrophic, like the world is literally ENDING before your eyes. Doom and gloom sets in, leaving you feeling crushed by the weight of everything you can’t control or isn’t going how you want it to and, boy oh boy… once you’re down, you’re DOWN… Flattened. Low as can be.

“Just snap out of it,” they say.

“Other people have it worse.”

Cue eye roll.

I mean, seriously?

When has saying that kind of thing ever actually helped anyone?

(I’ll tell you when: NEVER!)

They may mean well, but these people are basically kicking you when you’re already down and trivializing things that really aren’t that trivial in that moment (not to you, at least)! They are no help to you. So, you try to shrug it off as best you can, only to realize you have no choice now but to put your adulting pants on… because YOU’RE the only one who can pick you back up again.

That can feel like the hardest thing in the WORLD when you’re lower than low. Your energy stores have been zapped. Your appetite has gone a bit cuckoo. You’re tired. So tired you don’t even want to get out of bed, let alone start trying to push the weight of the world off your sore shoulders.

In short, your get up and go has officially got up and GONE.

It has well and truly left the building.

“But isn’t finding motivation the only way to get yourself out of a slump?”

NOPE!

Motivation is great. It’s powerful and it’s awesome and it WORKS, and you’ve got to fuel it with something… and your cup is completely empty right now – that’s why you’re stuck in this rut! So, you’re going to have to rely on something else instead.

Momentum.

“Okay, Carol, that’s great and all, but how exactly am I supposed to do that?” I hear you ask.

You do it by trusting me and following these steps:

1. Choose your direction. The whole point of momentum is to get you somewhere. So, pick what you’re heading towards. The finishing line of a project? A healthier lifestyle? It’s completely up to you. Just pick one!
2. Start small. When you’re feeling low, every step you take can feel ENORMOUS. Daunting. Scary. Impossible. So, instead of setting the bar way too high for yourself (like saying you’ll run a 5K tomorrow when you can barely even get off the couch right now), be realistic and keep it simple. If you want to take up running, start by getting yourself some running sneakers. Then get yourself something comfy to run in. Next, get dressed and go for a gentle jog around the block. It may seem simple and like it’s nothing to shout about but, believe me, it is. Why? Because doing these tiny things is what’s going to get you where you need to be!
3. Let that snowball roll. Once you’ve followed steps one and two, you’ll have already done the hardest part of this process – getting started. Now, all you have to do is let that momentum you just generated carry you forward to the next small milestone, then the next, then the next… and then HURRAH! Before you know it, you’ll have created a snowball of positive energy that’s not only going to get you where you want to go, but also kick your low mood into the trash where it belongs.

Sounds kinda easy, right?

That’s because it is.

You’ve got this, my friend.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Tony Robbins:

“People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

It’s the million-dollar question, how do we create order without a plan? What traits or habits can we develop to be as productive as possible? Can an unorganized person become productive and what are the key factors to being successful in creating order?

When we talk about being productive, we don’t mean being as busy as possible or becoming a workhorse. This is a reason for someone, especially a Creative Entrepreneur, a spiritual person, someone with ad/hd…a rebel…etc….to RUN AND HIDE.

So, what if you turned YOUR idea of “productivity” on its head?

What if Productivity meant YOU GET TO LIVE YOUR LIFE, YOUR WAY?

Great news. In my community, it means precisely that.

Remember, YOU are in the driver’s seat of your life, always. Every in-breath is to some degree, your choice! You have far more choices than you may realize. That said, check ou this list and respond – which of these do you wish to incorporate right away?

• Know your priorities (aka…your Why): it’s absolutely crucial that you take time to understand what YOU WANT and that you stick to it. Knowing your priorities will help you set boundaries. And these boundaries will protect your time, allowing you to keep distance between the people or things that zap your time and your energy and decrease your productivity.

• Focus and limit: Focus your attention on a task or project for a fixed amount of time. Set that timer and love up your task. Do it for the “right” reasons, like…”I am in charge of my time!” and not “I should be really productive right now.”

• Arm yourself with the right tools: having everything you need at hand will increase productivity in ways you couldn’t even imagine possible. Starting a task with everything close by will save time and energy and will create headspace to focus on what you are doing. Look after the minutes and time will look after itself.

• Be organized, just ONE step ahead: Ever tried baking a cake without all the ingredients? Make a checklist each evening of what you need for the day ahead to avoid potential setbacks. Those setbacks will send you off into shiny squirrel land pretty quickly so take 5 and get it together – It can be as easy as a quick sticky note near the coffee pot!

• Be consistent: Consistency is Queen (or king!) so….as UnFun as you might think it to be to “not be in the creative spirit of each moment” – give it a shot. Go easy on yourself. Just start super simple like, Have a Morning Ritual. I guarantee that you have one now, anyhow. (It just might not be workin’ for ya!) Just try out a Ritual, have fun with it, and be okay when you forget or it all goes to pieces sometimes…the next day provides a fresh opportunity.

• Be collaborative, ask for help and outsource what you need: somewhere along the line, we’ve trained ourselves to be self-efficient, to not need help from anyone and asking for help can sometimes be perceived as failure. Time to rip that script up and accept this one: Real Leaders allow help. LOTS of it!

• Don’t make yourself too accessible: in one of my recent blogs, I talked about how it’s okay to say no and how to do it without feeling guilty. Saying no from time to time is perfectly acceptable and is a common trait in highly productive people. Saying no will reinforce your boundaries that you set at the beginning of this article and will also stop you from committing to tasks that take way too long for too little outcome.

OK, your turn. Hit reply and tell me which one is talking to you!

I’ll leave you with this quote from David Allen “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” 

Do you have a trait or traits that aren’t serving you? How can this be remedied? We all have them, there’s no doubt but what can you do to remedy this? Is it a simple fix or is a new habit needed to wipe out the existing trait?

A trait is a characteristic that influences how we think, feel and act. It’s part of who we are. It gives us personality but what should you do when this trait is stopping you from reaching your goals, getting you stuck in other people’s expectations and how do they develop?

Traits can change over time and are influenced by experiences, belief systems and largely depend on what stage of life we are in. How we act are modelled by these 3 things and are often tricky to untangle. The key thing to remember is that when you let go of what you no longer need, you free up space to attract more of what you want.

So how can be easily remedy these traits that are no longer serving us?

• Identify what the trait is that’s not serving you. Are they traits that you get you into trouble? Do they interfere with your productivity? Knowing what we want to change is the first step to eliminating a trait. Once identified, it’s important to assess and evaluate the impact it has. For example, do you find a lot of negativities in your life? Does this leave you feeling upset or depressed? Or perhaps your perfectionism is stopping you from moving forwards with a goal or plan. The best way to identify a trait that no longer serves it by looking at a range of problems or issues that we have faced in our life and looking how it started. Often, we’ll find that there is always one (the same) trait at the center of it.
• Verify the trait with a friend, family, or colleague – our hardest critiques are always ourselves so it’s important to make sure that what you believe is true. If you tend to notice a lot of negativities, you might try asking someone close to you to see how they view you. It’s important to remember that some traits might be serving you, even if you think they aren’t.
• Identify if there is someone feeding this trait – for me, this is one of the most important things to do. Let’s continue with the example of negativity. Have you ever met someone for a coffee and come home feeling deflated because all you’ve done, while sipping your matcha latte, is talk about all the things are going wrong in your lives as opposed to everything you are achieving? Creating distance between you and toxic people will be vital to your success of remedying a trait that no longer serves you.
• Set yourself a goal on how you want to be – think about what you want your new trait to look like? Think about how you will feel when this trait, that no longer serves you, doesn’t have a use in your life?
• Use affirmations or reminders. Write it on a post It note and stick it to your wall, remind yourself each day that this particular trait holds no value and will not contribute to the success of your day.

Remedying a trait, although simple in isolated circumstances may be more difficult in everyday life so it’s important to keep pushing yourself every day to be a better version of yourself. Whatever the reason you are looking to remedy a trait, always remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day and these things take time.

And to finish, I leave you with this quote from Teal Swan as a reminder that you are YOU, you are UNIQUE, and you deserve to be the person you want to be.

“All too often our personality is nothing more than psychological clothing that we wear to hide our true self from the world.”

As humans, we have grown to be very harsh on ourselves caused by high expectations as to what we are meant to be achieving or thriving towards. It’s easy to get “lost” in the crowds, to be a diamond covered in dirt but what if this wasn’t as bad for us as we think? Are the days of “fitting in” over? Well, let’s look at a few strengths of being neurodiverse.

• When identifying as neurodivergent, you think differently to the rest of those around you. Let’s face it, it hasn’t always been easy – to get to where you are today, you’ve had to overcome many obstacles and difficulties and you’ve had to create or find workarounds to situations that don’t come naturally to you. This problem-solving ability is highly sought after in many aspects of everyday life and the race is on to find those with these abilities. So what you consider a FAULT is GOLD to others. 
• You have the power to encourage CHANGE in the environment around you. For so long, we’ve been taught that there is a “way” to do everything. Society expects us to act or behave in a certain way because that’s the norm and it’s what’s expected of us. Being neurodiverse challenges people to rethink how things are done, to take a different perspective and consider that there might be a better way! Last month we spoke about getting caught up in other people’s chains of expectation and how to break free to reach your full potential.
• Some of the greatest innovations have been discovered, designed, or invented by a neurodiverse person. These people push the boundaries of “making the impossible happen” because the impossible presents itself EVERYDAY. Take Alan Turin as an example of greatness in neurodiversity. Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, the list goes on. Times have changed and NOW is the time for neurodiversity to shine bright and show that greatness can be achieved but it requires THINKING DIFFERENTLY, outside of the box, we need to reinvent the wheel…
• Neurodiversity often equals creativity. We know creativity works, we know innovation works and we know that neurodiversity works. With at least 1 in 8 of us being neurodiverse, the diamonds covered in dirt are all around us. You have unique skillsets that are unlikely to be matched in the workplace, in your friendship group and in society itself so use it to its full potential, SHOUT about it from the rooftops, don’t be ashamed.
• You are a teacher in disguise. What if people were watching you because they thought they could learn from you? Companies with heterogenous teams who have neurodiverse team members often outperform those and this is thanks to the range of skillsets and determination that a neurodiverse person brings to any working environment.

The list of reasons why being neurodiverse can benefit you are endless. YOU are changing the world around you one step at a time with what you consider “faults”. There’s a true saying that you always want what you haven’t got but what if you started loving who you are and the gifts that you have?

I’ll leave you with this wonderful quote to keep in mind on the tough days from Carl Jung “The shoe that fits one person, pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases”

Saying NO is often not so easy.  Engrained deep down somewhere is the fear of rejection, the fear of someone else saying no to us. Somehow, with the busy lives we lead, many times we find ourselves saying yes, when really we should be saying no. We overstretch ourselves, tire ourselves, burn ourselves out and this could all be remediated by simply saying no. Discernment is critical. So why do we feel so uncomfortable about saying the two-letter word? Saying “no” may feel “aggressive” but it doesn’t necessarily make you the “bad one”. So how do we say NO and not “feel badly” about it?

• Start by saying it! Many times, we don’t use “no! effectively. We find ourselves “beating around the bush”, providing useless explanations or getting ourselves into a mess when really all we need to say is no. Provide a short explanation if you wish to but keep it brief, stay away from excuses and be assertive and confident in the reasons for which you are saying no.

• Set boundaries and understand your relationships – sometimes we can find it hard to say no because we haven’t taken the time to evaluate our relationships and understand our role within them. All solid relationships are built on trust and can withstand you saying no when saying yes just isn’t the right decision for you.

• Remember, the only person who can take care of you is YOU. Therefore, it’s crucial that we know it’s okay to be selfish. It’s perfectly acceptable to put your needs first. As Warren Buffett once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything!”

• Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should. Yes, you heard correctly. You are extremely talented, and your skillset is wide, your heart is big, and you CAN and WANT to help but this doesn’t mean you should. Take time to evaluate the situation. Do you have time to help? Do you have the headspace to help? If you answer no to any of these questions, you should also be saying no to the person asking.

• Learn to negotiate – If you really want to say yes but are torn because you could really do without having this request on your plate, negotiate. Do you need more time to complete the task? Do you need further assistance from a colleague or a friend? Setting conditions to your answer can help free up time and headspace to complete the request at hand.

• Practicing saying no on smaller things will allow you to say yes on bigger things. Do you spend all your time mopping up small tasks? Are they zapping your time, energy and productivity and stopping you from achieving BIG? If this sounds like you, saying no to smaller requests may free you up the time to focus on what you need to get done. It will also set you on the path to learning to say no and accepting the feelings that come with it.

• Remember, it’s okay to say no and you can’t be everything to everyone. You just can’t and the sooner we accept this, the better.

Ultimately, saying no gives us greater navigation over our own lives. It grants us the opportunity to build a fulfilling, meaningful life on our OWN terms and helps us steer away from living by other people’s expectations. It’s easy to believe that we are protecting others by saying yes when we really want to say no, however, being transparent and honest about what we want is key to building authentic relations.

I’ll leave you with this quote as food for thought “Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough” – Josh Billings.