Even when you don't want to

Do the thing you said you’d do even when you don’t want to.

When it’s 1am and you don’t feel like it.

When you just feel like skipping a day.

Do it anyway.

Every damn day.

Giftless Christmas

Happy Holidays everyone, no matter what you celebrate! We celebrated Christmas today with my cousins in London, and I wanted to share a new tradition we started: games instead of presents.

I love a gift as much as the next person, and I am not hating on gifts at all. The reason we chose to do no gifts this year is that last year, we all ended up buying each other the same things – pens, pencils, socks… from the same shop. We all went to a “gift shop” and bought things we felt like we had to buy.

I love gift giving when I find a brilliant gift and think YES! I know someone who would absolutely love this. It’s not their birthday or a holiday, but it doesn’t matter, I’ll give it to them anyway. But I don’t like obligatory gift-giving. I find it stressful, unnecessary and wasteful to consume things just for the sake of it.

So this year, instead of giving gifts, we all played games as our gifts to each other. We did Charades, Celebrity Heads Up, and our new tradition: Secret Santa Portraits. Everyone picks a name from a hat, and then you have to paint that person. Then we mix all the paintings up, and each person has to guess who painted them. Do you like the one my cousin painted of me? 😂

Now we’re all snuggled up together on the couch watching Lord of the Rings (again).

No one even mentioned presents, and no one felt left out. We had the most brilliant time, eating and playing games, without the pressure.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Blognitive Dissonance

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is where you have two conflicting beliefs or ideas about something.

E.g. someone continuing smoking, despite knowing the negative health effects.

Right now, I’m experiencing blognitive dissonance – two conflicting thoughts about my blog. I’m unsure which style I’d like to blog in:

1. Documentation of my life. Sharing my own lifestyle, goals and experiences day to day, complete with images from my own life. I love reading blogs about what other people are up to, and I love watching daily vlogs on YouTube.

2. Sharing my philosophical ideas, personal development tips and advice. No need to create my own images. I can do this in bed in my pajamas at 1am and still pump out some words onto a page that still have value.

Option 1 feels egocentric and takes a lot of work, and option 2 feels impersonal and lazy.

What would you rather see from me?

Here’s how today’s post would go, considering both options:

Documentation Option

Yesterday we flew into Tenerife to get some much needed sun (Brighton is freezing at the moment!). I’m on day 15 of my 50 push ups in 30 days challenge, which means I have to do 20 push ups today. To be honest, I’m a bit nervous about it, because 25 is my record, and it took me a while to build up to that last time, and since I’ve been on this super-charged 50 push ups schedule I haven’t had as much time to build up my strength. I never have any photos of my push ups because I’m always alone when I do them! Tomorrow I’ll get my sister to film and photograph me doing them I think, so you can see where I’m up to.

I've also been thinking about doing a 2020 Impossible Goal Setting Workshop online, so anyone can attend from all over the world. Let me know if you’d prefer to watch a Facebook Live or join a group together on Zoom, I’ll be doing it in few weeks, before the New Year. (I’m SUPER excited for the New Year – NYE always has a special magic to it for me. The start of a new era, a fresh start, a new opportunity!).

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Theory Option

Habit Tracker

External accountability is one of the most important things you can possibly do to make a goal happen. For more than a year I’ve been using the HabitShare app, which means that I share my goals with my accountability partners and they can see when I’ve checked in. It looks like this:

So if you read my post from the other day, you’ll know one of my philosophies is: if it matters, do it daily. These are the 5 things I’m doing every single day.

1. Meditation. I meditate every single day because I set myself the challenge to do it for 365 days in a row. Tracking it makes it 100x easier to remember to do.

2. Vitamins. I take vitamins and some medications I need to thrive, and they are so important to me, I never want to skip them. I used to go days without taking them because I would forget. Now, because every night before I sleep, I check my Habit Tracker, I never ever forget.

3. Daily blog for two years – another challenge. I’d been wanting to blog for about 5 years, and I’d only been occasionally publishing. Once I set the challenge I knew I would need a tracker to keep me accountable. You can look back through my posts and see that I have indeed posted on my blog every single day for the past 146 days – and will do for at least 730 days (who knows, maybe after two years of blogging I will set another blogging challenge).

4. Funnel Diet. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with food! I called it a diet because I want to work on it with the intensity and force someone would if they were on a diet. A diet requires sacrifice and a lot of thought power dedicated to it. I’m committing to a short term sprint of working on my sales funnel until it’s done, rather than a long term lifestyle choice, like my vitamins or my blog. To me, being on a funnel diet means working on my sales funnel every single day, and tracking it. I know this is the one thing (implementing a great sales funnel) will make a difference to my audience reach. Eventually this ‘diet’ will finish and I will replace this daily habit with the next thing that is my #1 priority. Tracking it is crucial to staying on track, because even if it’s two in the morning, I know I better do something towards it.

5. Push Ups 50! This is another sprint goal. I have an overall goal of 100 push ups, but this month I have decided to hit 50, and I’m following a plan. Today I need to do 20 in a row, and to be honest I’m a bit nervous because 15 was tough, but I’m ready for this! I can do it. Keep track of it alongside my other goals makes me feel so dedicated to it, especially because I HATE seeing a red circle on my tracker. It feels like I’ve ruined everything.

Tracking my habits has changed my life and I’m so grateful to have the ability to do this (but you don’t need a fancy app – ever since I was a kid I’ve been making habit trackers with gold stars and stickers!).

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Which one did you like better?
As I wrote this, I felt that the content is more thought out for the theory option, but it’s more fun with the photos in the Documentation option. In an ideal world, I would like to mix the two and have strong content AND strong photos, but I’m not sure how that would work, because my pictures don’t match my habit tracker. Hmm.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Lessons from Daily Blogging

Today is day 141 of blogging in a row (I’ve set myself a challenge to blog every day for 2 years). That means I’m about 1/5 of the way through, so I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned in the past 4.7 months of blogging.

1. Writing in the day is so much better than writing at night, last-minute before bed. Yet mostly, I write in the dark because my boyfriend has already fallen asleep. The girl in this photo is not a good representation of me – imagine a glowing screen and rapid touch-typing.

2. Writing every day means some of the content I produce is inevitably going to not be ‘my best work’. The proportion of great content I create is still the same as before I started this challenge, but because of the sheer volume of content I’m creating, the overall number of great blog posts is much higher. Generating more content gives me extra opportunities to generate great content. More content = better content, overall.

3. Sharing my blog to social media every day is more draining than actually writing it, and therefore I tend not to share it to social media very often, which means my blog probably isn’t being read by many people – currently. I’m kind of torn between putting out my writing because I love doing it, not caring if one soul reads it, and the ‘Gary Vee Method’ of trying to get as many eyeballs on it as possible.

4. I’m writing for myself, not for anyone else. I have an audience in mind, but I blog because I’m deeply passionate about the topics I write about. It fuels me and it’s exciting to see a collection of works coming together, like an artist creating paintings for an exhibition.

5. I’m still finding the balance between personal and general on my blog. Am I creating ‘how to’ pieces? Or lifestyle photography with a small excerpt from my experience of my day? Am I just sharing my experience or is it more than that? I’ve tried all of these and I’m not totally sold on any of them. Right now, I’m just creating whatever comes to mind. I’m interested to see how it develops.

6. I don’t enjoy writing closing or openings to blogs. I just want to get straight to the point, the good stuff. Introductions and conclusions are generally fluff written out of obligation to the reader. Many posts would be better simply as tweets, as you’d get the point across without the unnecessary details. One of my favourite bloggers is Derek Sivers. He does this.

Even though I said I don’t like writing closings, this feels like it needs one. This is it.

If it matters, do it daily.

Daily. Daily. Daily. If it matters, do it daily.

It might sound obvious, but this one concept has impacted my life far beyond what I expected in 2019.
Every single day, I meditate.
Every single day, I blog.

No ifs, ands or buts. No question of whether I will do it or not. I never think “Should I write on my blog today?” Because that decision has already been made, and the answer is yes. Always.

Of course, I’ve discovered that my best work comes when I have more time, and when a topic I’ve been contemplating for a while is bubbling to the surface. And my best meditation sessions happen when I purposefully carve out time in my day to focus on it, rather than rushing it at the end of the day.

Nevertheless, doing both of these every single day brings me so much joy. I know that I’m making progress, slowly but surely, towards my goals. I don’t even have to think about it. I’m just going to wake up one day in about two years time and find that I’m a much more practiced writer. That’s the beauty and simplicity of a daily practice.

I have a habit tracker that I use and check every night before bed to make sure I’ve completed my daily habits.

And to walk my talk, I’m adding another daily habit – at least for December:

• Push ups, daily. It doesn’t matter how many. The important thing is that they happen daily. If you read my December Goals, one of them is to reach 50 push ups (I can currently do <25).

If it matters, do it daily.

Mandatory Chill Time

One of the things about being a Goal Junkie (yes, I just coined that term) is that I tend to follow the unwritten advice “you can relax once everything is done.”

And yet, ‘everything’ never gets done, does it? If you’re like me, there is always more to do. Trash to take out, clothes to mend, tax to file, and even when the daily chores get done – there is always something you could be doing towards your goals and dreams. Setting up a dog-walking business. Writing a romance novel. Learning tennis.

I remember, as a kid, asking my friends, “What do you mean, you’ve got nothing to do?”

Being constantly inspired and excited for life is a beautiful thing, but then when I do take some time to do something relaxing (even at the end of the day) I just end up feel guilty. And so goes the cycle of burn out followed by guilt-ridden breaks at inconvenient times (like, the night before an exam).

So, what is the solution?

Happiness and habits researcher, Gretchen Rubin, argues that you should schedule leisure time into you day. To some people, scheduling time to watch TV or read a book might sound silly, but for chronic dreamers, inventors and goal-getters, like me, I’ve found it’s an incredibly effective technique. I call it Mandatory Chill Time. Mandatory Chill Time is just as important as work, sleep, chores and anything else on the schedule.

Right after I finish this blog post, I’ve scheduled some guilt-free MCT.

Would you try Mandatory Chill Time?

Limiting beliefs

Beliefs are thoughts that we think often enough that they seem factual to us, even if they aren’t a fact.

That means that sometimes, we create beliefs that limit us, and they were totally fabricated in our own minds to begin with.

Here are some examples of common limiting beliefs:

1. Money doesn’t grow on trees

2. I can’t go after my dreams because I might fail

3. I can’t be myself or I will be judged

4. I’m not good enough/smart enough/beautiful enough to do X

A limiting belief is not a fact. It’s only a thought that we’ve been thinking for so long we can’t distinguish it from fact.

And what do we do when we believe something? We act accordingly. You believe you can’t go after your dreams? You won’t.

Changing your beliefs is paramount to changing your actions, and your results.

The good news is, if a belief is a thought we think often enough that they seem factual to us, then we can choose our beliefs.

in order to change your belief, you need to think a new thought enough times until it becomes a belief.

Examples of empowering beliefs to replace the limiting ones:

1. Money doesn’t grow on trees / Money is made by the value I bring to the world

2. I can’t go after my dreams because I might fail / Success is built on pile of failures

3. I can’t be myself or I will be judged / When I show my true self, I give others permission to do the same

4. I’m not good enough/smart enough/beautiful enough to do X / I am enough

Here’s the thing: saying it once isn’t enough. You have to think that thought so many times it becomes second nature. Tell yourself your new empowering belief every single morning.

Waking up? I am enough.
Making a cup of tea? I am enough.
Getting the post? I am enough.

Write down your top 3 limiting beliefs, and then write the new belief you would like to believe next to it.
Make it a habit to repeat your new belief every day, over and over.

What do you do?

What do you tell people when they say, “what do you do?”

People remember the first thing you say.

Option a) tell them what you do to earn a living 

Option b) tell them what you’re passionate about

You do both of those things. Maybe your a and b are the same thing. Maybe they’re not. It’s your choice how you see yourself, and how you portray yourself.

If you want to be a writer, and you write, but you also work at an office in the day, you can answer the question with “I‘m an office worker” or “I’m a writer.”

Both are true.

But what is on your dream business card?

Writer?
Singer?
Producer?
Firewoman?
Chef?
Scuba diver?

Start doing that thing. Then, we people ask you what you do, you get to start living into that reality.

Write yourself a business card, and introduce yourself as that thing. Starting today.

Things I'm never doing again

I’m never going to record another concert on my iPhone.
I’m never going to take another picture of food for Instagram.
I’m never going to go somewhere just for the photo.

Because in trying to capture a moment, we are the ones captured from the moment.

How much is a follower worth?

The more followers or subscribers you have, the better, right?

But what is the true value of a follower? We think that thousands or millions of followers makes our content heard by more people – but those people are also following between 300-2000 other people. No wonder the social media algorithms aren’t showing your content to your followers. You’ve got to compete for their attention, which means your message is being diluted in a swarm of other content also vying for your audience’s attention.

If you read my last few posts, you’ll know I’m currently considering quitting all social media entirely. But wait, what about my 16 thousand Instagram followers? I’m just going to throw that all away?

I just want to examine exactly what having 16 thousand followers actually means.

As of the moment of writing this post, I have 16,598 followers, and it’s been stable in the 16k mark for about a year.

According to this engagement calculator, I have an engagement rate of 1.71%.

This is low, but not unusual. Most accounts my size have around 2.43% engagement:

Let’s do the maths:
1.71% of 16,598 is 283.

That means, if I delete my Instagram, I’ll be losing the consistent engagement of around 283 people in total.

Puts it in perspective, right?

One of my core values is connection. I truly love being with people (I score highly on the extroversion scale), and I value every single one of the people who connect with me on social media. It just happens to be that there’s fewer than you might think.

Unfortunately, because we think we’re more popular than we really are (well, I'll speak for myself), we let the social media machine run our lives. Wouldn’t it be so much better if we personally connected to those 283 people (or however many are truly engaging with you), and had a decent conversation with them instead of obsessively pumping out perfectly curated posts at them?

I think so. I’m on a mission to put the social back into my life – by deleting social media.

Social media is optional, and as a society, we tend to forget that. It feels essential.
The point is: whether or not you feel you need to delete social media to get back in control of your life, don’t let the numbers fool you.