It's really sad that I have to talk about this core problem I see in women, but if you're a woman, you need to read this because it is a very crucial piece for your happiness in life. This probably sounds weird that the woman who is all about women’s empowerment is saying there's a problem with women. It's not what you think, and it's not even your fault, (and this happens to a lot of men too) but this is the Dynamic Women Blog, so I'm speaking to you, women. It’s important to know what you want There is a problem I see and that I have seen for a long time. I realized this when I started coaching with a coach back in 2010, and this was before I was even a coach. I realized that the core problem in women that's causing them to not be satisfied in life, not be happy, not go after what they want, not to have support from others, and really get to a point in their lives where they feel empty. It's the inability to answer a question. It's a simple question. The question is, “What do you want?” But so often, we cannot answer that question. I can remember being at an event with a lot of professional women working in corporate, and we were chatting, and I asked them, “What do you want?” They were like, “Oh, like maybe a vacation.” Some of them actually couldn't even answer. They said, “I don't know, what do you mean by, what do I want?” I said, “In life, what do you want?” Other people say, “For my kids to stay healthy”. I'm like, “No, what do YOU want? What do you want for yourself? What do you want?” They didn't know how to answer that. I could answer with at least 10 to 20 things. Now, that does not make me better. It just means that I've had this question asked of me many times and I have practiced. Most women don't. Most people don't. Now, it's not your fault. You see, what's happening is we have not often been asked what we want. Why is that? Let me go through three ways or reasons why we haven't been asked what we want and why we are not good at this question. 3 reasons why women struggle to answer the question: “What do you want?” 1. Women tend to prioritize others' needs before their own As women, we tend to be the caregivers and the nurturers. We care about everyone else before ourselves. Let's be real, are you guilty of this? Probably. We make sure everyone else is taken care of, their needs are taken care of, their wants are taken care of, and when everything else is okay, we can take care of ourselves. Let me share with you a story of something super-duper small. I'm not talking about, “What do you want in your mission and your vision and your world and your legacy?” I'm talking about, “In the day-to-day, what do you want as well?” There are two pieces to it, the little “a” agenda (we talk about this in coaching) and the big “A” agenda. The little “a” agenda might be you're a busy mom, a busy woman, you're making sure kids are taken care of, the house is taken care of, and dinner is made after work. BUT all you want to do is go take a shower. I experienced this when my husband came home one day. We say our hellos and such, and then he disappeared. I thought, “Where did he go? That's weird because he doesn't announce where he's going.” Then I hear the shower running and I think, “Wow, must be nice. Must be nice to go take a shower. I've been waiting to take a shower.” The thing is, that was his need and his want at that exact moment, “I need to take a shower, I want to take a shower,” and so he went and took a shower. I have lots to learn from that. However, what I was feeling was, “Well, I can't take a shower yet because these things need to be picked up, the kids need to have their dinner, their homework needs to be done, and then I need to message a client back.” All these things needed to happen before I could take care of my needs. I know the question is, “What do you want?” but when we're not even taking care of our basic needs, taking a shower can be a basic need. It comes from that place of nurturing. Again, not your fault, ladies! You are hardwired to take care of others and that's why we've survived as long as we have, right? 2. There are so many things pulling you, and you don't even have time to sit with it If you have children or not, that's fine. I'll also give examples for you because you're probably super busy as well. For Moms, it may be:
For non-moms, (as well as some moms), it's things like:
It just continues on and on and on. We often get into that place of just scrolling Facebook because we want to disconnect. There are so many things pulling us that we never have time to sit with the question, “What do I want? What do I want for myself? What do I want today? What do I want in three years? What do I want in every single area of my life?” 3. We’re often not asked in the right way I think the one time we're asked is when we're younger and people say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Then we're supposed to come up with an answer at that moment. We don't know it, and we don't know how to get there, then we feel lost. How am I seeing this in my world? Well, I've been coaching for over 12 years now. The way I see it is someone comes to me, and they'll say:
Then I asked them what really seemed to be a simple question: “What do you want?” and they said:
“What do I want?” I'm talking about, “What do I want in all 10 areas?” In general, what do you want for your life, and what do you want in all 10 areas? Then what do you want every single day? It can take time to uncover that. Wheel of Life That's when I use the professional coaching tool, the Wheel of Life - mine has 10 areas:
It's not just knowing what you want in your business or what you want in your career, but it's what you want in all of these areas as well. Oftentimes, fun and recreation just get kicked out or forgotten about. What do you want in these 10 areas? I usually start by using the wheel, and they get clarity on:
Then we paint the picture of “What does it look like at a nine out of ten…?” In your health:
With your significant other:
With your career or your business:
I understand why this is the core problem. Knowing is half the battle. Now that you know that this is a problem, you can take this information and do something with it. So what are you going to do? Are you going to sit down with this question of “What do I want?” Are you going to get a session with a coach to help you figure this out? That's what I highly recommend. If you are thinking, “Wow, I would really love to figure out what I want in all areas. I want to achieve more, be happier, I want a clear path”, reach out to me at diane@dianerolston.com. I hope that in a few years when I create more blog posts, I won’t have to do this topic of “What do I want?” I hope people can easily answer this question and I hope it’s what YOU truly want, at that deeper life satisfaction level, and not what society wants for you. For example, I hope the answer isn't only materialistic like:
I hope it's things like:
Now, I'm not going to tell you what you want. If you really want the material things, then great, but have it be the stuff at the deepest soul level that you want. Rather than the pressure to keep up with the Joneses. The pressure of “I need to have these things in order to be validated as a person, in order to fit in with my friend group.” I've cut friend groups out who were too materialistic because I knew that I couldn't be where I needed to be in my life, in my happiness, and in my worthiness. It just wasn't aligned with my values. Wrapping Up Let's not have the question, “What do I want?” be the core problem of women. But rather be the core solution, the core answer to building a foundation, a life that you love and that you get excited to wake up to. Even when you get asked at a restaurant, and you're looking at the menu, and they ask you, “What do you want?” Let's make more decisive answers rather than looking at someone else and saying, “Well, what are you having?” Because if we start to do that with small decisions, that's when we start to lose confidence, and then won’t be able to make bigger decisions for our own lives. I’m asking that you take the next few weeks to sit with this question, “Am I really doing what I want?” And outside of your responsibilities, you have obligations, you have other people in your life, you just can't do everything you want. You might say like, “Ah I want to fly to Morocco and leave everything behind.” No, you've got stuff that you value and prioritize, but over the next few weeks come up with some answers. Every moment you have an opportunity to share what you want, give a clear answer, be decisive when you share it, and confident you can achieve that. P.S. I want to help you figure out what you want. Let’s start with this FREE booklet, the “3 Simple Steps to Figure Out What You Want” Read my other blogs:
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Have you been thinking about how to offer your next program, what your next product should be, and how to make big money? I'm pretty excited about this topic. It came to me just a while ago, as I was thinking about my journey starting the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program. It made me reflect on how I've come about some of the different offerings I've had. How I put together the Dynamic Women Community and what inspired me to do it. How I made the Dynamic Women program. I wondered, how I was able to come up with the ideas? …By listening. Why listening is important to me As a coach, part of my profession is to listen. I'm supposed to listen for the answers from the clients. Listen to them to help them figure out what the true answer for them is and to empower them. Listening is a skill that I need to have and use in coaching, at least in life coaching. In business coaching, it's more so listening and then providing the answers, advice, wisdom, and support. Listening never came necessarily naturally to me. I was the youngest in the family. With older people around, I always had to fight to be listened to, especially with two older brothers who were four and eight years older. They didn't care much about hanging out with their little sister, and I was a bit of a chatterbox because I learned to talk to get attention. 3 ways to make big money by listening There are three ways I've found where you can make big money by listening. I just want to preface this also by saying, it is not all about the money, but I'm guessing that that word being part of the title made you pay attention to this. If that's the case, then great because the benefits you're going to get from listening in are guaranteed. I've done this myself and taught it to many clients, and it’s guaranteed to help you give your clients exactly what they want. I'm going to go through the three different ways and give some examples of how this has shown up in my life and how I moved this into a business opportunity.
Even if you don't have a business, and you're in a profession, or you're thinking about a business, listen to the compliments. Some people might say, “Wow, you're so organized!” I've heard, “You've achieved so much” and “Wow, you're everywhere!” (meaning, I guess, on social media and YouTube and podcasts, etc.). Or maybe before, when I was attending a lot of in-person events, “You were everywhere.” I've had some clients say to me, even though they're older than me, it's funny, they'll say, “I want to be just like you when I grow up”, which is extremely flattering. It's also the follow-up question and asking. Here are some examples:
By you listening first to what it shared, asking the follow-up question, and then listening again, you're going to get a lot of insight as to what people value about you, and the things they potentially want to know and learn themselves. When I look at things like “You've achieved so much” and asking someone, “What do you want to achieve that I've achieved?” and they say, “Writing a book.” and then I can say, “Well, I can help you with that.” I did a 360 survey at the beginning of my career. One of the things that was said that has so much impact on me is, “You have a presence when you walk in a room.” I thought, “That's cool. What can I do with that? Is that confidence? Can I teach that? Can I teach how to have a presence? Can I also teach when it's not good to have presence or too much presence?” Listening to the compliment helps you to figure out the offering. When I heard things like “You're everywhere,” it made me realize that it’s because I have a system with my VAs, which is for social media content creation. It’s where we take a piece of anchor content, (this is what my team does for me), like a video, and we repurpose it into your YouTube, your podcast, your newsletter, your blog, and all your social posts. All these different things come from one piece of anchor content, and then get put on all the social media platforms that you want to be on. When people say, “You're everywhere,” that's how I do it. That helped me to learn what people value about what I've achieved or done or who I am, and then how I can teach that. Now, you're not always going to take everything. If someone says, “That's an amazing apple pie,” and you don’t really want to have a baking business, then you can just thank them and move on. But if you're listening for the other compliments, that could be something that's helping you to move forward in your business or in your career, and you can use that for promotions to talk about what you’ve done well. On the flip side, in your business, it might be a new offering or even just something that you share about a little bit more to bring people into your community. Lots of stuff has happened because people have said these compliments to me, like, “Oh, you're just so busy, but you've achieved so much.” (And then it gets into number two. But let me give you one final example here.) People have said to me, “You've achieved so much”, and “You have two kids, and yet you've achieved so much.” It also lets me know they value the fact that I'm also a busy mom, as well as a business owner. That's my opportunity there to think about that as a positive for marketing. I'm going to share it in some of the different pieces that I put out into the world and bring it into podcasts, YouTube videos, lives, when I meet people, my About section, and all these different pieces. That’s the first one: Listen to the compliments, and you know what, the things you should sell and offer in your business are the things that come most naturally to you. They're innate. They're easy for you to do. People keep wanting to choose things that are hard to do as the things they sell and the services and the products. Stop it. Don't do that. Leave them to the people who are passionate and have a natural gift for those pieces, and then you focus on the ones that are great for you. Being in alignment that way will make you happier. 2. Listen to Questions Oftentimes people will say:
Another question might be what mentioned before, “How do you do it all, Diane?” I get that one quite a bit, and “How do you stay on top of everything?” As I go to answer this question, this is now again a potential for an offering. For many years I had people say, “Diane, what is a Dynamic Woman? You talk about dynamic women. You have the Dynamic Women Community. Am I a Dynamic Woman?” That is actually what sparked me to want to be able to answer that question better. Not just what it is, but how can you become one. By people asking me what's a Dynamic Woman, the Dynamic You Program was born and became a book. (Heads up! We're going to do the next cohort to Dynamic You. New and improved coming out, probably in the New Year. Be on the lookout for the launch of that or email team@dianerolston.com to get on the waitlist because space will be limited. ) Think of the questions that people ask you. Are they asking you things like, “What is the definition of this?” or “How did you do this?” These are the pieces they want to know. A lot of questions I've been getting recently are around
The questions just always come in, and it got me to the point of like, “Wow, people are hungry for this knowledge.” In these questions, you might have a small offering like a workshop, training, or a masterclass. You might have a four-part series mini-course. You could also have a full-blown program, a coaching mastermind, a book, and a speech that you give and get paid for. There are so many opportunities just by thinking, “What are the most common questions I get asked?” After going through two points you know to write down all those compliments and questions and keep a list of them. They might be from random people, your neighbor, or a mom at school pickup. It could also be someone in a networking group, once they hear what you do. It could be a client giving you a compliment. It could be from your lead who asks you a question. It might not even be related, again, to a service you already offer. It could be something different. 3. Listen to the Complaints Listen to the complaints, as well as concerns because sometimes people aren't complaining, they're just sharing with you a worry they have or some trouble they've had in the past. Here's some I recently have been getting:
These complaints are things that people don't like. They could be obstacles for them for achieving their goals, or could be obstacles for them in their life or in their business. Listen to the complaints of the people around you, because a complaint needs a solution. A concern needs a solution. Some concerns I've had with people coming in for the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program where I hire a virtual assistant for you from the Philippines are:
There are solutions to all of these concerns. If it's in relation to a course you already have, you can answer this in the frequently asked questions. You can talk about this in an intro event, a class, or a masterclass that you're doing. You can share it in your marketing, in a newsletter, a blog, a podcast, a YouTube video, or a story. These are all things that your ideal clients want to know. If I'm going to complain, “I'm tired!”, well, is there a reason for being tired? Probably.
Finding out again about the complaints. What is it that's really concerning them? A complaint is something that somebody doesn't want to have anymore. It's not a good thing for them, and you can probably provide the solution. What are the complaints of your ideal clients? Maybe it's some obvious things, like not enough clients. Then, what about that is hard for them? You're kind of unpacking this. If they're sharing, “Oh, I just need to have more clients. I can't get enough clients!” then ask them, “Oh, what kind of clients are you looking for and how are you currently looking for them?” or “How are you currently marketing yourself?” If you find out that they've just been going to meetings, and they're not using social media at all, then that's where a solution could be. What you should do What happens now? Well, go back to the three ways of making big money by listening, and I encourage you in your circles, listen for the compliments and write them down. I love to use the notes section on my phone as a very quick way to document these things. You can keep a note that just says, ‘Marketing’ or ‘Research’ and then put compliments, questions, and complaints. When you're working with clients, be listening. “So hey, how are you doing?” “Oh, I just have so much going on. I just got off a training. It was really intense.” “Ah, okay. Doesn't like intense training or needs a buffer time between events.” Or get curious, “Hey, what made it so intense?” “Oh, I felt like the speaker was yelling at me.” “Ah, okay. So my ideal clients don't want to be firmly talked at on a training. I need to be a certain way. Maybe if I use that talent that I have, there is going to be more opportunity.” I could sit here all day and take your profession, and match it to some compliments, questions, and complaints, but I'm curious about the ones that actually show up in your life. If you want to comment, and let me know, like your industry and some compliments, questions, concerns, or complaints that you've been hearing, let's see where the correlation is. It's like a 1-2-3.
Or it could be,
This is really great because it’s not taking any extra time. It's just in your normal day-to-day, but when you get curious, and you ask follow-up questions, that's really where the gold is. Because your ideal clients are going to give you the exact verbiage they use so that when you write your marketing, you can say, “Are you sick of being on the hamster wheel?” Because that's the words that they actually said, or “It's easier to just fly under the radar than it is to put my neck out and be confident in business meetings.” You're pulling their actual words like, “I just wish I could have people pay me on time because cash flow becomes an issue at the end of the month when they don't.” Then you'll know this is working because you'll start to hear things like, “Wow, I felt like you were speaking straight to me”. That could be through your social media, when you're on stage, when you're training something, or even when you're offering. If they just read your landing page for your offer, and they said, “Wow, I felt like you were speaking straight to me.” Isn't that amazing? You're you're going to have more people signing up with you. I've had this happen, where someone started crying during an offer, and this is the first time I had made this offer so I was very concerned that I had offended them, that I triggered something negative in them. It was a small group and I think at the time, there were only eight people and I just said, “Hey, so-and-so I noticed some emotions coming up what's up?” and they said, “This is exactly what I've been looking for.” That was about my Elite Coaching Program, (which I'm also going to be relaunching in the new year under a new name.) That's what they said, “This was exactly what I was looking for.” Do you think they hired me and bought the program? 100%. They couldn't throw their credit card at me fast enough because I was listening to them earlier. I was listening to my ideal client, and I was speaking their words. I think that is the greatest way to really serve your clients in an authentic way, in a way that actually will get them the results they want, and will have them (the word that comes to mind is clamoring to work with you. But I just like to say) gladly working with you. Where I make an offer for some of my programs, I'll get messages afterward after people have signed up saying, “Thank you so much for offering this. This is exactly what I needed. I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to working with you, thank you.” To get that type of message after people pay you for something is incredible, even before you've even done the work. Then more accolades come later is a bonus. A few things I want to share I have just a few final spots in the Virtual Assistant Made Easy Program in 2023. So if you want to do it, please email me directly at diane@dianerolston.com. We also have Your Content Made Easy, which is our social media content creation that we do in-house for you, creating 12 pieces of content every single week for you in your voice and with your branding. Wrapping Up The three ways to make big money by listening works. I've been doing this in my business for over 12 years. It has helped me to produce some of the greatest programs possible because sometimes as the teacher, I can't see it through the eyes of the student. Listening gives me that insight. Also, the Les Brown quote, I say this so many times, “You can't see the picture when you're in the frame.” Many times, you and I don't know our greatness. We don't know how amazing we are until we listen to how other people compliment us and the things people ask us because they trust us as an expert on that topic. Then the complaints they share with us because they feel comfortable to share, and maybe hoping we can support them or give them a solution. If you've had a win with any of this, let me know, send it to me. I'd love to hear what's your takeaway from this blog post. I'd love to see you over in the Dynamic Woman Facebook Community. I love going live there and hanging out and asking cool questions and sharing awesome tips for your business in life. I hope to see you in there. It is free to join. Share this with a friend and until next time, stay dynamic! Read my other blogs:
When I first spoke of the weight I lost, it was on the Dynamic Women Podcast and I had lost 20 lbs. That felt very vulnerable.
My weight is not normally something that I would broadcast in a public forum like this. However, there have been so many learnings. I feel like the vulnerability that it takes to talk about my weight, as well as these insights, can help you. Whether you have weight to lose or you don't, there are still some really great learnings that can be had here. Why I was unhealthy I have had a crazy few years. I know everyone has with COVID, but if you've been listening to the Dynamic Women podcast, reading my blogs, or watching my YouTube videos, then you would have heard some of the stuff that happened. When COVID happened, I had to cancel a whole week of work out in Ontario. It was going to be a multiple six-figure week. My kids were at home because of COVID and I had to completely pivot my business to be mainly online or only online rather than live events. Then my father went into palliative care, and passed away seven days later. I stayed in Ontario to support my mom, do the funeral arrangements and clear out my dad's stuff. Then my Facebook account was disabled. This is all while the pandemic was going on. I then had to redo so many things in my business because of my Facebook account being shut down. It was a stressful time and I gained weight. I went and saw my naturopath, and we determined that even though I didn’t want to be unhealthy, focusing on changing my eating habits at that point wasn't the smartest idea. There was already too much stress happening in my life that having one more thing to control, one more thing to focus on, another thing to be constricted by wasn't the right timing. Just to be honest, I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to deal with it. Those words, “emotional bandwidth” and “emotional stamina”, one of them came from the grief share program I did through my church. Side note: The program is amazing, and it's only $20 for the book. I took it twice, and it was really, really helpful. I didn't have the ability to deal with it. One more thing to manage wasn't possible in my life. I was overwhelmed. If you're wondering, “Oh, what do you do when I'm overwhelmed?” I just wrote a blog post about that. That's part of “why” I was unhealthy. There are also stressors and all that, but there were so many layers of stress that I just couldn't get around it, and the idea of having to restrict my eating felt overwhelming. It felt like too much. I was the heaviest I've ever been in my entire life, even heavier than when I was pregnant. This blog post is not meant to shame anyone who has gained weight, anyone who is at their heaviest, or anyone who's struggling with weight. This is just the story of my experience and what I went through. I didn't like how I looked. I didn't like how I felt. On the soccer field, it was really hard to play well. I felt self-conscious of myself, pulling my shirt down as I ran. I had many injuries at soccer. That was another reason why I wasn't at my healthiest because it's really hard to be fit when you have multiple injuries, one after another. I knew I wasn't able to drop weight like I did in the past by doing keto. It was really helpful, but it was also super restrictive. Previously, I had really great motivation and support, but it had disappeared with everything that was happening. What changed it for me Well, I eventually really hurt my knee playing soccer, back on May 3rd to be exact. It's a lateral-torn meniscus, and they're not going to do any surgery. There's no real way to heal it and fix it. The only thing I can do is be kinder to my body by reducing inflammation, strengthening and also by dropping some weight. I said to the doctor, “Oh, I know, one pound of extra weight is five pounds of extra pressure on the joint.” He said, “It's actually six”. I knew that I needed to drop weight at that point, and so he said, “You know, if that's something you can do, then do it.” I reached out to a nutrition coach who I know from my hometown. She's been a client of mine, and been in the collaborative books. She’s great at what she does. I've seen her results from when she worked with a couple of my rugby friends over the years (and yes, rugby friends. I used to play rugby, pretty high level as well.) I knew that she got them results, one for fitness competitions and one for just health and feeling better. I paid the money and signed up. I knew I needed the accountability. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I know how to eat. I know how to eat well. I know how to exercise. I know how to do all these things. But the truth is I wasn't doing it. Again, as I said, this doesn't have to be a blog post about weight loss. It can be about…
I knew, I needed someone with a no BS approach to be able to hold me accountable. I have coaches in my life: mentors, advisors, people that I go to. I call them my team who support me, guide me, keep me accountable, and help me be committed. In another blog post, I talked about how having a coach really helped me to get serious about soccer again. I also needed to be serious about my weight loss journey, so I dove in with a specific eating plan. I’ve had great success, and it’s interesting how people feel cautious about asking me about it. People who know I’m on this journey will compliment me, and other people who don't know I'm on this journey feel awkward about saying something. It's okay to say something to someone who has lost weight. They never said like, “Whoa, you lost weight!” They'll say, “Wow, you look great.” Then I share about the journey I've been on. I dove in headfirst into the program. Having the support has really helped, and it was something I was craving. I'm on a six-month journey, and I’m at almost the 5-month mark, and I knew that I'd be able to drop about 20 lbs in 3 months and in another three months, I'll be able to drop another 20 pounds. Then I know I’ll be at a point where I can manage it. Why does this matter to me It's funny when I told my team, we were having a potluck party and the socials, there's always alcohol. There are always yummy appetizers. I sent them a message I said, “Hey guys, I just committed to working with a health coach. I am not going to eat a lot of your delicious food at the potluck. I'm not going to be having any drinks and that includes straight-up alcohol or zero-calorie/ zero-sugar drinks.” I'm having none. It's not about having a summer body for me. It's about having a soccer body - a body that is able to play soccer. I'm happy to say that in July and now into October, I have been able to do some soccer. Not at the level I want. I'm still not 100%, but I'm able to actually be on the field. Did the doctor say I should do it? No, he said, I should stop soccer, but if it's a joy for me then do it, but just realize that I'm aging my knee, and so I'm taking that responsibility. Well, this is where I'm at. Wrapping Up If you have any questions, if you have any comments, go ahead. As I summarize, I just want to let you know that if you think you want to make a change, but you feel like it's too hard, that's okay. Spend some time just reflecting on “What would help me?”
Whether it’s in business like writing your book, launching your podcast, or having a new team member like a VA on your team, what's going to help you get there? Or in your life if it’s to decorate your home like you want, to get over an addiction, to parent better, just ask yourself that question, “What is going to help?” If you have Dynamic You book, look in the pillar that has the five stages of change, and you can learn more about that. The other thing I want you to know is if you see someone around you changing their behavior for the better, can we please applaud them? Similarly, if you have noticed a difference in me, applaud me and acknowledge it. I have had people at soccer acknowledge me because they know. People at my church, my neighbors, my friends and even acquaintances. It is encouraging, and it is motivating because I look at myself sometimes, and think, “I'm still not where I want to be”. Having that external acknowledgment and feedback is so encouraging. You don't have to say, “Wow, you've lost weight”. You can just say,
Whatever it is, you can say those things, and it's okay. It doesn't have to be a secret, but encouraged. On the flip side, I wish people wouldn’t push things. For example, I went to another event with food that I couldn't have, with alcohol I couldn't have and when I said “No, thanks”, people pushed it on me, “Would you like a piece of cake?” “No, thanks”. “Oh, come on. It's delicious.” “No, thanks. I'm not eating cake.” “Oh, just a little piece? “No, thank you. I am not eating the cake because I’m focusing on losing weight to make my knee better.” Don't make me have to say ”no” so many times. I know some people will say, “No is an answer, you don't have to say more.” But when they're people that are pushing, pushing, pushing, the best thing to stop them is a reason. I am unapologetically saying no to things. I showed up at the potluck with my own chicken thighs because I knew I would not get enough protein and my potluck item was a platter of vegetables, so that I knew I was covered. Be unapologetically yourself. Please be supportive of others because I tell you, this is one of the hardest challenges that I've had to deal with. Even saying yes to it was extremely hard and emotional. Maybe some of this resonates with you regarding your weight, your health, and maybe some of this resonates with you in another area of your life. No matter where it is, I'd love to hear from you. Diane P.S. Are you looking for some common tasks that can be delegated to your virtual assistant? Knowing which tasks to assign to improve efficiency and productivity can be a challenge, especially if you are in the early stages of starting up your business. Grab your copy of “The 229 Tasks You Can Delegate to Your Dynamic VA.” Read my other blogs here:
Have you been feeling overwhelmed recently? One of the women in my Dynamic Women Global Community asked, “What are some ways to prioritize during overwhelm?” So that is what I’m going to cover today. What overwhelm could feel like Overwhelm can feel like there's so much on your plate. You don't even know where to focus, where to start, like what's even the point. All you want to do is scroll on your phone or go to sleep. I’ve felt like that at different points in my life, maybe you’ve been feeling:
The issue in these overwhelming times is you can't focus. You’re not going to be able to be at your best to utilize your skills properly. What I'm going to do is share three different ways you can prioritize during overwhelm so that:
First Way: Brain dump You've maybe heard this expression before. I encourage you, if you're feeling overwhelmed right now, do this process. Take a piece of paper, a notepad, or whatever you’ve got, and a pen and write down all the things that you have on your mind. Now, these can be two categories, so make a ‘T’ shape and on the top of the left column, you're going to write “things to do”. On the right side, you're going to write “things on my mind”. The things to do can be obvious that are in your life like:
And some other things to do in your business would be:
There might be really specific goals or they might be more obscure, and you're not sure how to do them like lose weight, or gain confidence. It’s ok, just write them down. You're not going to judge anything. You can start with two minutes on the clock and just dump everything down that's on your mind around things to do and a whole bunch of things that are on your mind. Maybe they're worrying you, and you have to deal with them or focus on them at some point. You can pause reading this blog and take those 2 minutes (or five minutes, however long it takes) and brain dump. As you're writing these things down, you're not thinking about, “How am I going to do it? When am I going to do it?” The only job you have right now is to write them down. Once that is done, we're going to put that aside because we just wanted to clear our minds. It's like closing all the open tabs when you have a browser open, or quitting all the applications you have running. Second way: Get a bird’s eye view of your life I encourage you to get a bird's eye view, which is a higher view of your life. You're going to do that by using a tool I call the ‘Wheel of Life’. It is a professional coaching tool that I use with my clients. If you want me to help you take you through this, then I can. If you want to have a copy of three simple steps to get ahead or get what you want, just shoot me an email at diane@dianerolston.com. We do the bird's eye view of your whole life to see your level of satisfaction in each area because when you intuitively answer what your satisfaction is in each area, you’re going to start to see where the problems are, where the dissatisfaction is and then where the lack of alignment is. A lot of times this is really eye-opening for my clients because they don’t realize those areas are high, but other those areas are low. It really helps them to see where the issue really is. You may have lots of stuff to do, but that's not the issue. The issue might come from a lack of satisfaction in your relationship or could be with your health. It could be something else that's causing you to not be able to handle life's tasks or business activities that you normally would do. By the end of doing the wheel of life, you're going to be able to see where the changes need to happen, and then you'll use that awareness to decide, “Okay, if the number is here, where do I want it to be in 6 to 12 months?” That'll help you to know where the difference is between where you are and where you want to be. We're not going to focus on what made it low, but instead focusing on where you want to be, and then see about helping you to get there. Third Way: Going into maintenance mode In order to be able to kind of move forward at this point, we move into the third way, which is going into maintenance mode. I talked about this with clients who have something that's been sprung upon them, like:
In those moments of something coming up surprisingly or it's a busy time in the business, there are lots of things happening, or you're traveling a lot and there are a lot of responsibilities on you. So I encourage you to go into maintenance mode, as a way of just maintaining the basics of where you need to be. You can think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's not just taking care of the basic needs like food, water and shelter, but it's taking care of so many other priorities. You may be like, “What are those?” Well, when you have the Wheel of Life, you can see where the priority is like your Health, family and finances. Then, when you go into maintenance mode, you're also going to go back to your brain dump, and you ask yourself,
For the other pieces, you could delegate, or pass the work off to someone else. I know that when I get super busy and overwhelmed, I look to my two main virtual assistants, Kristine and Karissa. They are just such a blessing for me in my business. I know when I'm overwhelmed, I can pass things off and have them figure it out because a lot of times when I'm overwhelmed, my ability for my brain to compute high-level things is just not there. Delegating is great. Deleting is great. Everything else left that you're not going to reschedule, do later, or put on hold for now, you need to be focusing on just those pieces. Maybe if we look at the Wheel of Life, the most important areas could be your health, your children, your clients, and your business.
We want to think of it as if you were juggling balls, and the balls are the priorities in your life. If you have too many things going on, you're eventually going to drop the balls. The trouble with that is you end up dropping the glass balls, the priorities, the things that really matter. You start burning the candle at both ends. You're not sleeping as much. Furthermore, you're eating poorly, and your health declines. You get sick, or maybe you have an illness that's been triggered. Maybe you drop a glass ball, which is your clients, and they are angry at you, and then they stop working with you, which means you have an increased stress now trying to bring in more clients. Or another glass ball might be your children, and you know you have to care for them, and you have no one else to support you and you throw them in front of the TV and your relationships are broken or things don't go well for a longer period of time. You have to think, “What are my glass balls?” What are those areas in your Wheel of Life that are super important? Go back to your brain dump. “Which are the things you need to be doing?” Those are the glass balls you want to keep juggling and at the same time letting the rubber balls (the ones that don't matter as much right now, like maybe the clean house, preparing your own meals, you being the one creating social media graphics), pass off, delete, delegate, postpone, push all those aside, or just don't worry about it as much. Those balls can drop and bounce and when you're ready, you can scoop them back up later, but for now, in maintenance mode they’re not as important. Wrapping Up Try the steps I suggest, but if you prefer to go through it with me and/or you want to go deeper that’s when having a conversation would make sense. If you want to do the Wheel of Life to see where your satisfaction is where I can support you and reduce your overwhelm, let's have a discussion. Email me at diane@dianerolston.com. This question did come from the Dynamic Women Online Facebook community. If you're not a part of it, I invite you to be. I like to jump in there with really great questions that are thought-provoking. Also, some tips and tricks, as well as me doing some live training, plus there are a lot of cool women. I invite you to join that group. It is a free online group for you! Read my other blogs here:
5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark (Part 2)10/11/2023 In my last blog, I share the first two pieces of advice for aspiring female business leaders looking to make their mark. Four of these pieces of advice came from the women in my Dynamic Women Global Community while the last one is from me. Let’s continue! Advice #3 “Look for ways for others to shine in your light. At the core of success is fostering long-lasting connections, be a known collaborator and build strong community!” - Jeanette In my Dynamic You Program, in order to unleash yourself as a dynamic woman, there are nine pillars and Jeanette actually pulls out three of them: Shine, Collaborate, and Connect. Let's look at each piece. She says, “Look for ways for others to shine in your light.” That means that you yourself are shining and others can glow because of you. I speak of this shining piece as if you're the lighthouse. You're the beacon. You’re calling people in and when they see you're shining, they want to be in your presence because you're positive, uplifting, and energetic. I'm sure you know when you're in those moments with people. When you shine, and then you look for ways to help others to shine, to bring out the best in them and empower others. That is a great way of building group around you of great connections, where when you go up, they go up and vice versa. It's just amazing. It's like being on a sports team, and you support another player to do well. Rather than always taking the ball in soccer and shooting yourself, you pass to someone else. Your ability to make the pass and have them score helps them to shine. Doing this in life and business means they're going to win alongside you. They’ll be grateful you gave them a good pass. It's the same in business. If you want to make your mark, it's not just about making your mark by yourself. It's bringing a group with you. That comes into that next piece around long-lasting connections. At the core of success is fostering long-lasting connections. There are so many ways to connect and have connections with others, but at the heart of it, it's around vulnerability, authenticity, and being in alignment with your values and your core competencies. Then you're going to build these strong connections with people because you're being real, and hopefully, they're being real. The last one is collaborating. In the Dynamic You Program, we talk about 16 different ways to collaborate. You may wonder, “How do you even have 16?” If you have the book, great, you're going to be able to look it up. Working together with others on projects, or cross promotion are a couple examples. Advice #4 “Think outside the box, ensure your creative path works with your personality, principles & goals, seek advice for your weak areas (know your weak areas), and, if something doesn’t work, try a different approach.” - Susan I love that and let me unpack each piece here. Think outside the box. There are so many people that just repeat what others have said, or worse, all their ideas are coming from ChatGPT. It's a great research tool, but if you want to think outside the box, you’ve got to come up with something unique. When Susan says, “Try a different approach”, that's also perspective work. That's the R in SMARTER. We evaluate, and then we redo it, or we reset. It can be like, “Okay, this isn't working, no problem. Let's go and try this way.” One thing that I want to speak on next is she says, “Ensure your creative path works with your personality principles and goals.” That's coming back into the connection piece around being authentic to yourself and your personality principles and goals. If you can continue to be in that way, you'll be in alignment, and you'll have energy. You don't want dissonance. You want resonance. You're going to make your mark because you're going to be so passionate about what you're doing, and people are going to feel that oozing out of you positively. The last piece is to seek advice for your weak areas and of course, first, you need to know your weak areas. Something that I do to know my weak areas is called the 360 Feedback Survey. I have a bunch of questions that I send out to people I trust. It might be people I know really well, might be people I don't know as well, but I still trust their opinion. It can give you an idea of:
I always have a question in there around the weaknesses so they can point things out to me. What I found in doing this for myself and for my clients is, there's such a cool opportunity here to learn new things about yourself. When I did this earlier on in business and I had some people from Toastmasters and soccer even fill this in because I didn't have a big business network. The response I got was, “Oh Diane, you have presence when you walk in a room”. I was like, “Oh, really? That's kind of cool.” I wonder:
What is it? I got to really dive into that, and it was actually part of what brought about the nine pillars of being a Dynamic Woman. This 360 Feedback Survey is something you send out to maybe 10-15 people. I like to have someone else do it on my behalf, so I do that for clients as well because then I can then filter it for them and give them the insight. Then you can use that for branding, marketing, and for product and service generation, which is really cool. Advice #5 “Say ‘Yes’ before you feel ready and then act.” - Diane Rolston Now, I've had opportunities in my career where I haven't done a corporate keynote, but said, “Yes, I'll do it.” I haven't been knowledgeable about affiliates or even before I did the podcast, I said “Yes”, and then I acted and figured it out after.
When an opportunity comes, say “Yes”. Put up your hand, as long as it is in alignment with your goals, where you want to be, who you are, your principles and all that. Just say “Yes” because those opportunities might not come again. This can be God's way of pushing you in the right direction. I've had opportunities that I've said no to, and I reflected and thought, “Man, like, why didn't I say Yes”, and the thing was, at the time, maybe I didn't feel ready, and I didn't have the right mindset. But I know that if I have it in alignment with my goals, if I have the right people around me, the right coaches around me, if I can collaborate with other people, and I can try a different approach if it doesn't work right away, kind of the things that Kathy, Paula, Jeanette, and Susan said, I know I'm good. A lot of people have asked me, “Diane how have you had success?” A lot of times it's implementation. I just implement as fast as I possibly can. In the beginning, it was always me doing it, and when I realized that I just can't stay balanced by me doing it all, and I really should be leveraging the skills and the passion of others who are better at other things than I am, and I started to have an assistant in Canada here. Then over the years, other assistants, and then now for the past two and a half years, Kristine and Karissa from the Philippines. It's so much easier for me to say “Yes” because I don't think about how am I going to do it. I've got people I know can support me. If you want to talk about the VA stuff, shoot me a message at diane@dianerolston.com. I’m happy to talk about how that can work because I do have a team now of 15+ virtual assistants who can support you. Wrapping Up Which of these five pieces of advice are you most excited about? Which of the pieces do you know already but are not actually doing it? I encourage you to just take one little piece of this blog or the last one, save it, re-read it, whatever you need to do so that once you've successfully put that one piece into play, you can pull in another piece. I say there are only five pieces of advice, but each one actually has multiple pieces of advice. A piece of advice is only worth something when you actually put it into play for yourself. Once you do, let me know how it goes. I'd love to hear about it! Read my other blogs:
5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark (Part 1)10/5/2023 In my Dynamic Women Global Community (it’s a free-to-join Facebook group!), I ask some thought-provoking questions, and I get some really amazing answers because I'm not the only one who can give great advice. Most of the ladies that I am sharing their answers with below have been clients of mine and women I know in the community. What does it mean to make your mark? I see it as “people know you”. That you've left an impression on because you're doing great work in your industry. If you're a leader, then others are looking up to you. Maybe you're implementing some things that are really helpful to your industry. With people knowing you, it's probably because you're a good person as well. There are many ways and pieces of advice that I could have pulled from, but I'm going to pull these four that were given by the women in my community and give mine last to fill in any gaps that were left because these are four really amazing ones. Over this blog and the next one, I will cover: 5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark. As you read through the blog, I hope you're thinking about:
Then get a little bit of a game plan going, so you can leave your mark in your industry, and be the female business leader you're looking to be. Advice #1: “Be intentional to reach your goals that you set each day, week, month, and follow through and if it gets stuck, ask for help. There's a lot of good help and advice out there.” - Kathy Wonderful advice there, Kathy. Let’s first talk about setting goals. We all know that we need to be setting goals. Have you set goals that are SMARTER goals? Are they Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely? Then the ER, are you Evaluating and Reviewing or Resetting those goals? We all know this, but are we actually implementing it? I think that's the key thing. When you set it for a day, week, and month, the cool thing is you actually can break it down into smaller pieces. It feels more manageable. You feel more confident you can actually achieve it, which is kind of a big deal because a lot of times our mindset is going to mess with us and say, “This is too big, I can't do it”. Or you start procrastinating. But when you break it down into daily goals, you can see, “Okay, I meant to read 10 pages of this or watch one video”, and the next day, if you haven't done it, then now you know you have two videos to watch or now you have 20 pages to read. You're going to see when you don't reach that goal and how every day that you don't do something towards it, it compounds and makes you even busier. A way to make sure this is happening is to have some accountability. Kathy says, “If you get stuck, ask for help, there's a lot of good help and advice out there.” Yes, there is, but having some accountability set from the beginning is really helpful. For me, I'm going on a health journey. You may have heard me talk about this before, but I wasn't fully ready, and I'm ready now. When I was thinking, “Okay, I want to be healthier. I want to drop some weight to make my knee function better because of less inflammation and less weight that it's carrying around,” I knew what to do, but was I being accountable for that? No, not at all. Oftentimes, we're not accountable to ourselves. In this case, I hired a coach to help set my meal plans for me. She checks my accountability because I have to log every single meal and every single amount of food I eat. Am I making progress? Oh, yes! (If you want to talk about that separately, just message me. I’m happy to share more about her.) Then mark milestones. Celebrating, “I achieved this! I'm here now! I'm at this point.” Have some sort of way to celebrate your milestones, and then make adjustments as you go. Having coaches, having a group you do it with, and having an accountability partner will be really helpful. Actually, I have multiple coaches. I have a counsellor for my life. I have a coach for my life. I have a business advisor for my foundational business. I have a marketing strategist coach, and I have a marketing-speaking business coach. It's not like if you reach a certain level of success, you don't have coaches anymore. No, you just have more of them, and that's the thing. I can remember reading a quote from Oprah where it said, “When I became successful, I didn't stop having a coach, I had more of them”, and I was like, “Yes!” That gave me permission to have more, too. Advice #2 “Trust yourself, and importantly not to consider setbacks or mistakes as failure but to embrace the learning as a gift.”- Paula What a fantastic perspective shift here, Paula. Trusting yourself maybe will come a little bit more when you do not like to set yourself up for failure by saying, “If I mess this up, I'm done. I'm no good.” Those mistakes don't change who you are as a person. In the Dynamic Year Program, we actually go back through all the things from the past year. All those disappointments, frustrations, things that didn't go well, and we grab the learning from them. Even those disappointments, the things that you're like, “I’m so embarrassed by that” or “I didn’t reach that goal”. By grabbing the learning, do you know what the cool thing is? You probably won't do the same thing again. It's not just learning from the mistake, but it's then being able to apply what went well in the positive areas. If you look and go, “Wow, I did these amazing things and this was my learning. I worked well with a team, or I do better when I have accountability, or I really enjoy having a beautiful spreadsheet with colours in it that helps me to do better." Learning, as Paula said, from the mistakes and setbacks, and also learning from the positive things. If you don't have a Dynamic Year Journal yet, please do so. It's going to help you to be able to reflect every week on those learnings because the key problem I hear with people is at the end of the year when they do this, they go, “Ah, I wish I knew this in January when I was making this mistake or having this success, I could have repeated it, or I could have stopped doing it.” Yes, trust yourself. But most importantly, let the things that don't go your way, be okay. In the next blog, I will cover the other 3. Let me know in the comments what you will implement this week! Read my other blogs:
Are you a business owner and a mom? Or a business owner and someone who is taking care of a loved one? Because I do. I kill myself trying to be both a great parent and a great business owner. I watched P!nk’s Amazon Prime Special The line, “I kill myself trying to do both” came from P!nk's Amazon Prime Special about her going on tour and bringing her two kids with her. If you haven't seen it, it's a good one. Not just for the fact that you get to see P!nk, her music, and the behind-the-scenes, but you see how she tries to be a normal parent in a life that's not normal. My “normal” life I consider my life normal. I'm a working parent, but I have a business. It is hard, and people without children don't understand. Case in point, I was asked to be on the board for an organization I'm a part of. My answer was, “I can't. I'm just too busy and I don't have the bandwidth to be able to do it.” The reply I received was, “Everyone is busy”. I get that everyone is busy, but when you have children you’re on 24/7 needing to:
Your time is not your own. As I'm trying to build my business, I've got two children who depend on me. That's why I stopped trying to do it all because it's a lot. It's one thing when you think they're at school for most of the day, or they’re at camps. Well, over the summer, I dealt with kids being at home all the time because they don't want to go to camps, and it's the summer, so I try to continue to build my business with kids at home. Now, I will say that I do have support. I have two virtual assistants, Kristine and Karissa, who are absolutely amazing, and who do so many things for me, and that's probably why I haven't completely lost it. That's part of how my business continues to move forward, but the reality is, that you cannot be an ideal parent and be the perfect business owner doing it all alone. You can't have both at the exact same time without help. The same goes if you're caring for an aging parent or a loved one who needs your constant care and support, you are with them probably all the time. You get maybe a little bit of respite, but it's the same situation. Job of a parent: me as a mother When I heard P!nk say she tries to be perfect at both, and she'll kill herself trying, I completely related. On the parent side, my background is in teaching, education, motivation, and empowerment, and I thought, “When I’m a Mom, I'm going to have the greatest children. I'm going to organize crafts and personal development and teach them about having a business and all this”. To be honest, sometimes I’m just keeping my head above water:
But honestly, my house is a mess. They don't always do what they're supposed to do. They're learning to talk back now, and I am having a hard time with it. When I was a new mom, my daughter at the time was about nine months old. (My daughter is the eldest. I have two now they're 8 and 11.) At that time, I was building my business, and I was a mom. I would be listening to books or podcasts as I hiked with her. I would have my computer open as I was nursing, trying to learn new things, trying to reply to emails, or posting on social. Those sorts of tasks while I was also being a mom. It kind of worked. We did our best, and I didn't have too high expectations for myself. While she was sleeping, I would work the business and when my husband was home, I would work the business. I had coaching clients right through this. I took like three weeks off after she was born, which is basically Christmas and New Year's because she's a December baby. One of those days, I was nursing her because my husband wasn't home yet. I thought, “Okay, I'll nurse her before my client call.” I never book clients unless I knew my husband would be home. There was an accident on the highway, and he was stuck. I wasn't able to hear from him to know when he would be home. I thought, “Okay, he's just going to be an extra five minutes, no problem”. I nursed her as much as I could and then I put her in her crib, but she didn't want to be there. She actually didn't even want to nurse either. She wasn't hungry. I put her in her crib and she cried and I thought, “Okay, well, my husband will be here soon. Her dad will be here in just a few minutes, it'll be okay”. I jumped on the call with my client. Wanting to be the perfect business owner, I didn't delay it. I started on time and I did my best at that point to focus on the client, but the truth is, she kept crying and crying and crying. My husband wasn't coming, and I couldn't call him because I was with a client. When I finished coaching the client, he still wasn't home and she was still crying. I ran in there, and she was red-faced. At that moment, as she was screaming, and I'm holding her, and she was exhausted from crying for like an hour. I broke down, and I started crying because I thought, “Wow, look at that. I chose my client. I chose my business. I chose to look like a great professional business owner, rather than the honest truth of where I was at. That I couldn't coach because no one was going to take care of my daughter.” She was safe. She was in her crib, but she didn't want to be alone, and I left her alone. That reality really sunk in, and I was hugging her and kissing her and saying I'll never do this to you again. That's the reality of being a mom and a business owner. Even being a mom and a career woman and having other things that are happening, you don't always get to be there, and you have to make hard decisions. That day, I made a decision that I regret, but it was a really good learning opportunity for me. I thought I'm never going to do this again because at that exact moment, I was a crappy mom, and a crappy business owner. Kids need you way too much. That was a really hard day for me. That was like a low. I've had other lows since then and continue to learn. Job of a business owner: me as an entrepreneur Now on the business owner side, I can remember meeting with my business advisor. I told her about how I'm watching all these other people get ahead and get opportunities and do more with their website or their social media or whatever it was. I couldn't, and I wasn't. I was asking her, “Why am I not reaching my bigger goals faster? Why am I not doing this and that? Why am I not getting ahead as quickly as so-and-so?” Then she said, “Well, Diane, can you count up how many actual working hours you have?” I counted them up, and it was like five hours a day. That's all I had and I had no help. She said, “So five hours times five days, that's only 25 hours. How are you going to build an empire and reach all of your goals on part-time hours?” Maybe you're busy. Maybe you have other things going on, and you have to build your business in part-time hours, but do you have the same expectations of yourself? Because it is extremely hard doing it all by yourself. At that time, I was doing it all myself to do everything and get ahead at that speed, when I only had 25 hours to do it all from scratch. There is the idea of the four-hour workweek, and I've been able to reduce my time so that during the day…
Those are all opportunities for me because I have support now, but the key thing is, without help you will kill yourself trying to do both perfectly. What we can do Here are a few steps or phases you can take: Phase 1: Look at the actual usable hours you have Then think:
Because it's really hard to stay engaged with your family if you have work things to do and are trying to be both simultaneously. When they were little, I could do that a little bit, but now they know. They know when you're on your computer. They know when you're doing work. It's really obvious. Phase 2: Write down the things you need to get done and who needs to be doing them. Are there things you can pass off? If you're like, “Oh no, I need to write my own social media”. Do you? Because I don't. It all comes from my repurposing model. If you're listening to my podcast, it's actually done in video and put on YouTube. Then it’s also made into a blog. It's also then made into my social posts and my newsletter and everything is taken care of by this one piece of anchor content. If you want that to happen too, we can do that for you, with my Your Content Made Easy Program, we're still in the pre-launch period, and we still have some spots open at the special rate to get four weeks of content made every single month. We do it in-house. My team and I manage the people who are working on it for you, and you get everything: carousels, stories, short-form videos, etc. You get seven posts a week, one per day, plus five stories per week. Write down everything and then see who's going to do it. It doesn't have to be you. It could be someone else, and if you don't know how to figure that out, it's okay. I can help you with that. We got that covered. We have the systems and processes, training videos, checklists, and all the things that are needed. Passing things off to someone else is an amazing way to gain back time and reduce your stress. Phase 3: Set some goals Another thing to bring in is what I call the “perfect balance” for you right now.
Set some goals for those pieces, then plug in the tasks underneath them. Phase 4: Set boundaries around your work hours When will you work? When will you NOT work? I always tell my clients and my VAs, I'm only a WhatsApp message away. That makes me very, very accessible, but I don't mind doing quick responses through WhatsApp and setting up a meeting date for another day. That works for me, but maybe you need boundaries more around your weekends and your evenings, just so you can rest. The rest part is so important because those two pieces, your career/business, and your kids demand so much of your time and energy. If you don't already get to travel with work and have some time off, I suggest you take a night off. Once a year, I usually take myself on an overnight trip to Whistler. It's about an hour and a half for me. I'm sure you've got some places about an hour and a half from you that you can go to for one night. I leave the house early on day one, and then come back after bedtime on day two. That's what I found works great for me when I go to Whistler. I go to the spa in the morning then check into my hotel, have a chill evening, or maybe I feel excited to work on business strategy. Then the next morning leisurely breakfast, wake up whenever I want, and then move into a hike, check out the stores, and then an easy drive back. That 48 hours is so rejuvenating and life-giving. Speaking of life-giving, what other things are you doing to support your spiritual life? Is there prayer, journaling, meditation, or going to church? What is that piece for you? That could be what your soul’s missing, that would really rejuvenate you. Now I can continue on and on and on and talk about all the areas of life and all the things that you can do, but I hope from this, you get the idea that it’s hard to have these two full-time responsibilities. You're not expected to be perfect at both being a parent and a business owner. You're not even expected to be perfect at one. Know that you will do some crazy damage if you try to be perfect at both (even with help). I've been there. I've run myself into the ground, burned the candle at both ends and suffered for it with postpartum depression, and anxiety. What I'm going to do moving forward and continue to do (which I hope you do as well) is give yourself some peace, give yourself some grace, and let's look at who you want to be in these two areas in the next three to six months, and work towards that. BONUS FREEBIE: Grab my FREE GUIDE “Top 5 Tasks Busy Business Owners Should Pass Off Immediately”. Read my other blogs:
Have you ever felt like you had to fly under the radar or dumb yourself down or be less of yourself to make other people comfortable, or to not get a negative response? Oftentimes, strong, powerful, confident, and successful women have to or choose to fly under the radar, or hide who they really are, and it's really ticking me off. If you can relate, I am just like you. This topic comes from my personal experience as a woman who at times had to hide my true self, not speak up and choose to fly under the radar to fit in. I’ve also seen this with my coaching clients who definitely would raise their hand and say,
What flying under the radar means The idea of flying under the radar is to not be so high, so strong, so confident, so successful and win things so you don't get on other people's radar as someone to attack, cut down, gossip about, dislike or whatever it may be. I flew under the radar many times… This has been true for me most of my life. (In these blog posts, I'm going to be starting to share more of the vulnerable stories of what I've been facing and what others have been facing, and then the triumphant results of them.) It was true for me in sports when I was invited onto a boy's rep team for soccer, I was not accepted and no one would partner with me. In my coed soccer league, I had very harsh insults, swear words and derogatory comments thrown at me when I would take the ball away from them. I was just 12 or 13. As my daughter is 11, I can't even believe the things that were said to me that are probably still being said to girls today. In high school, when I ran for Student Council President, the other candidate tried to win by spreading vicious lies, attacking my character and making up sexual rumours. I still won, but at what cost? I had to repair my name, prove myself, and he continued to run his mouth about me even when I was doing a great job. When it came time to pick the class Valedictorian, I chose not to put my name forward (even though it was a dream of mine) because I feared I’d face the same from him, so instead I decided to fly under the radar. This has happened in so many areas of my life where I was cut down or felt negativity from others because I've been successful or confident. This is not me bragging. This is me speaking my truth in relation to you and hundreds of women I have coached on this topic. If you are a woman who has felt this, then I get it. Sometimes it's just so tiring. It's so frustrating because we're just doing our best. We're doing what brings us joy, and we're using the gifts that God has given us, and then people want to be hurtful because they are jealous or threatened by us. What I see in corporate, is women not putting their hands up for roles because if they do, they're potentially going to lose all of their friends that they're currently working with. They don't go for positions. They don't ask for a raise because of what people will say about them. Will they be treated differently? The answer usually is, “They will”. But we can’t let that stop us!!! A few years back, maybe four or five years ago, I wanted to interview a bunch of women. Some of the requirements were making multiple six figures or seven figures and some sort of leadership role. What I found is in these interviews, is this concept kept coming up over and over and over again: Life is just easier if I fly under the radar. This made me so sad and pretty pissed off! Life is easier and more enjoyable if I don't stick my neck out, or if I don't win things. That saddens me and it also scares me. It saddens me because these women are not living at their full potential for fear of what other people will say, will do, or the repercussions. There should not be repercussions to doing well. Yes, you win a sport, you win a game, you are the gold medallist, whatever it may be, there will be people who are jealous of you and there will be people who wish they were you. But to be in a workplace with coworkers, you may have other people treat you differently, or have it out for you or in my case, other people in the industry coming after me. What kind of world are we in where we can't just all do well ourselves? What if everyone just did well and stopped putting their negativity on others? Sad and scary It saddens me because people, specifically women, are settling and playing small, me included, because it was just easier. It's just easier to not be the one in the public eye. I feel like I've been pulled back the past few years. It takes a lot of stamina. I don't know how some of the famous people do it. It takes a lot of emotional and mental stamina to be able to be in the public eye, to take criticism and have people cutting you down for no reason at all. They don't even know you. It saddens me that women aren't feeling like they can step up and step into these bigger roles and play big. It also saddens me for the women that are around them, that are watching them and thinking, “Well, if she is not going for that, and she's more confident than me, more successful than me, or more experienced than me, then I shouldn't either.” It's got this trickling down negative effect. Plus, not just women to women or peer to peer, but what about the girls coming behind us, the future women who have fewer role models to look up to? I know for me in the teaching side of things and coaching side, there are a lot of women. It's really easy for me to look to role models in that way. There are a lot of great female speakers, but not enough that we see. Not enough on the main stages. How many times has a woman gotten on stage, and I've heard people complain about her outfit, complain about her voice, complain that she's too confident? That's the sad side. Do you know what the scary side is? The scary side is gender equality and pay equity, these things are not going to get any better if we diminish ourselves. I know we're not doing this on purpose, but we're doing this out of survival. There's just so much going on. It's different for everybody, but we’re trying to be perfect:
We're trying to be the perfect everything. It's not just that we're always trying, but it's kind of expected. If we're making an effort to do all these things, how then are we also going to show up as our fullest in these places when we know that there's a chance that people will take us down? Don’t fly under the radar - I want to interview you! I don't want us to fly under the radar anymore. What I'd love to do is see us soar. BUT HOW? I’m going into research mod again. I want to interview maybe 10 to 15 women who are making six figures or multiple six figures or seven figures (I only say that because you've probably been established in your business or your company and have a lot of experience with this, and you're playing at that higher level). I still sometimes say to my business advisor, “I thought when I was more successful, brought in more money and had more clients, things would be easier.” But the truth is, new level, new devil. You don't even realize who's going to come out of the woodwork after you. I don't say this to scare the people who are starting their business and such, but I'm just given the reality of it. If you want to be interviewed, email me directly at diane@dianerolston.com. You have to be in your position, your company, or your own business for at least a few years, not just in the startup stage, unless you've just come from having a business or something for more years. If you're in some sort of leadership position, or you’re on your own time, and you've had an experience where you felt, “Man, it would just be easier to just lie low a little bit, to not put myself out there.” I want to talk to you too. I want to have a conversation, doing some research for some really exciting stuff that's coming up. You will not only be part of the interview, but I'll share the results with you. I'm also going to bring all of these ladies who can be highfliers, but sometimes feel like it's just easier to fly under the radar. Stay tuned for what is coming with this and reach out if we can have a chat about it. BONUS FREEBIE: Grab your “Top 5 Tasks Busy Business Owners Should Pass Off Immediately”. Read my other blogs here:
Usually, my blog topics are “1,2,3 ways to…” or “5 steps to…”. But this week’s blog is different. There have been some changes over in my world… and I’m going to share the good and the bad. Let’s Look Back on the Hard Times Since 2019, I haven't fully felt like myself. Things have been off. It’s felt like I have been pruned. I have been changing, and things have been different for me. I know I'm on the verge of something big. You may have read or heard me share about the hard parts. COVID happened and I was in Ontario at a hotel about to deliver a whole week's worth of different events for my current paid clients, potential clients, people that we're at the start of their journey working with me, and also for my Dynamic Women Community. The year before that week was about an $80,000 week, and I was on target to be $120,000. I had to make the conscious and socially responsible decision to shut everything down, so I lost on the revenue. I was also there visiting my father who had cancer, and he wasn't doing so well. Then I come back home to BC and my kids were off school due to Covid, and I'm in charge of them as well as figuring out how am I going to adjust to this being only in a virtual world when I was in the in-person event space. I made some good changes, then summer comes, so my kids are around me full time. I do have a husband, but he's working outside the home. Then we visit my family in Ontario and my father goes into palliative care. Shock. Surprise. He had a blood infection, not cancer-related. He then passes away seven days later. I'm grieving, and I'm getting things back going into my business and then my Facebook account is deactivated, and I lose all of my Facebook ads. A lot of the stuff I built up in my business, including all of my friend connections and client connections. Many hits to me personally and to my business. These hardships and feeling pruned caused me to pull back a little bit and not be so in the public eye. When I was running the Dynamic Women Community's live events, we were doing eight different live events every single month in eight different locations. With these changes, I feel a little bit like I've been in a cocoon for a while. I haven't been as public. It definitely was public doing eight events a month, as well as lots of speaking engagements. I had a lot of stuff happening, and if I wasn't already feeling like myself, boy, was life really hard and I was in a bad place. I was gaining weight and didn't feel like I had the emotional or mental capacity to handle a lot of stuff, which is shocking because I used to have a lot going on, multiple events every week, and be packed all day. I’d be driving in traffic to get to an event and attending other people's events, hosting my own events, going to speaking engagements. Always on the move, and I realized I just don't have the same tolerance for stress and risk. Normal things for me like traffic started to stress me out to the point of not wanting to go. I wondered, How do I then navigate this world, coming from a place where I'm not myself, and I can't handle things at the level I used to be able to handle which was normal for me? Maybe you’ve felt some of this. Well I want to let you know, positive change is always around the corner. The Good Changes Yes, some great changes did happen: offering my programs at a higher level, celebrating over four years with the Dynamic Women Podcast, publishing another collaborative book and the Dynamic Year Journal and adding in the virtual assistant programs VA Made Easy and Your Content Made Easy. I'm currently in the process of releasing the weight and am already 30 lbs down. I'm feeling better, and am starting to get my voice back. I’ve been showing up at events and I am starting to feel the energy and spark coming back. I've been on this journey of keeping the business going and actually quadrupling my income, which has been really exciting. However, I know that where I'm at right now is not the next chapter and that the next chapter is just about to be opened. I've been investing my time over the past months doing some reflection and reading so I get more clarity on my brand and locking in what I stand for. The Turning Point I was asked by one of my clients in my Facebook group, the Dynamic Women Online Community, “What was the turning point moment for me?” It could have been the stand-up comedy class I took back at the end of 2022. I actually performed in two shows back to back in two different provinces, which is pretty crazy. I did one in BC with the class then I flew to Calgary to perform at the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) Convention Charity Night. It's not like they were paid gigs at a comedy club, but they were still so invigorating. This ignited something in me…I know there's something bigger. There's something edgier coming. Follow the Energy I know it's important for me to follow the energy. What I am in alignment with, invigorates me and excites me. That's what got the Virtual Assistant services going. I love when I can use my business strategy, life coaching, and love of efficiency all together to support my clients and really propel them forward. The Being Side In July, I was at the CAPS summer party, and was sharing with the other members that something big is coming. But I couldn’t say exactly what it is. This can be frustrating because I’m usually a doer. I am A-type. I am driven. I am the type of person that's like, “Okay, here’s ABCDEFG, I'm going to do all of it. Let's go, let's do this!” But to get the clarity, I needed to be in the BEING. The being and doing is the co-active coaching model I was trained in. I’ve never been super strong at the being side. I'm very, very strong, on the doing side. I've had to really tone that down so I could open up the being side, which is the listening, the intuitive, the asking questions, rather than the diving forward and getting things done. I do know this next iteration of me and what I'm offering, will still be in alignment with life coaching, business consulting, and virtual assistant services. Plus, supporting life balance, women's empowerment, business scaling and systems. I just haven't figured out what that one thing is yet and what that looks like, so I'm giving it space and that's hard for me because I want to jump in, and I want to DO. Right now, I'm just BEING. Being More Vulnerable My clients, audiences, and friends know that I wear my heart on my sleeve, I’m extremely transparent, and can be vulnerable, for sure. But often how I come across is polished, and put together. Maybe you’ve known the vulnerable side by listening to my podcasts, watching me on YouTube or hearing me speak for longer than a minute. You hear more, you see the walls come down and you're let in. You're going to be let in a lot more! The reason why I haven't before is not because I'm hiding, it's because I don't believe that everyone online should be completely open and transparent and vulnerable all the time. People who don't know you haven't earned the right to know these things about you. As I shared before, with my clients, in my close circles, in blog posts like this and even at my events, I am an open book. I share. I pull back the curtain and talk about the hard moments, over the past years. But maybe not enough. I want to Provoke! I realized I've been doing a lot of teaching, and a lot of training. Instead, I want to really step into the being side more, do more storytelling and really let out more of the edgy side of me. That part fires me up. I just heard our CAPS National President, Lorne Kelton, speak about how speakers should be persuading or provoking and if they're not doing that he asks, what's the point? I want to provoke more, and I feel like you want to be provoked. You want to feel something. You want to have something said that causes you to get into action and pushes you to feel motivated and inspired with your goals, in your life, whatever it may be, and I'm in for that ride. Imagine being in a raft on the rapids. I want to be your guide, so you can jump in confidently. Let's have a wild ride. This is the change that's coming. I don't know what it looks like yet, but I'm here for it. I'm excited! BONUS: I have a new FREEBIE “Top 5 Tasks Busy Business Owners Should Pass Off Immediately”. Grab it today! Read my other blogs here:
Are you enjoying your summer? Do you love vacation time? Or even just like long weekends or a day off? But then you feel like, “Ah, how do I get back to my regular routine when my routine has been so thrown off by summer/vacation?” This is also true after being sick, surgery, supporting someone else and being busy.” This was a question that was asked in my Dynamic Women community. You could list a billion ways that your routine gets thrown off. The key thing is you know you want to get back to things, but how? Follow my 3 Phases to Bring Back Routines After Summer!!! For many of us, now is the time that kids go back to school. Or at least if you're not a parent, you're thinking that summer is winding down, and you’ll need to get focused back on your life, on your business and back to routines. Phase 1: What is your routine? First, I invite you to think about your routine. What is your routine? What are the things that, when you're off of routine, you want to get back to? I'm going to list some of the things that I've heard from my clients as we're ending summer. A lot of them have said to me,
For the moms, dads, parents, or caregivers out there, you're probably thinking, “As soon as the kids get back to school, I'm going to get myself back into my routine.” Ask yourself, what are the parts I want in my routine? It could be:
Soccer is my hobby and passion and it starts up again in the fall, so exercising is part of my routine that needs to come back in. Maybe you have a hobby of painting, playing the piano, or rock climbing. Whatever it may be, you want to get back into the swing of things. How do you do this? The first questions should be, “How do you prefer to do it? What's your style?” Phase 2: Find Your Best Approach Approach #1: All at Once You can go all in and bring back all your routines at once. Does that feel good for you? Let’s look at the pros and cons or the costs and the joys of that style. Now, you might already be thinking, “I don't want to do them all at the same time.” The cost here could be that by doing all of them at the same time, it feels overwhelming. If you are a highly sensitive person, anxious, or someone who has trouble with change, then this might not be the best option for you. But the joy of this approach is that when you tell yourself, “I'm all in. I'm doing this. I'm committed.” The joy of being committed and going all in is that you can habit stack. One habit will trigger another positive habit. For example, going to bed early is going to support you getting up early and going to the gym. But if you decide to get up early to go to the gym, and you don't to go to bed early, the night you is screwing over the morning you. Think of it that way. Approach #2: Piece by Piece The other approach, as you can probably guess by now is piece by piece. Think, “What's the first habit that I need to bring in”. This could be the first habit that's the easiest to bring in. It could be that habit that is the fastest to bring in. It could be the habit that you are looking forward to the most. It might be something like a walk in the morning. If a walk in the morning is the first habit that you want to bring in, then you get up and go for your walk. Maybe you spend the first three days making the walk 1st thing in the morning. Then after you have a little bit of time getting that walk in, you bring in the second routine or habit. That could be, “I want to have my healthy green smoothie” so then you start making the smoothie. The cost of this approach is that it's going to take you a long time to really get it all going. Because if it's bigger habits, I would say you only do one habit and you don't learn anything else until you're actually doing it, and you're sticking to it. Look to the Five Stages of Change, to help you to move through this process a little bit easier. If you don't know what the five stages of change are, it’s in my Dynamic You book. Plus, you miss out on the opportunity of one habit supporting another habit. Some things might be harder to do because you haven't done the other habit that really goes well with it. Then the joys of this are that if you’re a person who has trouble bringing on new habiys/routines, your willpower is terrible, or you're not able to be committed, then this can be an easier approach. Approach #3: Bring a whole bunch of habits that support each other For me, I want to jump in full force to most of the habits and then add a few layers of habits and routines after. Maybe that's the approach you take. You bring in a whole bunch of habits that support each other. Then after that, you add in the other ones. For example, right now, I'm currently going to bed earlier so that I can wake up earlier. First thing in the morning, I'm reading, doing my daily devotions and I'm eating healthy food. What I'm going to bring in later, is my full morning routine with visualizations, affirmations, exercise, drinking more water, weight training, and journaling. With these three approaches, ask yourself, “Which feels better?” Phase 3: Get Started Now that you know the routine you want and the approach you want to take it’s time to get into action and have success with your routine. Step 1: Choose a start date: Decide for yourself, “When is my start date?” If you're doing everything at once, give yourself a day or two to prepare. If you're going to eat healthy and go to bed early, maybe you need to change your schedule. Maybe you need to go shopping to get this ready. If you want to do it piece by piece then choose which part will be first. Step 2: Prepare As I mentioned, you have to prepare your schedule and the things or tasks that you need to put in place before the routine can happen. If you want to start exercising again, maybe you have to go and join a gym, or you need to go get better running or walking shoes etc. To eat better, you need the right groceries. To start reading, you may need to go to the library and pick up a book because you've read all of yours. There are a few options here for how to prepare. Step 3: Have accountability You've chosen to do it, you've picked your date, you're preparing, then maybe you need some accountability. Accountability with a friend, with an app on your phone, with your coach, or someone to do it with. If you want to be walking more, you can have a walking buddy or a gym buddy, or you have a friend that you share prepared meals with. Step 4: Get into action You've got a bunch of options there for getting into action. That's actually the fourth stage of change. Start doing what you said you’d do, on the day you said you’d do it. It’s pretty simple. Make sure you don’t put off starting as it will make every day after harder. Step 5: Check-ins Congrats! You have a start day, you've prepared, you have some accountability and you got into action. Now you need some kind of milestone or some check ins. Maybe after a few days, you check in by asking yourself, “How is this going? Do I need to change anything?” Review where you've been. Evaluate and say, “Is this going well for me?” Then know that if it's not, you can just make changes. Maybe you need more accountability. Maybe you need a better plan. Maybe you need to add in another habit to support you. That's okay. Preventative Measures Let me tell you about preventative measures so that this doesn't happen to you. A lot of times we have things that we do in the morning that are part of our routine. But we go on vacation, we just don't have time. Maybe our routine in the morning was an hour and we don't have time, or we're running off to work and we just don't have time anymore. During that period of busyness or vacation, rather than completely scrapping the routine, could you do 10 minutes of each of those things that you normally do for much longer? 10 minutes of journaling. 10 minutes of reading. 10 minutes of running. 10 minutes of visualization. Whatever it may be. If you feel that's too long, can you do five minutes? How about four minutes? Instead of going for a 30-minute run, could you do a minute of jumping jacks or burpees, and then a minute of journaling, or one healthy meal a day? If you don't want to get out of your routines, let me encourage you that the next time you go on vacation or it's a busy season, that you still keep your habits in a minimal way. This doesn't mean you have to eat perfectly on vacation or you have to exercise every day on vacation, or during a stressful time, you have to make sure you're doing all of these things. However, if you do them just a little bit, you’ll remain committed to yourself and your routines. Your body is kind of committed and is remembering that “Oh, I like these things. I want to do these things” so that when you actually have the time, you can just extend or do it more. There are many benefits, and you’ll end up saying things like,
It's so much easier to do a little bit of your routines to stay on track rather than trying to get back into our routines. Now if you're coming back into September and want to get back into your routines and you feel like, “Darn it. I didn't do the preventative measures.” Not a problem just start at Phase 1. Wrapping Up Going through the phases at any time will work for you. It’s ok if you fell out of your routine. Just start again! If I can support you in any way to make this an easier transition or to support you in answering another question you have, drop them below or reach out to me by emailing me diane@dianerolston.com. I trust this will help you to get back into the swing of things and back into your routines! BONUS FREE EBOOK: Learn the 3 dangerous trends that professional women face that keep them overworked, overwhelmed, and pulled in a million directions. Read my other blogs:
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