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