What To Do When You're Drowning

How to actually get the things done. The very first step that I would really love to encourage. Drop the meeting. Let's talk about what to do when you feel like you are drowning. This time of year, everybody's so busy. There's lots of events to attend, there's school things if you have kiddos. We also are feeling all this pressure in our businesses. Like the end of the year, we gotta finish strong. We have to make sure that we can talk about how our year went, but also like new year, new me. Right? We also have to plan for the next year and make sure that we're really positive. And there's just so much pressure. And I was feeling like I was drowning. I've come up with some strategies through the years of how to survive when I feel like I'm drowning. And I thought that could be really helpful to share here. A couple years ago I took this quiz called the Strength Finder Quiz. It's by a company called Gallup. And what I found out was my top two strengths. I'm futuristic. Number one, I love to think about the future. I love to plan for the future. And then number two is that I'm strategic. So I love to plan strategies for the future. So I've had a lot of different projects all in the work and I haven't launched anything because I feel like I'm buttoning up all these different pieces and I have all these different fish hooks out in the pond. Right. Like I'm ready to just hit that next level and reinvent my business in a way. Woke up this morning and my 11 year old has a fever. Now he is home sick from school. And you know when you have one kid sick but you have multiple kids, everybody's going to get sick at some point. So not only that, but I'm Catholic, Christian, we plan for Christmas. I haven't planned anything yet. I feel like I have 30 different projects that are 95% done. I feel like I'm drowning. There is no way that this is all going to come together. Right? And I don't know about you guys, but sometimes when I feel like this, I just want to go watch Netflix and not actually do anything that's not going to work. I have to find the motivation, I have to dig deep and I have to figure out how to actually get the things done. I have people depending on me. I have clients that are expecting things. I have lots and lots. If you listen to last week's episode, you know that I've also had changes on my team. I've had two different right hand women leave my team. So now I'm also hiring and I'm trying to figure out what was below the surface that has not been happening that I thought was happening. Where balls have been dropped because I wasn't aware that things were happening because other people were just manscape it, right? Like, where were the holes in the system? What has been happening that I need to fix? So there's a lot of that going on too. So basically, I feel like I'm living in a dumpster fire right now. I mean, completely honest. So what do you do? Like, what do you do when you feel like that? When you feel like your business is a dumpster fire, or when you feel like you're falling apart, you're a hot mess? Like, whatever the story is, the very first step that I would really love to encourage anybody is like, drop the meaning. Like, don't make it mean anything. Just state facts, right? Like, okay, I have to dig into operations and systems a bit more than I usually do, but I get to fix things. I get to be so aware that I know exactly what's going on and we can build a better mousetrap, right? I'm not sitting here like crying about it. Like, I'm excited. I'm like, oh, I get to fix this thing now. And if I just get through this moment and I only look at the facts and I think, okay, we need a better system for our accountability call. So if I sit down and I just, you know, mentally plan that, then I can come up with a way to fix that. So the very first piece of it is make sure that you're not living in judgment. Make sure you're not in this world of like, terrible. Everything is terrible. My business is broken. I will catastrophize super fast sometimes, but I have to stay up here. It's just these are the facts of what's happening right now. I've worked with a lot of clients where they immediately are like, of course this is happening to me. Like, they just expect things to be terrible, right? And then things are terrible. Like, it's literally, that's how things work. So if you think things are going to be terrible, they're going to be terrible. If you think you're going to have a bad day, you're going to steal your coffee and you're going to fall down the stairs. So if you can stay away from the like, of course thinking like, of course this is happening to me because I'm terrible. We don't want to do that. Right. And there's this really amazing book. It's Buddhist principles, and it says this one thing. Emotions are basically like clouds in the sky, right? Even if it's thundering or storming or raining and really, really cloudy outside. Just because it's cloudy, it doesn't mean that it's always going to be cloudy or that the weather is going to be terrible forever. So if you don't feel like you're thriving in the moment, it's going to come back around. Strategy number two is get it out of your head. So, like, I carry something like this around with me all the time. It's just this white notebook. Sometimes the pages look like this. Sometimes my children get access to them. Most of the time, I use these not only to, like, map out funnels and have different ideas, but I use it to create my entire checklist for the day. So I will brain dump every single thing that I need to get done. If I have it right here, I will keep this on my desk at all times, and I will just write things down as I think of them. I learned at one point that we're basically computers. The way our brains are created. We are created to process things, not store things. Our brains are only created to be able to think about things, and then it leaves our brain. So if we think that we can remember all these different checklists for, you know, personal life, business planning for families that we have to be prepared for to manage this time of year, we can't. Our brains are not created to store all of these different thoughts simultaneously. So when you're trying to do that, you're setting yourself up to fail. So the only way to keep yourself sane is to get it out to on paper. And then you can just let that pressure off of yourself. Like, I don't actually have to remember all the things. It's all right here. So the more you can do that, the more you can, you know, not necessarily create a to do list, but create a brain dump list. Then you know exactly what you need to do next. The other thing that I do with these lists is looking at the list and trying to figure out what the big domino is. So the big domino, there's this concept where they. They did this study on if you have a tiny domino and then another domino and then a little bit bigger domino, if you like, push this tiny domino down, this tiny domino through this chain reaction, could end up knocking down a domino that is the size of the Sears Tower. That was the experiment that they set up. And it would work so when you can figure out the big domino or maybe the tiny domino, since I talk about tiny things a lot. What is the tiny domino? What actually knocks over your Sears Tower? So if there is only one thing that you can get done for the day, or maybe two things you can get done for the day, what is going to have the biggest impact not only on your overall to do list, but on your brain? Like, what is the thing that you can knock off your tooth that's going to relieve the largest amount of stress? So maybe it's the thing you've been avoiding. Eat that frog. Right? Like that quote of. There's a whole book about it of eating the frog, doing the thing that you really don't want to do, doing that first, getting it off the to do list. You don't have to think about it anymore and just check it out. Because I don't know if you're like me, but I will avoid eating the frog for weeks if. If I had to, I will avoid the one thing that I really need to do. And then when I look at it and I sit down and I do the thing, it takes five minutes. If I can really sit down and focus and get my br. Put my blinders on, my funnel vision that I talk about when it comes to launching funnels and businesses, get the funnel vision and actually do the one big domino, then it's done. And it always takes way less time than I think. I will build it up and up and up and up in my brain and then not do it and then finally get it done. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that was super easy. So think about that. Like, make your list. Figure out what your big domino is and check it out. And if that's the one thing that you have sick kids at home and there's only one thing that you have time for, there's only one thing you can get done that day. At least you know, you got that done. Say the last piece of this. That has been my. My survival strategy is thinking in this moment of, like, right before I created this video, I was sitting in my office and I was, like, looking at the piles of paper on my desk, and I was thinking about all the things that I had to get done, like, planning for tomorrow, wondering if my kids are all going to get sick, wondering if the consultants I hired are actually going to make it into town. You know, is it all going to work out? Is it all going to explode? The one thing that I thought of is, like, I have this to do list right here in this moment, if I think about my mental health, you know, my level of sanity, what is one thing that I can do to feel good in this moment? And for me, it's usually go for a run and take a hot shower and then get back to work. So if I can get those things done, if I can get some happy endorphins going, like go exercise, then I'm going to get way more done than if I sat here and I'm like just staring at my desk like, oh my gosh, there's so much here. I would end up procrastinating and probably going on Facebook and doom scrolling for the next four hours. So if I can make myself go exercise, go for a really good run, get a good sweat on, go take a hot shower and then put my hair in a high ponytail and like get to work, I'm gonna get way more done than if I just fight it and fight it and fight it. I don't have time to work out, I don't have time to take a shower, I don't have time for anything. That's not a productive way to think, right? So think about for your mental health, what is one thing, what is your mental health? Big domino too. For me, it's always exercise. And I will procrastinate any day of the week by going to take a hot shower and getting back to work because I know I will be way more productive afterwards. If I put myself together, take, you know, the 30, 45 minutes to really take care of myself first, then it's going to pay off exponentially inside of my business if I can at least make that commitment to myself and then get back to work. So hopefully those strategies are helpful systems I've had to set up and an understanding and grace that I've had to allow myself to be able to through a decade of working at home and having kids that are unpredictable. And you never know, like, can't always plan for what the day is going to look like and oftentimes your plans disintegrate anyway. So how do you survive when you can't always plan for exactly what life is going to look like? Those are the strategies that I've used. Keep moving forward and keep growing and keep building momentum and not completely losing myself in the process. Having this mentality is what's gotten me to 5 million in my business and what's going to help me get to 10 million a year. So I'm going to keep growing, keep sharing these strategies. If you have an awesome day, make sure you subscribe and if you ever have anything that you want me to cover in these episodes, let me know, send me a message, and I will see you on the next episode.