PP 145: Weekly Reflections Volume 1

Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity.

Weekly Reflections Volume 1

In today’s episode, I’m going to start a new series which I’ll be releasing once a week. In this weekly episode, I will be sharing weekly reflections and insights that I’ve seen over the course of the previous week. I’d love to hear what you think about this type of show format, because, unlike my other solo episodes, these will be a little bit longer and will cover a variety of topics.

As always, if you relate to anything that I’m talking about, I would love if you would visit the show notes page.

Weekly Reflections Volume 1 – Choices

When I was thinking about this past week, I realized that we always have a choice on what we do, but so many people aren’t seeing the choices that they have, and either aren’t making a good choice, or really aren’t making a choice at all.

This became so obvious to me every single night when, in exhaustion, I had to decide whether or not I was going to work on my website rebuild, or simply crashed in bed, which to be totally honest, is what I wanted to do just about every single night.

However, looking at my to do list and realizing that there are people who depend on the content of my site, every night I made the choice of putting at least 10 minutes into the site  reconstruction.

You’ve likely heard on the Positive Productivity podcast before that I say I always try to get away from my screens at least an hour before bedtime. However, this did not happen this week. I don’t know how many mornings I woke up and had to search for wherever my husband put my laptop because I know, even just last night, I fell asleep staring at the pages and trying to figure out if the wording that I had put on a page previously, was what I wanted to use again.

I know it may seem like him deviating from the topic that we always have a choice, however, looking back at the stats for the week, I’m already realizing that the decision I made to put in that extra effort was completely worth it. Looking back at my website stats, I can see the week plus of zero page views and as soon as I start started getting the content up again, the traffic started flowing, visitors started clicking in the inquiries started coming in again.

The path of trying to build a better life is often very complicated and very scary. And sometimes rather than facing that fear, we settle back into what is comfortable, rather than taking the step into the unknown.

I’ve worked with clients who often didn’t tackle their task list because they wanted to do something that seemed fun, and gave them a little bit of peace of mind. However, when we met for our next coaching session, nothing had been accomplished, and they were still in the same place that they had been the week before.

So I want to ask you… What choices are you making? Are you stepping out of the comfort zone? Or are you staying in the place that you’ve always known and are therefore seeing no progress toward achieving your next goal?

I challenge you in this next week to start making bold choices. Step out of the lines a little bit. And if you are coloring, choose to use a different color and go outside the lines. It’s only by making these choices, whether they’re big or small, that you’ll be able to see some real progress on up leveling your personal or professional life.

Weekly Reflections Volume 1 – Scarcity Mode

The next major realization that I saw this past week is that working in scarcity mode is real. I have not worked in scarcity mode for months and let me tell you, it’s a wonderful place to work in, even when my monthly revenue isn’t as high as I would have expected to be.

I’m not thinking about lack. I know that there is greatness to come. I can see in the communities around me where people are making rash decisions, and are completely working in scarcity mode.

These are the people who come up with launch ideas late in the evening and want everything produced for the next day.

These are people who are putting out offers that really don’t resonate with them or their brand.

And these are the people who are constantly thinking about income, rather than about the impact that they could possibly be making on the world around them.

Now, just remember, when you’re thinking completely on the income side, you’re not only impacting you in a negative way, but you’re also impacting your team and everybody who works with you. Your stress carries out into all the people around you, and it makes a fairly, if not substantially uncomfortable working situation.

If you’re working in scarcity mode right now, I want you to take a step back and look at the big picture.

Is your primary focus really all about the money?

If you were to die tomorrow, would you really be concerned about how much money was in your account? Or would you be wanting to look at how many people whose lives you touched?

And would you want to hear the stories about how you had helped people?

Stop working in scarcity mode, know that everything is how it should be. And if you focus on producing your best work possible, then great things are going to be coming soon.

Weekly Reflections Volume 1 – Feeding the Fire

My third and final reflection this past week was out, we have the choice of feeding the fire or extinguishing it.

There are so many people, especially on social media, who will comment negatively on our posts, try to steal our spotlight and sometimes even just maliciously try to get into the way of our success. While there are times that these people need to be addressed and perhaps talked to, there are often times when we really just need to ignore these people, because concentrating on them and their negativity is only going to take us away from the positive place that we are and the impact that we’re making.

The more successful we get and the bigger impact that we are making, the more often that we’re going to see fires starting in our social media feeds in our inbox, and social media messaging. But we have a choice on how we’re going to address those fires. And in almost all cases, I have to say, Don’t feed them, extinguish them.

I can hear the question marks raising right now, like how do we actually extinguish those and I want you to think about one thing back in grade school or junior high. We may have taken science class and been shown that if we remove the oxygen from a flame, the flame would go out.

The same happens with the fires on social media and in other parts of our business. Unless the fire is a critical element that really needs to be addressed in order to keep our business running, if we take the oxygen away from that drama, eventually will die away.

This can be likened to ignoring a bully, just as we were taught back in grade school. If we don’t let these people know that they’re bothering us, and if we continue doing what we were already doing, then eventually they’ll get bored and go away.

We don’t need to highlight the negative in our life.

We don’t need to give the haters the attention that they’re looking for.

So extinguish those fires and keep on creating your own brilliance.

Now with all this said, in until our next episode, go forth and have a positive productive day.