193. Take Those Courses Off the Shelf: 4 Steps to Make Progress

People who consider themselves course collectors and have that stack of books on their nightstand run into this problem where life happens. They have the best of intentions to learn and grow and then everything else just takes over. I’m going to give you the four steps you need to get this party started so you can use all this beautiful knowledge that you have access to and make progress towards your goals. 1: Remove morning obstacles. I’m talking about those mental obstacles. In the morning our brain is flush with decision-making hormones that get used up during the day. Don’t waste that morning time on anything that isn’t what you feel is the most important.  The first habit you can implement, and this can be truly life-changing, is to take care of your mornings the night before. For example, close every tab on your computer except the one you want to tackle in the morning and have that website open. 2: Write it down. This list is going to be a comprehensive collection of everything you know you could be progressing and implementing now. It’s time to get it out of your head so you can start dealing with it, and how you capture it is completely up to you. You might use a spreadsheet, Google doc, a journal, a vision board…whatever works for you. You can now pick the top 3 items you want to work on, and the rest, whether it’s 5 or 50, won’t go anywhere. You’re not going to forget about them. “Sarah, I love them all, I can’t pick just one,” you might say. I hear you, but loving all of them and not picking any of them is why you haven’t done any. This is about actual progress and, like I said, these are on a list you're not going to not do them, you're just going to do them NEXT.  3: Find the time. You need 30 to 60 minutes per day to start to move these items forward. If you want to just do one thing at a time, I'm cool with that. If you want to work on the others all at once, what you can do is the course three times a week and the book two times a week and sprinkle in the project. (You can see how this can get complicated if these are too similar.) 4: Deal with high-functioning codependence. Don’t let others interrupt your growth with their priorities. Ask if you're so scared that if you say you'll get back to them in 20 minutes, they're going to leave you? My client will leave me, my family will leave me, no one will love me. People are going to think I'm a bad person. This is what we’re talking about. There is a space between the stimulus and the response where you have all the power. There is a moment where you get to decide.  “I have something started right now. I'll get back to you this afternoon.”  The end. Notice I didn’t ask for permission. Watch your world shift, and it's a shift internally. You have invested to grow and you've made decisions to make yourself a better person or to create projects and put your creativity out there into the world. And we don't ever want to let something come in the way of your full self-expression.  The game is on! Have fun and enjoy. Other Game On Girlfriend podcast episodes you might want to check out:  How To Stop Binge Buying Courses You Don’t Need with Lindsay Maloney https://sarahwalton.com/binge-buying-courses/  How to Pick Your Next Big Project https://sarahwalton.com/choose-your-next-project/  How to Run Your Business When Life Happens https://sarahwalton.com/when-life-happens/  How to Finish What You Start https://youtube.com/live/O7pbYawxo5U  You can check out our podcast interviews on YouTube, too! http://bit.ly/YouTubeSWalton  Thank you so much for listening. I'm so honored that you're here and would be so grateful if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking "Write a review." Then we'll get to inspire even more people! (If you’re not sure how to leave a review, you can watch this quick tutorial.)  #MakeProgress #MakeProgressNotExcuses #PersonalDevelopment #DailyRoutine #Motivation #SelfImprovement #HowToStart #Growth #WomenInBusiness #IntuitiveBusinessCoach