Have you ever felt like you've given your power away? Maybe you didn't even know you were doing it until someone pointed it out. That happened to me recently, but you know what, you can stop giving all your power away. What is “IT” I didn't give you specifics in this blog title because I didn't want the IT that I felt or happened to me recently to be the thing that stops you from reading. Here are some examples of what that IT could be (what we could be giving our power to). It can be:
How IT showed up in my soccer team I saw someone on my soccer team give their power away to an opponent. The person on the other team was being lippy. If you're in competitive sports, you know people try to get under your skin and when they can get under your skin, it throws you off your game because you're so focused on them and…
His can cause you to not play your game as you normally would. In walking off the field, a player on my team was really giving away her power by talking about all the things about this opponent, instead of resting and/or being in the moment of camaraderie around how well we did that first half. She was complaining. Instead of listening to the coach with the strategy for the next half, she was not just complaining, but oozing negativity, and it was starting to impact me to the point where I said, “I get it. You're frustrated. But let's leave that on the field and let's start fresh here.” How IT happened to me recently Now that's not what happened to me recently. But this is how someone in a certain situation could give away their power. Maybe you give away your power to someone who puts you down.
You give away your power, and you don't show up powerfully at that moment. What was shocking for me is the thing that I was giving my power away to on this particular morning was a piece of glass, a little bit of digital electronics, and some metal. I was giving my power away to a scale. Now for some of you, you know that I've been on this health journey. To give you a timeline: On May 5th, I hurt my knee. I tore my lateral meniscus while playing soccer. The sport that I've played since I was probably four. I love it so much. One of the only things that we can really do for this type of injury is to strengthen the muscles around it, do physio, and lose weight. The other option is just don't play soccer anymore. For me, that's just not an option. I just love it too much, and I gave up rugby earlier than I wanted to. On June 5th, I decided that I would start working with a coach. Her name's Nicole Doumont. (If you want a personal introduction, I can give that to you. If you want to just reach out to her, just say I sent you so that she knows you're one of my connections, and she'll treat you extra special.) I started working with a coach because I believe that if we really want something in our lives, we need to work with a coach to get there. I know what to eat. I know what to do. But she had different strategies for me, accountability, support, acknowledgments, and could troubleshoot for me. She could do all of that. I started working with her, and I've been on this amazing journey where I've been just getting rid of so much weight. I'm probably down to about 40 pounds now, which is phenomenal. I'm really excited about it. I'm feeling great. I did a podcast episode on how I lost 20 pounds, but I think by the time that came out, I lost another five pounds. But anyway, just a few weeks ago, on Thursday, I had Pilates and soccer practice. Then on Friday night, I had a soccer game, and then we did a double that weekend, so back to back games. We played then on Sunday morning. At the end of Friday's game, both my calves seized muscle cramps, and I had to go off at the last minute. I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to play on Sunday. I was very scared about that like, “Oh my gosh, how can I physically do this? Can my knee handle something else, a fourth thing in such a short period of time?” It was actually great. I had an amazing game. I did so well. I was so proud of myself. Now, this is based on my limited capacity right now. I was really happy with how I did in spite of my knee. So, where did I give my power away? Well, I had started feeling great physically and athletically. I came home and I went and grabbed my kids, and we cleaned up all the leaves at the front of our house. Then I went and helped my daughter clean her room. I was high on endorphins. Life was good. I was feeling good about myself. I had hope again - hope that I could do well at soccer. Then I woke up in the morning, the scale said I gained three pounds. What? But I exercised? What? But I did all these extra things. What is going on? I am physically getting better and stronger. My knee is not inhibiting me as much. How come I gained weight? I was so pissed. I was upset. I was frustrated. At first, it was frustration and anger, and then it turned into sadness, complete sadness for how I jumped up again. There was a special number that I crossed over. It was like a goal of mine to cross over this specific number, and I got back over that number. I was really upset, and I came down and my husband was home and I hugged him and I just started crying. I went from such a high to such a low that I messaged Nicole, “I went up yesterday, and today I'm over again. Is this because I over-exercised?” and I shared about the different things. “That's the only difference from the plan. I'm still working on having more water, getting better sleep, and these have never affected my weight previously. And so what's going on? Is there a whoosh coming?” (Whoosh means a big drop) She thanked me for being open with her. This is again why it's good to have a coach so you can go and bring your mess to them. She said, “Definitely could have been overexercising.” I did actually end up missing a meal too. I didn't skip a meal on purpose. I missed a meal just based on the timing and I said, “Yeah, you know, I felt so great yesterday at soccer. Maybe it was so much soccer in the four days. I thought my knee wouldn't be good, but it was, and it gave me hope for the future.” The other thing I was proud of myself for is that our soccer coach on Friday night bought pitchers of beer and I didn't touch them. I had club soda and lime and, my team members had chicken wings and nachos and fries. I didn't have any of that. I had a salad and a burger wrapped in lettuce. I was so frustrated. It made me think (this is where we get in the screw-it mentality), “Why did I bother not having beer on Friday since I gained weight anyway?” It makes us have these doubts. When we give the power to something, it makes us doubt ourselves, potentially we’ll get off of course. One thing that she said to me was, “Don't give the scale all the power.” I said, “Don't give the scale all the power. Hell yeah!” Okay, I've snapped out of it. I realized I was giving this digital number on a piece of glass, plastic, and metal the power. Like, what the hell? I have dropped over 30 pounds. I'm feeling better. I just had an amazing weekend of sports. Give the power to the progress! What is your IT I ask you now, what is IT for you? Where are you giving your power away?
What happens when we give up this power? It stops you from making progress. I was ready to say screw it. I was so ticked. Like what's the point, right? I got into a little pity party with myself. When you give away your power, it stops you from believing in yourself. It can take away hope. It can make you say, “Screw it.” It can make you give up. It could have pushed me to go and binge. It’s not what I would normally do. But it might make me go on to say, “I'm going to eat everything because it doesn't matter.” I’d give up on my goal. The Solution What can we do so we don't get into this place of giving away all of our power? #1: We ask ourselves, “Where do I give away my power?” Or the question could be:
Sometimes I feel like I'm dumbing myself down in rooms where people are very successful because I feel like I've still so much to learn, but so do they. I maybe don't stand in my brilliance. I don't own the successes that I've had. #2: When you figure out where you’re giving your power away, also ask yourself, “What is that costing me?” For me, if I really fed into this, this could have cost me my progress. It could have cost me a few weeks. It could have cost me this whole goal of losing weight and being able to play soccer. #3: Ask yourself, “Where do I want to put my power instead?” Hopefully, the answer is yourself. #4: The next question is, “What am I going to do about it? Now that I know this… now that I have this information, what am I going to do about it? Wrapping Up If you're in a position of giving your power away, I really hope you have someone like Nicole - a coach or someone who can call you out and say,
I've had moments in my life where I've had people badmouth me. People talk behind my back. Not get promotions. Am I going to give that all the power? No. Have you ever had someone say “no” to you when you are trying to sell? Have you ever had someone choose to hire someone else when you know you're better? Have you ever missed out on an opportunity? Yeah, but that doesn't mean that that takes all of your power away. Instead, it should fuel you. The word coming out of your mouth is “Next”.
For me, it was “Next day”. Next day, and next day, and next day, and next day where I'm choosing to have a healthier life. Because I know it's what I want. Usually, when you give your power away, it is not for things that you want. I encourage you to take a hard look at every area of your life, every situation, every person, and ask yourself:
What I wish for you is that those around you actually boost your power and evolve your power. There's a thing that Brendon Burchard said when I was at his Experts Academy, “Power plants don't have energy, they create it.” So the same thing you can think about is maybe you feel like you don't have the power. Well, power plants don't have the power, they generate it themselves. They create it. What I encourage you to do is if you're feeling a little bit powerless, is to start generating power for yourself. Make those strong decisions. Even if it's, “What am I having for breakfast?” Rather than an energy of, “I don’t know, maybe I'll see what someone else is having.” Why don't you just decide? Tap into what you want, and choose to have that for yourself. Stop giving “it” all the power, whatever “it” is. Don't give your power away and step into what you really want. I trust that there are some points here that made sense for you. I would love to see that in a comment or if it's a little bit too personal, feel free to reach out diane@dianerolston.com and let me know how this blog impacted you. P.S. A place I love to hang out, go live, and ask cool questions is my Dynamic Women Global Community Facebook Group. I’d love for you to be a part of that group! It’s free to join. :) Read my other blogs:
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Coaches have coaches, and I've always believed in the power of continuous personal and professional growth. A few weeks ago, my own coach took me on a transformative journey during my visit to LA. In this blog post, I’ll share what this experience meant to me, how it happened, and where it's leading me. How it happened My coach shifted me a few weeks ago. I feel like a new person right now, and a little bit like, finally, I'm coming into this place where I really want to be. It's not to say that the past few years or the past 12 years are not where I wanted to be. But there's been a lot of evolving. I wrote another blog called The Change is Coming, and the funny thing is I didn’t know what the change would be, only that it was coming. I hadn't been able to put my finger on exactly what it is. As someone who is A-type, driven, and decisive, this has been so frustrating and so annoying to not be able to pinpoint what it is. I've had sessions with other coaches, and we just haven't hit the nail on the head. It's been annoying, and really frustrating. When I went into this two-day mastermind in LA, I thought what I was looking for was some clarity on my 2024 strategy with my current offerings:
I wasn't looking for a personal shift, but it had to happen. As I said before, the change is coming. It is coming, and the change is feeling like it's seriously been happening since 2019. It was before COVID-19 that I felt off in a way. I was shifting but, I didn't know what that meant, that I’m changing, and there's this new thing to bring forth. But without the clarity of what it actually was, I struggled. I have this client who listened to the podcast episode of the Change is Coming, and she was so excited. In our next one-on-one session, she wanted to get the behind-the-scenes scoop, the “what was really happening” or the “what was I alluding to”. The funny thing is I didn't have the clarity. A lot of the work I do with my clients is around three phases:
You need clarity on what you want and clarity on what that looks like. Then, when you decide that you’re going to do it, you start to build confidence with the support of me as your coach. Then, when you start to get into action, the confidence boosts even more, and the clarity comes in even clearer. When you're in action, it's exciting and great because you're moving forward toward your goal. In my case, I couldn't get into the confidence and action piece because the clarity was lacking. I've been looking for it since 2019, and I believe that it was unlocked that weekend. I knew there was something bigger for me. It all comes from this place around working with high-achieving women, high-level women, and dynamic women, and realizing that they're not happy. They're not where they want to be. Partially true for me and I’ve experienced it many times in my life as well. It was like I had a sore and a band-aid was still hanging on it. It's painful when you have a sore and still have a Band-Aid stuck to it, right? I needed the band-aid to just be ripped off, and I couldn't do it myself. It was slow and painful. It's been hurting for a long time, but I feel that my coach ripped that band-aid off. I had been talking about the past:
All this crazy stuff happened. I've been hanging on to the past. It wasn't serving me, and I'm not doing that anymore. My successes and challenges Now you may look at my life or my business, and say, “You started a whole new area of your business. You started VA Made Easy. That's super successful. You have a team of 16 Virtual Assistants now, and you're doing all these amazing things. You just got interviewed by Jack Canfield, like, how were you sucking or holding on to the past?” Now, yes, I was doing a lot of great things. But have you ever had that inkling that something's not where it needs to be? That you're not exactly in a position where you are the happiest or where it’s meant to be? I keep having these visions, and these feelings that there is something different, but I couldn't pinpoint it. Until my coach called me out. Until she said, “Diane, I think you want to go back into life coaching.” Now, this also may be shocking to you because you think, “Diane, you've always been in life coaching.” What actually happened was in the beginning, I was only doing life coaching (not business coaching). But once I started to build my coaching practice, then my speaking business, then my programs, my women's community, my books, my podcast, and so many pieces. People came to me and said, “Diane, how did you do that? Can you teach me how to do that? Can you show me? Can you guide me? Can you coach me?” I said, “Yes, yes, yes!” I always follow the excitement and the energy. I was totally in alignment with those using my core competencies of teaching, guiding, problem-solving, creativity, strategy, and showing things in another way. They were all great. But what I realized, in my 12 years of coaching, probably the last 8 years, have been 90% business strategy, consulting, and coaching, more so than just the life or women's empowerment and such. It's not to say that's bad. I love working with my clients. I just have this desire to do more in the life coaching world again and do more in women's empowerment. But I couldn't figure out what is my unique positioning statement on this. I'm not going to tell you right now what I think it might be because it's still brewing. It's like if you made a soup, or a stew, or a chili, or a curry. You can eat it right away, but it needs to sit and bubble and boil on the stove so that everything can kind of meld together, all the flavors. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm melding all the flavors together, and I'm trying it on like a new outfit: the new shoes, the new jeans, the new jacket, whatever it may be. I'm putting it on to see how it feels. I'm in that place right now. One thing that was really funny was when my coach and I started talking about the pillars of my brand, I said “Okay, it's about soul satisfaction, about being a Dynamic Woman, and the third pillar would be VA services.” My coach looked at me, and she said, “Diane, we just got you into the sparkly shoes. You got to get out of the work boots.” That's true. I've been putting on the work boots for so long. Probably eight years, like I said. The work boots mean the analytical, the head work, the strategy, the masculine, all of this. I want to wear some sparkly shoes, meaning I want to be in a place that feels more life-giving and energetic, where I have this soul calling. Over those two days in LA, I cried a bunch of times as I was shifted. Going into this mastermind for two days I wanted to have certain outcomes, that's the analytical brain, and I realized I just needed to have this personal shift. On the second day of the mastermind, she said, “What do you want to get out of today?” I said, “If today is just about completing the shift in me, like ripping off that band-aid from being in the work boots, moving into being in the sparkly shoes. I'm good with that.” From there, I went to be interviewed by Jack Canfield, and there were a few other people I knew who were there as well. And they said, “There's something different about you.” I said, “Oh, well, I've lost now over like 32 pounds.” They said, “No, no, there's something different about your energy.” Then I shared about getting out of the work boots, about helping this high-level woman who has been tamed, helping her be wild again. They were like, “Wow, I've never heard this kind of stuff out of you. So cool!” A Team of Coaches?! I’m glad I have put together a team of experts to support me. Why do I have coaches? Because there's always work to be done. For me to be able to serve my clients well, I actually have a few coaches. I have this Business and Marketing Coach, who also will give me a good butt kick here and there. I have a Speaker Business Coach, not actually about how to tell stories, gesture during a speech and all that, but instead how to have a business in speaking. I also have a Business Foundations Coach, a business advisor, who helps me with things like organizing my business, basically things like contracts, agreements, HR stuff, all the things that I don't find fun, she's super helpful. I have a counselor that I meet for my personal life. I talk to the women's pastor at my church to help with my spiritual life. I have a health coach now, and then there are other people here and there that I tap into in order to get some coaching and get some support. I love what Oprah said, “When I became successful, I didn't stop having a coach. I just have more of them.” That's what I have. Wrapping Up I hope you see that it's not about perfection when you’re aiming for success. There will be times when you can’t stay consistently on top of everything, where you don’t have the answers, and change doesn’t feel easy (because it's not). Sometimes you just don't have the clarity, and it's frustrating, but stick with it. Get the help, like Les Brown said, “You can't see the picture when you're in the frame.” I knew that I was in this frame. So many times with coaches, it's kind of like the answer is right in front of my face, and I'm saying, “Oh, is it over here? Is it over here? I just want to know what it is.” Then people point it out to you because they can see the full picture, like my coach did. You have the opportunity to be called forth by them. It is such a blessing to have these kinds of aha moments, to have someone care about you enough to speak the hard truth and to pull you where you need to be. I felt like I had that band-aid ripped off. I felt like I was called out of the darkness, called out of this lack of energy place, and I was reignited. I've had many times in my life where this spark got extinguished, and I had to find a new spark, or I had to reignite it. What's cool about this situation is I've just been reminded about the spark I had for coaching women, high-level women, to feel enough, to be happy in their lives, to stop pushing for more, and to actually be in a place where they can be successful and fulfilled and satisfied. This has been ignited in me. This has been reopened for me, and I've been given complete permission to step fully into this. So, as I figure this out, I’ll let it simmer like a really tasty chili, you're going to get more pieces of info. I'm working on a new signature program, and I'm really pumped about it. It's going to be coming out real soon because I'm on fire about this. Stay tuned! P.S. Have you joined the Dynamic Women Global Community? It’s a free-to-join Facebook group for female business leaders to come together to connect, share, grow, and be inspired. We’d love to see you there! Read my other blogs:
This year I turned 44. In my excitement, I realized I keep learning things, so I’m doing a David Letterman’s top 10 list of things I’ve learned now that I’ve turned 44. I want to keep these brief and bold and move you forward in life. In the comments below, let me know… Do you relate to some of these things? Are you younger or older than me, and you also relate to some of these things? Let me know when you learned them and what are some things that you learned this year at whatever age that you're at. Learning #1: Having older kids does not mean my house is any cleaner or will be cleaner. I look back at photos of my house when my kids were young, and my house was clean. Now because they can move everything around, the house is messier. I think it's also because I used to clean up after them. Now, I'm at the point where I believe they can be doing it themselves. I've got my own solution to this problem, but it is funny how my kids are 8 and 11, and I thought my house is going to be so much cleaner when they can help out. They do help out and they do have some jobs. But boy, do they have a lot of stuff. Learning #2: Speaking for five minutes on stage can be scarier than eight hours. You might think, “How is that even possible, Diane?” Well, I have done trainings that are eight hours long and full-day trainings, and I don’t freak out about it. Then in the past year I did a stand-up comedy class, and I had to do a five-minute set on stage and then for another show an eight-minute set. I'll tell you, I was so much more nervous to do that than I was to get up and do a keynote or get up and do a half day training or get up and do a full day training. The reason is there is no room for error. The punch lines and the lead-up to these jokes are so important that you land and say the right words. Otherwise, your punch line is not going to get any laughs. And with 25 jokes just a few sentences long, there was a lot to remember. Also, I was having a hard time remembering the order of the jokes and which joke came where, and if I did the joke at the wrong time, then it wouldn’t link with another joke I was doing. I do love the thrill of stand-up comedy, so I am going to continue learning how to do it and add jokes into a humorous keynote that I'm putting together. But it does scare me. Learning #3: It's important to call widows and hug them. I have a friend who was sharing with me that hugs from her daughter, son, and grandkids and massages are the only physical touch that she gets. She's not necessarily a widow, but she was sharing this with me. Then I also think of my mom, who after my dad passed away, is living alone; therefore, she doesn't have someone to talk to all day or at any point in the day at home, and she doesn't have the physical touch from my Dad anymore, and so it is important to at least call. And lots of hugs when I go visit her. I've also learned this from coaching widows and people who are alone. They miss these things. It's a simple thing. But if you have a friend in one of your groups, coworker or whatever, and you're friendly enough, maybe give them a hug, call them or message them sometimes. Learning #4: I love soccer so much that I will cry if I'm forced to give it up. I've had a rough few years. I don't know if you've heard some of the episodes of the Dynamic Women Podcast or read my other blogs where I talk about my journey with soccer, my body, how I've been injured, and I kept getting injured. I got injured back in May when I tore my lateral meniscus on the same knee that I had a reconstructive ACL. It's a bad knee. The orthopedic surgeon said, “The best is not to play. Do you do it for fun? Or do you do it for fitness?” I said, “I do it for fun. I love it so much.” He said, “Okay, well, it's your choice.” I was saying this to a teammate and friend. She said, “Maybe it's just time to give it up. Not play anymore.” I started crying. I wasn't able to answer her next question or even answer that because I was so upset because I love it so much. I think the other thing is, I was forced to retire early from rugby. I tore my ACL playing rugby. Then I did three months of physio thinking I didn't need surgery because that's what I was told. Then five minutes into the first game back after an intense three months of physio, I fully tore it. I needed surgery and didn’t get back to playing. Then it was leading up to my wedding, so didn’t play because I wanted to make sure I could walk down the aisle, then I started having kids and I just never got back into it. I'm not ready to give up soccer. With the knee injury, the other thing I realized was I'd get healthier. I'm losing weight, and eating better, so my knee has less inflammation and less pressure on it. I've learned that I will get healthier. I'm motivated to get healthier for a soccer body, not a summer body. Times have changed. My priorities have changed now that I'm 44. Learning #5: I can be at my heaviest weight and feel like I'm so far gone, and still come back from it. You may have listened to my Dynamic Women Podcast episode or my blog where I talked about how I lost weight. Now, I've lost over 35 pounds. I'm going to keep going until I'm at a healthy goal weight. How was I able to come back? Because honestly, I was feeling like, “I don't know if I could lose this weight. I don't know if I can come back. I just don’t have the willpower or ability.” The key thing was I hired a coach. I know what to do. But I didn't have the emotional and mental bandwidth to do it. I needed accountability. I needed someone to just guide me and tell me what to do. I would just say yes, and follow the plan and tick things off and get the, “Good job, Diane.” That's what I needed. What I actually realized from that was I could eat more, exercise less, and still lose weight. Isn't that amazing? If you want to know my coach, let me know. Email me at diane@dianerolston.com. Learning #6: I like online digital investing. This whole cryptocurrency, investing thing was doing my head in. My husband and I were looking at doing real estate investing in Vancouver. Just not ideal for the type of investing we wanted to be doing - flipping. Then there are stocks, bonds, puts, and all these other types of stock market investing. I use my brain all day for work, I didn’t want to stretch it at night as well. It's not in my zone of genius to understand this financial side. I didn't do any of it. But then I met a mentor. I realized I could learn to navigate this crypto world, this online investing digital world, and make good investments that are making me money because I have a great mentor. Do you know what's really weird? I have always thought, “I'm going to coach until I die. I love this so much.” But when I started getting into investing, and seeing how much was coming back to me, without me doing anything (passive income), not “Oh, I have to figure out all these businesses. I have to watch what the market is doing. I have to see if the stock is up or down and then buy low, sell high or any of that”. I didn't have to learn it. I don't have to be on top of it. I put it in. I get the interest and then decide to withdraw or compound. I then thought, “Oh, maybe I don't want to be a paid coach until I die. Maybe I want to volunteer coach instead.” Anyway, that was interesting to me. I got excited about it because I had someone to show me where to go with it. Learning #7: Sometimes you need to break up with friends, clients, or soccer teams if they're not a good fit. When I say good fit, it might have been a good fit, but things and people change, so maybe it’s not a good fit for this period of your life. I won't go into why I broke up with friends, clients, or with these teams. But I'll let you know the learning from this is that even if I make a tough decision to end a relationship, to switch teams or to fire a client, I still think about them. I still want the best for them. I grew up always thinking that everyone would be my friend, and everyone would like me, and I'd like everyone and everyone would get along. I realized it's not that way. I want it to be that way, but it's not. Doing the breaking up or limiting my time and energy has really been hard. It sits on my heart about these people. I still pray for them every week, anytime my pastor’s like, “Lift up someone who's hurting right now”. If they say someone who has physical pain, I still lift up these people even though it doesn't even relate. It's just the whole idea of lifting them up and praying for them. Not praying because I want them to be better or get better. No. Praying because it saddens me that there was a break or distance created. Learning #8: I can't wear heels anymore. At least, I'm trying. Here's a variety of reasons why I don't think I could wear heels. But I'm going to do it anyway. I wore them in my photoshoot for my birthday. I loved the power, the feeling, the sexiness, and the beauty of high heels. However, I need to go buy new ones, better ones, bigger ones. I think what's happened is two kids (my feet widened), plantar fasciitis issues, ankle issues (yes, those are both soccer), COVID and not wearing heels (I’m out of practice). I had a client who is a personal trainer of people who do fitness competitions. When they come up to fitness competition time, she has everyone wear their heels in the house for at least 10 minutes a day because you have to build up all those ligaments in the feet and get them used to that position along with the calves. Well, I just put the shoes on and I haven't even walked a step and my foot feels in so much pain. That makes me feel old like I need orthotics in my heels, which I don't think you can do, but I wear orthotics in my shoes. That makes me feel older, and that's okay, but I'm going to have to train myself how to wear heels again and get some good ones for myself. (Since writing this I bought myself 3 comfy pairs!) Learning #9: I'm more sensitive now, and I just won't rough it. I used to backpack, stay in cheap places, get on cheap flights, and go into chaotic restaurants. I just can't do it. I can't do it. I'm not a fan of loud music, loud restaurants, loud spaces, chaotic spaces. I want to take cabs or an Uber or Lyft over public transit. I will choose better seats on a plane just to be away from people if I can, and to have a bit more space. I want hotel rooms that have kitchens so I can prep my own food and more space in the room. Ideally, a room close to the elevator and pool. I don't want to rough it anymore. My husband says, “We're not going camping because you don't like it.” I said, “Oh, I like camp fires, nature, smores, I just don't feel like sleeping on the ground because I know how my body's going to be in the morning.” That makes me think, “Yeah, I'm 44.” Learning #10: I feel most alive and like myself when I'm with my friends. When I get on here, and I write to you, I also feel like myself. This is the real me. Except when I'm with my friends for longer periods of time or more of them, I get a little edgy. I use my humor. I get into some banter pretty quick. I picked all that up from my parents. We bantered a lot growing up. They're British and watching British TV shows. I love banter and I miss it. I feel most alive when I can be with my friends like that and just be silly, edgy, and funny. That's what I want to be like in 2024 I'm going to be bringing out a humorous, inspirational keynote, with a bit of my standup in it. That's going to be really good! I’ve already locked in a coach to help me with it. Wrapping Up Well, there are my top 10. Everything from heels to soccer to weight loss to housekeeping to investing to when I feel most like myself, so I'm curious, what have you learned over the past year? Do you relate to any of these? Let me know. Put it in the comments. P.S. I hope to see you over in the Dynamic Woman Facebook community. It’s a free-to-join community for female business leaders to come together to connect, share, grow, and be inspired. There are virtual and live events, networking, coaching, and more! 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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:
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:
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