Hi guys! Welcome to episode 240 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Thanks for being here. Thank you for listening and also thank you for sharing episodes with your friends and family. It means a bunch when you do that, so thank you.
I often find myself very very busy. You know that if you listened to Episode 238! Just like you I’m sure, I have a lot on my plate, a lot of which I’ve put there.
Sometimes we think just because we are putting in a lot of effort, we should be super successful right? Like if we work our butt off at the gym we should have the body we want, right? Or if we are busy reading good books, consuming good podcasts, getting lots of degrees and certifications we should be super successful right?
Effort and busyness don’t mean you’re going to reach your goal. No matter how hard you work out if you follow that workout with a hamburger and milkshake, you aren’t gonna have the body you want and no matter how many degrees you have if you don’t use that to take action, you’ve been successful at getting a degree and that’s about it. No matter how many diet books you buy, they won’t eat the salad for you. I just finished the Life Coach certification, if I do nothing with it, well it’s just another certificate to add to my wall to make me feel successful but successful at what? What’s my end goal? If it were simply to have a life coach certification, well mission accomplished but not many people pay that much money for a certificate to just say look what I did. They have dreams to do something with it. That’s the piece we’re often missing.
Sometimes if we’re being honest we are spinning our wheels and maybe it’s intentional because we don’t know the next step or we don’t know HOW we are going to make things happen so we consume and consume and consume hoping someone has the answer, hoping that with this certificate I will finally have made it. And if your goal is to have the most certificates or degrees then you’ve done it. But that is not the goal most of us are wanting. We want to make a difference, we want to add value, we want to create something, we want to leave a legacy of success in some way and if we’re really being honest most of us would like to make money while we do that.
Consuming other people’s products is not going to make you money. Getting another degree is not going to make you money. Reading books and listening to podcasts is not going to make you money. They add value to your life, of course they do. They add value to YOUR life. But they are adding money to the person that CREATED IT. A famous self help author was asked by someone if buying their book would make them wealthier. The author looked at them and said “you buying my book, makes me wealthier, you reading it and applying it, makes you wealthier.” And look, I’m a podcaster, so I don’t want you to stop listening to podcasts, there’s value there. I want to encourage you to create the value YOU were born to create.
If you’re like me my comfort zone is a good positive podcast or book. It’s taking a course or learning something new. That needs to always be part of your life because that adds value to you. But it doesn’t need to come at the expense of you creating your own value. Note to self. Because I still find myself doing this, I think we all do. But I’ve become keenly aware of it, and I’ve made great strides to change it.
I get up early and I love to start my day with a positive message of mindfulness and self awareness and that’s ok, but I’ve also started adding in a morning marketing and business message, an area in which I want to grow. I’m comfortable with the mindset message, it’s very easy for me to listen to that but I’m growing from the business and marketing message because it’s something that doesn’t come naturally to me.
My podcast is an area that is very comfortable for me, marketing is an area that is not as comfortable so I am challenging myself in the next 2 weeks to write and send out two ads to reach people for my empowerment coaching package. I can’t change people’s lives if they don’t know what I’m offering, or even that I’m offering it. It would be nice if people just fell into my lap without me stepping out of my comfort zone to reach them, but no-one is going to knock on your door and hand you success, you have to go and make it. It’s uncomfortable knowing it might take me 15 tries to get an ad that works, but guess what, just like I won’t quit putting these episodes out twice a week because I know the value they are adding, I also know the value of coaching because I’m a product of it so I won’t quit until I find what works to reach the people looking for it. That’s uncomfortable and just writing makes me want to grab my phone and scroll on twitter for an instant distraction but remember from a couple episodes ago, Ive challenged myself to stay off Twitter until I leave for Belize so I can’t even do that. Actually, I can, I choose not to. Small steps.
P.T. Barnum says Comfort is the enemy of progress. It’s true. Being busy does not equal results. Stop spinning your wheels and start taking action. Even if you aren’t sure how, just do it and you’ll figure out how because when it doesn’t work, you just get one step closer to what will work as long as you don’t quit.
If you’re like me you have big dreams. And that’s wonderful, ideal even. Make sure you aren’t consuming books and podcasts to buffer. Make sure you aren’t keeping yourself so busy because you’re really afraid of the next step. Afraid of the discomfort. Afraid you’ll fail.
Failure is really the only way you’ll eventually succeed. So get good at it. Know up front it’s going to be uncomfortable and you could fail. What’s the worst that can happen? You fail and you feel embarrassed. Or you fail and you feel humiliated. That’s the worst that can happen. We can do that.
Confidence is doing things you’ve already done so you know you can do it well again. Self confidence is doing something new that could succeed or fail but you’re going to have the courage to do it anyway.
My challenge to you is this. If you’re a self improvement junkie like me, commit to not buying one more book until you finish the ones you’ve already bought. Commit to looking at your list of things you need to do and prioritizing and optimizing. Commit to getting clarity of your outcome and then ask yourself is what I’m doing moving me closer to my outcome, keeping me stagnant or moving me further away. It really is that simple, not easy, but simple. We can spend our whole life being busy, but when we intentionally direct that effort towards a certain outcome and take the action needed for that outcome, now that effort will get you results.
I love you guys, talk to you in a few days.
