850. Cross Off Your To-Do List With These Tips

I think the biggest thing about supporting Soul the entrepreneur is to have grace with yourself, to recognize where things are maybe not going well, to recognize where you're not supporting yourself.

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, Rista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. Not by choice, but because I no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not.

Alone and that we all feel like.

We don't know what we're doing. We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform, I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show.

It's time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration and I am here to ask you the question, do you have a running to do list? Oh my God. I feel like mine is actually running away from me and it's out of control. But there's a few things that I have been doing that are really helping me to dial it in and know what really needs to get done during the week. So for a lot of you, we're probably facing some new things because I know many of you are go getters. You want to do big things. You have really big goals in your life. And I'm so freaking proud of you. Because a life life of purpose is a life worth living. I love that phrase. Purpose is the opposite of depression. And I've actually been really looking at my life lately and making sure that I'm focusing on purpose because I have been through some rough mental seasons lately, and I believe it's just because I'm so challenged. And also, I'm not doing my best to support the soul of the entrepreneur, meaning that I could do better as far as what I actually need to feel content, supported, and happy. And we can't get those things from other people until we figure out how to get them from ourself. And while this podcast is about learning about what we can do with our to do list, I also just want to take a second to really check in with your soul. I feel like my soul right now is really asking your soul, how are you? And even though you're going after the things that you want and you have these big goals written down, are you truly doing the things that make you feel like a supported human with purpose out in the world? And for me, I know that I need to do some more things, like schedule time with friends where I really drop in and ask deeper questions to feel connected. Because for me, it's not big groups that fuel me, it's small groups with really deep, intimate conversation. And I'm finding that I need that supportive place on a weekly basis. So it's not about, oh my gosh, I already have this. This is like such a an easy thing. All I have to do is schedule it. I have to figure out who I want those people to be. I have to figure out how to make sure I'm going to get that support and schedule that in on a weekly basis. So that takes a little bit of time, right? Because sometimes we don't have those people already in our life, or sometimes maybe we just want one. And sometimes maybe that person can't always be that person for you or come through because they're busy. So really looking at how can I make sure this is scheduled in on a weekly basis with these people to really be able to drop in. And for me, it's also going to classes. I haven't been going to workout classes lately, and I've been noticing this in my soul. I really like the feeling of community and support during my workouts. I've definitely have two workout buddies. One I run with, one I go to the gym with, and that's absolutely amazing. But I would like one more that I Also make sure getting to classes regularly. So what else does support of the actual soul of the entrepreneur look like? For me, it's also making sure that I'm reading good books and I'm honing in on good podcasts that I'm really making sure that I'm listening to podcasts. And for me, I'm such a creative that when I'm not doing something creative or with my body or enjoying moving physically, I don't feel great. And you're probably like, what are you talking about? You literally just talked about working out and, you know, all these different things that you have. That sounds like a freak. Ton of support. Support, right. Okay. I also feel like I want to be learning something physically. For me, I've always been a physical person. I learn through motion in my body, not just learning the thing such as dance class, but I actually learn about the world through my body. And maybe a light bulb just went off for you guys. Maybe you're like, oh, my gosh. I literally have always learned through my body as well. Right. I'm that person that never learned sitting at a desk. I did terrible in school, but put me out in nature, and I feel like I get all of these different downloads and I can understand the world more clearly. So for me, that really does mean making sure I'm out in nature and making sure. Maybe I'm taking a dance class. Making sure. Maybe I'm taking a pottery class. Something where I'm working with my hands, moving my body. And surfing was really huge for me. When I surfed when I lived in la, I didn't do it that often, but when I would do it, I would learn so much about the world. What does that look like? You're like, how do you learn about the world through surfing? Well, one of the stories that I talk about a lot is when I was out surfing with my surf instructor, he noticed that I was always trying to catch every single wave. And I had this moment where I was paddling and paddling and I was exhausted and trying to catch so many of these waves coming because I was like, wait, they're all good. I want to catch them all. I want to make sure that I get up.

The more waves I try to catch.

The more likely I am to get up. And while yes, that could be true, what you don't realize is that your energy is being drained from trying to do it all. And I really looked at this in my life, and there was a point where I was trying to do it all. I was trying to catch Every opportunity, I was trying to catch every single thing that came my way. I was looking around at what other people were doing, and I thought, well, if I just do all of it, something's got to stick. Absolutely opposite was happening for me. I was exhausted. I was not being my best. I was becoming a master of nothing because I was trying to do everything. And it was just a moment for me while I was surfing that I was like, stop it. Stop trying to do it all. Wait for that right wave or that one that feels really good, and just do your best at getting up and riding that all the way to the shore. Stop focusing so much on being in a hurry to catch the next thing or the next best thing. And obviously, this is gonna go in seasons of your life. There was a time where I do believe that you have to learn that you have to try to catch all the waves in order to understand which is right for you. So moving on to really asking yourself, how do you support the soul of you, of the entrepreneur? What is needed? And I just threw out, you know, 10 different things for myself, and I'm gonna choose one this week to work on. I'm gonna choose one this week to work on, because we can't do it all at once. And I think the biggest thing about supporting soul the entrepreneur is to have grace with yourself, to recognize where things are maybe not going well, to recognize where you're not supporting yourself and say, okay, I love you. You're doing the best that you can. I'm so proud of you. Now, how can we make sure that you feel better? Now, how can we make sure that you do something that elicits joy every single week? Because without that, you guys, what the hell are we doing? For real, what the hell are we doing? And to really reframe that this is such an opportunity that we get to focus on how we want to have purpose, right? We get to choose what our purpose is. We get to choose how we show in the world and give back. And instead of looking at it like this big, daunting thing, oh, my gosh, this is so hard. Life is so hard. We get to really choose how we participate in this world and how we look at it. And, yeah, it's not gonna go right. It's not gonna go the way that you want. It's gonna be hard. But that. That is the journey of life, right? We get to get stronger from the things that are challenging. Without those, we don't get to experience what it's like to grow that muscle.

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So let's talk about your to do list quick. Now, when you think of your to do list, I actually want you to start thinking of your later list. Because now that I have my to do list and I've had it forever, right, I'm so attached to my list. I'm attached to notebooks. I don't know about you guys, but I literally always have a notebook in my life. It's like something I love to carry around because I like to write it through my hands to pen and paper, put my thoughts to pen and paper. I can just dump it all out. But what I've started doing is having a later list. And I was just talking to Ashley Alderson, who started something called the Boutique Hub. I'm actually going to go speak at her Boutique summit in a month. I'm very excited about it. And it's for people who have boutiques or want to start boutiques and helps them grow and scale, whether it's a boutique in person, a brick and mortar, or a boutique online. You guys go check it out. But she was talking about her later list and I realized how important my later list is. Because if we're being real with ourselves, the most important thing that you do is looking at your week on Sunday night or Monday morning and saying, what are the top two to three needle moving things for my business that I can do this week that are the most important and put those on your to do list every single day until they get done. And honestly, everything else needs to go on your later list. It needs to be on a list that you're not even gonna look at until next week and then reassess what needs to go on your now list. Right? Those top three things on your now list. And then all of the other things go on your later list again. Now some of you are like, oh my God, what if I forget what's on my later list? You won't because you're going to look on Monday or Sunday Night. And you're going to say, what are the top three things that I need to do this week that are needle moving things for the business? Meaning it's going to progress forward, it's going to scale your business, or it's going to bring more money into your business. And what is everything else that can wait, that if that fire is burning, you can let it burn. And I talk about this a lot because being an entrepreneur is just getting really good at knowing there's always gonna be fires burning. Now it's the difference between telling if it's a small contained brush fire or if it's gonna be something that's gonna rage later on, right? It's gonna spread, it's gonna get out of control. And for me, when I actually look at my to do list, what happens is we normally wanna start with the ones that are not that hard. And sometimes that can be a great method to be honest, but not that often. So with that said, you really need to do the hard things first. You need to get those things in there on Monday or Tuesday morning. You need to make sure that you're not doing all of the little piddly things that are going to drain your energy and then the most important things get put off, right? That's busy work. It's what a lot of people do. It's what majority of people in business and careers and in entrepreneurship do. It feels good. It's a dopamine hit to do the easy little piddly things that don't actually bring in money and move your business. So if we really look at it like that, like what are the top two to three things I need to do this week and put everything else on the later list. I care more about your later list than I do about your to do list. Meaning I hope that you have a long later list and that your to do list is very, very short. Two to three things per week. Can you imagine what would happen in your business if you marked off those two to three most important things every single week? I will tell you what will happen. You will grow. It will be the most incredible thing that you've experienced because you will know that your time and energy is going to the things that actually make a big difference. These are the most challenging things, but these are the things that are going to move the needle the most. So you guys, I'm sending you so much love. I'd love to hear if this was of value. I'd love to hear if you're gonna implement this. It's always so much fun to see who's actually listening to the podcast. You guys, I hope that you have the most amazing day. Support the soul of the entrepreneur and make sure that your later list is growing and you're keeping your to do list small. All right, until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.

Sam.