7 Ways to Stop PROCRASTINATING and Make TODAY Your DAY! - #7Ways

If you have a problem with procrastination and you are just not getting the stuff done that needs to get done, then this video is for you. What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I want to see this big idea that you have inside you actually come out, actually start to make an impact for yourself, your family, your community, and the world. And one of the biggest problems that I see with entrepreneurs is they procrastinate. You have ideas, but you don't actually do anything about it. and then time runs out and you miss your window. And so today I'm going to talk about the 7 ways that you can stop procrastinating and make today your day. Way number 1 is accept responsibility. This is what I think to be the most important. When you accept responsibility for where you are in life, that's when things start to change. So many people, entrepreneurs and otherwise, are always in the blaming and complaining game. You're not more successful because of whatever, your parents, the government, the education system, the country you live in, your gender, your upbringing, your background, whatever it is, there's a reason. If you go to the mirror and you ask yourself, why am I not more successful? That answer that comes back at you almost always for most people is some kind of excuse, some kind of complaint, some kind of putting the blame on somebody else. And listen, a lot of that is legit. Like, if you did not grow up— like, I grew up in Canada, that's a huge advantage. If I'm not from Canada, it's harder to get started. Great, but so what? Like, if you don't grow up in Canada, doesn't mean you can't have success. Tons of people have done it. The people who you look up to who've had massive success have done it with less resources that you already have right now. The fact that you are watching this video, the you have an internet connection, that you are investing time in yourself already puts you ahead of most of the world. And so just accepting responsibility for where you're at, the reason why you are here is because of you. The reason that your path is not more clear, is not taking off like you want it to, is because of you. And yes, there's lots of other factors that play a role, but you can't blame them. You got to blame yourself. You're going to take responsibility, you're going to start taking some action for where you are in life. And when you first do that at the start, it sucks. You know, there's nobody else to blame. Wow, that really hurts. Like, it could be depressing to realize that everything is on you and there's nobody coming to save you. But I find it also empowering. Like, once you get through the depression and the sadness, it's empowering. It's like, It's on me. It also means I can go and fix it. I can go and solve it. I can go create a better life for myself. I don't need to wait for a new president or for a new tax cut or for a new whatever to come out. I can do this right now. It's on me. If I put in energy, hustle, and drive, I can go make whatever I want happen. When you take on that vibe, that's when things start to change. You need to accept responsibility for where you are in life and where you're going. Way number 2 is find your one word. I wrote a book, it's called Your One Word. It's really about finding the most important core value, what do you stand for as a human being, and then bringing that to your life and to your business. A lot of times why people procrastinate and they stop doing something that they're, you know, they say they're excited by is that they don't really know where they want to go. They don't really feel invigorated by their goal. Their goal is too small or it's too ambiguous or there's too many fears that they have. When you figure out what you stand for, when you figure out what your one word is, that should be a bold, empowering goal. It should be a mission that gets you excited on a regular basis. So for me, it's about believe. The content I make is about believe. My environment is about believe. My morning routine, my habits are about believe. Understanding what I stand for allows me to create that more positive routine and environment for myself and gets me excited by the goal that I'm chasing. I want to have an impact on the world. I want to make a big difference. When you are excited by your goals, you're much more likely to do something. When you are not excited, when they're boring goals, when there's no commitment behind them, you're likely just to put it off. It's like, ah, I'll do that later, or I'll do that tomorrow, or I can't do that. When you are fired up, like this is important, when I'm making these videos for you, I'm just talking to a camera right now, but I feel the vibe. I feel the importance that it's like reaching through and touching you guys, that gets me excited to want to get up and make these videos. How do I make 3 videos a day on my channel? Most people have a hard time making a video a week and I'm doing 3 a day. Why? Because I love what I'm doing, because I have a big goal to want to change the world. And so when you are excited by your goals, and that I believe comes from the self-awareness to figure out what your one word is, what you stand for, it gives you the energy, the fuel, the motivation to crash through the procrastinations that you want to take action. Way number 3 is create an action plan. So having an action plan is super important. It's great to have self-awareness, to understand what your one word is. It's great to accept responsibility for your life, but now what are you going to do? What's the goal? What are the steps that you're going to take? This is where modeling success can work, where you find people who have done what you want to do. You look up to Steve Jobs or Howard Schultz or whoever it is that you look up to. Look at what made them successful. A lot of people get paralyzed by what to do next. They get paralyzed by the next step. What do I— how do I do this thing? What, what am I supposed to do? And the next step doesn't matter even that much. It's not about taking the first perfect step, getting over that fear. There is no perfect next step. It's just continuing to build. It's that you do something and you do something again the next day. You do something again the next day. And for me, what really helped was just studying successful people people who are inside my industry who I could model from, and people who are outside my industry that may bring a different kind of vibe or different idea that I could apply. So I got some ideas that I could go out and do. I started building my action plan. So you build a plan. Don't spend a year building an action plan. Research, build a plan, and then start to do. When you have a plan that you know has worked for other people, when you model someone like Steve Jobs or whoever it is that you look up to, you say, this worked for that person, At least for me, I find that motivating and it gives me the confidence to go forward and start to do something and stop the procrastination and take action on my plan.

Tip number 4 is to raise your stakes. The reason why you're procrastinating is probably because you think the task that you have on hand is not that important. That's why you keep putting it off for another day. Another day over and over and over again, and it's just not going to get done. Now, what if I told you that you are a hostage negotiator and there is a group of people that are being held hostage right now and their lives depend on you and it is your job to free them and your job is to finish that task. So if you were to finish that task, means that this group of hostages are going to be let out to the world. They're going to go see their family. They're going to go back and contribute back to the society. But if you don't do that task, they will all die. What would a hostage negotiator do? They'd be like, oh, oops, sorry, it didn't work out. Of course not. They will never ever say that. They will do whatever they can to free those hostages. Right? So you're probably thinking, this is crazy, Lily. This is very extreme. Like hostage negotiator versus me doing an email. That is a little bit too much of a far fetch and it's not that important. But I'm here to tell you that it is that important because in a way, your idea, your mission, the thing that you really want to do is being held hostage and it is your job to release it to the world. So for example, if you want to be a fitness instructor and your dream is to motivate millions of people to work out and to end obesity, and that's your mission, but you are procrastinating sending out the first email to a client that you want to train, you're holding that idea hostage. By not sending out that email to your first client, for whatever reason, maybe you have a fear of rejection, or maybe you think it's not that important, as a result, people are going to die of obesity. Because that email is going to lead you to becoming the fitness instructor for millions of people. Now you're never going to be that person. Now people are not going to be able to work out. People are not going to be well. People are not going to enjoy their lives. Once again, people are going to die because of that. Now how does that feel? How important does that email feel to you? There you go. It's always about raising the importance of the thing that you're doing, even though you don't see the connection yet. I promise you there is a connection. Make sure you see it. Make sure you make it important, so important that you cannot do anything but that task at that moment. So next time you find yourself procrastinating, put yourself in the shoes of a hostage Negotiator and raise your stakes.

Way number 5 is improve your environment. Your environment matters. Where you work matters. You know, this is my office. Why are these people up on the wall? They may mean nothing to you. Some of them you probably have no idea who they are, but I walk in and I get inspired. I wear this like this means something to me. I feel like a superhero putting on my hoodie and getting to work with a t-shirt that I have on underneath. The environment that you're in makes a difference. And so think about your environment. Think about the people that you surround yourself with. Think about where you're trying to come up with your creative ideas. There was a great story by Sylvester Stallone who said he used to block out all his windows and work at night. And I forget who it was, I think Edgar Allan Poe did that. And so he modeled it from him. But then he found that all of his writing was really dark and dreary and miserable and everybody was dying. It's like, yeah, I need to change that. I need to work in a brighter environment so there's some positivity coming out too. Your environment has such a direct influence over how you act, how you believe, whether you take bold bets or not. And so it's super important that you start to think about that consciously. The people who you're around, do they build you up? Do they make you feel unstoppable? Do they give you power and motivation? Or do they tell you, you can't do that, you're never going to be successful, that's never going to work out for you? For you? The books that you read, are they inspiring? Right? Like I read this every day. Are they inspiring? You know, do they help you lift up? The videos that you watch, that is so important to helping shape your actions. And so if you don't have good people in your life, then you can work on eliminating some of those, right? And even if there's a void, even if you don't fill them with somebody else, it's better than having a bunch of negative people in your life. So I would look at one, The people that you're surrounding yourself with, do they help build you up? And then two, your physical environment, from what's on the walls to what you're wearing to what you're walking into every day when you're trying to build your business, and changing that so it supports you to actually take action. Way number 6 is fix your habits. I talked about it a little bit in the last point. Every morning I wake up and I have a morning routine that is empowering to me and serves me. So every morning I wake up and I've got these birds that sing. I want to wake up to birds and nature more than like a blaring alarm clock. I wake up 10 minutes before sunrise to the birds. I go to the washroom and I read a page from the book. There's 2 genius ideas from legendary entrepreneurs. I drink a big glass of water and then I write down my goals for the day. And I do this because it's so easy to fall out of your day and just coast, just do the same thing you did yesterday, and fall back down to the expectations other people have for you instead of pushing through and say, like, I want to do something bold. It's so easy to procrastinate and do nothing and slack off, especially as an entrepreneur who doesn't have a boss on them saying, you need to do this, right? We are our own bosses, so we let ourselves down way too much. When I read a page from the book or when I watch my YouTube videos, I do it for me. Like, I wrote the book, It's great that you guys picked it up and read it. It's great that, you know, you watch the videos that I make. I do it for you, but I do it for me. Like, I need to raise myself up. I want to be around success every single day. If I open up the book and I see a page from Steve Jobs and there's 2 legendary ideas from him on there, I'm reading them, it just makes me want to do something bigger. And I think it's important to start your day with that every single day. And so whether it's watching a video or reading a book or whatever the thing is for you, You have had moments in your life where you have felt bold, unstoppable, ready to go off and conquer, believe in yourself to a crazy degree. Try to reverse engineer that to think about what led to that. What was I doing that got me so inspired and excited and animated? What was I doing? And then put that into your morning routine so that you're doing that every single morning. If you start your day in a powerful way, feeling bold and unstoppable every single day, Your life will be so different one year from today. And so I encourage you to figure out what that thing is. Again, for me it's videos, for me it's reading a page in a book. Find out that thing for you, put it into your daily routine, and you'll see a big change in your actions. And way number 7 is build in accountability. You know, we're likely to let ourselves down more than anybody else. It's so easy to, you know, set an alarm clock and then hit that snooze snooze button, and the first thing you did was you set a goal for yourself and you let yourself down. You set a goal, I'm going to wake up at this time, snooze. I'm just, I'm saying it's okay not to follow through on my goal. First thing you do every day is agree to not go through on the goals that you set for yourself. When we commit to somebody else, we're much more likely to follow through. You know, if you are going to go to the gym with a buddy or a friend, you're much more likely to actually show up to do it. If you have a writing assignment, you know, you want to, you want to write something for your website and you're meeting up with somebody who wants to do something for their website. You say, I'm going to meet you at 2 o'clock at Starbucks and we're going to grind this out together. You're much more likely to show up and do the work because you committed to somebody else. If it's just you, you're less likely to follow through. And so it's figuring out how can you build in some accountability into your life, whether it's through a mastermind group, whether it's through a coach. I have a mastermind group in my business. I have two, one that I run and one that I'm a part of on the YouTube side. I also find that the videos hold me accountable. You know, when I watch someone like Steve Jobs doing big things, it makes me feel like I got to do more, I got to push harder, right? Not in a bad way, not like I can never be like Steve Jobs, who am I, I'm this small person. More of a push forward to say I can do more, I can be bigger, I can, I can follow follow through. And so figuring out whether it's a friend, whether it's a family member, whether it's another entrepreneur, finding some way to be able to hold yourself accountable, to set goals, whether it's a weekly thing or a monthly thing. Like, find somebody in your network who you can come up with 3 monthly goals for. Here are my goals for the next month. Here are the 3 things that I want to have happen. What are your goals for the next month? And then you have a quick meeting at a coffee shop, or you have a quick call every Wednesday at 3 o'clock for 10 minutes, say, hey, how are you doing on your goals? Well, here's how I'm doing. How are you doing on your goals? Just knowing that you have to talk to somebody on Wednesday afternoon at 3 o'clock and you have to update your, your goals, see how you're doing. You don't want to get on that call and say I did nothing. Just the pressure of having to get on that call and talk to somebody will make you do work on your business, will make you do work on the things that you say are important to you, your goals. And so having some kind of accountability, again, through a friend, a buddy, mastermind, coach, something so that you are not just doing it for you, that you're committed to other people, means you're much more likely to follow through. So thank you guys so much for watching. Those are my 7 ways to stop procrastinating and make today your day. I made this video because Ken Meefey asked me to. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a future 7 Ways video, check out the link in the description, go and cast your vote and I might just do it for you. I'd also love to know which of the 7 ways meant the most to you, had the biggest impact, you're going to apply it somehow to your life or your business, or is there an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Leave it down in the comments, share some love for Believe Nation. I would love to hear from you. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon. Raise your standard. Apple, at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated. Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules for success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.