This past holiday weekend had an oddly great balance between work and play. I got my blog, website, Etsy store and Facebook Fanpage up and managed to get a lot of other work done; and I still had time to hang out all day with my family for my cousin's birthday at my Uncles house, I got to spend time with my grandmother, and finally on The 4th I got to spend the entire day with my boyfriend and have a barbeque with his family.
Which begs the question: How does one keep this work/play balance during the unpredictable workweek? (At the end of this blog I'll leave you with 4 pieces of advice to help you stay on track. But first, some back-story about me so I can further prove my point that if I can do this, anyone can do this.)
The obvious answer to that question is self-discipline. I've told myself for many years that I wasn't born with self-discipline and that structure had to be created for me in order for me to be productive. Which is the reason why, years before I graduated from SVA with my Illustration degree, I had already told myself that when I was out of college I would be working as a designer in an Advertising agency because that would be the only way I would survive financially living in NY. I already made up my mind that there was no way I would ever make it as an illustrator/artist/entrepreneur because I didn't have the self-discipline gene to be my own boss. This is what I told myself. I never even gave myself a chance to prove myself to myself! How ridiculous is that?
Some of us may have been blessed with jobs that actually start at 9am and end at 5pm, but, I'd say a good 85% of people have a 1-3 hour window after 5pm as to what time they will be heading home from work every day. I fall into the latter category, and that window of time varies day-to-day. On top of this crazy schedule, I also have an hour-and-a-half commute in both directions. The fact that I don't know when I will be home day-to-day, while at the mercy of a fixed train schedule, can be quite frustrating and I've spent a lot of time blaming the inconsistent schedule on my inability to get some of my artwork out there (I've also blamed it for having no time for my yoga practice, which is also a lame excuse).
I realized and decided I can't do that anymore, people have done much, much more, with far less time and resources.
So if people have done more with less, then how does one cultivate self-discipline and get things done? This doesn't have a short answer, and I'm still working on it myself, but two things happened that kicked me into high gear this past week, incidentally, these realizations came to me while I was educating myself about my Yoga practice:
1) Last week I listened to Elena Brower's Yoga Teacher Telesummit telecast with Tal Rachleff (whom organized The Yoga Teacher Telesummit which features free live interviews with respected Yoga/alternative health practitioners and conscious business owners.) If you are a Yoga teacher or serious about your Yoga practice, it is well worth the $97 to download all the mp3s plus transcripts of the interviews (for mp3's only it's $67. I like to have transcripts though, sometimes I can't focus on audio interviews, for the same strange reason that I can't focus on audiobooks) You'll have the recordings forever and I've only listened to about 8 so far while on my commute, I'm not half-way through all the calls and I've been so inspired by every single call I've heard. I highly, highly, highly recommend purchasing/downloading the interviews if you are not available for the live calls.
Anyway, Elena Brower is a huge advocate of The Handel Group which is a group that offers business and personal coaching. Without getting too deep into the Handel Method, Elena mentioned during her interview (which, if you get the download package, listen to Elena's call first, it's called "Teaching from Your Heart: Finding the Real Love in Your Teaching", it will blow your mind.) one aspect of it that really resonated with me. She mentioned that, according to The Handel Group, everybody has two destructive voices inside them: "The Chicken" (coward) and "The Brat" (obvious what that is). These voices work in tandem, almost seamlessly, to keep us down. The idea is to self-examine and notice when you're allowing these voices to govern your life, and then quickly change your mindset and your actions to quiet these voices and "do the work".
I realized that "The Brat" in me was so out-of-control I wasn't doing anything toward what I said I really wanted to do in life: "If I didn't get home so late/knew when I was coming home every night I could get something done.", "I can't start doing work at 11pm because I have workaholic tendencies and I'll stay up 'til 4am and will only have 3 hours of sleep before work.", the list goes on. Even worse than "The Brat", "The Chicken" was (is) also freaking out too: "Well, I can't start a business because I don't know the first thing about structuring it", "I can't create/follow a schedule for myself.", "It won't work unless I sacrifice all my free time and sleep, so what's the point in trying?", "The Etsy community is so big and intimidating, I don't know where to begin with making contacts so that I could become a valuable part of it.", "What will I do about health insurance? What about having an inconsistent income? How will I survive in NY?"
As you can see, "The Chicken" had taken over my brain more than anything else and was taking me further and further away from my goals.
I decided that now my force of will is like a jackhammer drowning out the sound of "The Chicken". As cheesy as that may sound, it's working for me.
2) I was lucky enough to be contacted by Racheal Cook, founder of The Yogipreneur and I filled out an application to get a free phone-consultation with Racheal, and lucky me, I was chosen as one of the people to get a free call! Yay! The 40-minute phone call helped me see things more clearly and inspired me that I have the faculties and resources to do this on my own if I really put forth the effort. Not only that, Racheal started from similar beginnings, (although my workweek hasn't been more than 65 hours, thankfully) she was working 80-hour work weeks, and the stress was so bad that she developed health problems and had to take a leave of absence. During that time she took Yoga classes and benefitted so much from them that she decided she wanted to help teachers get more students in classes so more people could reap all the benefits of Yoga. If she could get through that, I have no excuse why I can't change my situation for myself. I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to speak with Racheal directly (and can't thank her enough for her time), because I was so inspired after the call that I was able to do so much this weekend, and get way more done than I had thought I would.
Racheal asked me a series of questions for her to better get to know me, that actually helped me to better articulate what my ultimate goals were/are. One question she posed: "What would be your ideal situation if you were doing exactly what you want to do?"...I never tried to crystallize that answer into one sentence before, and I realized that was a big part of my problem: I wasn't perfectly clear about what I wanted. So, after Racheal posed this question, this is what it came down to:
I want to make art and teach yoga for a living, and through those avenues I want to spread positivity, love, inspiration and compassion to as many people as humanly possible while I'm on this planet.
So I'll leave you with three pieces of advice, as simple as they may be, are tough to implement when "The Brat" and "The Chicken" are running amok in your mind. The first step addresses this, so here we go!
Four Easy Steps to Cultivating Self-discipline from a (formerly) Self-professed "Lazybone":
1 - Do not be discouraged by setbacks, especially the ones you create for yourself. Nobody's buying your items in your Etsy shop, someone left a snarky comment on your blog...so what? If you allow a negative, defeated attitude to take over, it will lead to inaction, and thusly, disappointment. There will be so many challenges in managing your own business, you'll have ups and downs and you have to stay positive when things are at the bottom of the curve. Your attitude and your actions/reactions are the only thing you can control in life, so stay enthusiastic about what you're doing even if The Universe doesn't seem to care at the moment. Life has a way of balancing itself out, so keep doing the work and the rest will follow. "The Chicken" and "The Brat" voices will no longer plague your mind when you practice this positive mindset, keep an "attitude of gratitude", and stay honest with yourself and others.
2 - Know exactly what you want. This needs no real explanation. If you don't know what you want or have no real goal in mind, how are you going to have any success? Once you know what you want, you can then start making lists of precise tasks for yourself every day toward your goal(s). Once you start "doing the work", the opportunities that usually go unnoticed will open themselves up to you. You'll remember that your boyfriend's aunt is a CPA and can offer legal/business advice; you remember your best friend's sister is really good at web design and can help you make a kick-ass website; or while writing a blog referring to a fellow Etsy artist you admire, a new client finds you.
3 - Make lists and schedules for yourself and follow them. Sounds easy enough, but for people like myself this concept was beyond me until recently (mostly because I told myself I wouldn't be able to follow my own lists since there was no real consequence for not doing the work...other than the sting of regret of having done nothing productive). Since there is only chaos governing my work hours, I've created my own sense of order. What I do is, every week at the beginning of the week, I create a list of tasks for each day of the week for me to complete when I get home from work every night. I worked it out so that the list of things I need to do should only take me 1-3 hours to complete. And since I'm involved in two different fields/industries, I organize it so I focus on tasks for either Art or Yoga every other day. This way, I don't feel so overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, everything is organized, in bite-sized pieces and easy to check off (and it feels good to check off things as I do them, it gives me a sense of accomplishment). You can organize your tasks however it works best for you.
4 - No excuses! You've made a commitment to yourself, so keep it. Sometimes life happens and you're literally unable to do what you need to do toward reaching your goals (working until 2am would be a good example of a setback for me). That's okay, tomorrow is a new day, you will get back to it, make your list and check it twice, and give a thousand percent effort.
xo!
Which begs the question: How does one keep this work/play balance during the unpredictable workweek? (At the end of this blog I'll leave you with 4 pieces of advice to help you stay on track. But first, some back-story about me so I can further prove my point that if I can do this, anyone can do this.)
The obvious answer to that question is self-discipline. I've told myself for many years that I wasn't born with self-discipline and that structure had to be created for me in order for me to be productive. Which is the reason why, years before I graduated from SVA with my Illustration degree, I had already told myself that when I was out of college I would be working as a designer in an Advertising agency because that would be the only way I would survive financially living in NY. I already made up my mind that there was no way I would ever make it as an illustrator/artist/entrepreneur because I didn't have the self-discipline gene to be my own boss. This is what I told myself. I never even gave myself a chance to prove myself to myself! How ridiculous is that?
Some of us may have been blessed with jobs that actually start at 9am and end at 5pm, but, I'd say a good 85% of people have a 1-3 hour window after 5pm as to what time they will be heading home from work every day. I fall into the latter category, and that window of time varies day-to-day. On top of this crazy schedule, I also have an hour-and-a-half commute in both directions. The fact that I don't know when I will be home day-to-day, while at the mercy of a fixed train schedule, can be quite frustrating and I've spent a lot of time blaming the inconsistent schedule on my inability to get some of my artwork out there (I've also blamed it for having no time for my yoga practice, which is also a lame excuse).
I realized and decided I can't do that anymore, people have done much, much more, with far less time and resources.
So if people have done more with less, then how does one cultivate self-discipline and get things done? This doesn't have a short answer, and I'm still working on it myself, but two things happened that kicked me into high gear this past week, incidentally, these realizations came to me while I was educating myself about my Yoga practice:
1) Last week I listened to Elena Brower's Yoga Teacher Telesummit telecast with Tal Rachleff (whom organized The Yoga Teacher Telesummit which features free live interviews with respected Yoga/alternative health practitioners and conscious business owners.) If you are a Yoga teacher or serious about your Yoga practice, it is well worth the $97 to download all the mp3s plus transcripts of the interviews (for mp3's only it's $67. I like to have transcripts though, sometimes I can't focus on audio interviews, for the same strange reason that I can't focus on audiobooks) You'll have the recordings forever and I've only listened to about 8 so far while on my commute, I'm not half-way through all the calls and I've been so inspired by every single call I've heard. I highly, highly, highly recommend purchasing/downloading the interviews if you are not available for the live calls.
Anyway, Elena Brower is a huge advocate of The Handel Group which is a group that offers business and personal coaching. Without getting too deep into the Handel Method, Elena mentioned during her interview (which, if you get the download package, listen to Elena's call first, it's called "Teaching from Your Heart: Finding the Real Love in Your Teaching", it will blow your mind.) one aspect of it that really resonated with me. She mentioned that, according to The Handel Group, everybody has two destructive voices inside them: "The Chicken" (coward) and "The Brat" (obvious what that is). These voices work in tandem, almost seamlessly, to keep us down. The idea is to self-examine and notice when you're allowing these voices to govern your life, and then quickly change your mindset and your actions to quiet these voices and "do the work".
I realized that "The Brat" in me was so out-of-control I wasn't doing anything toward what I said I really wanted to do in life: "If I didn't get home so late/knew when I was coming home every night I could get something done.", "I can't start doing work at 11pm because I have workaholic tendencies and I'll stay up 'til 4am and will only have 3 hours of sleep before work.", the list goes on. Even worse than "The Brat", "The Chicken" was (is) also freaking out too: "Well, I can't start a business because I don't know the first thing about structuring it", "I can't create/follow a schedule for myself.", "It won't work unless I sacrifice all my free time and sleep, so what's the point in trying?", "The Etsy community is so big and intimidating, I don't know where to begin with making contacts so that I could become a valuable part of it.", "What will I do about health insurance? What about having an inconsistent income? How will I survive in NY?"
As you can see, "The Chicken" had taken over my brain more than anything else and was taking me further and further away from my goals.
I decided that now my force of will is like a jackhammer drowning out the sound of "The Chicken". As cheesy as that may sound, it's working for me.
2) I was lucky enough to be contacted by Racheal Cook, founder of The Yogipreneur and I filled out an application to get a free phone-consultation with Racheal, and lucky me, I was chosen as one of the people to get a free call! Yay! The 40-minute phone call helped me see things more clearly and inspired me that I have the faculties and resources to do this on my own if I really put forth the effort. Not only that, Racheal started from similar beginnings, (although my workweek hasn't been more than 65 hours, thankfully) she was working 80-hour work weeks, and the stress was so bad that she developed health problems and had to take a leave of absence. During that time she took Yoga classes and benefitted so much from them that she decided she wanted to help teachers get more students in classes so more people could reap all the benefits of Yoga. If she could get through that, I have no excuse why I can't change my situation for myself. I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to speak with Racheal directly (and can't thank her enough for her time), because I was so inspired after the call that I was able to do so much this weekend, and get way more done than I had thought I would.
Racheal asked me a series of questions for her to better get to know me, that actually helped me to better articulate what my ultimate goals were/are. One question she posed: "What would be your ideal situation if you were doing exactly what you want to do?"...I never tried to crystallize that answer into one sentence before, and I realized that was a big part of my problem: I wasn't perfectly clear about what I wanted. So, after Racheal posed this question, this is what it came down to:
I want to make art and teach yoga for a living, and through those avenues I want to spread positivity, love, inspiration and compassion to as many people as humanly possible while I'm on this planet.
So I'll leave you with three pieces of advice, as simple as they may be, are tough to implement when "The Brat" and "The Chicken" are running amok in your mind. The first step addresses this, so here we go!
Four Easy Steps to Cultivating Self-discipline from a (formerly) Self-professed "Lazybone":
1 - Do not be discouraged by setbacks, especially the ones you create for yourself. Nobody's buying your items in your Etsy shop, someone left a snarky comment on your blog...so what? If you allow a negative, defeated attitude to take over, it will lead to inaction, and thusly, disappointment. There will be so many challenges in managing your own business, you'll have ups and downs and you have to stay positive when things are at the bottom of the curve. Your attitude and your actions/reactions are the only thing you can control in life, so stay enthusiastic about what you're doing even if The Universe doesn't seem to care at the moment. Life has a way of balancing itself out, so keep doing the work and the rest will follow. "The Chicken" and "The Brat" voices will no longer plague your mind when you practice this positive mindset, keep an "attitude of gratitude", and stay honest with yourself and others.
2 - Know exactly what you want. This needs no real explanation. If you don't know what you want or have no real goal in mind, how are you going to have any success? Once you know what you want, you can then start making lists of precise tasks for yourself every day toward your goal(s). Once you start "doing the work", the opportunities that usually go unnoticed will open themselves up to you. You'll remember that your boyfriend's aunt is a CPA and can offer legal/business advice; you remember your best friend's sister is really good at web design and can help you make a kick-ass website; or while writing a blog referring to a fellow Etsy artist you admire, a new client finds you.
3 - Make lists and schedules for yourself and follow them. Sounds easy enough, but for people like myself this concept was beyond me until recently (mostly because I told myself I wouldn't be able to follow my own lists since there was no real consequence for not doing the work...other than the sting of regret of having done nothing productive). Since there is only chaos governing my work hours, I've created my own sense of order. What I do is, every week at the beginning of the week, I create a list of tasks for each day of the week for me to complete when I get home from work every night. I worked it out so that the list of things I need to do should only take me 1-3 hours to complete. And since I'm involved in two different fields/industries, I organize it so I focus on tasks for either Art or Yoga every other day. This way, I don't feel so overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, everything is organized, in bite-sized pieces and easy to check off (and it feels good to check off things as I do them, it gives me a sense of accomplishment). You can organize your tasks however it works best for you.
4 - No excuses! You've made a commitment to yourself, so keep it. Sometimes life happens and you're literally unable to do what you need to do toward reaching your goals (working until 2am would be a good example of a setback for me). That's okay, tomorrow is a new day, you will get back to it, make your list and check it twice, and give a thousand percent effort.
xo!
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