017: The Positive Psychology Behind the Entrepreneurial Journey!

The Modern CEO Podcast Episode 17.

Hey, have you heard? There's a new style of CEO on the block. The Modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, family and impact. And her corner office looks nuts. Nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street.

It's a kitchen table, your grandma's lake.

House, a spacious home office, the living room floor, maybe surrounded by kids and crayons or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay.

Because when you embrace your role as.

Modern CEO, you will have more freedom.

More profit, and more fun.

Most importantly, you'll fall in love with your life and a business in a way you've only dreame. Trust me, this isn't a pipe dream reserved for only a select few. You are the modern CEO. You are creating a business and life you love because a better business means a better life.

Well, hey, hey, hey. Welcome to the Modern CEO podcast. I'm your host, Amber McHugh, and today I'm coming at you from Venice, California. Yes, I am just a couple blocks from the beach and I, my friend, am in my happy place. And I am not in the happy place today because I have reached a specific goal, but I am in a happy place today because I am enjoying this journey. You know, I sometimes think about my biggest goals and the goals that I have in mind. And I think about how amazing it is going to feel when I reach those goals. You know, think about it. Think about the goals that you have for your life. Think about the goals that you have for your business. I mean, how good is it gonna feel when you actually hit and achieve those goals? What will you do to celebrate? Will you be the happiest person ever when you hit those goals? Maybe. But maybe not. As much as I want your business to succeed and my friend, you will succeed if you stay on this journey and keep at it. What is more important to me is your life. Happiness. Yes, sometimes they do go hand in hand. Entrepreneurs who choose entrepreneurship and are forced into it to simply pay the bills are generally happier than the average person. Said another way, if you have chosen this path, there's a good chance that you're happier than someone who feels stuck in a job, right? Or who isn't an entrepreneur and is just living out a normal day to day lifestyle. Of course, mental health is a greater risk for entrepreneurs as well due to increased stress, uncertainty, loneliness, amongst many other things. Further when we focus exclusively on our business, our self worth can be tied to the success of our business. And things elsewhere in life can start to feel out of sync. I can totally relate to this idea. Can you? I at one point was spending so much time in my business, heck, I came right out of corporate where I was definitely a little bit of a workaholic. And I applied those same workaholic tendencies and principles to my business. But this was totally out of sync with the vision I had for my business and for my life. I don't know about you, but I personally started my business to have more freedom, to be able to spend more time with my family, to do something different, and to serve people like you in a better way. And somewhere along the way, things got a little out of sync. And that's because I was focused on the end goals, not the journey. And I let business take priority over who I was and what I wanted to be in my life. You know, on the journey to feeling happy, the success of your business is important, but you hitting your goals matters less than if you're actually enjoying this journey or not. I remember one time I was sitting in the driveway with my husband and we were getting ready to go somewhere. We had a gorgeous five bedroom house, brick front, stone steps, long driveway. And we were in fact sitting in his Audi. Life was good, right? I was happy. But my husband challenged me and said, you're not really happy right now, are you? I was shocked. I was speechless. I screamed back at him, tears running down my face, and I said, of course I'm happy. If you don't think I'm happy right now, you don't really know me. You don't know who I am at all. And I continued to cry. And of course I reflect on that time and that moment in that conversation. And he was right. Of course he was right. I was so far from happy, I didn't even know who I was anymore. And that's because I got away from my goals, I got away from my dreams and I got so wrapped up in, in the business of doing business. In fact, positive psychology shows that the happiest people are making progress toward a goal. Unlike me at the time where I was completely focused on the end goal and I was lacking from finding joy in the journey. You know, this progress toward a goal concept reminds me a lot of a video game. Level one. You complete it and then you enjoyed the challenge getting to level one, but you're not done done yet. Now you get to enjoy the challenge of working through and Making your way to level two. It's the challenge of working through that journey, working through those obstacles, working through and problem solving on your way to the next level that actually brings joy. I cannot even tell you how many times I have heard my very good video game playing husband say when he gets to the end of the game, I wish my game wasn't over yet. I want to go back and do that again. I want to experience that again. Because he is experiencing joy in the journey. You see, lasting joy does not come from beating the game. Lasting joy does not come from hitting your goal. The joy is in the journey. The joy that comes from actually reaching your goals is often short lived because yes, there is a scientific reason for this. Once you hit the goal you were working toward, the dopamine that was released simmers down again. This same dopamine is released as you move towards your goals. And at the very end, and because you're not working toward that goal anymore, because you've achieved the goal, it all starts to simmer down. Yes, in upcoming episodes of the Modern CEO podcast. As we move through this virtual planning experience series, we will be stepping very directly into components of your business. But today I want to talk about the joy of the journey that is your life. Because running a business is just one part of it. And yes, like I warned earlier, that business can become your identity. Your business can become tied to your self worth. That was me for a long time. I associated the potential success I would or would not have in my business with with my identity and it certainly impacted my happiness levels. And yeah, you are right if you guessed that that was crazy stressful. I want us to start with our life goals, purpose and plans for the year ahead. Because if we don't have you and your life front and center as we grow your business, we will be in trouble as we move ahead. Things may start to get out of alignment when our business and life don't sync up and they start to go down divergent paths as we go. Now, I highly recommend that this isn't just a one and done exercise that we do together. I'm going to circle back to these specific exercises and I'll call out what specifically I'm going to do with these exercises as the year progresses as well as so we can be in this together. So before we go any further, I gotta ask, how's life, my friend? Wait, wait, wait, don't answer that. As a part of the exercise we're gonna do today in this virtual planning series, I'm gonna give you A series of activities to walk through together. If you wanna follow along with us, you can just listen along. But if you want the paper copies of this, you can go to ambermcch.com forward/life check. Again, that's Amber mchugh.com lifecheck. And we're going to explore today in a structured way what's going on in your life. So you have a framework to assess, reflect and reset as we go forward in this series and as you go forward in your life. And remember, as we step into this, the joy is in the journey. Or as Tony Robbins says, progress equals happiness. So let's make a little progress today. Now, the first question I have for you as we step into this life check is what are the most important components of your life? You might identify five to eight areas of your life that are really important to you and that you want to draw attention to as you focus on improving and developing your life and your goals. Now, some areas of life that may come up for you are family, friends or social elements, fitness or health. Soul Fuel is a big one for me. Money and finances, having balance, business or work, fun, pure fun and adventure. And one that I actually added this year that is so important to me is having white space. And of course, I identified how important the white space was as we were moving through that very crazy year last year with the 15 moons, I craved and needed white space more than I realized. And it became ever so evident as we were hopping from one Airbnb to the other. So what are those areas in your life that are most important to you? Again, some of the examples that I gave are soul, fuel, fitness and health, social or friends, family, business and work, money or finances, fun and adventure, and potentially white space. Now, as you identify those areas, what I want you to do is take the Wheel of Life template that was included in the packet that we shared with you@ambermceh.com for forward slash slash, life check. And if you don't have this packet with you because you are on the road and on the go, no worries. You can map out and assess and create your own wheel of life. When you have a pen and paper in hand, don't stop and do this. If you're driving, actually just do it mentally with us. If you are driving, no worries. So what you're going to do is you're going to put a dot in the middle of a big circle and then you're going to divide your wheel of life into a number of pies, equal number of pies to the areas in your life that are a priority, and then draw lines so you know which part of each pie equals what area of your life. Now, color in or visualize yourself filling the different areas of the pie based on how fulfilled and how satisfied you are in each area of life. For example, there was a long time when I was not getting enough soul fuel. So in 2016 and 2017 and really into 2018, I spent a lot of time filling up my soul fuel pie. Because when I did this exercise in 2017, I realized that piece of my pie was basically empty. And as I worked on it and identified things to make progress on in that soul fuel bucket, I was more fulfilled in my soul fuel bucket of my life. And that permeated and spilled over into my overall levels of joy. So you're gonna do this for each of those areas that you prioritized in your life that you identified as priorities for you. And you may find that it's not necessarily soul fuel that has an empty pie, but maybe it's money for you because you're not watching your budget and you're not paying attention to money, and you're getting overdue notices, and things feel a little bit out of control on the money front. I've been there. I have been there, friend. You are not alone. And there is no shame in that game. Life happens. Maybe for you, you want to get in shape this year. You want to drink more water. You want to pay more attention to your health. In fact, this is one of my areas of focus for 2019. I'd say that that piece of my pie is about half full, and I want to get it to 80% full. Full this year. Maybe for you, your family pie, which is very important, and it's potentially a priority in your life, Maybe it's a little low, or maybe it's all full. So you're gonna keep on keeping on in that area of your pie this year. But as you first go through this exercise, don't worry about identifying action steps, because we'll do that together later. What I want you to do first is to build out your wheel of life and do an assessment on how am I doing in each of these areas that are important to me? How do I feel about them? If you've got a partner, encourage, and I invite you to get him or her to do this with you, because this is an incredibly revealing exercise that's colorful and fast, fun, and can be creative, but it also says a lot about where we are in our life and where we want to be. Going. And remember, the joy is in the journey. So after you've completed your Wheel of Life, we're going to put that on hold for a minute and we're going to circle back to that later. Now I want you to make a list or if you're using our guide@ambermceh.com LifeCheck, let's take a look at how you're going to stay fully charged in the year ahead. You know, I like to think of our energy levels just like batteries. Are we 50% charged? Are we fully charged and able to serve and show up in the best way? Or are we totally drained by right now? Make a list of what gives you energy, what will fill your battery throughout the year and charge your battery throughout the year or what will drain it. You know, I know that having an overbooked schedule totally drains my energy. Now one would think that that could be in contrast because speaking with my clients on the phone in our back pocket deal sees totally fills my battery. Like instant battery filler Upper is talking to my clients. But at the same time, if my schedule is too booked, if I don't have that white space that we talked about earlier, my battery will be drained rapid fire like it is a not even a good battery. I might as well throw that battery out if my schedule is too full and I don't create that white space for myself. So I want you to think about as we step into this new year with this fresh start. And remember, regardless of what time you're listening to this podcast, you get to create a fresh start at any time. I want you to make a note of what's going to give you energy, what's going to charge you up, and what is going to drain you. Okay, that's where we're going to stop for today. In the next episode of the Modern CEO podcast, we are going to pick right up and we are going to complete our life check together. And then of course we are going to move into some business building activities so we can set your business up for growth and success in the new year as well. We are going to leave, I hope, on high vibes and with batteries fully charged. The and if you're not totally there yet, I hope this little song from the Beach Boys will help you out. All right, with that, let's keep on keeping on with this journey to joy. The joy is absolutely in the journey and I am so happy to be completing this virtual planning experience series with you as we kick off here with the Life Check. And that is exactly where we will pick up in our next episode. I will see you soon, Sam.