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I used to be 100 pounds overweight, a three time college drop out, failed barista, failed bartender, and failed other things, too! But I lost 100 pounds, kept it off for 10 years, and built a 7-figure business online!! Now I coach people who want to be high performers in life, whatever that means to them. I find out what their goals are and use my experiences and my tools that others have shared with me and pay it forward to help others!
Today I was thinking about what holds other people back. We’re coming into that time of the year where we want to feel more productive and it’s easy to downshift. It’s easy to throw in the towel and coast to the finish line of 2017. But remember how excited you were in January?! Maybe it seems like a million years ago, but you probably had a New Years Resolution and a sense of what’s possible, hope, that sense of “this is the year!” Then a couple of weeks in, we’re back in the same rut. People tell me they’re motivated by my posts but they can’t put that motivation into action. They tell me they struggled keeping up with their side hustles while they have full time jobs and families. They tell me they struggle to get up in the mornings and work out.
I’m so fascinated by the world motivation because to me, it’s just another emotion. The same way you felt excited in January, that feeling will pass. The feeling doesn’t change anything. There wasn’t a magic feeling that made me start moving and lose 100lbs and keep it off for 10 years. There was no magic lightning bolt that helped me maintain that motivation every morning when I wake up to move my bsiness forward. People look at me and assume that the successful person loves every minute of what they do! That’s just not the case! One of the challenges of working from home is that I have a couch and a TV here!
For me, it all ties back to physical movement. When I saw Tony Robbins speak in Las Vegas, he talked about how our state, our energy levels are the start. We say I’m tired, I’m stressed, I don’t have time to do this today…and our minds are so powerful that we can convince our bodies to do what we think about. So while we say we’re tired, our bodies follow suit! But there’s somebody out there who has more variables, less time, more stress, more children, maybe they have a full-time student and a job and they’re still getting stuff done! It’s because they haven’t bought into the story that they’re too tired/busy/stress.
No doubt there are days I get tired. But there are ways to get past that, and for me it’s what I do with my body to let my brain know where our energy level is. Midday is not my high-energy time! I’m productive in the mornings but by mid afternoon I’m tired. So what do I do? I move! I also choose to work out first thing in the morning regardless of how tired I am (I am not a morning person!). People assume that I’m a super morning person ready to go lift weights first thing out of bed, but it’s simply not true. I have been doing this long enough that I know the benefits of when I do it versus how my day goes when I don’t, and for me, I’m much more lethargic when I don’t. My brain doesn’t work as well when I don’t. Mid-workout I almost always get a spark, some ignition in my head that inspires me. But the motivation doesn’t come FIRST. The drive to continue to show up everyday happened because I chose to move first! My physiology changes my state. My physiology changes my energy level.
Zig Ziglar once gave the example of a furnace. He said you don’t look at a furnace and tell it that once it produces heat, then you’ll throw the logs on it. So often we get it backwards with motivation. We say, “Once I’m motivated, I’ll start that workout program or that new job or I’ll start traveling or I’ll start eating better…” The universe doesn’t’ bless you with motivation unless you’re willing to take action when you don’t feel like it. People who are willing to do something before they know the how or the what are the ones who move ahead of the pack. They start a new workout program, they go to a new event, they buy the new books, they start a side business before the timing is PERFECT! They take the current time they have now and they make it perfect because they know the perfect time doesn’t exist.
This is the time of year when everyone starts romanticizing January. Somehow, some magical force completely clears your calendar in January and you’re ready to go! I can’t tell you the number of people who turn me down in December because they’ll be “ready” in January. But then I hit them up in January and guess what? They still aren’t “ready.” If we don’t fill in the holes in life, life fills in the holes for us. Somebody else will take initiative while you’re waiting for your schedule to clear and suddenly you’ll find yourself serving everyone else’s agenda as opposed to writing your own.
The people around us will not understand that immediately. It would be awesome if they championed us at every turn, but it’s often those very people who don’t support us in the name of “looking out for us.” They want to protect us from making a mistake or getting hurt. They don’t want to get our hopes up. Oh, that’s great advice!! (Not!) “Don’t get your hopes up because you can’t handle disappointment!” As if we don’t all experience disappointment anyway.
“Shoot for the moon and you’ll land on a star.” We all know that cliché, but it’s truth. What if you try something and you fail? I don’t know! Are you any worse off? If your goal is to lose 80 pounds and you only lose 20, is that failure?! Of course, not. It’s just another form of laziness to me. You have every right to play that card, but if you do play it, you lose the right to complain about your life. You don’t get to bitch about something you’re not willing to invest in.
If you’re already unhappy, take a leap! Do something about it! If you fail and it doesn’t work out, then you’re in the same spot you were in the beginning. But you’ve earned the respect of knowing you tried something.
There is more opportunity now for you to get healthy, work out, or start a side business than there ever has been in history. Gary Vaynerchuk says that anyone with a 9-5 job has 7pm-1am to build a side business, and he’s right. The fact that we even have that ability is incredible, and I’ll bet our parents would have been all in if it meant getting us out of debt or taking us to Disney World, etc. That’s what I did. I used to get up at 3:30 in the morning to work my online business little by little. I gave up sleep for a few years to completely change my life. I was willing to do things others wouldn’t do to have things what others don’t have. I don’t have to do that anymore. And now, I get to do and be whatever I want. My time is mine. You can’t put a dollar amount on that.
The secret to productivity starts with movement! If you want to be productive, you must incorporate some kind of a physical movement routine. You’ve got to stretch, do yoga, run, try a gym, or an in-home fitness program (which is how I coach people). I don’t know what it is for you, but you’ve got to make that commitment. Are you willing to get uncomfortable for a little while to have what you want long-term? Movement sparks motivation. And motivation sparks productivity.
If you need help to get moving, email me. That’s what I do! If you’re willing to take a step, I will come along side you and help you! Doing it alone is daunting. I get it. You don’t have to!