46: Staying Consistent When You Have A Lot Going On - #GrowYourLife

Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast I talk about how we can grow in our life and in our business to reach our goals, do more, and accomplish more. If you're not part of the Grow your Life community on Facebook, check it out. There's over a thousand people just like yourself that are looking for accountability and mentorship and are growing in their life and in their business by listening to this podcast, plugging into the content that I put out on social media, and just growing together in a community. On this episode, I want to talk about how to stay consistent with your goals, how to go after it, how to not fizzle out, how to not let the things that are happening around you get you knocked off track and keep staying consistent. Listen, we all know what it's like when we have big dreams, big goals, big ideas, and we try to go after them, and then life happens and it knocks us off track and we stay inconsistent, and then we feel guilty because we're not doing what we should do because of all the things that we have to do in our life. Anyone else like this? I myself have experienced this, and this has been my experience for years of constantly. I have these goals, things that I want to do, but then life comes in and the things that I have to do get in the way. How do you go from being that way to crushing it? Massive action, accomplishing your goals. Listen, anybody who's ever crushed it or accomplished their goals has experienced this at some point or another right before they had breakthrough. And so I want to. I want to challenge you in this. What if you were only one step away from reaching your goal? What if you were only one step away from doing the things that are going to change your life forever? But because you've been in the hamster wheel of inconsistency, you're not experiencing the fact that you are. And then I'm looking at this from a big picture at where you're at, and I'm saying this. Obviously, you're listening to this podcast. I don't know your situation, but this is what it is with everybody that I've coached, with, anybody that I've ever worked with, and even myself, that right at that moment where we struggle with consistency, we're one step away from the very thing that's gonna change everything for us. And so I want you to start to believe that and start to realize that. That you are only one step away from the shift in your life that is going to help you get to the next level and that it's okay where you're at right now and start to be present in that moment. Be present where you are right now. You see, the reason that we get in a state of being inconsistent going after our goals is we become so attached to the expected outcome that we have that we miss the process, that we miss being present through the process. And we're so tunnel visioned on where we are right now, focusing on the solution, the solution, the solution where I'm going that we're missing the fact that we're right there already and that the very thing that is going to get us to where we're going is being consistent, giving ourselves grace and trusting the process. You know, I talk to people all the time where they, they got big dreams, they got big goals, they know what they should do, they know what actions to take. In fact, they, they, man, they're not afraid of anything. You know, once we break past this fear, this worry stuff, they know what they need to do, but something is missing that is keeping them stuck spinning in hamster wheels, spinning around in circles, trying to get to that next level, trying to see things start to gain traction. And if you're somebody who's listening to this podcast right now and that resonates with you, boy do I got a treat for you in this episode. This episode is going to show you exactly what you need to do to get to the next level, to break through to that next place. And one of the first things is, is this. Erase from your vocabulary and the words that you use the words should do. And that might sound hard. Trust me here for a minute and stick with me throughout this episode. There's going to be some hard things that I'm going to say, but they're what's going to change everything for you. And what you need to do is start to erase from your vocabulary. Should do not the things that you should do, not the concept of it, because that's always gonna be there. But verbally saying it or mentally saying it to yourself, well, I should be doing that. But I have to do this and start to change the have to do's to something that you're grateful for. I get to do this, I'm grateful for this. Talk to people a lot and they're like, well, you know, I have to take care of my kids, I have to pay my bills, I have to, have to, have to. And they're so focused on I have to and I should do this. And it creates this loop of keeping them right in the middle, right in the have to's because they're not giving themselves grace to take ownership over the fact that I get to do my have to's and I'm choosing to do my have to's because those are a priority for me. They're a priority in my life and these are the things that I want to do. And then you might be saying, well, but I want to do the things that I should do, but I'm just not doing it. I get it. I totally get it. You want to do those things, but you're not. Stop saying you should do and start saying this. I'm choosing to do this today and I'm choosing to give myself grace for the things that I didn't get done. I am okay with leaving things undone. That's a hard one for if you're a perfectionist or a people pleaser. You feel like you have to plan and see everything's to completion and get it all done or you're not good enough and you're finding your identity in what you do and performance. I'm going to try really hard to not trigger people on this episode. It's not really going to be my goal. I really want to point you to what's going to help you because planning and executing and doing the things that you need to do with excellence and discipline are absolutely incredible. But we've had past experiences in our life that tell us, if I don't do what I have to do, I'm going to feel bad, I'm going to get hurt, I'm not going to live the life that I want. But if I don't do what I should do, I'm also not going to live the life that I want. And we live in a balance of believing that it's too hard to do the things that we should do because of all the things that we have to do instead of giving ourselves grace and realizing, you know what, what if this is kind of the big what if that changes everything. What if the way that I've been looking at this all along has been wrong and taking ownership over what we're choosing to do with discipline and excellence and saying, today I'm choosing not to do that, meaning something on your should do list and be okay with that. Today I'm choosing to only do half of that and be okay with that and leave things undone to the point that you can start to stack progress, start to see things build upon each other over time. Be okay with the thing that you should do. Doing only 10% of it, because that was the hundred percent that you can do today. And I've, we get this belief that if I can't do 100%, it's failure. And that's so sad to me because to be perfectly honest, giving it your best, doing your best, showing up every day and consistency is not failure. Celebrating the process is not failure. Loving the fact that you're making forward momentum and that is success. Finding success not in the outcomes, but the day to day. Being present in the day to day moment and giving yourself a pat on the back for making progress is good. And realizing that for you to reach those big goals, my friends, you're gonna have to celebrate the little things and stick to the process and trust the process and put one foot in front of the other. And you know what? You're gonna fail, you're gonna mess up, you're gonna make mistakes, it's not gonna be perfect. But that's exactly what you're, that's exactly what you should do. And we shift our definition of should do's and have to dos and we redefine have to dos to get to do's and we shift what that means. You know, maybe what I should do isn't going to be this hundred percent, but maybe it's going to be 1% and I'm going to build and compound 1% every single day towards my goal and do a little bit more each day. And maybe there's going to be some days or some months, by the way, some, some months in a row where you can only do 1 or 2 or 5% and that's perfectly okay. And be okay with the fact that you're staying consistent because you've taken ownership and choices of where you're going and you're not giving it up to some outside someday, some outside circumstance, some outside experience and taking ownership of the fact that the things that you have to do, you actually want to do those and you' chosen to do them and there's nothing forcing you to do them. And oftentimes I talk to people and they say, well, no, if I didn't have to do them, then I wouldn't do them. And you're missing it, believing that if you didn't have to do it, you wouldn't do it because you're choosing to do it. You're choosing to do those things that you have to do and you're choosing not to do the things that you should do every single day and coming face to face with that reality and then realizing, okay, Once you can get to that point where you come face to face with that reality, start to prioritize things, start to prioritize which things you're going to do, which things you're going to let fall aside. I'm going to be real with you. If you did all the things you should do every day, it would probably take you 72 hours in a 24 hour period. All of us are like that. We get it. So that's where you have to be okay with knocking some things off the board. Meaning it's okay if I don't do this today, it's okay if I don't do that today. And if you don't want to take it from me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote a book. I'd never heard him say this until the, literally the last chapter of this book. And I'm so thankful because now I have somebody that has a track record that is like way above mine to point to on this. His name is Jocko Willink. He's a Navy SEAL cap. I think he's a captain. I mean, incredible. You know, and in the Navy seals they say, don't quit, don't quit, don't quit. Keep driving forward. You know what he said? He said, once you're out of training and you're out of that training period to execute, you have to be willing to quit some things to get to the great things. You have to be willing to say no to the good things and no to feeling like you didn't quit to get to that next level and be willing to say, hey, listen, that's not working. We're going to cut our losses here because this is a priority, this is my priority. And we start to choose the priorities. And, and he talks about that in that, in that last chapter of, of his book that I just went through about the fact that oftentimes a lot of young, you know, Navy seals, they're afraid of not doing certain things. They're afraid of choosing to quit certain things. They're afraid of choosing to give up certain things because they feel like a failure. And so they're def. Their identity and their value in getting all these other things done. But they're missing the point of it because you needed to take a step back and not be so tunnel visioned on the problem or the solution or what you're doing and look at the big picture. And that's what it's all about. Look at the big picture of your life and start to choose and prioritize which things are important to you. Again, if you haven't, I listened to all of his books cover to cover. Check out Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and then Leadership Strategies and Tactics. Awesome books. But to summarize, if you lift your head up just for a second and stop looking at the situation you're in, stop trying to come up with a solution to fix it, stop looking at the problem and start to be present in the moment and look at the big picture and say, okay, what's important today for me to do? What can I let go to tomorrow? What can I let go to next week? And you know what? It's okay. If that thing doesn't get accomplished this week and we start to choose what we're going to do and prioritize what we want to do, then we can start to stay consistent. And I talk to a lot of people, okay, they do that. They do what I just talked about and then they're like, but I still didn't stay consistent. Well, you gotta then circle back around and do the whole thing. You gotta figure out, okay, what got in the way of me doing that thing, what got in the way of me staying consistent with that priority. And oftentimes it's because, or either over complicating the process, we're over complicating how to do that thing, we're over complicating the steps, we're making it way too complicated because maybe we're comparing what our situation is to somebody else and trying to do what we see other people do. And we're saying, you know, what, if it, if it's not that good, I'm not going to do it at all. Or maybe we've made judgments against people that have not done things fully and so we're choosing it's all or nothing. Or maybe we've judged ourselves or we're worried about getting judged by other people for not doing everything perfect. And so we make a decision that, you know, what if I can't do it all perfect, I'm not going to do it at all. Or if it's not that you're just like, I just had to do all this other stuff. It just, it just all got in the way. Ultimately you have to take ownership over the fact that the things that you need to do shift your should do's to need to do's a couple of them. The things that you need to do to get forward momentum. You made a lesser priority to what you have to do. Start to take ownership of that, start to own the fact that, that you're choosing to do what you have to do and the things that you need to do became a lesser priority to that and be okay with that fact and stop trying to find your identity and what you get done and what's perfect and what people say about you and how you're validated. Improving yourself. Start to do some self care, Start to relax, start to give yourself some grace, start to give yourself some rest. Start to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, what you're choosing to do every single day. The have to dos you chose to do that. The should dos, you chose not to do that. Stop using should do and have to do in your language. Start to say I get to do, I want to do and I need to do and then start doing those things, prioritize them and execute them and make a plan that you can stick to and be consistent. And now we run into a situation where we lose motivation because it's not working out for us. How do you get motivation when you lose motivation? You just do it anyways. You remind yourself of your why. You remind yourself of why you're doing that. Your why needs to be bigger than proving yourself to other people. Validating that you're good enough, proving that you can do it and knowing and believing and having confidence that you can do it and going after it consistently even on the days that you don't want to prioritizing. And if, if things keep dropping off and you're not consistent with them, you need to take ownership over the fact that your why isn't big enough. That doing what you have to do and feeling accomplished and feeling like you got things done and that you did all the right things to get a gold star, that you did a good job is more important than these things that need to get done. You need to own that fact. And oftentimes that comes in from experiences where we had people tell us that, well, if we didn't do that, we were bad or a failure or a belief that we're a failure if we don't do all those things that we have to do. Start to realize why, how some things got onto your have to do list and where things are on your should do list and why are they so important to you? Start to ask yourself, why is this thing on my have to do list so important to me? Why Dive deep and own that fact. You being on the phone with people all day long and so you couldn't do your Facebook lives, great. Why was that important to you? Own it. Own it. It's not a cause of why you couldn't do the things that you should do. You chose that those were important. Own the fact of what you want to do, what's important to you and start to def your life, start to design your life, start to prioritize those things that are important to you and start to prioritize, hey, what can be let go? What can I knock off that list? Not just because I got it done, but left it undone and it's okay and I don't need to get approval or validation or a gold star from anybody that I did all the right things that I should do, that it's okay if I quit this and stop doing the thing that's not serving me and start doing what's going to help me me reach my goals and start doing the thing that's going to help me keep moving forward and stop looking at the outcome as this somewhere, someday, off in the future, moment in time, and realize, you know what? Not every day is going to be perfect. Not everything is going to work out the way that you want. And that's perfectly okay. Detach yourself from the the outcome and be present in the process. And love the process, love the step by step. Celebrate those moments where you did the little things. And if you need to take the little things and make them even smaller, maybe take, okay, I have this big thing. I already took it down to 1%, take it down to 10% or 1% of the 1% and start to break it down to what you can do. Stop complaining about what you can't do and choose to do the things that you can and give yourself the grace that's okay to just do what I can do today. And that's perfectly enough. I don't need to do more than that to prove or validate myself to some person in my past or, or, or how I want to look or how I want people to praise me or any of that. Why are you doing the thing that you're doing? What are you going after? What experience did you have in the past that told you that you have to do this and you should do this? You get to define what you have to and should do and want to do and need to do. You have to define it. You have to own your life. And the next thing is this is start to forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past. Start to build trust with yourself. You might say, well, I can't trust myself. Whenever I do, I mess up. So clearly I can't trust myself. You know, What? I used to say that all the time because I was trying to blame other things outside of me for why I couldn't do the things that I want to do because I wasn't taking ownership over it. So, yeah, I wasn't trustworthy. Shift it, change it. Start to keep the promises that you make to yourself. Forgive yourself for when you didn't. It's okay. You don't need to go back and fix the things in the past to move forward. Let go of those ball and chain things that are holding you back. Find joy in that process. Find joy in the present moment. Find joy in what you're doing right now and find some ways to keep yourself accountable. Find some ways to keep yourself consistent. Keep yourself accountable to yourself. Oftentimes we're looking for other people to hold us accountable, and that's great, by the way, if you can find somebody that holds you accountable, awesome. But for most of us that are going after our goals to get that forward momentum, we don't have anybody that's going to hold us accountable. We have to hold ourselves accountable and not wait for somebody else to be the reason why we stayed consistent and start to stay consistent ourselves. Now, if you want somebody that can help hold you accountable, that's what the Grow youw Life community is for. That's what these podcast episodes are for. That's what my coaching is for to help you stay consistent, to help you stay on track for your goals. You can find people in the Facebook group that are working on the same things and going after the same mission together. And y' all could link up and have accountability partners that way. But you have to also hold yourself accountable to your goals, to your why, to your vision, to taking ownership over the things that you're doing and not let your past experiences or the pain or the trauma or whatever happened in the past define you. It's been defining you long enough. It's been defining your choices long enough. It's been defining what you should do and have to do what long enough. It's time to choose your life and create the life that you want, to reach the goals that you have, to grow your life to live the life that you were made for. This isn't about performance, my friends, by the way. See, a lot of people mix all this up as performance, and they believe that if only I could just perform enough and do enough, then I can do it. This is actually the opposite of performance. This is choosing what you want to do and then sticking to it and staying consistent and giving yourself grace Meeting yourself right where you're at and being okay with where you're at, allowing yourself to grow and heal and go through the process to reach that next level, and being okay with giving yourself praise, not needing praise from others, keeping yourself accountable, not needing others to keep you accountable, and staying consistent because your why is bigger than your why not. And you can break things down to a point where you can stay consistent and stick with it. And if you're still having trouble with that, start to go through this process again. Listen to this episode again. Sometimes we have to go back a couple times through this and really dig deep on why am I doing this? What did I experience in my past? Maybe you grew up in a house with abusive parents or people in church or a spouse or some situation in your workplace where you weren't. You weren't validated enough or given enough credit or treated like you were good enough. And so you're looking to what you do to validate that for you. Because you didn't get it in your past experience, you're not getting it somewhere else. You have to start to learn to love yourself enough that you don't need other people to define you. You don't need other people or outside circumstances to define what you get to and want to do. And you're choosing to do the thing that you want to do every single day to go after your goals. Nothing can stop you. Nothing can stop you. Start to go after your goals, start to go after your dreams, start to go after the things that you know that you want to do that you were made for, and stay consistent. Keep the promises that you make to yourself. That's how you stay consistent. You do it even when you don't want to. You. You realize the fact that, you know what? I'm gonna lose motivation. You don't try to pretend like you're not losing motivation. Notice the triggers, notice the moments where you lose motivation and then say, okay, I'm losing motivation. Now, let's get back. Let's get back to where I want to want to be. Let's get back to that place. Let's get back to the things that I know that I need to do. Let's get back to the point where I'm choosing to do the things that are gonna help me move forward. And then start putting one foot in front of the other every single day. And when you. When you mess up, when you. When you stop being consistent, you give yourself grace. It's okay. You don't need to figure out why you messed up you just do it again. You just move on. You just forgive yourself. You made a mistake. Oops, I'll do better next time. Get back up. Keep moving forward. You don't need to figure it out. We spend so much energy and time wasted on problems or coming up with solutions or ruminating on why things aren't going the way that we want to because we're so misfocused. We actually find our worth and our value in finding solutions, in figuring it out instead of actually just doing the thing and not needing it all figured out before we start moving forward. Being okay with less than perfect and knowing that this is the process, this is how we're going to reach our goals. Anything else is going to lead to failure and believing that in ourselves. Listen, your life may be as told you the opposite up to this point. It's time to redefine what you believe about what you should do, what you have to do, and start to be grateful for what you experience right now. Be grateful for the present moment, be grateful for the experiences that you've had and start to move forward towards your goals with confidence and clarity. Listen, if you're somebody that wants to coach with me, I want to work with you. I want to help you reach your goals and I can help you get to the next level. Head on over to my website, Jeremiah gracowski.com and click on coaching. Let's hop in the phone together for 30 minutes and go over your goals and see how to get you to that next level, how to get you from where you are to where you want to be and create a strategy and a plan, both in your life and your business. The tangibles, the executables, the technology, what you should do, all those things to get you there. Stay accountable to yourself. Stay accountable. Fill out the form on my website. Let's talk. And if you're not ready to start coaching with me, that's perfectly okay. Head on over to my Instagram, leave growyourlife on my Instagram and I pick one winner every single week on Sunday to win a free full coaching session with me 30 minutes long, where we go over your goals, where we go over those things. But if you're somebody that wants to take this to the next level and start coaching with me, fill out that form. Can't wait to work with you. I can't wait to help you create a plan to get from where you are to where you want to be. I know that you can do it. I know that you can accomplish these things. I know that you can reach your goals, and I want to help you get there. Let's do it together. Grow your life, everybody, and we'll talk soon.