#88: Create a Power Thought for 2020

Hey there health coaches! This is our second episode in a special series that's designed to help you make 2020 your best year yet inside your health coaching business and in your whole life. Hey, let's do it all. Now listen, later in the series we're going to be covering some like brass tax topics. That's what I call them around marketing and selling and all the thinking that you have to do in the new year. But, we are starting off last week, this week, with more planning and mindset topics because this has to come first. Now last week's episode, that was all about planning for your goals or one big goal. So if you missed that, go back one episode and check it out. Today we are going to talk about the obstacles. Yes, because they are there and they are real for all of us. So rather than kind of putting on Rose colored glasses and just hoping for the best, just crossing our fingers and assuming that everything's going to work out just fine.

No, we're going to acknowledge the inevitable obstacles so that when they arise we have a plan for overcoming them. How does that sound? All right, good. Now listen, I have a free workbook. If you don't already have it from last week. It goes with last week and this week's episode and it's going to walk you through all the steps required to set smart goals and overcome the obstacles and get where you want to go in 2020 so download that workbook for free at healthcoachpower.com/goals. I'll say that again. It's healthcoachpower.com/goals. Go get it now.

And while you do that, I have a shout out for ward126789 who left this five star review on iTunes and the title of the review is, "Can you spend too much time with Michelle?" which cracked me up. So here's what she said.

She said, "I'm a subscriber and I listen to the podcast weekly. I've done several challenges and training sessions, learned to use MailChimp with the HPU tutorial," which means this person is a member of my program for health coaches called Healthy Profit University. Um, she says, she's "implemented many free templates and forms. In fact, I spend so much free time with her that my sons actually yell hi Michelle now when they hear her talking. Straight forward, real world proven tools to take your business to the next level, all delivered by someone who feels like a friend with your best interests in mind curled up on the sofa next to you. Thank you Michelle. And here's the 2020." Amazing. So hi boys. Thank you for listening with your mom. She's awesome. Big, big. Thank you for that review. Please send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and reference episode 88 because we've got a little thank you gift to send your way. And to all of you guys, if you find this podcast useful, if your children now know my voice, that's so amazing.

I'm thrilled to hear it and I plan to continue running this show weekly into the new year. But I do need your help. So head over to iTunes and leave a review and maybe I will read yours on the air next time. Okay, so let's talk about obstacles, the things that are inevitably going to come up and get in our way between where you are now and where you want to be. So you have a goal for next year. You want to launch your business, you want to launch a new course, you want to increase your revenue, you want to get your message out there, whatever it is, what's standing in your way.

Now, if you're here with me live, go ahead and tell me in the comments and it'd be really fun to brainstorm some of this stuff on the fly. You know how I roll, but I do know that Maria already told us inside the Facebook group when I announced today's topic, she said, I will be launching my business in the new year and my obstacle is getting over this fear of failure, which I think is a really juicy one because that comes in so many flavors, right?

We can fail in so many different ways and I promise you I have in all the ways and all the flavors of failure I have tasted them. So Maria, it would be helpful if we could have a little bit more of a conversation about this because I'm curious what fear of failure looks like for you, but just based on my own experience, let's say one thing that I know I have been afraid of failing, failing at, and I'm saying that with air quotes around it is like putting up a product or a program out there launching something and nobody buys or only one person buys. So what could we do to overcome that obstacle? What can we do? What can we plan to do? And I'm sure there's a million different ways to approach this problem and you know, and solve for it, Maria. But one thing that comes to mind for me is like, why don't you just go ahead and do that, put something out there, assuming that it's going to fail, like plan for it to fail.

There's a great, a great thing, it's called fail fast. So if you're, if you have an idea, if you have a product like, just get it out as quickly as possible and fail. So you can learn from what worked and what didn't. Rather than spending like three years trying to make it perfect and then you put it out there and it fails. Do you know what I mean? So why don't you plan Maria, this would be my plan if I were you to do something and fail fast and get over the fear of failure because you're going to actually set yourself up for these sort of a controlled failure situations from what you will learn and from which you will build some resilience around. Oh, nobody bought. Oh nobody signed up. Oh, nobody clicked, blah blah blah. And you won't be paying as much attention to that if you know that you went in looking for other information, you know, maybe they didn't buy, but how many people maybe looked at the page to buy or what kind of feedback did you get from them about why they didn't buy?

And all this stuff will inform how you move forward and hey, along the way you might make a sale or to anyway. So Maria, I hope that helps a little bit and if you want to discuss that any further, please pipe up or write something in the Facebook group and we can talk more about what fear of failure means to you.

So here's another obstacle that you guys may have and that I know I have just like raise your hand, not enough time. That is an obstacle, not enough. They have time in the week to do all the things that we want to do. Okay. How are we going to overcome that? This is what I'm working with personally. Uh, for the past like, five months or so, I've had my children and much less of a childcare situation than I have in previous years. So I have fewer hours to work and therefore I always feel like I don't have enough time.

So one thing that I am doing in January is I'm bringing them from, uh, you know, right now I have them in after care, two days after school. I'm bumping it up to three days. So that's an obvious one. Like to get more child care will obviously give me more time. So I extend that thought to you. Now is a great time of year to revisit your childcare or your just overall scheduling plan that you have like a second job and you need to cut back some of those hours. You know now is generally a good time to do that. Cause you can say like starting in the new year, this is what I want my hours to be. So consider.

Now from another perspective, one way that I deal with not having enough time is to actually give myself less time. Have you ever noticed that if you have like 10 things on your to do list right and you have all day to do them, it will take you all day and you still won't do like two of them because you stopped and did laundry, you stopped and like you know made dinner, folded some clothes, got on the phone, you know what for a walk did you a thing.

Somehow work expands to fill a space and that's just some sort of physics that I didn't learn in school, but I learned as an entrepreneur. So, one thing that I've done recently because I felt like I don't have enough time, is I started going to yoga every morning. Not every morning, most mornings, let's say two or three times a week. I am definitely been at the yoga studio often more frequently than that. I take a class that goes from 9:30 to 10 45 so I'm not getting home until about 11 o'clock in the morning. That's a late start to the day, especially if the boys are home at three o'clock on the bus. So what happens? Well, work contracts and expands to fill a space. And when I get home from yoga, boom, I am focused. Boom, I am on it. I'm not like here, there and everywhere because I'm feeling really satisfied.

Like in my body, I feel happy, I feel balanced, I feel stretched out and I can do my thing. So I actually get more done in a shorter period of time. Isn't there a saying? What's that saying? You got, I'm sure you guys know it. It's like if you don't have time to meditate for an hour, then you should meditate for three hours. It's kind of like that when I don't have time, I have to go to yoga. So consider the sort of amorphous shape that time is and how your work fills it. Cause I promise you that being more efficient with your time is probably a better way to go than actually looking for more hours in the day, or maybe a little bit of both. Okay. Any other, um, obstacles that you can name for yourself? I'm going to take a sip of water.

Here's one. This feeling of being overwhelmed. Oh, I know it. I know it well, it's the holiday season right now. So everything that you normally doing, you're also, if you're like me, like, Oh my God, I got to go get a tree. I'm baking cookies and buying the gifts. I'm doing all the things. I'm trying to make it like the best Christmas ever. And it is a completely overwhelming feeling. So how can you overcome the feeling of overwhelm in your business? I think, I think one thing is it's the same, you know, meditate for three hours, go to yoga, do all the things that help reset like your internal system 100% now it'd be an amazing time to book that into your January calendar. Like if these are your work hours, let's say you work every day from nine to two well maybe every day from nine to 10 you're going to book that out.

Now you're just going to block it in your calendar so that you have that me time so you can like breathe or do whatever sort of mind, body practice you have. Super important. Make it making time for it and not trying to squeeze it in when you can. We'll make all the difference. How else can we avoid being overwhelmed if that's our obstacle? And by the way, if you download that workbook at healthcoachpower.com/goals I'm going to invite you to list out your different obstacles and brainstorm solutions for each of them, just like we're doing now. So that when you feel overwhelmed, you don't just kind of dissolve into, you know, a mad fury of like, ah, so you actually have a plan for it. So, one thing I do when I'm feeling overwhelmed is, I talk to someone, I talk to one of my peers.

Someone else in the industry can be very helpful because they understand this type of overwhelm of like running your own business. They get that. Or some type of coach or some type of mentor or a therapist or my best friend Kim, you know, reaching out to somebody. Again, it doesn't change the situation, but it changes your perception of the situation. So that could be your plan. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'm going to call fill in the blank. Who's your person? Or when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'm going to journal for 15 minutes. Okay? So I'm talking about practical things that we can do to overcome what are sometimes just obstacles in our mind. I mean, some obstacles are a little bit more, uh, real, real life, like physical obstacles, like something standing between you and your goal, like in a physical way. But let's be honest, most of them are just in our head, aren't they?

Here's another obstacle, obstacle that comes up a lot when I talk to health coaches. Again, just raise your hand if this is you. I feel like I don't know enough. Hmm. Any hands, anybody feel in that way? You really want to do this thing. You really want to help people. You really want to launch this, this program of yours. But what if you don't know enough? How can you overcome that? Okay, let's do the obvious things first. You know, and this is just brainstorming, so some of this might resonate for you. Some of it might not. You're going to have other ideas too. If you feel like you don't know enough. Well, my goodness, there are books, there are courses, there are articles and podcasts and all kinds of way to increase your knowledge if that is appropriate. Some of that might definitely be useful.

I'm going to suggest some other things though. I'm going to suggest that you start before you're ready, which is classic advice. Start before you're ready because you will learn everything that you need to know as you go along. I have learned so much from my clients, it's unbelievable and the difference is that instead of like going to take a course or spending money to learn, your clients pay you and you still learn and you learn so much and so deeply. So maybe you can take on clients, be very patient with yourself and repeating to yourself. I don't have to know everything. I am not an encyclopedia. A health coach is not an encyclopedia. It's okay to not have the answer and work with the client. Anyway, just this morning I got a message from one of my current clients, one of my current health coaching clients, and she said, um, Michelle, can you tell me how much vitamin a I should be supplementing with because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I thought to myself, Hells no, no, I'm not going to tell you that. That's like definitely out of my scope. And frankly, I don't even know the answer and I'm not in a position to be making that kind of recommendation now am I? So what I wrote back to her, I didn't say that. I didn't say, I don't know. I said, here's an article from the Mayo clinic about vitamin a, some great information in here, and it suggests you bring this to your doctor and discuss with him or her. Hey, win-win, right. I don't have to give out a recommendation that could get me sued. She's going to get much better information, more like, you know, appropriate information from her doctor. Somebody who's actually like, maybe has blood work or whatever, knows more about the medication she's taking, et cetera, is the appropriate person to ask.

She's also getting information that she needs cause I'm sending her a resource. So there's always a way to take questions and either turn it back around on your client or say, let me go find out for you or let me point you in the right direction. So you yourself do not have to feel like you have to have all the answers. Cause I promise you I do not have all the answers. Instead, if someone said, how much iron should I be taking? That's something I'm a little more well versed in. And even still, I would not write down like a number of milligrams for them because it would be inappropriate. So I think you know enough to get started. I think you know enough to move to the next level of whatever you're doing and just know that the universe is going to be feeding you the information that you need along the way.

Trust, trust. So go through the workbook, figure out what your obstacles are. You're moving a, there's someone in your family is sick, you're broke, you know, whatever the problems are that you have going into 2020 and think now about how to solve all of them so you're not blindsided when it happens. Okay, good plan. Thumbs up, everyone, thumbs up. So with that thought in mind that we can have goals and we can have obstacles that we can overcome to achieve those goals. Woo! We are powerful, powerful human beings our way. I want you to come up with what I call a power thought. You might, you know, think of it as your, the mantra that you're going to be repeating to yourself this year. Maybe you're not into that. You know, maybe it's the kind of thing you write on a sticky note and you put it on the mirror.

The point is, as opposed to an affirmation, which sometimes feels to me like it's out of left field. This is a statement that has to feel very true to you. So you know, like, um, I don't know, sometimes for me, affirmations are a little bit out there. Like the affirmation could be like, the sky is purple, the sky is purple, the sky is purple. But like in the back of my head, I'm like, the sky is not purple. So like there's a dissonance there. I don't want that. I want you to instead be repeating something to yourself that really does feel true for you and will motivate when you get stuck. It will motivate you when you get scared. For example, um, if any of you are, I know many of you are graduates from the Institute for integrative nutrition like I am. One thing that Joshua always said when I was a student, and I'm sure they still say this all the time, is feel the fear and do it anyway.

Wow. Has that statement taken me far? Because although there is so much fear involved with this stuff, so try that on for size. If you're not sure, feel the fear and do it anyway. I'm going to feel the fear and I'm going to do it anyway. That's a power thought right there. That's something you can come back to every day as you work towards your goals. I'm going to feel the fear and do it anyway. What other thoughts might you come up with? Let's see. Um, when you think about your big goal for 2020 what is your compelling reason behind that goal? Like what's your motivation? And I shared last week that my big goal for 2020 is to increase my revenue by 50% and at the same time work 50% less in terms of the hours spent. I have a very, the compelling reason behind that goal, it's because I'm a single mom now I need the money and I need the time.

So maybe there's a phrase I could come up with around that. In fact, I have the one thing that keeps coming to mind lately, I keep it, it just keeps appearing in my head for all different reasons is this idea of if you want something done right, give it to a busy woman. That to me feels like I got this, I can take this on. Like I can do this better than anyone. Right? Like if you get that sort of like inner fire going when you have your power thought that is what you want. So think about your motivation behind your goal. Lauren's here and Lauren said that she loves what Marie Forleo says. Everything is figure-outable that I've heard that many times, right? That is a really good one. It's a really good one. If you're just starting out and you're kind of like, Oh my God, my website, Oh my God, my first client, Oh my God, I don't know how to do a workshop.

Everything is figure-outable. My mom used to tell me when I was a kid, when I was little, she didn't look at me. I don't know if this is the right thing for a mother to say to her daughter or not, but she did. She said, listen, you're smarter than like 95% of the people out there. If they can do it, you can do it. And you know what? My mom was right. I don't know about being smarter than everyone, but if they can do it, you can do it. Everything is figure-outable. Thanks for sharing that. Lauren. I agree 100%. Another thing that you might consider when you were coming up with your power thought is, um, what's a thought about yourself and your abilities? Another year I was having trouble, uh, you know, my goal was really to scale my business, but it felt hard.

It felt like there was some sort of glass ceiling of sorts that I couldn't penetrate and I wasn't really sure why. Of course, everything is figure-outable, but my, my power thought for that year was I have unlimited earning potential. And although when you say that, try it, just say it. I have unlimited earning potential and like, you're not going to totally believe that, especially if you're not earning that much as a health coach right now. But it's so true because there's no cap on what you can earn. There's definitely a cap on what you can earn when like, let's say when I was an art director and I worked for the ad agencies, well, there was a certain budget for the art director, right? There were, uh, you know, lots of people determining how much money was going to be spent on all these different positions.

And there was a definite cap and I was not going to break through to the next level of earning until I was promoted. And of course, you know, maybe there's 10 art directors and then there's only like three senior art directors and there's only like two creative directors. So there's a real cap there and that sort of structure. But as an entrepreneur and when you're working on your own like this, none of that exists. So quite literally you have on limited earning potential. And reminding myself of that day in and day out like was a breath of fresh air when I was feeling really stifled. And I am very happy to say that I have far surpassed my income as a health coach. I mean as a, as an art director now as a health coach. So think about your abilities or thoughts about yourself, something again, that is true and that will breathe that life into you.

Your power thought should make you feel positive. It should make you feel inspired to do whatever is necessary to reach your goal. Like I will do everything that is necessary to make sure my boys have everything they need and more so extremely motivating for me. And I know you have something like that inside of you too. I mentioned one to you about um, you know, one thing I'm considering for this year, which is you want something done, right? Give it to a busy woman. There's another term that kind of came to me and I'm curious what you guys think about this one. I was, I was just walking through the grocery store the other day and I realized that this word kept coming into my mind recently. And the word is ambiguity. Ambiguity. That's not one you often hear when it comes to like goal setting or you know, aspirations, ambiguity.

But for me, what it means is living in that gray area of maybe knowing, not knowing. Like I couldn't actually tell you right now I have ideas, but I don't actually know how I'm going to work 50% less or if I do, how that's going to feel. I can't be certain that everything's going to get done. And like that's where that's, that's the sandbox I'm playing in right now is that ambiguity. Like I don't really know how this is going to work, but I'm just going to kind of do it anyway. And I, I'm trusting that it's going to sort itself out. You know, like, um, like when you haven't gone grocery shopping but you have to make dinner and you're just like, ah, I got like some leftover chicken and you're looking in the fridge like this. You're like, I got carrots, I got some miso and you know, you're living, sometimes the best meals come from that.

Like you know, that that leftover put together dinner. And that's kind of how I'm feeling about my business right now. Like I'm kind of making it up as I go along ‘cause dinner has to get made and there's going to be some ambiguity involved. So I'm, I'm considering the thought of the power thought of, I embrace ambiguity. Hm. Hmm. That's kind of exciting cause I typically am such a control freak, but this year I embraced ambiguity. It feels so exciting. There's so many possibilities in that.

So once again, if you have not downloaded the workbook, you can get that at healthcoachpower.com/goals and now next week we'll be back. We're going to be continuing on this topic for a series of weeks. Everything that you need to know moving into your 2020 like I said, we're starting out with some sort of mindset and planning and then we are going to be moving into the hardcore, here's what you have to focus on first, second, third, so that you can be like an arrow shooting through your 2020 and hitting those goals right in the bull's eye. Thank you so much for joining me today, everybody, and I'll see you next week.