Be Better or Be Bitter: 5 Ways to Survive a Rough Season with Sanity

QUICK NOTES – BE BETTER OR BE BITTER: 5 WAYS TO SURVIVE A ROUGH SEASON… WITH SANITY:

TRANSCRIPTION:

[needs cleaned up but thanks for checking me out!]

Hey there, everybody, this is KIM SUTTON and today I welcome you to another session of next level Mondays, we’re going to be talking about be better or be better. Good. There we go for the blooper reel, be better or be bitter five ways to survive a rough season with sanity. I know that as of the date of this recording, we are going through a global pandemic. But this video is relevant to any season in our life when we may be going through turbulent times. If this is your first time meeting me, Oh, I forgot to turn that off. I’ll be right back. That is

not how I like to do a Facebook Live but

good friends call when they’re supposed to call.

If this is your first time meeting me I just want you To know that my entrepreneurial journey has definitely not been the easiest one. My whole existence for the last 10 years has not been easy. For example, my husband and I, in 2012, I decided that we wanted to start our own family. We each already had two kids. And we wanted to add another to the mix.

In between

November of 2011, and September of 2012, we went through four miscarriages. And we gave up trying, we, I just couldn’t go through the heart break anymore of knowing that

there was life inside

of me and all of a sudden there wasn’t, I didn’t want that stress. And in September of 2012, when I started my business, we needed a way to make additional money.

And

I started so I was a virtual assistant to start. Let me just tell you though, I undervalued, my expertise, I undervalued what I knew what I know. And I charge way too little for the services that I offered. I also was very unclear about what I did and who I did it for. So there was a lot of learning that needed to happen in those first five years. So that would take you up to 2017. By July of 2016, I was only sleeping two to three hours a night. I was working 20 to 22 hours a day because I was saying yes to everybody and everything, except for myself. In the meantime, my husband and I were blessed. We had we got pretty Pregnant not just once, but twice, unexpectedly. And out of those two pregnancies came a daughter. And then twins just 16 months later, I was the primary breadwinner for this period. I’m the primary breadwinner today. But all of a sudden, in the midst of these pregnancies and being so sick and then the downtime after the babies were born,

there was nobody that was making money.

I want you to know that when I say be better or be better, and I discussed the five ways to survive a rough season with sanity, it’s because I have gone through rough, super rough seasons myself. I’ve gone through rough seasons with my husband with our family. We had a car repoed after the twins were born, we went into foreclosure with our house and got out of it. So the five steps that I’m going to take you through are some of the lessons that I learned and some of the lessons that I need to remind myself On a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis, depending on what the season looks like at that time.

The biggest lesson

that I needed to learn was to prioritize me. I know it may be hard to think about prioritizing yourself when you have a family that you need to take care of when you have clients who need to serve when there’s a world that is in chaos, and there are people who need help. But if you don’t take care of yourself first, you’re not going to be around to take care of other people. It took me forever to realize the whole concept of putting on your own mask first. You know how in the airplane they talk about how you need to when the when the masks drop the when the oxygen masks drop, you need to put on yours and then take care of the child and then take care of the people next to you. That’s because If you don’t put it on your own, if you’re putting on everybody else masks first, by the time you get the chance to put your own mask on, you could be passed out because you haven’t been able to breathe. This is exactly what was happening to me in 2014 2015 2016. By the time it got to my super, the ultimate low for me, I was sleep deprived, anxiety ridden, majorly depressed and suicidal. Please do not let you’re taking care of everybody else go before you’re taking care of you.

And I have a confession for you.

Just yesterday, I put physical fitness back onto my shelf. I am prioritizing my fitness and exercise. Before I even prioritize my kids homeschooling during this time, if you’re watching this two years down the road, I’m recording this in week, two of our Stay at home order here in Ohio during the coronavirus. It’s been rough. We are not homeschoolers, we look forward to shoving our kids out the door and to school every day. So finding that balance where we can get the kindergarteners to do her work get my older two boys because my husband and I both had two kids from previous relationships, getting my older two teenagers to do their schoolwork. By the way, one of my teenagers decided to stay up all night last

night.

That is not

okay. This is not summer vacation, but I need to prioritize me before I prioritize him. I went to sleep last night I got up this morning. I smelled coffee. Why is there fresh coffee in the coffee maker. And it wasn’t until two hours later because he was being really quiet downstairs on his computer. Then I realized oh my gosh, he never went to sleep. He made coffee to keep himself up. But hey I know what I got to do for me. He’s going to sleep now he knows he has to do his homework later. So prioritize you that is way number one to be better instead of bitter. Way. Number two is clear the clutter. I was sitting out here at my desk yesterday and actually even on Saturday, so two days ago, I was in bed with my laptop and I was looking for stuff and I was having trouble finding it. full transparency. I have a product that I set up. I recorded the videos months ago, never edited them never got them onto the site. Haven’t launched it yet. But I decided on Saturday, hey, I’d really like to

get this going.

So I went into my computer on Saturday and I couldn’t find them. I knew they were there. But there was so much stuff so much clutter in my iCloud that I couldn’t find it. Now I’m not proud of it. Because this is definitely not, in my opinion, the best way to spend my time, but I spent Saturday organizing my whole computer. My iCloud is clean. My downloads, folders empty, my desktop is empty. My Documents are empty. Everything is filed. Going into my computer this morning was Well, I mean, even my inbox has been cleaned out. Is it Inbox Zero?

Nope.

But I’m okay with that the clutter is gone. Coming out to my computer yesterday I needed or coming out to my desk I needed to record a training virtual summit I’m on and I looked around my office and again, it was the same type of case there was clutter. I mean, my kids, the younger ones bring toys out here. The animals do all types of crazy stuff and I don’t mean discussing I just mean they jump from the desks to the floor to the desk again and papers go flying. I needed to clean up the clutter so that my mind could be clear and focused on the task at hand. When you’re going through that rough season, clear out the clutter, clean out the trash that you don’t need, clean out all those extra objects and get them out of your brain space. When you clear the clutter from your physical area, you’re clearing the clutter from your mental space as well and you can focus so much better. So, way number two, again, clear the clutter. Way. Number three,

make your main stream

a clear, clean stream. So I’m going to say that again make your main stream a clean stream. Last night I was watching the evening.

Release.

I don’t know what to call it of Pastor Steven furtick sermon from yesterday at elevation church. He’s been doing it all virtually because you know we can’t congregate and there was a bit of talk about Instagram specifically how People were saying if it’s not Instagram right now it’s Instagram. I disagree in Let me tell you why. I have cleaned up all my social media streams to be only the inspiring and motivational messages or the people who I know like and respect that have motivational and inspirational messages. So I don’t see all the drama. When we’re going through a rough season. The last thing that we need to see when we go online is drama.

clear it out,

unfollow it, if it’s family members on Facebook and you just don’t want to see their drama anymore. You can unfollow is that mean you unfriend them? You just unfollow and then it doesn’t show up in the stream when you come online. I’ve also been using what what is it called? Facebook newsfeed Eradicator. So every time I get on here on Facebook, or any other platform, I am not seeing everybody else’s posts. I don’t, I don’t even need to unfollow anymore because I use the newsfeed Eradicator All I see is a place where I can put in my own post. And I seen inspirational quote of the day. I don’t need drama in my life, especially drama that I don’t create. If I want to go see somebody’s feed, then I type in their name, and I go see it if I want to see all the feed. Then I go on my phone, and I can see it all but I am not glued to my phone. That’s why my phone was on the other side of the room when it started ringing just a couple minutes ago. So make your main stream, a clear stream. Clean stream, make your mainstream a clean stream. By the way, positive productivity is not about perfection, but it doesn’t need to be painful either. Don’t worry about bloopers Do not worry about typos. Everybody has them nobody’s perfect. Focus on being perfectly imperfect or In perfectly perfect depending on which way you want to say I don’t worry about bloopers I don’t worry about the phone ringing in the middle of podcasts or live streams. Life is life. Everybody has one way number four that you can be better or be better instead of bitter when you’re going through a rough season is focus on what you can do right now. You don’t need to be focusing on anything that you can’t do. If you’re in a financial

hardship, then don’t

guess I understand that the creditors might be calling time and time and time again. I’ve been there. Mute the phone, disconnected phone for all I care. Just tell them answer it. Hang up. Is this the most responsible thing to do? No, but we don’t need to be getting stressed out by what we can’t do right now. When we can be focusing on what we can do right now. That’s it. Don’t get stressed out about it that used to actually drive my ex husband crazy, because I would focus on what I could do today. I, from 2005 to 2010, I built a very successful business. Yes, I built a unsuccessful business. By the time I shut the doors in 2010 I was earning a quarter a day with an e commerce shop, I made every single last mistake you possibly could including building up $100,000 in credit card debt thinking that the bigger the inventory I

had,

the more I could sell, you know, the bigger the inventory I have, the bigger my credit card bills are gonna be and I couldn’t pay them. So they started calling. If I could do it again, I don’t know that I I don’t know that I would make different choices to be completely honest. Because so much of what I learned then has taught what I know now has influenced the way that I work. For example, I haven’t built my business with credit cards. It’s been amazing. Has it been tough at times? Yes. But it’s definitely been a lot easier. But one of the biggest things that I learned back then was focused on what I can do right now. Don’t worry about everything else. In the follow that up, way, number five, is keep moving forward. You’re not going to make your life better. If you stay in bed with the covers over your head all day. You’re not going to be serving the people who need you and the people who could pay you or you’re not going to be helping your health or your mental health. If you stay in bed and hide from your problems all day. What you need to do is get up, get dressed, maybe take a shower first so you don’t stink. And keep moving forward. Get some exercise if it makes you feel better. Have your coffee have some To eat, and look at what you can do today, ways four and five, focusing on what you can do. And keeping moving forward these to work hand in hand, we’re not going to be better if we don’t keep moving, we’re not going to be better if we keep on focusing on what we can’t do. So focus on what you can do, and keep moving forward taking action on those items. Today, I would love to invite you to join the positive productivity private Facebook group where I am keeping my group members accountable

and taking action every day.

As I said, it’s so important that we keep moving forward. So I’m going to put down below in the description a link to the positive productivity Facebook group and I welcome you to join me now or in the future. I would love to hear your highs I would love to know which one of these points is hardest for you in which You’re going to be taking actions on so make sure to leave a comment telling me which one of these ways is going to be implemented in your life right away or which one is serving you the most right now. And if you haven’t already, make sure to like the page or subscribe the page and turn on notifications so that you know when a video releases or when I go live in the future. This is KIM SUTTON, host of the positive productivity podcast in the marketing and automation, marketing, marketing and business automation mentor for business and life coaches. And I thank you for being with me today. I know times are tough, they may be tough for you right now even beyond what is going on with a global pandemic but I encourage you to be better instead of bitter. I’ll be back in a couple days with work harder. Not know let me try that again. I’ll be back in a couple days with my work smarter not harder Wednesday, but until then Go forth and make it a positive and productive day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

​