Pain is beauty

Good morning, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Coming to you in the morning, which is a new thing for me. I'm thinking about switching my lives to the morning, so welcome. For those of you who are joining today, I wanted to talk about the phrase pain is beauty and beauty is pain. And I know the context that we all have this for. It's, you know, some, like, evil stepmother who is trying to force her daughters into a really tight corset so they can go to the ball and woo the prince. Not really what I'm talking about. But you know Tim Ferriss. Everyone knows Tim Ferriss. He has a saying that I love, and I was recently reminded of it. And it's a life made up of hard decisions, of hard choices is an easy life. And a life made up of easy decisions and easy choices is a hard life. And the way I take that is that if you focus all of your attention on the easy stuff, that doesn't really require a lot of thought, that, you know, it's kind of filler tasks. Like today, some filler tasks that I could do, I could do laundry, I could do grocery shopping. I could do a lot of things that wouldn't actually move the needle for my business. It wouldn't actually move the progress of my life. Yes, they need to happen at some time, at some point this week. Hi, Harish. And let me know if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Thank you so much, and welcome. Good morning to you. And so there are so many things that we could all do that are easy decisions, you know, and maybe it's choosing to stay in your job. Hi, Martin. Good morning. Maybe it's choosing to do something around the house that you've been putting off, you know, instead of going to the gym, instead of going and working out. And we all know those tough decisions that we're putting off. It's usually the thing that keeps you up at night. It's the email that you've been avoiding sending. It is looking at your bank account because you're worried that you're about to run out of money. Hi, Natalie. Good morning. Yeah, filler tasks. Filler tasks are, you know, they're things that are actually things that you do need to do throughout your life, but they're not things that are urgent in the moment, and they're things that you usually use to put off other things. Right. And they're usually a little more fun to do. Like, I love grocery shopping. It is one of the top activities of my week. I can't explain it well, actually, I can't. I just like shopping, and then I like shopping and being able to justify everything I'm buying. And I love food, okay? And if I could, I would. I would go grocery shopping every single day because I'm only one person and I can't eat that much food. But also, I have. I have to prioritize other things in my life. I have to prioritize building awareness for my business. I have to prioritize my clients. I have to prioritize building up programs that I can roll out in the future that will benefit my business and benefit me and then benefit my world, because then I can give back. All those things I just listed are not easy things to do. They're not filler tasks. They are brave things. It's putting yourself out there. It's deciding to do one thing over another. I have a couple clients right now who are, you know, trying to make very, very serious decisions about their life. You know, are they going to go full into their business now or they gonna put it off? Are they gonna continue working their job? You know, there's nothing wrong with either one. But that decision, like, that's a hard decision to make, and it's so easy to put decisions like that off. One of the things that I ask potential clients when they are inquiring about working with me, you have this idea for a business that you want to start. Could you put it down? Could you put it down and walk away? Is this an optional thing for you? If they say, yeah, I think so. I think I have a lot of ideas, and it's just one, it's kind of cool. Then I tell them straight up, I'm not interested in working with you. The clients that I work with, they don't have an option because in their heart of hearts, this is the thing that they need to be doing because they know that they're going to be successful. And it's just a matter of, am I going to be successful as soon as possible with a coach, or am I going to be successful a few years down the line after struggling and doing it on my own? Those are the clients that I need to work with because I know that they're going to do the work because they're committed. There's no other option for them. And I know there are a lot of people out there who are like, okay, well, plan A is this thing, you know, we're going to do the really hard, scary thing, and that's plan A. But let's have plan B. Plan B is that you go back to your job or you get a new job or whatever contingency plan you can think of. And as per usual, I'm reading Think and Grow Rich and I'm on the chapter of Desire right now. And with laws of attraction, when you have something you're wanting to create, you actually cannot have a contingency plan. I'm sorry, you just can't. There's plan A, and maybe plan A incorporates having a full time job while you're building the thing. But if you have a plan B, it confuses the universe. It confuses the universe. And how this shows up is say I want to start a coaching business or I want to start a consulting business. But then I'm also kind of looking for a job and I really want a job because I want the income. But like, I am splitting my attention. I'm splitting what I'm building awareness around in my world. That confuses everyone. It confuses you. It confuses everyone else also, you know, when you're working on doing something that's that big, creating a business, it really needs your full attention. It has to be the one and only. So pain is beauty and beauty is pain if you want to live a beautiful life. And when I say beautiful, I don't mean Instagram beautiful. I don't mean it looks good in pictures, I don't mean it looks good on paper. I mean feels beautiful to you. Gym shields. Burn all the ships. Make the commitment 100%. You have to. You have to burn the ships. You know, there's no going back. There's only going forward. And by the way, people are worried when they burn their ships to do this thing, they're like, oh my God, like, then I'm going to be marooned on this island and then I'm screwed. No, no. How far have you gotten in your life so far? How far have you gotten? How many challenges have you overcome? How many creative ways have you found to solve a problem up until now? And how many resources do you have? How many people do you know? You're always going to be able to build a new ship to take to a new place, okay? And that ship and that new place is always going to be far more beautiful because it's something that you created and you called into your life, okay? Creating a beautiful life is creating a life where you get to live authentically yourself 100% of the time if you choose to. You know, one of the things I think about, when I think about Working in corporate is how many times I started crying in my office and then ran to the bathroom because I wanted to hide. I had to hide that I was upset. I had to hide that I just had a meeting and it didn't go well. Or just corporate politics, like, they just got to me. I so prefer just being able to cry at my desk now. Just being able to cry openly. You know, there's. Everyone has their own values. This is one of the things. And this is coachee talk. I'm sorry, this is the. I advise not to go into coachee talk. But this is really important. We all have our own values. Hi, Shreyas. Yes, the time zones finally worked out. For instance, I have values around fun and having control over my time and community. And when you live your life beautifully, when you live your life making hard decisions, guess what? You get to make sure that your values are honored in every single moment of your work in your life. If that's not beautiful, I don't know what the fuck is. We need to start making hard decisions. We need to start getting stuff off your plate. So here is my challenge for you this morning. We all have. And I have plenty of them. I'm doing this challenge as well. We all have a ton of tasks that. That are hanging over our head that once we get done, allow us to move forward more freely. Okay? Emails to respond to, taxes to file. I have to say that for my boy Michael Eckstein, who's going to flip out if I don't. He's an accountant, so he's in it right now. Taxes. We need to file potential clients. We need to reach out to current clients that we need to reach out to. Just check in on them. Whatever this is for you, you're going to go and do it today. You're going to do three. Three of these things. Okay? And. Oh, God, the number just dropped. People don't like getting a challenge. Sorry. Anyway, but you're going to go and do three of these things today. And as you get them done, I don't want you to just do them and not think about it. I want you to do them and then give yourself a moment and just feel in your body and feel in your soul what it's like to have that off your plate and dealt with. Okay? Give yourself a moment of grace and a moment of appreciation for having dealt with that shit. It is so important to give yourself that. Give yourself the credit of it. Okay? So that is the work I'm going to leave you with. I have a client calling in in about a minute. So I'm going to wrap it up there and get on with my day and do my three things, and I have to figure out which of the million things that I have on my plate I have to do. But anyway, I hope that was helpful, and I look forward to talking to you all later this week. I am going to be going live every single weekday this week. So tune in. And again, I'm not sure what time is going to be. We're mixing it up. So for those of you who join me, Shreyas, Jim, Natalie, Martin, Harish, it's been so lovely to talk to you all. And I hope you have a wonderful day. And that's all Katie McManus out.