How to Get an Olympic Level Advantage on Your Goals

How do you decide what action to take towards your goals? In this video, I'm sharing exactly what you should be doing to get an Olympic-level advantage on your goals.

Girl Power

Art by Cleo Wade

I want girls to know that they are enough.

And that they can stand up for what they believe in.

And that they can talk about MONEY.

And that they can want big things.

And that they can be ambitious as hell.

And none of those things make her wrong or bad or greedy.

They just make her one of the women who are changing the world.

Short-Term Feelings

"I don't feel like it."

Aka, the most common excuse my brain gives me for not doing something I said I would do.

• Getting out of bed early.

• Making a YouTube video.

• Going for a run.

It doesn't matter what it is – when it comes down to it, I almost always don't feel like doing it.

One of the best things I've ever heard was Will Smith saying he doesn't care what his in-the-moment feelings tell him.

He says that what he feels like in the moment never gets a say in his success.

How good is that?!

We think that when we let ourselves off the hook with our commitment, we are being kind to ourselves.

But really, we're doing the opposite – we're sabotaging our future self.

Don't let a short-term feeling sabotage a long-term gain.

Feelings only last for a moment.

Results are forever.

My September 2020 Goals

September 1st – it's the first day of Spring! (At least in the Southern Hemisphere where I am!).

Spring means new beginnings, regenerating, budding, and growing.

With that in mind, I have decided to revamp the way I do things a little bit this month. Here are my September goals:

1. Do less, to have more impact.

   This is based on the Pareto Principle: 20% of the work you do will give you 80% of your results.

   So I want to spend more time this month focusing on that 20%.

   I want to create shorter, more meaningful to-do lists.

   Less crowded calendar with better, more important things scheduled.

   Fewer social media channels, with better content.

   The way I will measure this is by how I FEEL throughout my day. Am I stressed, rushed, and anxious? Or am I calm, prepared, and at ease?
   

2. Get the most important things done in the morning.
   Because I'm a night owl, I have always thought that mornings aren't my best time. But really, a productive morning means that I can spend my favourite time – the evenings – doing what I want to be doing.
   

3. Run 3x a week.

   Last month I ran 2x a week, which was great, but I definitely feel like I'm ready to take it up a notch. 3x a week is going to be an extra challenge, I think!
   

4. Apply what I learned in my YouTube course to my videos.
   Now that I know what to do, I need to actually DO it! Each week, I am going to apply one new *important* concept to my videos. (I will continue to put out a video every Friday).
   

5. I was trying to think of a fifth one and then I realised that the entire idea of this month is to reduce! So number 5 is to focus my attention on the first 4 goals rather than spreading myself too thin.

What are your goals this month? Let me know in the comments!

My August 2020 Goals Review

August is almost over, and I hit my goals this month again, woohoo! Here’s what happened:

1. Run 2x a week
   Complete! This was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I really enjoy not putting these on specific days of the week, but allowing myself to choose a day when the weather is lovely and I'm feeling energized. Next month I'm ready to take this to the next level and exercise more!

2. Put out a YouTube video every week (and start a video release “day”)
   Complete! I decided Friday is my release day (and I made a little banner on my YouTube to say "new videos every Friday" to keep me accountable!). I put out four videos this month on Fridays, EVEN though I wasn't 100% satisfied with them. I decided it's more important to stick to my publishing time than to have absolutely perfect videos (not that any of my previous ones felt perfect either!).

3. Show up every day in my Facebook Group with mega value
   Complete! I posted in there every single day. I always tried to ask myself, "how can I add more value?" and then on the posts I added something extra, they always got responses saying they were impactful. I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to make this group the most supportive group on the internet, and I'd love your feedback so let me know what you'd love for this group to have/do!

4. Learn the YouTube Algorithm
   Complete! I studied my YouTube course and now the fun is to apply everything I've learned to my next videos. I also gained 84 subscribers! That might not seem like much, but these last two months it's moving faster than ever before. As of today, I'm on 684 subscribers. #celebration!

5. Create a way to make my work more environmental/sustainable/contributing to climate action
   Complete! My business all online and it's service-only (I don't sell any physical products), so I thought I wasn't producing much waste. However, I realised that when I'm coaching, I write A LOT of notes. Pages and pages. I probably use thousands of pages every year. That's not only tress, but bleach and chemicals to make the paper white. If I make the simple switch to electronic notes and if absolutely necessary, notes on recycled paper, then I will definitely be making my business as eco-friendly as possible. (P.S. if you've got more tips for making an online business even more eco-friendly that I haven't thought about, let me know!)

How did your August Goals go? Let me know in the comments!

Double Your Goal

Want to make $10,000 a month? Set your goal at $20,000.

Write a book in a year? Write two.

Lose 10kg in a year? Lose it in 6 months.

What would you have to do to hit that doubled goal?

Would you get up earlier?

Use a different marketing technique?

Be more disciplined?

One of the biggest things I've learned is how easy it is to underestimate how much time, energy, and effort a goal will take.

When you double it, you have to think differently. You have to think bigger. You have to act bigger.

When you're aiming and planning your efforts for double, suddenly your original goal seems like a piece of cake.

Feeling determined?

Double it again.

Because mediocre goals lead to mediocre results. 

And it's so much more fun to do something impossible. 

Early Bird Strategy

As my coaching business grows I'm coaching 15+ hours per week. Add in preparation and post-call paperwork, and creating blog posts, connecting in my Facebook group, writing emails, and keeping clients accountable, I often end up working 10+ hours a day.

Initially, I think this has been great for the growth of my business. But now that I'm ready to scale it, I'm looking for ways that I can reduce the time it takes me each week, and eliminate distractions and time-sucking activities. 

First, I'm going to test out creating all of my content in the morning. I'm generally a night owl so I do so much of my work at night, but I don't enjoy doing things into the wee hours. I'm ready for more daily structure.

I am committing to trying this out for seven days to see if I'm more productive.

• Get up at 7am (as I'm a night owl I usually sleep 1am-9am, so I'm going to try switching to 11pm-7am)

• 1 hour: Create content for my blog and my FB group

• 1 hour: Check emails and social media

• 1 hour: Do my daily theme (emailing my list, doing a livestream or editing a YouTube video)

• 30 minutes: Getting ready for the day (breakfast, showering etc)

• 30 minutes: Prep my calls for the day

• 3-4 hours: Coaching

• 1 hour: Writing emails to my clients

• Any extra time: Personal development

I'm excited to let you know how it goes!

Why I'm Ambitious

My Friday video is up! I wrote a post about this earlier this week and felt called to make a video about it.

Let me know what your thoughts are!

Thought Processing

I’ve been doing this thing all my life, but I’ve only recently heard it referred to as a ‘thought download’.

Where you just write everything down on a list to get it out of your head and onto paper. Then you can properly evaluate it.

My favourite way to do a thought download is to imagine that I’m with a team of experts in a board room meeting (if you’ve seen the TV show The Politician, it’s kind of like that in my head).

They can take care of everything for me.

I can offload anything to them. They will fix it and make suggestions that my own self wouldn’t normally come up with. I think “Right, Gerry, over to you. What do you suggest we do about the ‘staying-up-too-late’ issue?”

And I’ll get perspectives from imaginary experts and I’ll make an executive decision.

“Right, we’re going with Barbara’s idea of scheduling everything down to tiny details, and we’ll meet back here in 3 days to evaluate and rehash the whole thing.”

This isn’t new to me. I’ve been doing it automatically every day since I was a kid. I thought every few hours everyone just stopped, evaluated the last few hours of thoughts, figured out how they fit into the puzzle of life, and then filed them into a mental library to deal with at the next board meeting.

And since articulating it, no one else I’ve met says they do this.

How do you process your thoughts? I’d love to know.

My Daily Schedule

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Wake.

Show up for my dreams.

Sleep.

Repeat.

That’s all that’s really on my schedule.

Showing up for my dreams looks different every day.

But I’ve committed to doing SOMETHING towards my dreams, every day.