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I have been asked to do a webinar on effective self-management, which will be happening on November 14th at 1:00 PM EST through www.lorman.com. You may be wondering…who cares if you manage yourself effectively, right? It’s something that nobody really thinks about. You get up in the morning, you do your routine, whatever that is. Maybe you exercise, maybe you have your coffee, maybe you do both of those things. Maybe you run out the door, maybe you read a book, maybe you bring your kids to school and you’re just kind of doing your thing, right? So what you’re probably not thinking about is “wow, if I manage myself a little more effectively, I could get more of what I want.” Because the truth of the matter is most people actually don’t think about what they want, they’re moving through life, doing the best they can, or maybe not even doing the best they can. They’re just doing something. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about what it is and why it matters. And if you want to learn more about this, in much more detail, come along to the webinar.

Before we get started, let’s address decisions. Decisions are a big deal. Lots of times, my clients tell me that they experience ‘analysis paralysis’. Those same people typically pride themselves on being analysts. Isn’t that interesting? Those same people will say “Well, all my analysis has brought me to this success I see right now”. Isn’t that interesting?  I ask, I wonder… at what cost? For example, are you really stressed out? Are you really living the life you want? Are you really managing yourself effectively? Or are you running from thing to thing to thing…trying to keep up with that influx that’s coming at you all the time. Could you manage yourself differently, proactively make decisions more quickly and effectively?

Lots of people don’t want to make decisions unless they are analyzed in duplicate, triplicate, quadruple.  And every decision means you must say no to something else. That can be really scary because most of the time people don’t want to say no to something else. They just want to fit more in. And when they try to fit in more, then they get overwhelmed and overloaded and they think they need better time management, which is true. But you can’t manage clutter, you can’t organize clutter, and you can’t manage something that is too much for you.

So then what?

So then it’s better to subtract. Get really good at managing what you’re doing FIRST, and THEN add more on. Every decision that you make  means you say no to something else, and then every decision you make actually gets you closer to what you want because as you make decisions and you get that momentum, what happens is you’ll actually start to say “no” when it’s not working, because your body and your mind will start getting used to this idea of making decisions and therefore making it better. The webinar is highly correlated to my Productivity Success Cake.  In that webinar we will  nail down what you really want and why and then go through, layer by layer, how to tap into each layer in a way that will then harken back to what it is you said you wanted. Now this process, while you may have gone through it before, is a process that you’re wise to go through over and over again. And the reason that it’s so helpful to go through over and over again is that we get better at managing ourselves. And just like a mountain (if you’ve ever climbed a mountain) you get to that first peak and you think… boy, oh boy, that was big!  You sit down, you have a snack, have some water, rest, and then you look and there’s another peak. Now you can choose to go back down the mountain. You don’t need to do that other peak that time, but you can also choose to say “Hmm, yeah, you know what? I think I’m up for that next peak” and it’s a continual improvement process. Your self management is best served by always going to your next level. Yes, it’s important to stop and celebrate, like the top of the Productivity Success Cake. You want to celebrate, you want to enjoy and digest – and then you’ll come to that moment of “All right, I’m ready for that next level.”

I have several clients, for example, who’ve taken the Productivity Success Cake group coaching course multiple times. And every single time what happens is they get new ideas, they go to their next level, they become even better at whatever it is.  Sometimes they’ve fallen off the wagon and their health layer is a little unstable – so it gives you that opportunity to come back. So, if you feel that before the end of the year, you really want to look at your self management and that you want to give that your attention, then I’d say consider it and take a look at the details and go from there.

And please let me know what piece of self-management you would like to work on before the end of the year – because you still have close to 60 days left.

Comment below and let me know!

Or you can email me at carol@eps-time.com.

“How do I say no without the guilt?” 

We’re going to talk about what it is, why it’s important, what might be behind it, and the actions that you can take to mitigate it and eventually overcome it. 

Watch this week’s video, or read on!

First of all, what it is.  I think you all know this, right? It is when you are finding yourself saying yes to things that you’re like, “Oh, gosh, I really didn’t want to do that”. And then it starts. And why this topic is really important is that the more times we say ‘yes’ to things that don’t line up with our priorities or our heart space, the less room there is for our priorities and our heart space. But what might be behind the dilemma of NO? Many of us have “the desire to help many people.” They are in my community. They might be coaches, they might be healers, they might be medical professionals, they might just be people with big hearts. They might be (this has got negative connotations) “people pleasers”. And the thing is that when we love the feeling of helping others, we need to watch that because that often masks a disregard for ourselves. It’s very tricky because the world thinks, “Oh wow, he’s such a helper/she’s such a helper”. “Oh wow, look at all these things they’re doing for their community”. “Oh, wow, what a giver”. 

It is really great to be a giver. It is really great to help your community. All of those things are wonderful. I’m not saying they’re not, but what I’m saying is that we can give from a cup that is not full. So the trick is to fill our own cup, and that way, we can give from the overflow. These are the things that might be behind the Yes when we mean No.  There’s a couple of other reasons for the dilemma. Perhaps you’re feeling, “I’ve got so many things that I love to do, so many things that I am interested in. I’m multifaceted and, and I’m a beautiful mosaic of lots of different things”. Again, that’s wonderful. But if it’s got you fragmented and scattered, it’s really not so wonderful, is it? 

Step two (for those of you who’ve downloaded ‘Scattered and Stuck to Confident and Focused’) is ‘Discern’. (Step one is ‘Decide’.) Those multiple interests can really be dialed in on through the discern step. So pay attention to those interests when you are discerning. And a hint, I’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks, I do have a course running on the discern step starting November 1st. The last thing that might be behind saying ‘yes’ when you really mean ‘no’ is that it can be a resistance to planning. You know, maybe you’re keeping a lot of options open. Maybe you’re having some FOMO. You don’t ever want to quite commit to anything, or you’re always not really sure. Decision fatigue can lead to procrastination, so these things can build up upon one another. Procrastination is a subject for another time. 

Let’s address the actions to take. 

The first action to take in not knowing how to say no, is to download my New Free Guide. Because the main focus of the free guide Scattered and Stuck to Confident and Focused is to get you lovingly  in a heart space and a soul space that feels good to you, to decide what you’re going to focus on without guilt, without shame.  I’m going to start you right now doing some other things, but if you haven’t downloaded that yet, please do.

The second action to take is to watch for a new lesson series, coming October 19^th. I’m going to be releasing a free video series. I will really dive in deep on topics of being scattered and stuck. So make sure you watch your email for that because that’s coming. 

The third action is to mark your calendar for 24th of October when I will be doing a special workshop. That will have a small fee attached, but that will be when we really roll up our sleeves and dive in together – live. 

So those are the 3 things that are coming up. But what can you do right now? Get your pen and paper out right now and write this down. 

Write this: “What do I love?”

You’re not going to do the whole thing right here, right now, but what you are going to do is write down 10 things that you love, then write down 10 more and then really take the washcloth and squeeze out those 10 more. If you have more, you can keep going, but really dive in and really ask yourself, what do I love and don’t have any guilt or shame, leave the ‘shoulds’ behind. If you don’t love it, don’t put it down. But if you do love it, or maybe if you just strongly like it, put it down. After you’re done with that, then what I want you to do is look at what you’ve got. Say you have 30 things, right? Take the top 20%, which of 30 would be about six things.

So, take the top six things.  The things that really are holding your heart space and your soul space and circle them. Those are the things that you’re giving yourself permission, through me, to focus on. As for the rest, you don’t have to say “no” to them forever; but you can say “No, not yet, not right now”. And this is the way to say no while saying yes because it’s not forever, it’s just for now. So, if you’re reading this on my website, feel free to put a comment below as to what you love. If you’ve watched the video, comment on it.  Feel free to put a comment below – a question that maybe I haven’t addressed. I am very happy to engage in a dialogue around this. And don’t forget, on Oct 24th you can come along to a special workshop, because I won’t be doing Wisdom Warriors in October.  You have a rare opportunity  to ask lots of questions and I will be your coach live for just pennies on the dollar. Pretty great stuff. I will see you then. 

And I’ll also see you in the next video/blog!

Carol here, your Green Goddess.

Today we will address your mission and your purpose, and how does that tie into your productivity?

It’s a great question. I got a response from last week’s video from, I’ll call him a top fan, and he wanted to articulate the lesson from last week in a five-part poster. So I’m going to include that five part poster as part of this article and post. Before I do that, I want to share some thoughts with you around productivity and purpose, getting things done, getting the right things done, because no matter how good you feel you are at this, there’s always a higher place to get to some background.

Watch this week’s video, or read on!

It’s been about three years, almost, (in January) since I created the Productivity Success Cake. So what? Who cares what kind of a cake I made? It has nothing to do with me. Does it? No, it doesn’t. Thank you. The point here is that the Cake itself is a wonderful tool AND what it sits on is critically important. And here’s what I mean, our Cake, our Productivity Success Cake must sit on a firm and solid foundation, which is the DISCERNMENT part of the Success Path that I hope you will be on. Here’s what I mean.  When we discern our deep soul purpose, every part of the Cake is easier to bake. Every part of our life, our work, our home, our productivity, our relationships, our health, everything just becomes that much easier. So do not skip the discernment portion. Do not skip the part about your mission. This fan said voicing our own mission and dreams inspires others to do the same. I would love for you to comment by hitting “reply.”

What is your mission?

What are your dreams?

They’re very important. As I said, in 2020, I created that Productivity Success Cake. And in 2021, after running that group coaching course for a few times, I realized we needed to do something else because the Productivity Success cake misses that piece. The CAKE is the DISCOVER. That’s where you discover those tools- and you discover the ways to be productive. Prior to that, you have to be so clear and that’s DISCERNMENT.

I want to dive deeper into the discernment part right now, because A PITFALL FOR PEOPLE IS that discernment is something that people skip over. That is the biggest mistake that you can do. So, when you don’t truly know what you’re doing, like not just “oh yeah, yeah, I like my job, you know, I like my job. I like the thing I’m doing. It’s, you know, it’s good. I’ll just go right to the productivity.” Don’t make that mistake because you want to be so clear on it. Now maybe you’re just “oh yeah, no, I like, I like it. I’m good”. Maybe that’s you, AND….maybe there’s another you that says “well, you know what, I’m doing this work, I’m doing this job because I knew I was good at it”.

More than one engineer or software developer that I have worked with (it’s not only engineers by the way), but many engineers also that I’ve worked with say “I’m doing this because I was really good at math and science when I was in school” and it’s actually not their passion now. That’s not always true. Sometimes it is their passion and that’s great.  But when it is not their passion, or if you are doing something that, you’re spending a lot of time and it’s just not your passion, pay attention here because  this is a hot tip.

Make sure that you’re doing enough of the other stuff. What other stuff? The stuff that is your passion, so that you can go ahead and make your living. And in fact, feel fulfilled at the same time. That’s a possibility. But let us just say that maybe you don’t even know what that passion is -but you’re feeling unfulfilled, right? What this is, is misalignment because it’s not coming from your heart space and because it’s draining you, what’s happening is you’re not able now to see or feel into what might be in your heart space. And if we’re not able to see or feel into what might be in our heart space, then what happens is we lose ourselves bit by bit.

And then we wonder why we’re unproductive.

We wonder why we procrastinate.

We wonder why we can’t manage our time.

We wonder why we can’t wake up in the morning.

It’s because we don’t have enough of ourselves, and we haven’t allowed ourselves to say “yes” to ourselves.

So, at the end of the day, what it’s all about – it’s saying “yes” to ourselves so that we can then give of the overflow. Sometimes that yes to ourselves means that the work we do fills our cup. That would be true for me. However, it does not have to, please don’t misunderstand me. You’ll probably get along just fine for a while. But think about it in terms of say, you’ve been sitting wrong, or you’ve been standing wrong, or you’ve been at your desk wrong, for a long period of time. Well, there comes a time in our body’s life that it says, you could get away with that, like in your twenties or thirties, but then somewhere along the line, most of the time in your forties, the body’s says, “time out, time out!”

You cannot do this anymore. You’re going to have some back problems – that happened to me by the way. It’s probably happened to you too, or it just might. So in that case, you go to the chiropractor, at least I did. And that was quite helpful. That chiropractor helped me line up my body. And in fact, I still go, I don’t go as much as I used to go, but I need to stay lined up because I want to do the things I want to do. Well, I am the chiropractor. I, Coach Carol, am the chiropractor for your life and business. I want you to have an aligned heart and soul so that every day you spread your sunshine and are able to give your mission.

If that is not possible for you right now, again, do not feel bad, do not feel “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to give up my livelihood”.  No, no. Just make sure that you’re giving yourself enough of that what you need from your heart space.

I will leave you with this – listen to that heart space.  I’ll give you the five steps for the poster.  

1. Follow your dreams.
2. Never give up
3. Release the timeline
4. Know what you want and why, and
5. Make sure that when you want something, it isn’t an “ego” want. It’s a “voice within” want.

Hello everyone! I’m starting something new & I’m really excited.  I’m going to be going live on my Facebook page, my business page. And I’m also going to be on my newsletter.  This will be broadcast on my newsletter every single Sunday, you’re going to get it popping in your inbox at 8:00 AM on Sunday, that’s Eastern time to hopefully give you something to chew on worth chewing for your week.

I decided something. Before, I was really focusing on the productivity end of things. I decided that now since I’ve got my new guide out and it’s really super-duper clear – the five main steps to go from scattered to successful, what I’ll do now is I’m going to come to you through video and through a transcript in my own words. So here we go. I don’t know how this is going to go and I’m going to do this for basically as long as it makes sense. So I hope that you like it. And I also would love some feedback, like if this is working for you better, I want to know if you’d rather just get the blogs on a newsletter a couple of times a month. I want to know!

So today is the 13th of September and I’ve got to say, there is a chill in the air and that’s part of the reason that I’m indoors. I’m wearing my sparkles today. I’m going to be part of a live event where we are getting our sparkle on, so I need to make sure that I respect my body temperature and respect my sparkle and come at you like this. So since it’s where there are these, there’s this feeling from a lot of people. It’s after Labor day here in the United States, kids are definitely back at school, no matter where you are at this point. Even schools that start much later, are typically back at school by now. And with that shift in seasons, I know I’m in New England and I’m definitely seeing a little bit of red in the leaves;  just a tinge.

It really brings us to a place where we can now look forward in a way that makes more sense to take advantage of the season. For the last couple of years I’ve done a workshop called the “100 day Sprint To Success”. And the reason that I have done this is that this time of year there are approximately 100 business days plus or minus, give or take, until the end of the year. And when we can see a goal post- an end point-  it’s easier to become motivated to do something differently. I was watching a TED Talk recently about procrastination and I think I’m going to put that on my Unscatter Me Community. So if you, by the way, if you haven’t joined them and, and joined in the fun there, make sure you do that.

The speaker  in the TED Talk was talking about how, when he was going for his PhD, he had to do a thesis. And when he had to do his thesis, he was given a year and being the master procrastinator that he was, he knew himself. And he said, okay, hang on. I can’t operate the same way that I used to operate. So what I’ll do is I will chunk it up by quarter. And I’ll do a little bit first quarter, a little bit second quarter, a little bit third quarter, a little bit fourth quarter that didn’t work for him. And we’re going to get more into that when I, when I do post that, however, or perhaps in a future article.

Let’s bring this back to the idea of a “seeable goal” as a motivator. How many of you decide to have a party so that your house gets cleaned, right? How many of you say, “I’m deadline driven”? How many of you say, “I don’t exercise on my own, but boy, when I meet somebody at the gym or for a walk or for a run, that’s when I go ahead and do it, or if I have an accountability partner?” It’s that motivation. It’s that end point. It’s not wanting to disappoint people that I want to just pull that energy in and, and the change in seasons and also to astrologically, it really does help the moons and the different things. You don’t have to believe in that if you don’t want to, that’s up to you. However, I believe it to be true. Let’s do this. Put your feet on the floor.  Uncross your legs, put your feet on the floor. Take a deep breath in. Let it out.  One more time. Breathe right in and out – slowly. This calms down your racing brain and allows you to access your intuition…your deep creative soul.

Imagine the 31st of December. Picture how you’re feeling. You’re probably celebrating with friends or family, or maybe you’re just going to bed early, but your mind is on January 1st and you know inwardly or outwardly (or both) that you do want things to be different the next year. Let’s not look forward just yet. As you sit there by the fire, drinking your glass of champagne, etc…, and you’re saying “Oh my goodness, look at what I have accomplished over this last year!” Drill into that thought.

You are in the future (Dec 31) and you’re looking back. You say…”I can’t believe I ….” and then fill in the blanks. There are many ways this could sound.

Here are some examples.

“I can’t believe I finally applied for those jobs. I faced my fear and I applied for those jobs”.

“I am so grateful that I said ‘no’ to business opportunities that really didn’t serve me that otherwise I would’ve said, well, geez, this opportunity looks good. And maybe it’s not my dream client, but boy, it got it, got it, got money in the door.”

“I am so grateful that I finally loved myself enough to really start doing that plant-based diet that I said I wanted to do for years now, I started really small. All I did was just have three avocado toast with sprout sandwiches over the week and that got the ball rolling. And look, now I have meat only once a week. And you know, I have so much more energy than I used to!”

Again, to be clear, I am not suggesting that these be your goals. What I am suggesting is that you think about yourself in the future as if it exists. Right now, you have a beautiful tool as a homosapien, and that is the power of the mind.  The mind and the brain are very, very powerful. We can choose to think and feel into our existence. Quite frankly, anything we want to, and I have loads of examples of this, and I actually am my own example. 

Quick aside on that topic….be on the lookout on October 19th, it’s coming to everybody on my email list. 

When I think about the power of the mind, I think about my story. My life has been really hard and now it’s really amazing. It’s taken some time, it’s taken some big time and here is a quick overview. In 2009 in the great recession, I was laid off. In 2012, I chose to leave my abusive husband and embark on my own and had absolutely no idea how I was going to support myself and my family. I rented this little house that I now own.

I purchased my home one year ago. I’m starting to live into my dream and my vision because I keep moving forward on opening steps towards the Beacon of Light Center, LLC. I never give up on my dreams. I live where I am. I inspire other people to do the same. I want to tell you right now that your dreams are real and that every dream 100% can (and most likely should) get not in a bad “should” way but in an amazing “should” way be manifest. And it will be manifested when you believe, when you’re aligned to your heart, sorry, your heart and your soul and your mind, and your actions are all aligned. And you are so inspired from the inside out, from the voice within – whatever that is for you. 

So I leave you with this: 

follow your dreams, 

never give up, 

release the timeline, 

know what you want and why, and 

make sure that what you want isn’t an “ego-want”, but is it  a “voice within-want.”

What is next??

If you like this, you might also like the video – make sure you tune into my Facebook page Green Goddess of Productivity, which by the way, I’ll be changing that name, but the page won’t change on Wednesdays around 9am.

Sign on to my email list through my website or through my new guide and live your dream with me because I want that for you.

It’s my mission to help every single scattered entrepreneur that wants to be unscattered to read the guide, do the exercises, follow his or her dream and make the world a better place.

It’s that simple.