How to keep yourself motivated during uncertain times

Your Dream Business

English - April 06, 2020 00:15 - 30 minutes - 55.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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Previous Episode: How to optimise your website, blog and podcast for SEO with Sarah & Hannah

Next Episode: How to Manage During this Crisis with Mary Hyatt

This week we’re going to be talking about how we can motivate ourselves during these times to make sure we are still being as productive as we can. We are going to be focusing on personal development, and I am going to put together all the things I have learnt from various books (because I read A LOT!) and put them all together to give you all some tips on how you can manage your time better, and stay motivated!

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTWrite your goals down for this quarter – Be realistic considering the situation we are in, but do push yourself. Aim for 3-5 goals.Don’t use this situation as an excuse!We need to work smarter and harder during this time.What will you do each month for the next 3 months to help you achieve those goals? Be specific!Join my academy – Members are all benefitting right now from weekly coaching calls and the support we all give each other.Get out of bed – Set a time for every day.Get yourself ready every day as if you are going into the office or out to work.Have a structured morning routine that you stick to every day.Plan your day – What are you going to do? What 3 main things do you want to achieve in that day?Start on the hardest thing first – Once you’ve done it, it’s done!If you are not accountable, it is so hard to motivate yourself. Decide who is going to hold you accountable (Friend, Colleague, The Academy etc..)Think about who are you doing this for? When you lose motivation, think of them!Journaling can help get everything out of our head so you can get on with what you need to do.Imagine exactly what your day is going to look like before it has started.Time yourself – Set a timer for each task.Watch, listen or read something that motivates you.If something resonates with you, print it out or put it as your screensaver!Give yourself a reward. Have something to look forward to when you have finished your tasks! (A bath, a nice dinner, a film etc..)
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…This is not going to go on forever. We have two choices, to either fall into it or try and make the best of a bad situation! Let’s use this time to the absolute fullest!HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSSetting your goals – 04:01The Academy – 09:25Practical things you can do every day – 11:24Journaling – 20:01Meditation – 22:45Time yourself – 24:21Watch, Listen or Read – 25:11Have a reward – 26:46
Transcript below

Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How have you been? How's your past week been? And you know what, I'm always interested but I am really genuinely interested to see how you're getting on because I'm actually recording this a week before it's coming out to you guys. So today is Monday the 30th of March and this is due out next Monday. And honestly everybody I've spoken to today is really struggling and they're finding it really difficult to get the motivation to do the work, which is really I guess really is an unsurprising in one way. Obviously if you're listening to this out of time, we are right in the midst of a lockdown so we'd been told you've got to stay in our houses because obviously the coronaviruses is around and we having to be in our houses all the time, which actually for me is not that different because I work from home.

I spend a huge amount of my time here and I guess I thought it would feel no different at all, but I guess the problem is one, my daughter's not with me currently, she's at her dad's. We're going to do every two weeks to make sure that if there are any symptoms that we can see them before we hand her back over two, I like to go out on a weekend and in fact on a weekend we don't cook. We pretty much eat out most meals. We, sometimes do a Sunday roast sort of dinner on the Sunday, but most often we are out and we really enjoy going to restaurants and eating out and doing nice things. So I've definitely missed that this last weekend. And I do think that sometimes when you do nothing you feel even worse for it. So if you're busy doing stuff and you're going in and out and you've got things to do, then it can make you feel better.

But what's really odd is, like I said, everybody today is feeling like I am done in and I am seriously lacking motivation. So this obviously is the same for me. I feel the same as you guys. Like I said, I am really missing having that time out of the house even though I don't have a lot of it out so today I decided after kicking myself firmly up the backside to get my own work done and to get my own motivation back. I decided that I'm going to do an episode on exactly that, on how you can motivate yourself to make sure that during these times we are still being as productive as we can. Now I know I talked about things that you could do in a few episodes ago when uh, it was a bit of a special episode cause that came out on a Thursday, but basically I wanted to specifically talk about the motivation side of it rather than you can look at your website, you can create a lead magnet, that sort of thing.

I definitely want to look at maybe more the personal development side that goes into it because you know what, I read and consume books on audible like you wouldn't believe and I have read a lot of books. I've listened to a lot of books. I consume a lot of content about the stuff because I want to be as good as I can possibly be in terms of managing my own time and getting work done. And therefore I thought I'm going to take some of those key learnings that I've learned and I'm literally going to throw them all together in a big jumbled up podcast episodes. I apologise if that's how it comes across, but I'm just going to go through all the things that have helped me and continue to help me to this day to stay motivated. Cause right now I feel like we need it.

Setting your goals

So I really hope that that works for you guys today cause that's what we're talking about. Okay. So the other reason it's really good to talk about this now is because we've just started the beginning of April and the beginning of April is the beginning of quarter two. Now when we set our goals at the beginning of the year. I don't think anybody could see this coming. And therefore what's happened in the world may or may not have affected your goals and the ability to get them and to achieve them. So the one thing that I would urge you to do at the beginning of this quarter is write your goals for this quarter. Now we might not be able to write them for the year. We might not be able to think, think far enough ahead, but if the government are correcting what they're saying, we could be indoors for quite some time. So bear that in mind when you're writing those goals because there's no point sitting there writing some goals that are completely unrealistic given the situation we're in.

Now, I'm always one for stretching. I'm always one for thinking, okay, let's sort of scare ourselves a bit with a big hairy, scary goal. However, I am also very realistic and understand that this world and what is happening currently is going to obviously have an impact on staff. So first task. First thing I want you to do is I want you to write three to five goals down for the next quarter and I want you to be realistic, like I said, realistic, but push yourself because bearing in mind, one thing I want you to think about is that this is completely unusual. This is different. You are doing things that you're not expecting to do. You're perhaps trying to homeschool the children. You've got your partners there. Seriously, I adore my husband more than anything in the world, but I'm not used to having him here all the time and you know it's different and my nighttime routine and my morning routine with him here gets a little bit mixed up.

So you know it is, it's having an impact on everything. So I know that first off, this is not normal situation. Secondly, I want you to be gentle with yourself. Now I'm going to give you some tough love here. That's not to say I want you to be lazy and use the situation as an excuse. And the reason I'm saying this and I, I'm sending it with all the love in the world is because I would do the same because I would sit there and think, wow, the kind of world's imploding a little bit and no one's going to miss it what I do on the podcast this week. There's just no way I can do that. There's no way I would allow myself to do that six months, 12 months ago maybe I would have done, maybe I would have used this as a perfect excuse to just shelve it all think, well, you know, this is a terrible time. I'll just wait three months, but absolutely don't do this. So please don't use this as an excuse to go well and being so easy on myself. I'm just not gonna do anything. Cause it does mean we're going to have to work a bit smarter and in some cases maybe a little bit harder to still keep going, but we really, really, really must. We must just shelve everything.

Okay, well you can decide whether you want a business at the end of it, isn't it? Cause I know I couldn't shelf stuff and then think to come back to a business that was where it is today. So, so set those three to five goals and then once you've written them down and you must write them down, I'm honestly, I can't be more firm with you today because I know, like I said, we need a bit of tough love occasionally.

And you know, my love is, is very much, you know, I want to help you guys, but also sometimes I know for myself I need a bit of a kick so I'm gently giving you one of them as well today. So then once you've written down your three to five goals, I then want you to work out what you're going to do each month for the next three months to help achieve those goal. So let me give you an example. Let's say one of your goals, which would be a brilliant goal to do at this time by the way, is to build your email list. I have just come off the back of a five week, five week, what am I on eBay. It'd be one hell of a challenge, but it's five weeks, five day challenge on this building and it was brilliant. So let's say you're thinking, I want to build my email list.

So April you might say, okay, April I'm going to come up with the lead magnet idea and I'm going to, and obviously we have lead magnets last week or the week before. Yes, episode 110 talking about what a lead magnet is. So you can go back and listen to that if you don't know what I'm talking about. And then you might choose what platform you're going to do this on i.e. Are you going to use MailChimp or active campaign or Kajabi? And I'm going to link up to them in the show notes for you as well. And then in may you might decide, okay, so I need to do that in April. Then in may I'm going to create the landing page. I'm going to create the actual lead magnet and I'm going to write the onboarding emails. And then in June you might launch it and market it.

So that's how specific I want you to be cause I want you to set yourself these goals because without goals we'll do nothing. So trying be motivated to get up to the desk every day and do stuff is going to be hard enough if we don't know where we're going. So that's first thing I want you to do, three to five goals for the quarter and for each one think right, what have I got to do each month so that I'm doing something so we're not getting to the end of quarter two go, Oh I'm done it then and you're trying to cram it in all to the last week. Okay. So it just wants to cover that off. Like I said, it's a great time.

The Academy

We're going to do another challenge in the Academy and we're going to be looking at what we're going to be doing and I'm going to be, in fact, I'm going to talk about the Academy for a minute.

I very rarely talk about it and sell it in a sense of buy my Academy. But honestly right now I think the members couldn't be more grateful for the fact they're in it. We're upping the number of coaching calls we do. I'm upping the support I give them and I'm upping their capability because right ne what they need is me to say, come on, we can do this. Keep going, keep going. So do you know what, I am going to softly all the Academy to you because it's brilliant and I swear the members are really, really benefiting from the support. We're all giving each other at this time. So I want you to go and check H receipts wearing.com forward slash Academy and it's $39 seriously, I'll pay more than that on a bottle of gin and I'm not going to throw with them. And cause I know money is a, you know, it's a tricky thing but all it means for me is I'm more careful where I'm giving it to.

I'm not sort of just cancelling everything kind of fear. I'm thinking what is going to help me move my business forward or what is that going to help me get through these few months? And that's what I'm considering. So I am actually really seriously urging you to go and have a look at it and come and join me and sign up. Because seriously, this is hard. It's hard enough running a business on your own. Anyway, this, this is going to break some people. This is going to break their business because this is a huge test to us all in terms of staying motivated and with all the stuff that's going on at the moment and obviously the financial and physical impact it's having on our businesses. Anyway, selling over. Like I said, I don't do it very often, but if I didn't think it was a brilliant and I didn't think it could make a difference, I honestly wouldn't even try and promote it.

Practical things you can do every day

So, okay, let me go back to now I've given you my little sales pitch. I'm going to go back to my motivation thing. So now I've got, that was kind of an overview as in you need set some goals, but now let's talk about real practical things that I do every day and remind myself every time I'm struggling. Okay. The first thing you need to do is you need to get up. No way to resist. Seriously get out of bed. That's, that's your motivation. I'm serious. You need to get up at set time. Now, bearing in mind there's no school run. My daughter's not currently with me at the moment. There is nothing making me get up early apart from me and I get up at 5:00 AM and I know you'll think I'm crazy and maybe I am a little bit, but I gave it 5:00 AM I meditate for the first 30 minutes.

I then spend, well not always, but I do some chigong occasionally for like 20 minutes. Then I will get ready and I get fully ready. Hair, makeup, everything. Every day I'm fully dressed like the weekend. That's when I have no makeup on and my hair just chucked up. But literally in the week I treat it as if I'm going out into the office, then I journal, then I do my gratitude, and then I plan my day. So that's my morning routine every single morning and I'm normally at my desk and ready to go by eight so I spend a few hours doing all that stuff. And the other thing is like if you do have children, my children aren't getting up at 5:00 AM depending on how old yours are, they might be getting up, but to get up and plum that day before they've even woke up, there's something so satisfying about that.

It doesn't mean you have to have a good bedtime routine and try and get to bed early. And I'm terrible at that. But I do want you to think about that morning routine. Like I said, it doesn't have to be the same as mine, but having that structure every day is going to really help motivate you the days, and don't get me wrong, I do at the days I get up late, like eight o'clock even, or nine o'clock I feel like I've wasted my entire day. And I am so unproductive. So that's the first one. Then I want you to plan your day. Like I said, this is totally something I do. I want you to think about what are you going to do for that day. I want you to write down any calls you've got. I want you to write your lunch down. I want you to write down when you might have to do something with the children.

I want you to write down when you're going to start prepping dinner and I want you to literally look at when you've got gaps and time where you can work on your stuff and then I want you to think about the three things that you are hoping to achieve that day. Now, I've totally stole this from Michael Hyatt stuff. This is what he does. I have his full focus planner and that's what you have to do. You pick your daily big three. So all I ever really give myself a three main things that I've got to do every day and as long as I do those three things, I can take them off and I can feel satisfied. Now the chances are I do more than that. But you, if you give yourself just three things to do, then you're not going to look at a massive long list.

You're going to pick the most important stuff first and you're going to make sure you get those things done because often as well, and I am absolute queen of this, you'll work all day and you're thinking, yeah, I've worked so hard today. I've done loads of work today and then you think, what have I done? And you actually have no idea. So you've been doing those bits and bits of nothing thing that actually does not move the needle with the business or does not go towards your goals. So that's the next thing I want you to do. Like I said, plan your day and pick three main things that you're going to get done each day and only three. Like I said, if you've got a list lower day and then absolutely fine but makes you got those three. Okay. The other thing I want you to do is eight of those three, I want you to do the hardest thing first.

Like is it called, there's a book called eat that frog. I think if I just made that up, I don't think I have. I'm sure it's called eat that frog. I've read it and it's exactly about that. It basically is what is the worst thing you've got to do. Do it first because once you've done it, it's done and you need. The other thing that's really interesting and I don't know whether you agree, but often when I put something off because for whatever reason in my head I'm thinking, Oh yeah, no, I'm not going to want to do this, but when I put something off and then I do it, I think that wasn't half as bad as I thought and it didn't take half as long as I thought. So actually I, you know, by doing those things first, again, you achieve that big horrible thing you don't want to do and if nothing else gets done, then at least you can be proud of yourself and give yourself a massive Pat on the back for that and that you've done that one thing.

Okay. A what's next on my list? I told you I've got loads of notes and scribbles and things. Okay, next one came. Stability. I've talked about this before. When I was employed, I was amazing. I was such a goody two shoes. I loved being patted on the head. I love being told, well done. You've done a good job, and therefore that was my accountability. I was always on time. In fact, I used to say, you know, give you a deadline and then I'd make sure I came in before it. I was annoyingly an irritatingly efficient and now not so much because of that came stability. So I have my own accountability. I have people that I obviously hold myself accountable to. I have Mary who's my coach, and obviously my husband and these sort of people, but who are we? Who's holding you accountable?

Again, coming back to the Academy, I swear this isn't just sell the Academy. That's one of the key things is that we're holding people accountable because if you're not...