Motivation – Page 2

March 20, 2020 by katmillar 2 Comments

Handling Chaos Well

In the midst of the current world chaos, there is no better time than to talk about strategies for how to handle chaos well.

This week I’m taking a break from the normal business topics, to talk about mindset and how to manage your mind throughout the season that we’re in.

Not everyone knows this but I do a lot of mindset work with people and I’ve been studying the mind for the past two decades and I’m fascinated with the mind, our thoughts, psychology and the brain.

I spend a lot of time researching and contemplating the mind, this is an area that I’m passionate about. The reason I chose business is that I love working with entrepreneurs like yourself, who want to grow their business.

Mindset is key when developing our businesses. Often people bump up against a roadblock, a limiting belief, a negative emotion of fear that holds them back.

It’s not until we work on this area of mindset that we get unstuck, and start flowing and taking action again in our businesses.

So I want to share with you some ways to manage your mind throughout this chaotic time that we’re living through. All of us are feeling the effects of the Coronavirus. A lot of people are feeling fearful, anxious and worried.

If that’s you, I want to give you some ways to think that might be helpful for you, and some mindset tips that you can take away and implement immediately.

These are keys that you can also share with those you influence; your family, your employees, your neighbours and your community.

Understand What You Can Control – The TEAR Model

Firstly, we need to understand the realities of what we can control and what we can’t control. I teach a model called the TEAR Model to a lot of my coaching clients.

The TEAR Model is a four-step model that shows that circumstances are not the thing that actually drives our feelings, our actions or our results.

T – Thoughts

E – Emotions

A – Actions

R – Results

Circumstances are neutral. The facts about the Coronavirus, the facts about what’s happening are neutral. They are a circumstance. They are the only things we can’t control. We can control the other 4 aspects which is our thoughts, emotions, actions, and results.

If you’re a coach, I recommend it’s so important at the moment to be coaching your clients in managing their thoughts, because we cannot necessarily control the circumstances and the events that are happening. Nor can we control the facts.

We’ve got to be careful with what we view as facts. Make sure that what we are believing is fact and not an assumption of someone around you.

Remember, we cannot control the circumstances, but we can control our thoughts, our emotions, our actions and our results.

It always starts with our thoughts. Our thoughts about a circumstance is going to lead to our emotions. Our emotions that come from those thoughts are going to lead to our actions. Our actions are going to lead to the results we produce.

An example of this is the circumstance with the supermarkets. People’s thoughts are leading them to the emotions of fear, panic, worry and stress. They think they are going to run out of food for their families.

Their thoughts are driving their emotions to overtake common sense and their actions are to panic buy. The result of this is no food or toilet paper left on the shelves.

Another person may walk into the same supermarket but have completely different thoughts, emotions, actions and ultimately results. They may see the empty shelves and think the shops will get restocked, they don’t worry because they know they are cared for.

These people walk in peace and joy, as they know everything will work out for them. You’ve got to separate the facts from the circumstance.

Watch what you put into your soul through your eyes. I call it the eyes gate. And watch what you listen to through your ears (your ears gate).

The media feed us a cocktail of fear. They show what’s happening and the panic and fear grow. It’s important what you ‘feed’ your eyes and ears at the time. Be protective over them and that of your children (if you have them).

Our social media feeds are called a ‘feed’ for a reason. We’re getting fed constant fear and panic, and that part of our brain is actually getting addicted to it.

The more we are consuming the fear in our feeds, the less that we’re looking at all the beauty in the world. We are overlooking all the love, all the communities rallying together, all the support and all the wonderful things in the world.

3 Don’ts for Managing Chaotic Times

1) Don’t Look to Others to Decide How to Feel

It’s so important that you don’t look to others to decide how you should be feeling.

We need to step up and take leadership, and be great role models.

A lot of people are looking around at people’s eyes and looking at the news and looking at their social feeds to decide how to feel. If someone is panicking, it’s easy to feel like you’ve got to adjust how you feel.

You can almost feel a little bit bad that you’re feeling calm and happy. I feel very calm, and I almost feel tempted to go into guilt for feeling calm and happy!

Use your thoughts to decide how you want to feel.

What feelings do you WANT to feel and what thoughts

Step back and look at this – we are living in a unique moment in history. We are on this journey together as the humans. This is our journey right now and we get to choose how we decide to view it.

How do you want to be known as to how you handled 2020 and what’s going on in the world right now?

We get decide how this time will be remembered in our lives and in the lives of our children.

I choose thoughts that help me stay calm and created and resourceful.

I know that the calmer and happier I am, the more that I can help other people.

It’s important for me to stay calm and to do that, I have to choose the right thoughts.

I have to choose to trust, I have to choose to believe that whatever happens, we will handle it.

2) Don’t Feel Bad for Feeling any Feeling

Please don’t feel bad, guilty or shame for feeling whatever you’re feeling. Whether that’s feeling like you should probably be sad right now, because people are dying, but you don’t feel sad.

If you’re feeling happy and you’re getting on with your life, don’t feel guilt! If you are staying on purpose, and feeling that for you it’s important not getting distracted, that’s the best thing that you can do for the world right now.

Don’t feel bad if you feel scared or if you’ve had to cancel an event. If you’ve got elderly parents and you feel concerned for them. That’s okay.

It’s ok to allow yourself to feel the disappointment, feel concern or feel the hurt. Don’t try to buffer or numb feelings. It’s healthy to sit with your feelings for a while. But you don’t need to stay there.

Be conscious of how others are being impacted by these events and don’t minimise the experience of others. It’s so important though, that we don’t get sucked into depression, anxiety or fear in the midst of this situation.

The leaders that are successful are those that will stay calm. When you’re stressed, you don’t think clearly, you’re not intelligent or smart decisions. As emotion increases, intelligence often decreases.

In this time of uncertainty, it’s good to give your brain certainty.

So stick with routines that keep a level of certainty about your life, like going to the gym or doing workouts and making healthy food. Routines help keep certainty.

3) Don’t Give in to Urges That Don’t Serve You

Resist urges that make you want to drink alcohol, give up your healthy routine or make you want to just stay in bed and not focus on building your business because the world is at a standstill.

Choose things that will benefit you and your business. If it means not looking at the news, then choose not to read or listen to the news. If it’s not helping you, it’s not serving you.

I’m putting my energy into my business into coaching people, focussing around mindset and helping people with their emotions.

3 Do’s for Managing Chaotic Times

1) Focus on Thoughts That Make You Feel Better

Think about what’s going to make you feel better and feel calm. For me, I trust that whatever comes my way I can handle it. I trust that the authorities are doing the best that they can and I trust that I will be provided for.

I know that I have a great community. I know that I can learn from this. I take this as an opportunity to grow.

There’s no point suffering for no reason. There’s no point sitting in anxiety, when you have tools and resources, and people that can help you get out of it.

Sometimes I’ll just stop and sit on my chair and I’ll just write out positive, helpful happy thoughts. It’s not denying the facts. It’s not putting your head in the sand.

You’re looking at the facts and deciding what you want to think and feel about them.

2) Increase Positive Input and Decrease Exposure

How much time, are you spending on your Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn feed? How much negativity are you allowing into your eye and ear gates?

Double down on your positive input. Listen to positive podcasts, positive addresses on Facebook and spend positive time with your friends. Match the amount of negativity you are seeing and hearing, with the equivalent of positive input.

Coaching is one of the best things you can do at the moment, because coaching helps people let out their concerns. It’s like cleaning your house; you can clean out all the mess inside. Clean up your mind and have a listening ear.

Don’t be scared. You’re not going to run out of work. You have so many people that you can help at this time. Please don’t sit back and wait for people to come to you. Reach out and ask people how you can help.

Offer free coaching sessions and help people with managing their minds. As coaches, we help people manage their minds and focus on what they want.

3) Use This Time to Grow Stronger, Be Creative and Innovate

Put on a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset welcome challenges. They think, ‘How am I going to grow? How am I going to learn?’ They believe the world is going to get better.

We need a filter change. If we filter to see only the bad, we will only see the bad. We need to take precautions and we need to be safe.

We need to choose a positivity filter to view life at this time. Choosing a positive filter means you will see this time as an opportunity to grow. You may have to pivot and run those live events as webinars, but look for the opportunities within this time.

This is an opportunity to get stronger, to look at how you can innovate. Be creative. Join together and form stronger communities. Do your best to be part of the solution.

If you’re a business owner and you’re struggling during this time, I’d love to offer you a free coaching session*

‪If you need help or support for yourself personally or in business, you can book a free 30-minute coaching session here

*First-time sessions

Don’t suffer alone. We’re all in this together.

We the humans are amazing, resilient and resourceful.

We will get through this.

Take strong and take care,

Kat

February 13, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

What To Do When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

We’ve all experienced it before, the debilitating feeling of overwhelm.

The problem with being overwhelmed is that it can really kill your creativity, your joy, your ability to overcome problems and find solutions because your brain totally shuts down into that fight or flight mode.

Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed now or whether you know you can become overwhelmed quite easily, I’ve got some practical things that are going to help you.

I really liked this description of overwhelm I came across when I was doing some research about it.

This is written by a Ph.D. Professor, Marla W. Deiblera, she says:

“Overwhelm comes when we think a stressor is too great for us to manage.”

It’s like when we think we don’t have the resources to do what we need to do, we feel like we don’t have the time, the energy or the money.

Being overwhelmed is usually not caused from having too much to do. It’s not knowing what to prioritise first.

Overwhelm also comes when we are not feeling equipped to be able to do it.

You start doing something and you get stuck and you don’t know what to do. You don’t know who to ask. You don’t know how to solve that problem.

When that happens, you move onto something else, when it gets too hard, you start another and so on and so on, until suddenly you’ve opened these loops in your brains and it freaks out. This is what causes overwhelm.

Ultimately, being overwhelmed is a feeling that is triggered by our thoughts. But the problem is, we don’t always know what thoughts are triggering this feeling, because it’s often unconscious or subconscious. So, we just think, we’re overwhelmed.

That’s not true. We can choose the state of overwhelm, overwhelm is a choice. We must remember that it’s not circumstances causing our overwhelm, it’s our thinking that causes overwhelm drives our feelings and drives our results in our actions.

You’re always going to have lots to do. It’s not a case of, I’ve just got to get through this, and I’ll be fine. If this is a pattern in your life, you’ve really got to look at the root cause of what’s going on.

Usually, it comes down to a limiting belief that we have about ourselves. We’re putting way too much expectation on ourselves, or we think that other people have a lot of expectations for us and that’s causing the state of overwhelm and it stops us from taking action.

We go into that fight or flight mode, where we freeze and kill time by doing something easy, something that we know how to do. We go shopping, the movies or we scroll our phone because we just don’t want to feel the stress, which is going to make it worse.

It causes us to procrastinate, to stress and doubt ourselves. That’s terrible for our relationship with ourselves because we start doubting ourselves, our capability because we’re not finishing things. We’re not getting things done.

I was talking to a friend recently and we’re talking about how we use overwhelm as a bit of an excuse. We both realised that we did this rather than focusing on one thing and finishing and completing it.

We thought if I do this and this and this and this and this, then I’ve got this excuse for not finishing that. When you focus on one thing, and you complete it, it’s very much a binary result you either did it or you didn’t.

For example, in January, I decided that I was going to focus on one habit only because I usually have lots of habits that I’m working on. The research says the more habits you’re trying to change, the least likely you are to change any of them.

90% of the time if you try and change one habit, it drops right down to 70% If you try to change two habits and 50% or less if you try and change three habits. When I set my goals for 2020, I decided it’s one habit per month and my habit for January, was journaling. That was it.

But on the side, I was trying to work on my health, my time management, skill acquisition and I still ended up doing way too much. The problem was, I got to the end of January, I hadn’t completed a full 30 days of journaling.

When you’re overwhelmed, you’ve got to look at why. You’ve got to ask yourself some questions.

So I’ve got some questions here to ask yourself to help you reduce overwhelm:

1. What matters most right now?

A great question to ask yourself is what matters most right now? It sounds simple. If you’re not overwhelmed right now, it sounds simple to say that question. But when you’re in it, when you’re frustrated when you feel like you can’t handle anything else…

…You need to step back and ask yourself, what matters most right now. Sometimes it’s a mix of people and tasks. You got to have these clear decisions of what matters.

For me, when I get overwhelmed, I’ve always got to think what matters right now is people over tasks. Maybe you’re managing a team and you think I’m so overwhelmed, whose opinion matters most right now?

Do you need to get something through that’s has a clear deadline, and you find yourself doing things that aren’t that important? For me, personally, I have a rule that I always put my paying clients first.

2. What am I already trying to achieve?

Sometimes we get so in the detail that you’ve got to lift yourself up above it and say, what am I ultimately trying to achieve here? And why am I getting so caught up in this detail and maybe the stuff that doesn’t matter?

I see some of my mentors they put things up that aren’t perfect, I was talking to Jess about this yesterday, we were saying we see people put stuff out that’s not perfect, and they are still really successful people.

I think why I get so caught up about typos or things that aren’t perfect on my path points. Yes, I want to do my absolute best, I want excellence, I want to get 100% but perfection doesn’t exist and sometimes I think we can waste a lot of time on perfection.

3. What Can Wait?

Sometimes I just need to stop and think, what can wait?

Maybe I’ve got a messy bedroom or maybe I haven’t cleaned my car lately.

It’s important to think about what can wait right now. Maybe it’s not that important to catch up with your Facebook feed. If it’s not that important, it can wait.

4. How can I best Manage Expectations?

Whether that’s an expectation that you’re putting on yourself, or whether there are expectations that other people have of you, ask yourself how can I best manage them?

Maybe you need to contact someone and just be honest. Just say, I’m really struggling right now, I’ve just got so much going on. I just want to let you know that it’s going to take me longer or I can’t come to that thing.

Put up those boundaries to manage your expectations.

Often, it’s our own expectations of ourselves. That’s the biggest problem. How can you best manage that?

5. What’s my Next Best Action?

This question is GOLD and I ask it to myself all the time, what is my next best action because there are always so many actions we can take. There are so many articles we can read, posts we can write, so many things we can do to grow our business.

But what’s the thing that’s really going to move the needle forward in business? Those are usually dollar-producing activities. Whether it’s sales conversations or creating an email newsletter, rather than sitting back and creating something that is going to take too long, start putting things out there that are going to get a result quickly.

I also want to share with you some things that you can say to yourself.

When I was feeling overwhelmed last week, I reached out to a friend who said “Do your reasonable best, and trust God for the rest.”

Whether it’s trusting yourself, the universe, God, a book, a system, you got to trust. Sometimes you just must ask what’s my reasonable best?

Your reasonable best is not perfection. It’s what’s reasonable in this timeframe. Sometimes we have a bit of shame around submitting something that’s not amazing. But it’s not reasonable to think that we can always do everything amazingly.

My sister left me a message that said, “You’ve just got to get through this try to manage it the best you can. Then going forward, say no to more things”. I love that!

When I’m really feeling my heart racing, when I feel like being overwhelmed, I’ll say things like “I’m okay, everything’s going to be okay. I’ll get through this. I can handle this.”

You’ve got to encourage yourself, build yourself up and be your own cheerleader. If you’re struggling to do it yourself, reach out to a friend and get them to tell you.

So to recap the five practical steps to overcome being overwhelmed

What Matters Most Right Now?
What am I Already Trying to Achieve?
What Can Wait?
How Can I Best Manage Expectations?
What’s my Next Big Action?

What was your favourite step? I’d love to hear! Post below in the comments.

P.S. Would you like a free chat to help you through your feeling of overwhelm?

I offer a complimentary 30-minute session where I can help you feel better straight away and leave the call with greater clarity and direction.

You can book your free session here*

* First-time sessions only. For you if you’re committed and serious about getting unstuck and growing your business

January 23, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

5 of the Most Costly Mistakes Coaches Make and What to Do Instead

Every 6 months, my sister and I go away and do what we call a ‘summit’.

We book a house or resort and spend the time dreaming, visioning, planning, coaching each other on our challenges and creating.

It’s an amazing experience! (highly recommend)

I’ve just finished one up with Vicki in NZ. We booked a house at Tauranga that looked over a beautiful garden and water.

Vicki is also a Coach so we talk a lot about our businesses and how we can best help our clients.

We talked a lot about the mistakes we’ve made as Coaches, and the mistakes a lot of our clients make.

If you have been in the coaching industry for a while, you’ve probably seen a massive rise in the number of coaches.

Many Coaches are incredible at what they do, but sadly, meeting a profitable Coach is rare.

There’s a big demand for great coaches, but a lot of coaches are getting disillusioned because they’re not making the money that they want.

In today’s video and article, I share with you 5 of the biggest mistakes coaches make and what to do instead to put money into your account and be profitable as a Coach.

If you have been in the coaching industry for a while, you’ve probably seen a massive rise in the number of coaches.

Many coaches are incredible at what they do, but sadly, meeting a profitable Coach is rare.

There are so many people who need help. There’s a big demand for great coaches, but a lot of Coaches are getting disillusioned because they’re not making the money that they want.

Sometimes they wonder if it is even possible for them to become a profitable Coach.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

ALL the enthusiastic, positive, grateful clients imaginable are out there right now, ready and waiting for you.

But you may be making mistakes that are preventing you from attracting and signing them up.

Here are five of the most costly mistakes Coaches make:

1. Too Broad a Niche

When you start out as a coach, there is a temptation to call yourself a life coach or to call yourself a coach who “helps people discover what they want” or “helps people get unstuck/move forward in their life or fulfill their potential”.

It’s really important that you have that one thing so that people know that you’re masterful at that one thing.

I see this on their Facebook a lot on Facebook pages or websites, they’re too broad and when you’re too broad, you’re not going to attract the right clients because you miss them – and they miss you.

This is a problem that keeps coming up time and time again with the clients that I work with.

They can’t find you because you’re talking like everyone else. You’ll never be an expert, you’ll never be masterful as an authority if you are too broad.

A broad niche might be, for example “I help people get fit” or “I help people get on purpose” or “I help people reclaim their joy”. These types of niches don’t separate you from everyone. They don’t show your uniqueness.

A micro-niche however, is where you can say, for example, “I help busy Mums in the eastern suburbs to get fit at home and have more energy, even without a gym membership”.

It’s not trying to help men, bodybuilders or people who want to put on weight, it’s very specific. It’s Mums, they’re busy and they live in a specific location.

Another micro-niche might be instead of saying, “I help people grow their business”, you might say…

“I help real estate agents go from six figures to seven figures.”

or “I help busy women declutter their homes in 6 weeks or less”

It’s got numbers and it’s very clear that you have mastered a problem a client has.

2. Not Focusing Enough on Dollar Producing Activities (DPA)

A lot of us get caught up in the fluff, looking at what other people are doing. reading articles, looking at YouTube clips, going to free courses but there’s no overarching strategy, no step by step clear plan.

Without a focus on DPA wake up in the morning, open your laptop and start feeling busy, but you’re fooling yourself by thinking you’re being productive when there are things you could be doing that directly puts money in your bank account.

How often are you directly speaking to your ideal client and making them an offer?

Ideally, you want to focus on sales conversations and building automated funnels.

My client Gaynor, for example, has set up an automated funnel that leads to a course online. People watch her webinar, click on the link that directs them to the sign-up page for her course.

That’s a dollar producing activity. It takes time and effect but has incredible rewards. She recently ran a course, where 30+ people had signed up to her course from her webinar and made $10,000 from the funnel.

3. Not Investing in resources and support

As a business owner, you need to pay serious attention to what you’re investing into.

Some people will say to me things like I tried funnels, but it was too hard.

Things that matter require investing the time, energy and commitment.

If you don’t invest in quality, you’re not going to get a quality result.

If you’re a Coach and you’re not investing in a Coach, for example, then you’ll feel that incongruency. It’s not aligned, because what you’re selling is something that you’re not buying.

We all need a Coach.

So are you investing enough time, resources and technology to get things done? Whether it’s setting up a funnel, webinar or workshop – it all takes energy and resources.

The Coaches that aren’t making it? They are not investing the time, money and resources to make it happen.

4. Not having enough sales conversations

When you get on the phone and talk to someone that is the most direct line to having money go into your bank account.

A lot of people say … I hate sales. I don’t want to sell, I’m not a salesperson and I get that because I’ve been and I’ve said that many times before, I’ve avoided sales, I’ve avoided sales training, I haven’t even wanted to think of myself as a salesperson.

But sales is the only thing that allows you freedom. If you can’t sell, you’re really stuck building someone else’s dream. And when it really clicked for me, because freedom is my highest value. I had to learn it. There’s no way around it. I had to just learn this skill and learn how to do it.

Sales conversations can happen anywhere. You don’t need to have a product to dive in and start selling something but you can start asking questions.

How many people are you asking questions? How many people do you ask questions to? Finding out their problems, finding out their concerns?

You can do this at networking events or online through Facebook groups – anywhere there are people.

Sales conversations aren’t necessarily the view to sell, it can open up the conversation and see whether you’re a match.

If you’re not doing that on a regular basis, you’re going to struggle as a coach.

5. Not using proven systems

Not using proven systems is like reinventing the wheel, trying to figure it all out yourself…

…you might get there but it takes so long when you have people who have proven systems tested and measured and allow us to model after them.

I’ve got millionaire mentors who I’m always looking at what they what they’re doing.

I’ve invested in their programs, I’ve invested over $100,000 doing programs and learning from people who have proven systems.

If you’re struggling, ask yourself am I using proven systems?

You don’t want to be struggling on your own. Being in business as a Coach on your own is so hard to do.

It gets discouraging if you’re not getting clients that hit your income goals and allow you to have the lifestyle that you want.

If you’re not hitting your goals, then you need to invest in yourself and you need to make sure that you follow proven systems. People have gone before you, figured it all out and you can walk in their footsteps.

Here’s a recap of the five costly mistakes coaches make and what to do instead:

Having too broad a niche
Not enough focus on dollar producing activities
Not investing in resources and support
Not having enough sales conversations
Not using proven systems

Would you like help to avoid these mistakes and know exactly what you need to do to attract and sign up coaching clients in 2020?

Come along to our workshop on Saturday, 1st February, ‘Get More Coaching Clients’.

If you want to know EXACTLY what to stop wasting your time on and learn the SPECIFIC actions that sign up clients, then this workshop is for you.

To find out the best strategies and tools to help more people and make more money, click below to learn more ?

? In This One Powerful Day You Will Learn:

? The BEST methods to connect instantly with your audience and INFLUENCE them to your ideas

? How to become a master influencer and build authentic trust and a powerful connection with your ideal clients

? How to use neuro-marketing to influence the SUBCONSCIOUS mind in your written and spoken content

? The MOST effective way to design your marketing plan so that you nail your message, and attract the right clients

? A proven, effective marketing plan that you can tailor to your business

If you want to grow a profitable coaching business, this workshop is a must.

2020 is the year to finally let go of what’s holding you back and create the life you dream of!

➡ Full Details Here

January 12, 2020 by katmillar Leave a Comment

5 Essential Elements of a 2020 Success Plan

How has the start of a new year, a new decade been for you?

I have a massive sense of excitement and energy and expectations coming into this new decade!

No doubt you are seeing all sorts of articles on goal setting and new year’s resolutions at this time of year.

According to research from the University of Scranton, a staggering 92% of people who set New Years resolutions never actually achieve them.

Over the years, I’ve discovered why I personally didn’t always achieve goals I set.

I looked at research, science and studied successful people and started applying what they did to ensure they followed through on their goals.

In this video and article, I share five essential elements of a success plan you can use to achieve your goals in 2020.

They can help you choose the right goals and follow through to the end and achieve them.

Here are the 5 elements:

1. A Why-based Vision

The first thing you need for your success plan is a why-based vision. What’s the vision that you hold yourself in your mission? I recommend your vision has a few elements.

The first one is the identity of the person that you want to become. A lot of people set goals about what they want to have and what they want to do.

But if you want to do and have the things you want, you first need to be the person that does and has those things.

Instead of starting with what you want to have and the things you want to do, think about the person that you want to become.

What type of characteristics do you want to have? Who do you want to be known as in 2020? That’s the “Why Based Vision” I recommended you grab a piece of paper, title your three columns Be, Do and Have, and brain dump.

I’ve been doing this task with my clients this week and there were some truly inspirational things they wanted to be- Thought leaders, authority figures, experts, courageous, trustworthy, brave, masterful at marketing, coaching, or presenting.

So ask yourself, what type of person do you want to be and build this vision of your self-image. Not just the material things you want but the vision about who you want to be and what type of person you need to be to create that vision.

Most importantly ask yourself why…. Why do you want this? Why do you want to be successful? Why is it important to you?

Think about the words that you want to resonate with 2020. What’s your intention for 2020? What would you want want to declare and put there as your words for 2020?

Last year my three words were discipline, fun, and courage and I look back at the last year and I was all those things. I was disciplined, I did have fun and I was courageous.

Set your intentions and build those goals from your why based vision from your identity of who want to be and the words that you want to put over the year and visualise it.

I’ve been working on my vision board with a couple of friends and I’m still building it out, but I have five words for 2020 that I want to focus on. Don’t just write down your goals and put in your draw or in a spreadsheet and forget about it.

Start with that vision of who you want to be and what you want, and then start building the plan based on that.

2. An Up-levelling Mastermind

This is one of my favourite things to have and this an up-levelling mastermind. The purpose of a mastermind is a small focus group that is designed so that everyone up levels, everyone grows, everyone goes into the best version of themselves.

Everyone knows what each person’s vision is and the goals they have. I was working with one of my masterminds today on setting our intentions. We started creating a manifesto for the group, we looked at things that we want to do together as a group.

We discussed what each of our strengths and weaknesses is so that we could collaborate and bring the best out of each other. We then had one person in the hot seat getting coached by three other people, and each person was given suggestions and advice.

When you spend time with people who are going places that are reaching for the heights that that’s going to rub off on you. Look at your surrounding influences, are they high achievers? Do they want to push themselves and hold you to a higher standard?

Do they consistently meet you, not just random meetups but are they committed to showing up, being reliable and want to help and support each other because have a supportive group is such a game-changer.

3. A Focused Game Plan

The third element to a successful plan for 2020 is having a focused game plan.

It’s just like in sports. The players know what they plan, they’re clear on it and they need to execute it. There are five things I recommend in your game plan.

I recommend you start with your annual priorities. Brain dump the priorities that you want to do for the year. It could be networking, presenting, workshops or skills like copywriting or sales that you need to build as a business owner.

Maybe you have goals for the year that you want your business to accomplish. Break it down into actual numbers, for example, I said I wanted to do 50 articles in 2019 and I chipped away at that goal and ended up doing 53 articles last year.

Every week I showed up because I wanted to give original valuable content that could really help people. It was amazing to have one strategy in place and committing to that goal with an actual number in place.

Your game plan could be that you want to write 50 blog posts, or you want to launch five new freebies. Break it down into actionable steps and create quarterly goals for each step.

For quarter one, what do you need to achieve by the end of February? It could be a webinar or a workshop, or launching a funnel, that’s your one big bold move for the quarter. Once you’ve got that as your goal, then you go into bite-sized goals.

Under that one big bold move. Let’s say it’s a webinar, you might say, I want to enrol 100 people to the webinar, knowing that maybe 50 will turn up, out of those 50 people, 10 people take me up on my offer for a discovery session and I close five of them.

Set clear number goals, those are your outcome goals. But then you need to set actual tasks. So under the webinar, you have all the different action steps you need to take in order to run a webinar.

There is so much to it. But once you’ve done it, it’s an incredible asset. But what a lot of people do is they put a project on their to-do list, and it mixes up with their habits and skills and the action gets confusing and overwhelming, causing your brain to say no, this is too hard.

Make sure that you separate your habits, your skills and your projects. Make sure on your action list, you take one step at a time. That’s your game plan- your priorities, goals, quarterly goals, and your one big bold move for the quarter.

Under that, you’re going to have goals, and your bite-sized action steps so that each week you know exactly what you need to do to get your result.

4. A Strong NO Commitment

A strong NO commitment is something you’re going to say no to.

I’ve realised that this year, that if I just keep piling things up on top of my existing schedule, goals and to-do lists, I’m going to get massively overwhelmed.

I realised that I need to decide what I’m going to say no to and it was a massive relief when I decided what I was going to say no to. I can actually achieve the goals that I have because I’m clearing things out of my schedule instead of pouring and piling things on, and creating white space for myself.

I was reading back diary entries from 2016 and writing that I needed more space, I need to create more margins. That was my goal for 2016. That was four years ago and I’m still saying the same thing!

This year, I’ve decided what to say NO to and I’m going to choose a new NO every month.

In order for you to have a successful life and achieve your goals, you’re going to have to clear stuff out of your life. It could be a relationship or friendships, it could be things that you’re wasting time on.

I was coaching one of my clients last night, and he was telling me, I don’t have time to study. I don’t know how to put it in without sacrificing my lifestyle. I asked him to open up his phone let’s have a look at your screen time. It turns out that his screen time was five and a half hours average per day.

We worked out that over seven days he was spending 35 hours on his phone. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s what most people do – hours and hours on the phone.

Can you imagine just one decision, a strong no commitment to eliminate your time online? For me, I said no Netflix in January, and no social media before 12pm and now I have all this space and energy that has opened up.

It’s incredible. I’ve been writing my goals and reading more books. I never thought that I could commit to something like that. But in order to get your goals, you’ve got to say no to things.

So what would you like to have as a strong no commitment?

5. A Monthly Habit Focus

And then number five is to have a monthly habit focus. Focus on one habit for a month. If you nail one habit, every month, by the end of 2020, you’ve got 12 brand new successful habits.

Remember, it takes time to build a habit. Some people say 21 days, 30 days, some say 60.

It really depends on you and it depends on the goal. Personally I like 30 days. I like using a month because it’s just a pure focus month on one goal.

Last year I had this app called streaks where you can add your goals. Last year, I had 12 habits I was trying to do; Daily meditation, daily journaling, daily exercise etc. and I did it for the first quarter and it was going really well, by quarter two I started dropping off and by quarter three I hadn’t even looked at the app.

Now what I’ve done is I’ve got two things on there, but my focus is daily journaling for the month of January. I know that if I write every single day it brings you back into mindfulness. It’s like that one Domino that knocks over the other dominoes in the chain.

If I can daily journal, it helps me stay present focused on my goals. It helps me brain dump, it’s like a cleanse at the end of each night. It helps me plan and do planning in my journaling. I write out my visualization and I write my goals. It’s just one habit that covers so many for me.

Charles Duhigg, in his book ‘The Power of Habits’, talks about one keystone habit that if you get that one thing, it’s going to affect every other area of your life.

It might be every morning going for a walk, and that one walk is going to set you up for success because of that one habit.

Set one habit that knocks down all the rest of them like a domino chain.

To recap, here are the five essential elements of a 2020 success plan…

1. Have a why-based vision, keep it in your face, and make sure that you include your identity, your words for the year, your intention for the year, and exactly who you want to be.

2. Have an up-levelling mastermind. A mastermind where you meet regularly in person with these people. These people are all about growth, up-levelling, supporting each other, holding each other to account and holding you to a high standard.

3. Have a focused game plan. in the game plan have your priorities, your goals, quarterly goals, bite-size goals, action steps.

4. Have a strong no commitment. What are you going to say no to in 2020 to allow all this space to the things that are most important and meaningful for you?

5. Have a monthly habit focus.

Draw a line in the sand for 2020, make it a priority to leave it all behind in 2019 and know that you can achieve anything that you set your mind to.

Put the action steps in place and check it off as you go. It’s not just about dreaming, it’s about having your head in the clouds but your feet on the ground.

P.S Want to know how to attract and sign up more clients in 2020?

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December 31, 2019 by katmillar Leave a Comment

3 Effective Alternatives to New Year Resolutions

How are you feeling about entering a whole new year?

I think the fact that we’re about to enter a whole new decade just makes it even more exciting!

You’ve probably seen in your feed, lots of posts about goal setting and new year’s resolutions.

There was a recent study done by the University of Scranton, and they discovered that only about 8% of people will achieve their new year’s resolutions.

There has been lots of research that has gone into studying why new year’s resolutions don’t work.

My personal observations of why people don’t achieve them boils down to this…

1. They haven’t chosen the right goal for them. They’ve chosen things that they think they ‘should’ do, not things they really want to do.

2. The goals aren’t aligned to their values. They haven’t really taken the time to ask themselves “What is important to me? What are my values and how can I set goals in alignment with who I am as a person?”

3. They haven’t created an effective action plan. Many people set a goal but don’t make a plan for the achievement of their goals, including the necessary skills and habits.

Often, people set goals that are someone else’s goals and they’re not even consciously aware of it. It could be their Dad’s or Mum’s, Brother’s or Girlfriend’s, it’s usually those influences that we have around us.

Sometimes we can shift our goals according to other people. For example, there was a guy who every year set his new year’s resolution to have abs….

…He really wanted a six-pack, or he thought he did. He would buy the latest ab cruncher, whatever the latest fad was at the time and it would just sit in his lounge room…

…and he would walk past it every day, but just wasn’t taking the action to get on these pieces of equipment and get the abs.

After a few months went by, he was being coached and the coach drew out of him that, he thought he wanted abs, but he realised that was his dad’s goal.

His Dad always said to him, you’ve got to exercise, and you’ve got to be healthy. He was trying to live up to his Dad’s expectation and had convinced himself he did want abs.

But the reality is, if you’ve had something on your new year’s resolution or goals list for years and years, the most likely conclusion we can draw from this, is that it’s not really that important to you or you would have done it by now.

When you really want something and you’re why is strong enough, you will find the how. You’ll find a way to do it. If you keep setting the same goal year in, year out and you haven’t done it yet, then we need to have a look at whether it’s the right goal and maybe if you’ve set too many goals.

My friend Natasha today was talking about trying to catch five tennis balls. If you try to catch five tennis balls, you’re probably going to miss them all. It’s that old Chinese proverb of if you try and chase two rabbits, you’ll catch none of them.

This is the biggest one that I’ve been guilty of. I don’t know if you’re the same, but when you set too many goals for every single area of your life, you become split focused, you don’t have a singleness of focus.

Napoleon Hill talked about having that definiteness of purpose, that single focus, and that burning desire for one thing and by going after that one thing, you channel all your energy into that one thing, and that concentrated energy makes it happen.

Whereas if you dilute your energy across a lot of things, then it’s probably likely those goals or those new year’s resolutions aren’t going to work.

I’ve seen this a lot with my clients as well, where they’ve either set the wrong goal, they’ve set too many goals or they have set the right goals, the right amount of goals, but they don’t have an action plan and the action plan has to include a review.

Rather than waiting till the end of the year, and going “Did I/didn’t I?”, regularly review your actions if you want to make sure that they succeed.

I recommend that you do a review at the end of every single day. Just a very short review – What worked well, what didn’t. Am I on track? Did I do the actions? If not, why not.

Get into the habit of reviewing every single day and looking at the progress that you make. Happiness is attached to progress and we can’t be fully content and happy unless we’re progressing.

Besides a daily review, also do a weekly review, and a quarterly review where you set goals for a quarter, instead of only thinking about the full year. Every quarter, I put aside three full days to review that quarter and make sure that I’m on track and if not reset for the next quarter.

It makes it less overwhelming, do it in chunks instead of saying I’m never going to do this again or I’m going to achieve this amount of income, or I’m going to get to this weight that we’ve given us a whole year to do….

…whereas when we chunk it down into very small goals, where can check in regularly and have that review, we’re way more likely to achieve it.

So, here are three effective alternatives to new year’s resolutions:

1. Skill Acquisition

There are other ways of setting goals that are a little bit different, but powerful and proven. The first one is skill acquisition. What skills do you need to develop in the coming year? What skills do you want to master in order to get that result that you want?

Think about your perfect life, your perfect year. Think about your ideal year – imagine it’s New Year’s Eve 2020 and you’re sitting with a friend having a drink celebrating the year. Think about that person that you’ve become, the characteristics of the person that you want to be that you’ve evolved into.

What kind of skills do you need to acquire to become that person? Not the outcome or the results but the person you want to be. What are the skills that you need to acquire?

For me, I’m setting three skills that I want to acquire and develop in 2020. Marketing, communication and time management.

1. In 2020, I’m going to be putting time, energy and money into skill acquisition around marketing, specifically Facebook ads.

2. I want to get masterful at communication. How I present, how I speak to one on one clients, how I speak to groups, how I speak on camera. That’s a skill I want to get better at.

When you want to develop a skill, you must invest time, energy and money into it. Otherwise, the skill won’t grow. If you really want to get better at let’s say attracting clients, what are the actual skills you need when you break it down?

If you want to have a successful business, say you want to earn five figures 10 figures a month, when you’ve got that kind of goal or result that you want, break it down to what are the skills that are going to get you there….

…and if you’re not quite sure, I would recommend if you have a financial goal in your business for yourself, and you want to attract a certain number of clients and earn a certain amount of income.

Then you need to know marketing skills, you need to know sales skills, and not just know them but practice them. The more time and energy and resources that you put into it, the more you’re going to get out of it, the better that you’re going to be at it.

If you want to be excellent at something, you’ve got to invest time, energy and money into it. Maybe you’ve already invested money, you’ve done a course but now you need to apply it, you need to practice it and you need to embody it…

…because it’s one thing to say “I’ve read that” and another thing to actually be able to teach it, and until you can teach that skill, you don’t really know it. You might understand it intellectually, but you don’t really know it because you haven’t embodied it.

3. The skill of time management. Being a super high performer, being productive and performing at the highest level that I possibly can.

What are some of the skills that you want to develop in 2020 In order to get the result you want?

Maybe the results that you want is to have a fully booked calendar of clients, you might want 10 clients a week. What are the skills that you need to get there?

Maybe you need to learn copywriting – which is writing to influence. In quarter one you might focus on studying it, practicing it and observing other people’s copywriting.

I learned how to write copy by putting out a piece of copy and seeing what works, seeing what people engage with, by reading other people’s copywriting, and by reading Facebook ads. I also learn it by other people reviewing and giving me feedback on my copywriting.

2. Habit Forming

Number two is habit-forming. Whenever you want to make a change, it’s always about thinking – how can I build it into my habits? How can I do it until it becomes automatic like brushing your teeth or driving a car?

We need to put things into our life as habits but the more habits you try and change at one time, the less success you have.

If you try and change one habit, you’ve got around a 90% chance of doing it if you just focus on that one habit…

…but if you try and change two habits at the same time, it drops from 90% to around 60 to 70%. And if you try and change three habits all at once it drops to less than 50%.

Knowing that, maybe you want to change one habit and give yourself 30 days to do it.

You might say my one habit is meditation or my one habit is daily movement. If you just focus on that for 30 days and then once you’ve mastered it, you add the next one.

This is what I’m doing with an accountability buddy of mine. And the habit that I’ve committed to is journaling, morning and night, every single day, no excuses. If I miss one day, I need to start the 30 days all over again. That’s my January habit.

If you think about it, if you do one a month for the whole year, you’ve got 12 new amazing habits. Instead of trying to change 10 all at once and just throwing the whole thing out the window, you’ve got 12 new habits instead of no new habits by the end of the year.

I recommend that you have an accountability partner for this as well. That same study that showed that only 8% of people will achieve any new year’s resolutions also discovered that if you do it with a group, or you do it with other people, or you join a supportive community, it boosts your success by 46%.

That’s a massive amount. There’s the proof that it works. Instead of just privately having your goals, staying accountable to other humans is powerful.

3. Output Commitments

Number three is what I call output commitments. Instead of saying “I want to earn this much money”, visualise that amount. I recommend that you make it a habit.

The classic book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, talks all about visualising that exact amount that you want, and every single day visualising that amount, but also knowing the result you want, and really using repetition on that result that you want.

Have a commitment to specific outputs.

In 2019, my output commitment was 50 articles on my website, and I did 53. That was an output commitment. I made it public in December last year. And because I made it public, it was a commitment and I did it.

A lot of people don’t set goals because they don’t want to fail. But it’s good to make your goals public because when people ask you about them, you don’t want to let them down and it becomes a good way to stay accountable to achieving them.

Think about what you want to output. Maybe you want to make a certain amount of sales calls every single week. Maybe your output commitment is a certain amount of Kms that you’re going to run every week, or a certain amount of Facebook live videos, or a certain number of webinars or meetup events.

You might even want to just set one for January or set one for quarter one – it doesn’t have to be for the full year. I’ve enjoyed doing it for the whole year because it really made me commit to something for a whole year, but you can also set it for per day, week or month.

So, to recap, my three alternatives to new year resolutions are:

Skill Acquisition
Habit-forming
Output commitments

Want to know how to attract and sign up more clients in 2020?

My next 1-day client attraction workshop is happening on Saturday, 1st February 2020.