Progress When Life Gets Challenging

I'm sick. 

I'm here.

But that's not always going to be the choice that I make. 

You see, I built a business specifically so that I could make choices. And choices have consequences. 

By choosing to show up in my business, daily, it has given back to me, my family, and the many, many others who have shown up in response to what I do for free in addition to what I show up for in my paid work.

A lot of times, people assume that what people have is because of the BIG decisions they make, the HUGE moments...

But as you've probably heard about making it in financial investments, the true secret is in compound interest, the small contributions steadily made over time that lead to consistent wins.

Consistency wins. Every time.

I've had my share of failure as a coach.

Products that didn't take off... 

Marketing ideas that panned...

Social media accounts compromised...

Jerks on the Internet...

Even occasional threats from people whose moral compass got a little whacky due to whatever was going on in their lives.

Life doesn't stop and get ready for you to build and launch the perfect business. Life keeps going, even as you build it.

This week I'm inspired by life hitting me in the form of illness... 

I'm down with COVID, despite our precautions and care, here we are. We prepared for it best we could, but life doesn't stop, just because you have other plans.

My business, as I've designed it, does require quite a bit of my personal energy and attention.

It's not a "passive income" venture. I like to actually coach people. 

But I didn't just stop the business.

I've noticed that for beginner business-owners, their tendency is to simply stop.

Like COMPLETELY stop. 

via CBC on GIPHY

A business is a collection of processes that work together to create value. And YOU are not your business.

Even if you are the solopreneur, let's check in here for a second...

Do you really need to completely stop the mission?

Like, TOTALLY IGNORE it?

This is an example of "all or nothing" thinking, that is super prevalent in the new coach community, that I'm addressing in today's vlog... and I address every week in our programs. 

You have 168 hours every single week. And a great move in 15 minutes is to reflect and ask a question of a mentor.

This is one single action that can make a massive difference.

Even if you are ill, busy, taking care of so much else... if your mind is working on the next challenge in your business while you take care of other things, you are progressing your dream.

Keep going Coach.

Keep progressing your dream.

Watch this week's Vlog, and challenge yourself, can you do even a reflection, and stop the all-or-nothing tendency to keep your dream forefront? Even in a dark or hard season?

It's made all the difference, through illness, death, and every challenge over the past years. 

I've started a thread to talk about this in our free community, The Coach's Plaza, which I'll hope you'll join for free and tell us about a time you've found balance in times of challenge... It'll help others find balance in hard times too. 

We're also planning to launch a brand new club soon, so if you'd like to join the waitlist to be the very first to hear about it, please let us know!

Progress When Life Gets Challenging

Transcript of Podcast - July 10, 2022

Hey there, Amanda here. And I hope you're having a really good week. I'm under the weather and I wanted to come on here and talk to you about what do you do when you are sick. Your family gets sick. There's life events that happen because I get this question a lot and you know, what's so funny is I was going to actually share with you a clip of a question and answer that I got on a coaching call that I hosted earlier this week.

But the thing is I was sick when I hosted that call. I am down with that, you know, you know, and I forgot to hit record when I was hosting that coaching call and, you know, Chris and I were talking about like, how do you move forward when you're dealing with a brain fog and you're dealing with feeling under the weather,

maybe you've got COVID, maybe you've got something else that is not allowing you to operate at your best. And at first I was like, ah, I'm not even going to do a blog. I don't have that recording. And Chris reminded me of one of the top things that we do around here, and I wanted to share it with you. Number one,

never let the perfect be the enemy of the good, you know, having a conversation about what does it take to keep moving forward. We've moved forward over the last five years with her coaching business in very large part, simply because we don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Would it have been perfect to show you that amazing, you know,

coaching exchange? I dunno if it would have been perfect, but it was what I had in mind. And obviously I can't do that because I didn't hit record. And our mindset usually goes into when we set our sights on a plan or a vision of how we think something ought to go, we tend to fixate on that one solution and it's a version of all or nothing thinking.

And it's a version of perfectionism. It's a version of, you know, if I can't have my, my way, then it's no way, right? It's no way my way or the highway. And you know, one of the biggest gifts that I have had in my life in the last few years is really just learning to let go of needing things,

to look the exact way that I thought it was supposed to look. So, you know, I get this question all the time. How do you move forward? If you know, this specific thing happened to me and, you know, in our programs, we, we have a requirement for our guarantees. So we offer really beautiful guarantees on our programs that we will continue to work with you until you get your,

your results. And you know, this varies by program, but basically we will work with you if you continue to work with us. And one of the ways that we ask that you continue to work with us is that every week you are showing up in the program and typically showing up means you are submitting a question of some kind. Well, I recently posted in our programs a reminder that this is a requirement for continuing in our programs,

and you would not believe how many people sent in a email or a private message of some kind telling me about their specific life circumstances that have prevented them from showing up the way that they would like to in the program and therefore their business, and have prevented them from getting what they wanted in their, in their results. And that's, what's prompted me to want to talk to you today about,

about this blog and, and, and this principle of never letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you engage in this all or nothing, thinking what ends up happening is you let entire weeks and months of progress go by by accident. And this is how people let lie lifetimes go by lifetimes, go by without ever going after their goals,

without ever launching that program without ever launching that business without ever changing that career without ever getting out of debt without ever-changing their health without ever improving their relationships. It's basically the tendency of humans to always kick the can down the road. And the problem is, is that we always have a perfectly rational rationalization. And the thing is, is that a lot of,

or, you know, people that are trying to help will say that's an excuse and yours, but I'll tell you is, is like the emails, the calls, the, the, the reasons why people are, you know, not feeling, feeling like the feelings. When I say, Hey, you got to participate in order for us to continue to work with you is because they're getting all these feelings coming up.

And here's what I'm going to tell you, whatever excuse is coming up for you, it's totally valid. I have COVID right now. That's valid. That is valid. I'm tired. I am tired right now. Like I'm nursing myself here and it is an exhausting, exhausting moment right now. I'm in a, I mean, a season right now that I don't have the level of exuberance that I normally have.

It is a valid thing. And the whole idea of perfect being the enemy of the good is what most people do with this is they say, I cannot do anything. I cannot do anything. I think one of the biggest differences in how, how I may be handling things versus how I used to handle things is I used to say, oh, I have an illness.

I cannot do anything useful towards my goals. I cannot think about my goals. I cannot journal about my goals. I cannot open my laptop and talk on a camera about my goals. I can not post something to the internet about my goals and the real capital T truth of the matter is most things related to building a coaching business are fairly low energy,

individual tasks. They are often intimidating tasks. If they are the first time that you were doing them and with this all or nothing, thinking pattern, this bias to all or nothing. It's easy for us to say, Hey, I've got this life complication going on. I better not do anything towards Michael. And the trouble with that is, is then we don't do anything at all towards the goal.

So whether the goal is building that coaching business, getting that marketing, going, getting that program launched, or let's face it, whether it's making a better health choice for our nutrition or our movement or our relationships around us, or building more quality friendships, whatever the goal is, if you think about it, there's this natural tendency to insert a very perfectly rational and valid reason why we don't need to make movement toward that improvement of a life goal.

So one of my favorite books is atomic habits by James clear, most of the change and improvement in your life is not going to come from these big declarative changes. You know, I've had big moments in my life, you know, where I accepted the proposal from my dear husband, Chris and I moved from Canada to the United States. And I quit my corporate job.

You know, like there's those big moments. And those big moments are very exciting. And I will tell you that most of the success and the real transformative embodiment of change has actually come from these tiny moments of commitment to change and tiny moments of commitment to, you know, what, I'm going to make a positive decision in the direction of my dreams in the direction of my goals.

And I'm going to nudge this thing forward in this moment. And I do this literally hundreds of times a day towards my various goals. So for example, I have COVID right now. I could very, very, very reasonably and rationally say, I am going to do nothing towards interacting with my community. I'm going to do nothing towards, you know,

continuing to progress my goals of, you know, contributing to my content. I could, I could say that, honestly, I just started bridge curtain. I could, I could watch another episode of bridge. Certain it is good, or I can take the 10, 15 minutes and record this video for you, post it and honor that process and,

you know, make that small sacrifice and honor, the honor, the goal honor the struggle, right? And I think that I feel better knowing that I have done that, and I'm not feeling that I'm pushing myself to such a degree that I'm compromising my recovery from my, my illness. You know, I'm not pushing myself to run a 5k today.

Cause that that would not be a thing I would do, especially not living in Texas, but turning on my camera. I didn't pressure myself to put on makeup. I did not pressure myself to do a bunch of fancy transitions and editing today. I was like, you know what? This is what we lovingly call the bam, the bare ass minimum.

I'm going to do my bam today because it's about nudging. The goal forward. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good do the good. And this shows up everywhere in my life. This is the same with showing up for my relationships, my children, my husband, my friendships, you know, I want to show up in my life and I want to show up for me because when I show up for me and I show up for my business and I show up for my husband and my kids,

I feel the best. It's when I feel like I'm in retreat from everything. And I have to excuse everything from everything that I feel the worst. So I'm going to just kind of punctuate that as a final thought today. I'm the only one that can make the decision about what is the most important thing. And that's the same thing for you. No one can tell you what is the most important thing.

You're the only one that can get very present to what is the reality of my choices and what are the consequences of these choices? And am I making a short-term decision that has a longterm consequence that I feel good about today? And is there just like a little nudge I can make towards my goal? Am I stuck in all or nothing thinking, or can I give myself permission to give just like a little bit of an extra nudge towards my better future?

That's what I want to leave you with today because that has changed my life. We'll see you soon.