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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910. Hey, good day, good day everyone. It is a beautiful December day and we are coming to you all about Ask Bernadette today. This is your day to ask your business life and career questions. And we are winding down 2016. It's unbelievable that we'd be at December 6th already, but we are, and that's reality. But what we are planning to do this entire month is kind of continue the momentum, continue the energy, continue the focus on what it is that you're pursuing in your life, while at the same time kind of reflecting back as to how 2016 rolled out to you against what it is that you planned. At the same time, what are you planning for in 2017, and what can we do here in the Shenzhen Village community to help you with that? So today is Ask Bernadette, your day to ask those career, business, and life questions, and I've got a number of them lined up. But at the same time, you can always call 1-818-572-2910 with your questions. You can post them on Facebook or Twitter. Deborah's out there—Deborah Parker of Parker House Virtual Services—and she'll pass them to me as well. I'm watching online. I am videotaping today's program so then I can splice it up and provide you the output to the questions that you're asking as rich on our Shed in the Bits YouTube channel. So there's a lot of little things going on around me, and we are all geared up and ready to take on whatever it is that's kind of keeping you stuck, possibly. Or maybe you just need some advice or guidance or some answers to something. Maybe you are working hard, you're delivering hard, you're getting great results, and yet you want to up-level. A lot of people I ask if they hesitate to ask questions because they don't want to appear as if they don't know something. Well, guess what? I probably ask a handful of questions to various people online or in person or on a phone call each and every day. And I would hope to God that I don't stop answering or asking questions until I'm in the grave. So don't hesitate to ask for your advice or for your— I'm sorry, for your problem or the challenge you might be having, or simply you just need some, a little bit of a shove in a certain direction. Don't hesitate to go out and get it wherever that might be. And here on the Shenzhen Bitch radio program is one of those places, and then we are working to provide you more and more ways and means for you to do that in the coming new year. So speaking of which, if you haven't already, I would love you to join our private Facebook group. Many of you do say that you hesitate asking questions or putting an issue that you're having online for the world to see or for the world to hear, whatever the case might be. Of course, you can always call and send to us, and you never have to give us your name. But our private group on Facebook, which is facebook.com/groups/shifttoriches, that's our private group, that will allow you to, in a very safe environment amongst people who also want to come into a very safe, collaborative, energized, and supportive group, and ask the questions or tell the stories or share with us whatever it is that you need to or want to right there in that group. But we are going to look for ways throughout 2017 to engage more and more with you, because one thing I don't want you to do is be sitting at home feeling like you're alone or feeling you're going to be judged or feel as if you're going to, you know, not get the support that you need. And Shenandoah B.I.T.C.H. Community is the safe, collaborative, supportive supportive space with a lot of energy and a lot of fun, I would hope, and for you to get your questions answered. All right, and through the month of December, we're going to be bringing you experts and topics that will kind of allow you to assess 2016 and look forward into 2017 to plan your goals and objectives, as well as the measurements, as well as identifying what issues are going to get in your way as far as you achieving your goals, so we can work preventively and proactively to address those things as we go forward. All right. Let's see, some other rich news. I hope— I guess we've met since Thanksgiving, yes? Yes, I believe we have. December is kind of going with a bang. And we are finally getting tons of rain here in Atlanta, so excuse the kind of background noise if you happen to hear any that sounds maybe like raindrops. But we are getting rain that we much need, so no one here is going to be complaining. Let's see. And then, like I said, December is going to be packed with more conversations in regards to things that are impacting women today in their career, business, or life. All right, we're going to take a short break. I'm going to take a breath since that little technical issue kind of took a little air out of my steam. And then when we come back, we're going to dive into the list of questions. But again, if you have a question and you're out there, I'm watching you on chat. Deborah's keeping an eye on you out there as well. If you have a question regarding your career, business, or life, that you would like to discuss or get some advice and tips around, please call 1-818-572-2910. You can even go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and you can chat with us, and I'm keeping an eye on the chat room. And then at the same time, anytime, even after the program's aired live and maybe you're downloading this like many of you do, you can always go to our Shedding the Bitch Facebook page and pose your question there. All right, so we're going to take a little break, a little breath, and we'll be right back and dive into the questions that you have for Ask Bernadette Tuesday. Talk to you in a minute.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear. Fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. Yes, this is Ask Bernadette Tuesday where I am answering your career, business, and life questions and providing some tips, advice, sometimes tough love in regards to what you could be doing and keep moving yourself forward and creating those riches in your life that you deserve. All right, so first up is, as we talk about, we have career, business, and life questions. We hope to get a blend of all of them in each program, but if not, that's okay too. But we'll start with a business question. How do you say no to a boss? And we'll expand that and say, how do you say no to a boss, to a peer, to a friend, to a family member when you just truly don't want to do something or you don't want to, you don't agree, or maybe you're being, maybe you're being asked to do something that you don't want to do. Maybe your friend wants you to do something that you don't want to do, and you're accustomed to being a people pleaser. Can I have a show of hands for those that might be people pleasers out there? And yet at the same time, you also recognize that you always saying yes and not standing true to what it is that you want and what it is that you believe in is causing you to swirl with not ever getting your things done or achieved. Maybe you just are getting frustrated at the fact that you're not able to say no. So they ask you to do something that's maybe not in your lane, maybe not part of your role and responsibility, maybe it's not something that you want to do. And therefore, you need to be able to very effectively tell that person no without, you know, feeling as if you're going to jeopardize your position or your job or anything of that matter. So what do you do in that situation? Well, what you can do is to merely point out, in all fairness to you, that it isn't in your role of responsibility. So this particular person, when they brought me this question, the situation that they were in is One of their customers asked them to update a process form. This is a business question. So they're updating a business, a process form within their business. And it's typically another department's responsibility, not this individual's responsibility. Not to say that person, you maybe, can't do it. It's just not your job. It's not your role and responsibility to have to do it. So in this situation, she was questioning what she should do in that situation to say, "No, I'll pass it on to another department." And I told her she answered her own question. She basically said and could say, "I'm sorry, you know what, I'll do you a favor and I'll pass this on to the customer service department and let them handle it." mention to them that you'd like this business process form to be updated. And what would that individual respond? They're not going to respond, well, no, don't do that. Most likely they'll respond, okay, thank you very much. Most likely they'll respond, okay, you know, just simply okay. And then, and you're still able to kind of hold your ground in that this isn't work you're supposed to be doing, it's work someone else is supposed to be doing. And therefore you'll pass it on. So if you're asked to do something, if you're asked to go somewhere that is not really in your role or responsibility, it's not in something that you want to be doing, then just stay true to yourself and simply diplomatically say, I'd love to, however, this is someone else's role or responsibility. This is someone else's task to be done. I'd be more than happy to pass that on. You know, I'm not really in the mood or in a place to want to go there today, maybe another time, or it's just not in my interest. A friend of mine and I always tend to go back and forth when it when it comes to going to movies. I tend to have a certain flavor of movie that I like to go, and certainly do not like certain other movies like sci-fi. I'm not a sci-fi fan. I'm not a horror fan. I'm not even really a psychological thriller fan. I'm into more of the lighthearted stuff. And so we go back and forth, and I'll simply say, you know what, that's just not of interest to me. You have the right to say something's not of interest to you, or it's not my role or responsibility. And as opposed to befeathering that, you should consider that someone's going to respect you for being upfront and honest about that. So if you are questioning what can you do to say no when it's from a boss or a peer or a friend, and you're accustomed to kind of being a people pleaser, well, maybe what you need to also think about is that people pleasing, that people is you. You need to be able to please yourself, and therefore the only way you're going to be able to please yourself is by saying no, and just find a diplomatic and direct way of saying that. And if the other person is worth their grain of salt, then they're going to be okay with that and respect the fact that you're not necessarily— they're not going to look at it as standing up for yourself, but you're basically saying what it is that you truly feel. And there's a lot of camps of people that don't like people-pleasing. They don't like someone always saying yes. They want to know that someone actually has a Fine. And secondly, and more importantly, what I need you to think about is if you're always saying yes to someone and you're always people pleasing and it's draining you, it's causing you frustration or stress, and it's taking you out of your lane of what's important to you and what you value, and therefore other people obviously aren't valuing that. Well, one, you're doing a disservice to yourself, and you need to look inward to identify those bitches, so to speak, that are causing you to not stand true to what you want and what you believe in. And what is that worth or that value you're putting on you being happy and you being pleased, not just pleasing someone else? So the next time you want to say no, simply step back and kind of identify and justify why you want to say no. Come up with that reasoning. It's not my job. It's not something that I have any interest in doing. It's not kind of true to who I am. And voice that and provide that back to whoever it is that's asking you to do something you just really don't want to do. And you shouldn't do. And whether it's a boss or a customer or a peer or a colleague or a friend, they should only respect you for that. And if they don't, then that's actually a lot of information that you should take and make note of for working with and handling that individual going forward. Because we should all respect someone standing true to what it is that they like, dislike, and who they are as an individual. All right.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. Available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email deborahparker@parkerhouseservices.com. Deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, this is Ask Bernadette. Bring me your business, career, and life questions and I'll provide you some tips, advice, and sometimes tough love in regards to them. And at the same time, we're working today to videotape this as well so I can slice them up, and provide you rich tips out on our Setting the Bricks video channel. So you can always go look there as well. So moving on to our next question. Our next question is all regarding— I call it gossiping or just merely calling it a major faux pas on someone's part. But this individual's boss shared with their team, with his team of which she's a part of, but she wasn't in this particular meeting, that she was going to be assigned a new role and position, and yet she had not even been told about it. Okay, did you get that? So the question was, what do I do when my boss shares with peers, with others, especially team members, that she has a new role and position, and yet she hasn't even been told about it yet. She's actually hearing it, you know, from other parties, her team members, outside of any conversation that she's had with her boss. Well, all I can say to that is, "Ah, that really sucks." And yet, It's not the first time I've heard it, and personally I've experienced it myself. And it is definitely something that can take your breath away once you, if you're the victim in this case, learn of it. It does. It causes you to just go, "What in the world?" And you get all anxious and excited, and not in a good way excited. And you just start swirling ideas in your head, which just takes you out of any of the productivity or any of the reality that you're just working in. And it can really send people into a tailspin, which is one thing I wish that individual, that manager, realized that when he— and as he's going and sharing information that he hasn't even disclosed yet to the person impacted, if he only realized the effects that that little tidbit of information is going to have, not only on their team, because obviously that team went away and started gossiping and was intrigued and curious and started poking around, but yet the individual being impacted now is in a spiral downturn. Fortunately, she picked up the phone and called me before she allowed herself to go too far into that abysm, so to speak, and simply asked, "What do I do in this situation?" I told her immediately to, one, first off, take a deep breath and calm herself down. Calm down herself before even the situation calms down. Just to take a deep breath. She did not want to move forward, and you never want to move forward in addressing anything coming at it in a very emotional mindset, because that's where a lot of the, a lot of the breakdown in communication happens. That's when a lot of the anger and the hurt and the pain is created, let alone felt or exasperated, is because we don't take a moment to just kind of sit with something, with whether or not it's a decision that needs to be made, or whether or not it's a piece of gossip that's heard, whether or not it's a situation that just happened to us. We just don't take a moment to just breathe. So first off, I would recommend anybody in kind of having an immediate jerk to their foundation. To just kind of first breathe before reacting. Because you're not responding, you're reacting, and reacting is not always a good thing. So I just asked her to take a deep breath and breathe. And then what I suggested to her, and I would suggest to you, is kind of formulate your conversation, formulate your plan, formulate formulate what it is that you need to go and address with this individual, in this case, her boss. So kind of clear the head first and then make sure that you are formulating how this conversation should go. You certainly want to tackle it head-on. Now, tackling it head-on doesn't mean that you kind of grab him at the throat and, you know, it doesn't have to be anything aggressive. It just needs to be assertive. You need to be able to share with him, first off, asking for an explanation and for clarity, and at the same time also addressing the point straight on as to why that was shared with other people prior to yourself. Because it just created X, Y, and Z, not only for them, but for you and for the boss themselves. This isn't a good thing for the boss, let alone for you or for your peers. Your boss is also impacted as a result of what it is that he's now kind of guilty of doing. It's not good for a boss to be sharing information that hasn't been disclosed to the— especially to the people that are directly involved. So this is a situation that all three parties are being impacted by and therefore has to get addressed. So she needs to kind of get her head on straight, get clear about what it is that she wants to talk to him about, and then to go and with a kind of a breath you know, being held, address it calmly and pointedly in order to get it kind of resolved and moved on. But I was glad that she didn't go and kind of stomp into his office or pick up the phone right away. We never want to do that when we have this sudden jerk to our foundation, as I said before. You want to kind of be able to go at it very logically, logically, unemotionally, and get the solution or get the answer that you need, as opposed to allowing it to kind of create this flurry of emotion, not only from you, but now with anybody else around that you're engaging with to kind of get the issue— get the issue resolved. Does that make sense? So I just suggested that I just suggested that she sit down, take a deep breath, write out what it is that she wants to get addressed with him, even bulletize the points of discussion, have an idea of what is the end result of that conversation, and then to just approach it very logically. That's how we have to handle a lot of any situations that come up like that. Just lay out a plan of how you're going to address it, how you're going to confront it, how you're going to combat it, whatever the situation is, and do it coming from a logical place as opposed to an emotional place. All right? Okay, we're going to take another brief break, and we'll be right back and continue our career, business, and life questions on Ask Bernadette on this episode of Shagging the Biz Radio.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors: TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com. Www.sheddingthebitchradio.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, this is Ask Bernadette on this Tuesday's Shedding the Bitch Radio program, and I am answering your career, business, and life questions and providing you some tips, advice, and sometimes tough love. Alright, so our next question is all around creativity. And the lack thereof. So have you ever had that situation where maybe you— it was a bright and glorious Monday morning and you got up and you were very anxious about starting a new project, or maybe a new job, or maybe a new program. Maybe you work for yourself and you had this great idea for a new product that you want to take out to the market, or maybe you— at work, working for someone else. You have a great idea for something that you could be leading up or working on at work. Or maybe you're a stay-at-home and all of a sudden you've got this great idea for something out in the backyard, and you know, you're all anxious and excited about going about it. And then you jump out of bed, you go into work, you get out to your computer or you get out to the backyard, and you just kind of stand there paralyzed by what to do. First. Have you ever had that situation? Can you relate? Because I certainly can. As a matter of fact, I should have known that this day was going to kind of roll out the way it has because this morning I got up with all kinds of gusto, went and visited a friend, and was all pumped up with some great ideas. As I got to my workspace, sat down, and stared at a white screen for about 15 minutes and had no idea, and had no idea as to what I really wanted to write about or what I wanted to work on. I just kind of sat there and stared at my computer. So what happens when you have all these great ideas and you're feeling creative and yet You're just feeling like you don't know what to do first. Well, that is a lot— well, what I really want to say is that's an easy problem to solve when you're in that space. You know why? Because there was only maybe one thing potentially missing from your plan. Do you have any idea what that is? Raise a hand. Anybody? Yeah, you have this great amount of energy to go and start something that you have a great idea about, and yet you're kind of sitting there void, vacant, absent of any type of activity or motion. What are we missing? You're missing the plan. You're missing the plan of how you're going to take action or pursue that burst of idea, or that burst of creativity, or that burst of momentum. You have the momentum. You have the energy. You have your mojo. And yet you don't have a plan. And that's an easy problem to solve, because you know what? You just sit down and make out a plan. Now, a lot of people get stuck. And I absolutely love talking about goals and about Defining plans and time management. I love it because it is such an easy problem to solve that if you just sit down and you write out what it is that you want to do. So say it is that backyard project, or it is that new role that you'd be playing at work, or maybe you do come up with a new product and program for your own business that you want to start creating and rolling out. Well, you do need to start somewhere, so don't get also tripped up by anybody expressing to you you have to come up with a plan. Plans sound very overwhelming, sound very involved. Oh my gosh, now I have to take time to sit down and make out a plan? Are you kidding me? And you can even come back and say that to me as your own coach. And I would totally understand your position. But all I'm saying is a plan only really can start with one thing. If you wanted that project or that role or that product, simply sit down and map out the first thing you need to do in order to get that new initiative, let's call it, moving forward. So regardless of what those examples were, The first thing could be, "Okay, let me put more thought and idea behind that raw project or product that I want to come up with. What is it? What does it look like? What's the end state of it that I want it to be?" That is your first step. So you don't even have to think about steps 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 if you don't want to. Just start somewhere. And so many of us get tripped up, and we get stuck and paralyzed because we don't even think about that very first step we need to take. So let me give you, for instance, I get up. I get all energized this morning. I come into the workspace. I'm staring at this white screen. I start writing, and nothing is coming to me. So what do I do? I don't stop. I don't give up. I continue to write, and you know what I land up writing about? I land up writing about the fact that I was staring— staring at a white screen without any creative idea or inspiration going on in between my ears. And that was exactly what I was writing about. And it turned out that the lesson learned was you don't always have the answers. You don't always have that burst of inspiration. And yet, that's okay. Just do something. So I kind of forced myself to continue typing and writing something. And you can go to ShadingtheBitch.com see if it makes even any sense to you, the blog post I just put out there this morning. But my point being is at least I kept doing something. The one thing, to bring it back to the plan, the one thing I said to myself in that post as I was writing and feeling very void and absent of any type of creative idea to share with you, I just made sure the plan involved the fact that I I wanted to get a piece of writing done because I committed to doing that on a more regular basis. And so void of any specific type of idea, or even the idea I came in to write about, I couldn't put two words together when it came to it. I at least pushed myself to come up with the one thing that was on my plan of three things, and that was at least to get some words on paper. Now of course, I want them to make sense. You can tell me that, yay or nay, when you read the blog post. But my point is, if you're lacking creativity, be okay with it. You don't have to have this aha moment every time you set out to do something. So whether it's working in the backyard, or it's working on a new project at work, or creating a new product, Just take a first step as your plan, and that first step will then lead you into a second, third, or fourth step. And if it doesn't and you're still feeling kind of uninspired, you're feeling vacant or void, or just you can't put two words together, you know what, be okay with that and put it aside maybe. Put it aside. And move on to thinking about something else, putting your energies elsewhere. And if that initial thing that you wanted to be pursuing was still important to you, then it will bubble up. But you have to kind of let that anxiety in your head, that kind of frustration that you can't put two words together, you can't, you know, come up with a creative idea in your mind, you have to put it aside. Because if you don't, that frustration is going to drive you crazy, right? That frustration is just going to have you— it's going to eat at you. And you need to just kind of be okay with the fact that you can't come up with anything juicy or inspiring or new or fresh. Be okay with that. Kind of walk away from it. Give it some breathing room. And most likely it will come back around. And you know what? If it doesn't, that's okay too. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe you were pushing or forcing something that really shouldn't have been there, and be okay with that as well. Does that make sense? Okay. All right, we're going to keep going since we have taken a bunch of breaks already. I want to make sure I can get in the questions that you all have already asked about, but at the same time, if you do— if you're listening to the program, whether live You can call 1-818-572-2910 to ask your question. I am having a little difficulty, I will tell you, I'm having a little difficulty with the chat room at the moment. I keep trying it in case you're going out in this chat room. Oh, there it is. Hello. And so you can always go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and go into the chat room and ask me a question there. You can always post the live broadcast, just go out to Facebook or Twitter and post it there, and I'd be more than happy to answer it at any time because I do answer your questions the moment I see them come up, or the moment you reach out to me, or the moment you email me. A lot of you come through LinkedIn to me. I do respond immediately, yet at the same time bring them here onto our Ask Bernadette on Cessna Beach Radio once a month. But just make sure you're asking. Make sure you're getting the support and the advice and maybe tough love that you need to just keep moving forward. All right? Okay. Our next question— because I am kind of bouncing around on the questions that have been asked. It is ended here. So I was at a meeting Sunday and was asked about end-of-year assessments. What exactly does that mean? What does that look like? What am I supposed to be doing when it comes to really just taking stock at the year that has passed? And I can give you a formula, and I'll be posting some things onto our SheddingTheBench.com blog in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that. But I will provide you some tools that you can be using, not only to kind of take assessment of the past year, but get ready for the new year. But it really comes down to this. You can even just kind of scribble this down into your journal, or just recall it. Because it really just comes down to what worked and what didn't work, and what would you do differently? If there were 3 questions you could ask yourself, and even just take stock, whether that's putting it on a piece of paper, recording it. I tend to sometimes like to record things as I'm kind of processing ideas, processing answers to my own questions that I might be doing, for instance, in my own assessment. You could be talking about it with a friend or coach or someone else. But simply, what worked, what didn't, and what would you do differently this coming year is really what you could be assessing your time with. Now, why is it important to do an assessment or to assess your productivity or lack thereof of any given point in time? And all I would say to that is, you know, we work really hard, and we have this one life. We only get one. It goes really fast. And I don't know about you, but I want to be sure that I'm spending the time smartly as opposed to just spending it potentially spinning my wheels. I don't want to work hard anymore. I'm tired. No, I'm not. I have a lot of energy. I have a lot of things I still want to get done, but I want to make sure that if I am working, you know, 7 days a week at something, I want to make sure I'm doing it smartly. When I do choose to work 3 days a week at something, I really want to be sure that I'm using that time smartly. And as time goes on, I certainly would love it to go from that, you know, 5-day-a-week, 40-hour-a-week to something that allows me more flexibility and more time to do more non-business things that I love to do. And I would think you would want to do the same thing. So assessing allows you to just take stock and give yourself kind of a grade without judgment as to whether or not you were putting your time and your effort and your focus where you originally decided you wanted to. Now, I was just reading just this morning, reading an article about why actually some successful people don't set goals because they feel that it immediately limits you. It immediately sets up a, you know, kind of a level of expectation that doesn't then allow you to push beyond that expectation. And I say to that— I say that because without goals, what is it that you're working toward? So that's kind of the basic premise and foundation that I have and that I work with my clients around it. Have at least something that you're working towards. So that's your goal. And now, if you set something— say you set something for $100, and maybe what they're saying is you stop at $100 and you don't push yourself to go to $200. Well, to me, that's purely just someone who has low expectations for themselves. Me, I might set my goal for $100, but hell, if I make $100 and I still have a lot of time or a lot of leeway between, you know, the end timeline or the endpoint of which I was going to be working on that goal, I'm going to push myself to 200, to 300, to 400, unless something of greater priority and of greater interest comes along, and now I can kind of say, okay, I've met this goal. I'm going to move over here now. I'm not going to give up on myself and walk away from it. And I'm not necessarily going to just abandon it if I feel like, okay, that's good enough. It's not wonderful, but it's good enough. I'm not a good enough person. I don't believe anyone in my Shed the Bits community are good enough people. That's why I love them. So I believe that you You set goals. You assess your progress towards those goals. You make the adjustments. Maybe at some point that goal isn't the priority you had on it before. That's the argument too that this article spoke of is then people feel obligated to that goal that they set. They feel as if they're trapped in it. No one's ever said that. No one's ever said if you set a goal and you assess your progress toward that goal, your priority toward that goal, your energy and enthusiasm toward that goal, and should you decide that it's not the goal or the priority that you had on it originally, no one's ever said that you should force yourself to finish it regardless. So you just refine your goal. You change it. Enhance it, you totally replace it, whatever the case might be. Assessing though yourself along the way as much as at the end of the year or end of the period that you defined a goal for is important just to ensure that you're still grounded in that goal. You're still grounded in the results that you're achieving. You're still grounded in the priority that you have for a particular goal or a set of goals. Assessment allows you to look at what worked and what you might, you know, continue doing as a result of it working for you. What didn't work, and therefore you either have to adjust or throw away or come up with something differently. And then what would you do differently? And that allows you to just refine what it is you're going to work on as you move forward. Again, that doesn't matter if it's January 1st, or May 1st, or December 6th, and you're going to change direction as of December 6th at 12:50, and you start working on something else. Assessing is just really a good practice to get into, so all of a sudden you don't find yourself at the end of a month, or quarter, or year, and you don't know where your time, energy, and focus went toward. For your creativity that we talked about before. You want to ensure that you're using your time smartly, because guess what? Working hard is just not all of it. You want to work smartly to ensure that whether it's 40 hours a week or 10 hours a week, you're putting the best work and the best planning and thought process and execution into whatever it is that you're doing. And it doesn't matter if— no one is impressed by someone saying they work 7 days a week. I don't try to impress you when I say I work 7 days a week. I'd rather impress you by the things I'm accomplishing as a result of working a day or 7 days a week. But I also have to say I'm not looking to impress you. And I don't want you working to impress other people either. I just want you to be working smartly to achieve the goals and the riches that you want and you deserve in this one lifetime that you have. All right, all right. So we're going to take one last break because we still have a few minutes to address a couple more questions that we have.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at media relations at sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. This is Ask Bernadette. I'm taking your business, career, and life questions and providing you some tips, advice, and some tough love at times, at times. But whatever question that you have, whatever story or challenge you might be dealing with and you need a little guidance, maybe a little push, then always come to Shed the Pitch on Facebook and pose your question. You can even do it in our Facebook our private Facebook group that we've established just for this purpose, because many of you say that you don't necessarily want to share that out in the public domain like Facebook or Twitter. So you can always go to Facebook groups, facebook.com/groups/shifttoriches, and we've started a new private group where you can always go out there and have a nice, safe, fun, energetic supportive group of people to get some support from. But we do take them all, all month long on our Shedding the Bitch Facebook page and bring them right here on the Shedding the Bitch Radio once a month. So be sure that no matter what you do, you get the support and the help that you need in order to create the riches and life you deserve. All right, so I am compressing this last question down significantly because it could take up— just the buildup to the question, it could take more time than we actually have left. So their question basically comes down to this: "I really screwed up at something really big in the workplace. What do I do?" Now, yeah, it's way too long of a story to kind of share with you right now. But so, say you just made a really big faux pas, and, you know, or maybe it's at work, at home, amongst your peers, maybe it's online. In this case, it's at work. Something got really screwed up that caused some, not money issues, but definitely process issues. Regardless of the situation, what do you do when you screwed up, effed up, call it whatever you want to call it, what do you do? Well, we talk about this a lot, guys, so hopefully my repetition of this answer kind of takes hold. But the first thing you need to do is just breathe. Absolutely breathe. Take a deep breath. Kind of get yourself grounded. Yes, your head is swirling. You're probably— your heart's racing. You're getting kind of feverish, those feverish heat strokes running through your body. Maybe your hair's standing on end, you're starting to breathe heavy, more of a panic than anything else, and you're just kind of creating all kinds of drama between your two ears. Breathe. Breathe. Then simply own up to whatever it is that you've done. Now, I can, you know, I can turn to Hope that you relate to it by, Some of the technical issues we have here on Shag the Bitch Radio, some of the things that I, you know, might work on with my clients that get screwed up. We all make mistakes. We all have technical failures. We all screw up in some way, shape, or form, and the only thing that we could do is be a big man or woman and own up to it. So after you breathe and after you've calmed yourself down and after you've grounded yourself, and you stop playing games in your head and start creating a lot of different scenarios that 9 out of 10 of them won't happen. You just simply own up to whatever it is that you've done. Now, that might mean going to the boss. That might mean going to the team. That might mean, you know, going online. That might mean coming on the radio and declaring your screw-up, whatever that might mean, just own up to it. And then also, as you're owning up to it, you may have already established solutions to the problem. You found ways to rectifying the situation. You've gotten back to whoever it is maybe that you screwed up on, and you figured it out and resolved the issue. The worst thing you could allow happen is your— what's between your two ears to totally create a bigger problem that might not exist. So don't go and exacerbate your own situation. Try to remain calm. Try to sit down, think through what it is that's happened, come up with a solution to it or at least steps to solving it., and then going and putting those things in place. And the best thing you could do is just simply say, "You know what, I screwed up." Don't deflect. Don't blame someone else. Even I'm going to own up to the fact that I sat here and said, "Oh, blah, talk radio, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." No, it got screwed up and I need to find a solution to the problem. Okay, and you can do that too. You can do that too. So I hope that helped. I realize the time, we were kind of getting squeezed, and I promise and will make a commitment to look into the issues that we're having here so our next Ask Bernadette is as clean as it can be. I want to thank everybody for joining today, and for those of you who posed your questions, thank you so much. You're getting a PDF copy of my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch, and I'll look forward to talking to you right back here on Shedding the Bitch Radio this time next week, noon Eastern time, next Tuesday. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.

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