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 You want it all, yet, you are not doing any of it. 

Are you finding yourself *overwhelmed* at times? 

Decision Overwhelm is real. You may WANT change, and, you may be avoiding it. It may all feel like “too much” at times.

In this article, we will get started, and tomorrow – Monday, October 2nd- we’re going to be diving much further into this at Wisdom Warriors and having an open discussion. One thing we will do for MONDAY is to introduce you to a powerful decision making “tool” so you will want to attend. Now, we will address some “background noise” – which is often what we are TELLING OURSELVES. This is powerful stuff!  

Before I go into that topic – what are we telling ourselves- I will share with you a recent DECISION I made.

It would be really easy for me to go into “decision overwhelm” about this.  My young adult son had an accident, and he really needed me. So I decided to reorganize my life and my work and my family (which was a big decision) in order to fly across the country for five days and help him out. It’s important to keep moving in your decisions, and do the thing that feels right to you and your heart, and it is aligned with your values and move the rest of your life around accordingly. 

Now I’ll share a story. Ask yourself, what big “thing” do I want – and what decision will I make?

Recently, I had a powerful conversation with a person who was referred to me for coaching.  This person kept saying over and over again that she’s just “not organized”. She is DEFINING HERSELF as this. This creates an overwhelm, which does not allow small steps. 

To completely change the overwhelm once and for all…. is to do it not all at once, but rather, in steps. MANTRAS can help. Perhaps you have tried that, and it’s not worked for you. I have a tip. Try NOT saying: “my new mantra is I’m organized, so I’m going to just say I’m completely organized and everything’s going to be perfect”. That doesn’t really work, because your brain knows it’s a big fat lie. 

Try saying “I am in the process of becoming better organized.” Your brain then processes this and considers “Well, maybe I could handle that”. So do that. Make a T chart.  On the upper left, write “don’t like” and on the upper right hand corner write “want instead.” This will help you BREAK DOWN what you want so that it is not a Big Hairy Audacious Goal “only.” It will be a list of do-able items.

There is so much power with do-able change.

In summary,

1. Use a mantra that helps trick your brain into thinking bigger…”I’m in the process of….(your desired outcome.)
2. Pick one small step so that it’s not “all or nothing.”
3. Make a chart of what you want – so that you become clear on your Desires by considering what you Don’t want. Use this for number 2
4. Come to Wisdom Warriors on Monday 10/2 so that you receive the bonus tool and make decisions so much easier. 

You are on your way to ending decision overwhelm, once and for all!

And what to do about it…in these challenging times.

Welcome to lesson two out of three of ‘Managing your time as a distracted entrepreneur’. 

The first lesson helps you take your big idea, dream, or goal and utilize the  productivity success cake (a whole e-book!) framework to achieve it. You have seen this lesson.

NOW, the second lesson we’re going to talk about diving deeper into what’s behind the Cake Process. 

• Why is this so important- right NOW??
• What kinds of problems does the cake-process solve -so that you can have the life and business that you actually want to have?.

NEXT, lesson three is the live lesson on Tuesday September 5th 11am to 1pm EST, and you’re going to want to sign up for that. That’s where it all comes together.

For the purposes of this article, we will stick with highlights only. To get the full benefit you will want to download and read the full .pdf. 

So….it really * IS * hard to say no, stay motivated, and get it all done.

I know for me, motivation lately has been really hard. There just have been a lot of things in my life. I’ve got aging parents with major issues. I’ve got teenager issues. Home and car stuff.  And a new relationship. My whole life feels like a fall swirl. The economy’s being weird, and people seem to be kind of funky and non-committal.  It hasn’t been the same in my business as it has been before. That can feel strange and uncomfortable. So if any of this resonates with you, stay with me. We will get through these times together. I have been through a lot of difficult times and I have always emerged stronger and wiser. You will, too. Stay with me.

How about YOU??

Here are some reasons you may find yourself becoming un-grounded and scattered.

• Inflation;
• Housing shortages;
• Prices, escalating prices;
• Job shifts;
• Covid has returned.

When I say job shifts I mean, you go to a restaurant and it’s not open on a Tuesday or a Wednesday because nobody wants to work there anymore. That’s where we are in 2023.  There’s things that are going on in the world. So that’s why I’m offering these lessons right NOW…about 100 days before this year comes to an end.

In fact, there is an anxiety explosion and a fun deficit. And COVID..just when we thought it was done, so it just kind of keeps coming up and slapping us in the face. It’s crazy. 

It’s really causing a new level of anxiety. Our cortisol, that stress, that thing that kicks us into gear, just keeps coming and we are experiencing too much cortisol. With that, our sympathetic nervous system goes into overload. 

When our sympathetic nervous system goes into overload, we start to jump around and we might be jumping around from thing to thing. 

When we’re jumping around from thing to thing, guess what? We get scattered. 

THAT is what the cortisol and the craziness of stuff that’s going on right now externally and internally has to do with you and your time management. 

However…there’s great news. There are things that you can do about it. 

Here are the steps… 1) reassess, 2) prioritize, and 3) consciously decide.

How do I reassess?

Let’s go behind the scenes. Go deep within yourself and ask,

•  “What’s going on in my life and what do I want?”
•  “What do I want in my life to be different?” 

Within that question, the productivity success cake process is invaluable.

The above is a great taste of lesson 2, so…download it now.

Then…come along Tuesday 9/5 to the Live Lesson 3 where we tie it all together.

Now, you can do it on your own, but let’s get real.  People don’t often do the things that they maybe “should.” When you can do it with other people and you can really get clear on your priorities and really get clear on your time management, your cortisol levels are going to go back down. You’re going to be able to think clearly. You’re going to be able to focus, and that scatter is going to be greatly diminished.

So- that’s just a little peek into your second lesson. Comment below and tell me: what’s going on for you and your life that you really want to shift? I want to know.

Just imagine,  at the end of this year, ringing in the new year saying, “I’m so glad that I took that time management workshop! It went so much deeper than I ever imagined.”

Get your seat while you can. I have 3 places left.

How to slow down the continuous demands

Today’s problem: the tyranny of the inbox. 

So many people say their inbox is driving them crazy, how they have too many emails, and that the demands are always coming at them. They are at the mercy of that inbox. 

Well, I have news for you. You may not like this. Ready? It’s probably NOT your inbox. To address JUST the inbox, there’s lots of programs where you can go to inbox zero and you can have this system and that system and have it filtered, etc. Those things are really good to do. However, the problem is much bigger and much deeper. I say this with love: the problem just might be you.

It’s not that you are a bad person. I believe that we are all made in the image of the divine and that we are all amazing.The problem comes in when we sometimes overdo ourselves, get distracted, and we overfill our lives to such a point where we are so overloaded that all we can do is look at our inbox. 

Think about a river, a river that is getting polluted. Sure, you can pick up the trash at the end of the river. That’s like dealing with “inbox zero”. Or you can go to the source and say, what’s happening? That’s what we’re doing today: getting to the SOURCE.

Let’s discuss three ways that you can look differently at your inbox.

1. Dial into the FEELING of the inbox tyranny. If you feel that all you’re doing is reacting and all you’re doing is being in that inbox and dealing with that inbox, that is your sympathetic nervous system going full blast. Great news: you can reverse this.

We have four energy systems in our bodies, and the first energy system and the most powerful one is the sympathetic nervous system. That system is what keeps us safe. It’s why we run out of burning buildings without thinking twice about it. You are living with it and it is creating cloudiness in your executive function brain, so that you feel as though you are under attack. Just the anxiety level of it is big. So know that the sympathetic nervous system is on overload. 

The way to calm it is to breathe and to give yourself grace and to do things that will calm you so that your sympathetic nervous system calms down and that your executive brain actually functions. 

2) When you’re in Overload, you are in firefighting mode (this is related to number one). Firefighting mode feels really good, because who doesn’t love a good firefighter, right? He or she puts out the fires in the building. We love firefighters. However, if we are in firefighting mode all the time, guess what we’re not doing? We’re not doing our big, important work that requires that deep thought. What we get, however, in firefighting, is “wow, thanks very much for responding right away”. And that dopamine comes in, it’s like, woo, I’m a hero, I’m a firefighter and I’m doing it. And that’s addictive. We get this false sense of “I’m getting it all done.”

3) Remember, the inbox is the presenting problem. It seems as though that’s all you’re doing. And guess what? It’s because you are, that’s what you’re doing. You do have the power to decide. You get to decide to do something differently.

You get to decide whatever you want for your life. You get to decide not to “squirrel” in your inbox and go to other people’s problems (AKA Your Inbox) all the time. You get to be the king or queen of your own darn life. DECIDE is a big topic…bigger than this article. Read more on that here:  UnScatter Your Entrepreneurial Life Guide.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e_YV-Jx-eXK9iTwWOxUZjTALryxd4s3W/view?usp=sharing62Y/view?usp=share_link

Download and print that, and read it through. More importantly, do the exercises because it will help you DECIDE. Most of the time when we’re in our inbox, it’s because we haven’t decided to say yes to ourselves and our own priorities. 

And please let me know what you think of the guide! Email me carol@unscatterme.com. 

So, rise above your inbox tyranny and decide. Another way to move out of the chaos, with your friends, is to attend Wisdom Warriors.

In fact, tomorrow (Monday) is our Wisdom Warriors (the free monthly version of the UnscattereMe community on Facebook), where we will be addressing our issues with SQUIRRELING and how to turn that around!

I will teach, live,  how to trust your gut when all you can think about is your failures, to capitalize on that last minute energy even when it’s not the last minute, and to really chase your dreams, not your squirrels. 

Looking ahead, in September, I do have a paid workshop. So come on in while you get in for free! You can ask anything you want and it’s an amazing deal. https://eps-time.com/wisdom-warriors-welcome-new.html

It’s the best “lunchtime” hour of your life….or at least the month!

Want time for FUN without guilt? Read this.

Before I get started on today’s topic, please help me help you with a 3 minute, 2 question survey about managing your time as a distracted entrepreneur HERE please and thank you.

And now, onto our topic:

What is a  deliberate checklist? It’s an effective way for you to take actions now to generate the results you desire quickly…without as much effort. 

Where did this topic come from?

Well, I was speaking to a client this week who said to me,“I would like to be more deliberate. I would like to work when I’m working, and I would like to carve out time to just have fun without the guilt.” This desire is music to my ears. It had me think about last week’s message, which was all about how having fun is not bad for you, so I’m grateful to hear that this has landed on ears that are listening. 

So here it is: your 3 part checklist to act deliberately.  It may not be exactly what you might be thinking!

• Slow down. Now, this is quite counterintuitive. Typically, when we want to do more, we speed up. And while there are absolutely times to speed up, there’s many times where what we need to do is slow down. Speeding up often creates the scatter that we’re trying to resolve. When we slow down we can hear the voice within. That voice within is very wise, and I find the slower I go, the wiser I get. The calmness then creates space for a deliberate action (or many deliberate actions) that matter versus “doing for the sake of doing”. Slowing down creates space for deliberateness from the inside out. 
• Create rituals. One of my clients doesn’t call the cornerstone habits that serve us our “routines”. This client calls them rituals. Rituals sound almost royal. For example, maybe you  have a ritual in the morning where you water my plants, and I take five minutes to meditate. That’s a beautiful ritual. 

Maybe your ritual is that you get up, you have a beautiful glass of water and you stretch. It doesn’t have to take long to have a ritual. Rituals are a really important tenet of the Discover Your Greatness through the Productivity Success Cake system group program. In that program,  I provide proprietary forms that I have people fill in. I call it “book-ending”. I invite you to have the morning be very intentional and deliberate, and in the evening, take a look, “how did I do?” (without blame or shame!) What went well; what didn’t go as well? And what will I do differently? Again, without any blame and without any shame. Your rituals really help with that iterative process.

• *Slowly* add Habits. A common pitfall that I see people make is trying to do too much and trying to do it all at once.  An even worse pitfall is not deciding, (which, by the way, is number one in our Success Path to go from scattered and stuck to focused and confident.) The first part is Decide, then Discern, Discover, Practice, and Celebrate. When the decision isn’t made and the habits are too many, it creates this complete scatter. 

So…decide, then build those habits slowly. For example, once I wanted to add PT exercises to my life, and kept forgetting. Then I added them easily. Here is how. My ritual: I get up right after I have my beverage and stretch.  I stretch anyhow, so, I added my physical therapy exercises on top of the stretch. This is a “habit stacker” tactic. Once that habit gets established and it becomes something you don’t think about any longer, you can then add another habit. Will it take a week? Will it take three weeks? Will it take a month? Will it take five weeks? Will it take six weeks? You be the judge of that. Just don’t try to do everything all at once.

• BONUS: Don’t kill yourself with “well, if I do this and I really want to do that, and maybe I’ll do this and maybe I’ll do that”. Keeping your options open is such a scatterbrained approach because your energy leaks, you forget what you were going to do, you can’t stay still and you can’t just focus in and zero in on just that one thing….

So let’s review actions to take now to generate results fast. 

1. slow down. 

2. create rituals. 

3. build your habits slowly.

Finally…mark your calendar for the 7th of August for our next Wisdom Warriors “How to plan ahead when your mind “squirrels” and still savor in the “now.” As always, it’s 12pm to 1pm eastern and totally free of charge.

Until next week,

Carol

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.