Category: Boundaries

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Boundaries multitasking Planning Positive Thinking

4 steps to focus after life gets in the way

Weather crisis? Health crisis? Name your crisis.

Today, the topic is how to refocus after a crisis.

Small or large, life will always get in the way of your big plans; it’s just the way it is. 

In the last workshop that I did (Time management for the distracted entrepreneur), we talked about four things that will distract us. Those were: extreme weather, cash crunch, too much to do, but belt tightening, or some combination of these things. 

Recently, I’ve had one of my community members cite that they had major damage to their home (this is the extreme weather which we are all experiencing right now!) As a result, this can  have a lot of impact on our homes. This entrepreneur had to leave their home, which had an impact on their business – and I do not want your business to go down the toilet because of extreme weather! So let’s discuss steps that you can take when not if life gets in the way. 

  1. Completely accept what is happening. Be in agreement with what’s going on. Too often, we’re in disagreement with what is happening. When we ONLY wish it weren’t happening, we’re not in agreement with it.  We’re then unable to take the next step as we’re so busy being in denial. 
  1. Get quiet. Go inward and really ask yourself what you deeply want. This is, of course, after the “fire has been put out” (so to speak, or the flood or whatever is going on!) You need to deal with the crisis as it presents itself, and it doesn’t have to last forever. When you do that, think about three months out, six months out, what do you want your life, your business, your situation to be like? 
  1. Work backwards. Watch out for this pitfall, though: don’t believe that you must have the whole plan mapped out before you start.
  1. Start. Begin with one step. For example, this community member that I was working with was asking “How do I focus 9because of what’s happened)?” I asked “well, what has helped you focus in the past?” This person said “Well, usually sitting down and getting a daily plan together.” I agreed! 

Dear reader, I think you might want to try it, too. Try this! After you do your morning routine (you wake up, stretch, shower, have your coffee, etc), ask yourself:

  • What are my priorities today? 
  • What might get in the way? 
  • What is my one priority out of everything? 
  • And how does that relate to that thing that I said I wanted in three or six months? 

That’s just to get you started. With those four steps, I believe that you can emerge from whatever your crisis is. 

For more information and next best steps:

  • Download the free guide to help you get through all the steps: decide, discern, discover, practice, and celebrate. 
  • Come to my next free gathering on Zoom (the Wisdom Warriors). That’s going to be at 12pm EST on Monday October 2nd.
  • Join my UnscatterMe community on Facebook and we can have conversations about this. 
  • Set up a complimentary phone call with me to find out what your personal challenges are and what roadmap you might be able to go on. 

None of these things will cost you any money. 

You can certainly ask me about how I could help you in a more accelerated way for faster results that are tailored exactly to you. Just hit replay, and I’ll be happy to talk to you about that. In the meantime, please use these free resources to get yourself unstuck from the crises that inevitably will happen because they do. 

Have a great day.

Categories
Balance Boundaries Get Organized More time in my day Organization prioritize Time strategies

What’s your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?

Time Management – Sleep

“What’s your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?”

This question was asked recently in one of my groups. I was looking at the responses, and what I was noticing was there was a very large percentage of answers having to do with time management, focus, consistency, and believing in ourselves.

Some of the responses were….

  • Balancing family time and business time;
  • Just plain old time management;
  • Managing my own time, not enough time in the day, 
  • Getting rest; I never sleep.  

For this article, I am focusing  on time management: sleep because several people brought up SLEEP in their responses. In this series, time management for the distracted entrepreneur, this week we are  in the health layer. Next week I’m going to move up to the environment layer, and today I’m going to stay in the health layer with a focus on sleep.

Many times I hear: “ I want to get more things done in my day.” When I’m coaching people, whether it be in my Discover Your Greatness through the Productivity Success Cake program, or high level one-to-one, what ends up happening is an “unpeeling.”  We peel back the layers of what is going on. So for example if my client wants to get up earlier….we have to start with bedtime.

Get a slice of your Productivity Success Cake here

Now you can see that time management in the day actually begins the night before. Since we are talking about the night before, we want to talk about Sleep. So today, that’s why I want to focus on Sleep. 

I’d like to leave you with a practical tip and a thought provoking question. First, the question.

If I say I’d like to go to bed by 10:30 PM, for example, what’s preventing that? And usually the answer is “things that are important” to you. So maybe you are spending time with loved ones watching TV or maybe you are doing projects late at night because it is light out later. Whatever it is, you value THAT THING in the moment over getting to bed. 

Now for the practical tip.

You can do this with an Android, or with an iPhone. If you take that home button on the right hand side, and you do three clicks, you get a red tone to your screen, and that red tone blocks out the blue light.

The blue light keeps us awake at night. It lights up a certain part of our brain that doesn’t allow us to rest. So if you are  looking to get more sleep, focus on sleep for the next week or two…the SLEEP slice of your cake.

Try it, and, if you’re having trouble with it, you can always send me an email.  You can also join the UnScatterMe Facebook Community and say, Hey, I’m having trouble with the sleep slice. Does anybody want to  join in with me and we can support one another? 

We are all in this together…. baking our cakes! If you are REALLY  interested in getting faster, consistent results, please know that there is an opportunity coming up to go even DEEPER into the cake process so you can truly level your life up beyond what you might have imagined.

So, if you are wondering “how do I really get more support with this?”

Mark your calendars for the 5th of September, because we are going to be doing Time management for the Distracted Entrepreneur in a workshop format from 11:00 to 1:00 Eastern. There is a fee for this meaty opportunity. And half goes to my favorite charity!

I will be putting the link in the comments below and you will  want to sign up for that and you can start now. So start with your sleep. Try out the red light idea, and let me know your results!

If sleep is not your issue, try something else on the health layer of that cake, and see how you do.

Start with a strong foundation of health, so that I can help you with your time management. See you Sept 5!

Book your space on the Time Management Workshop here

Categories
Boundaries Get Organized More time in my day Time strategies

5 steps to make sure your summer is peaceful, productive and profitable

You don’t have to choose between profit and enjoyment

We are right on the cusp of the longest day of the year, and some of the kids are starting to get out of school.  Perhaps if you’ve got kids, you’re feeling it already – that the summer has started for you.  Sometimes, as entrepreneurs, we are stuck in this funky place where we want to really enjoy our summer….yet we feel the “pull” of “omg I can’t leave my company in the dust!”

Summer might look like spending a lot of time on the beach with our kids. It might be with our grandkids. It might be taking an extended trip. Yet, we need to keep the business going. We need to continue on with some basics through our work. It also may be that your work gets busier in the summer. Maybe it’s a really busy time for you and that adds another level of confusion. And then on top of it all, you might consider yourself a distracted entrepreneur or a scattered entrepreneur…which does not help with the “being pulled” feeling.

To get to a place of peace, confidently make those decisions, and ditch regrets…follow these 5 steps.

  1. Plan your time off. If you haven’t already done this, first and foremost, plan your vacations – even if your vacations are just a few long weekends. I’ve got three weeks of vacation set up (I wanted four, I ended up with three. I’m okay with it).
  1. Decide if this is enough. I was going to take the whole of July off, and due to some other circumstances that came in, I decided to go with the first two weeks of July and then one week in August, and I’m okay with it. Would I like to have four weeks? I would. Next year, I’m going to try again. I’m going to try to take the whole of July off. So, even if it’s just a week or a few long weekends, it doesn’t matter. Plan those vacations, and then be okay with it. 
  1. Ask: what are the important milestones in my work/ business this summer? Write down where you wish to be on September 1st and look backward. One way to make it personal is to write a letter to yourself dated Sept 1st. Write how you feel. For example, “wow, you had a great summer. While you took every weekend as a long weekend, you were able to work Monday through Thursday, 8am- 12pm. And you were able to create [these certain milestones for yourself that are important for you and your business].”
  1. Work backward. Create a plan for yourself so that  you’ll be able to achieve those milestones. 
  1. Review and adjust mindfully. This is something that we can often forget – to have a system that reminds us of what we said we wanted. Remember, while we love to be nimble as entrepreneurs, it’s important to be in the decision making piece of changing our minds. 

For example, say your milestone was to work Monday through Thursday, 8am to 12pm, and to do x, y, z – but something came up on a Wednesday that was a once in a lifetime opportunity. As long as you go back to what you said your milestones were, and ask yourself, “will this affect it negatively?” 

If the answer is no, it will not affect my milestones negatively when I adjust accordingly, you then make tweaks. Maybe you work a whole day for a day or two on those times. You make that conscious choice and conscious decision– versus just “kind of forgetting things” and going with the flow. You honor that commitment to yourself. If you do change your mind, you change it purposefully. 

And there you have it! Those are five steps to have the summer of your dreams with productivity, peace and profitability or whatever you decide that you want. 

What is the NEXT step?

Come to my Free Wisdom Warriors tomorrow!

We’re going to talk about how to decide and still keep your options open. So that is something that I find many people have an issue with. They want to make a decision, but they don’t want to lose their options. So it’s all about time management in the summer for the Distracted Entrepreneur. 

 It’s always free at Wisdom Warriors. 

While this is usually a monthly event, I’m skipping over July, so if you don’t come on Monday, then just know that you won’t have another opportunity to go to the Free Wisdom Warriors until August 7th, because I am taking those first two weeks of July off and I’m honoring my commitment to myself – but I’ll miss you!

Join me at 12pm lunchtime Eastern on June 12th.  

  • It’s so simple
  • It’s free
  • There’s no high pressure sales for anything. 
  • It’s all, it’s all information and community and you really get clear and you know what to do next.
  • AND you feel like, “Oh my gosh, I am not alone here”. 

See you on Monday?

Categories
Boundaries Confidence prioritize Time strategies

Know anyone who tells you “life got in the way” of what they wanted?

Have you ever been going along just fine in your business and your life, and then all of a sudden an event occurs- seemingly out of nowhere?

Maybe a loved one had an accident, maybe your spouse lost their job, maybe a snowstorm came in and you lost your electricity, or another natural disaster. 

I call this “life getting in the way.”

On April 28th, life got in the way for me.  On this date, I was informed that my father got into a big accident – a fall. It is now almost a month later, and we are still experiencing issues from this fall, and like many other people my age, I am now faced with adding the needs of my parents to my already very busy life.

Many times, my clients tell me that’s their biggest problem: they were going along fine and then life got in the way. I have three tips to help.

  1. When you believe that things are going a little off the rails (you are going to laugh at this one), double down on your self-care.  There’s a lot of conversation around self-care. Maybe it’s ‘just take a hot bath’ or ‘go to a massage’, or ‘go get acupuncture.’ My version:  do what makes you feel like you. For me, I dance, I get out in nature, and I allow myself the pleasures that make me happy. This weekend I’m planning on going to the ocean and I’m going to lay in the warm sand and I’m going to listen to the surf and I’m going to go out to eat. And it’s going to be amazing. I  ask myself ‘How are you loving yourself right now?’ 

Read on or watch the video.

  1. Clear the deck. I am right now not accepting any new appointments. I’m not making any new plans. I’m not necessarily crowding my schedule. If anything, I’m removing things. I just did a live video over at the UnscatterMe Facebook community that showed that we removed our fence from the backyard about a month ago – and sometimes removing is a great productivity strategy.  It’s a way to see into the woods.  Before there was a fence – and now I can see into the woods. Removing is a beautiful thing, removing things from your calendar. 
  1. Set your expectations with reality. I am a high achiever. I get a lot done, and I get it done in a short amount of time, with work and at home. I was once called Kali, the Goddess who has many different hands, and I am Goddess Kali.  This new situationI find myself in, however, feels like an octopus with lots of different tentacles and a lack of clarity. To that end, I release this expectation to get to the goals that I had planned on before -because I am not Kali. God is Kali right now. I am simply Carol. I am able to do what I can do. To do that, let’s return to the first tip: taking care of herself. I have to love myself. I have to eat good food, drink plenty of water, and once in a while, have a glass of wine. I must stay active, stay out in the sunshine and in nature whenever possible.

Let me know what parts of your life might be getting in your way and what tips inspired you and what your next step is. I’d love to hear it. If I can do it, you can too 🙂

Categories
Balance Boundaries Confidence Growth

How to say NO clearly and comfortably

In our last blog post, we talked about the reasons why you should say NO sometimes and how that little word can help you gain clarity in your own goals.

In this post, we’re going to look at key ways that you can say no and mean no, but do it kindly, too.

1. No excuses.

It’s often the prevarication around the word NO that causes all the problems.  Because we feel uncomfortable in refusing a request, we often feel we need to provide excuses or beat around the bush, rather than plainly saying “no”.  It’s this evasion that provides the window of opportunity for others to mistake our NO for a YES and, before we know, we’ve agreed to the request we were hell-bent on refusing!

Instead, just be straight.  Don’t stall or hesitate.  Your refusal is enough.  You can offer a brief explanation if you wish, but don’t feel duty-bound to.  Be assertive, yet courteous.  A response along the lines of, “I’m sorry, I can’t right now, let me come back to you when and if I can” resets the power dynamic in the conversation, putting you in control.

2. Boundaries are there for a reason.

Your personal boundaries are set by you and give you the best compass of whether you should say yes or no to a request.  How will the other person feel if you say no?  By looking at, and understanding, the dynamics of your relationship with them, you will see that a good relationship can withstand your refusal to one task.  If you feel the relationship will suffer by your refusal, then surely that says more about your relationship than anything else?

3. Put yourself first.

Be firm in your refusal.  Don’t feel compelled to say yes simply because the other person won’t like a refusal.  It’s essential you put your needs first.  If you constantly try and please all of the people all of the time, you’ll simply end up pleasing no one!  In order to be the best version of yourself, you need time and space to grow and this means having the wherewithal to say NO when that request takes you too far off your own track.  Besides, in order to give to others, you need to have something to give, so feel comfortable in saying no.

In summary, remember that YOU come first.  Don’t feel bad about furthering your own success by saying NO to others. 

You’ll often find that a firm, polite NO will increase the other person’s respect for you and allow them to see things from your perspective. 

Go on, give it a try!

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