Journey to create positive action

Are you feeling a bit stuck? Are you lacking positive 'action' from yourself? Are you feeling a bit let down? Me too and now its time to make an action plan to start creating action. I have staggered through the past 3 weeks doing some conscious and subconscious work on myself. Your mind is so important and in many ways can make or break what you achieve and how you show up in the world. I have always done mind work with myself in this fashion and I come out good at the end even though it is always work in process. Just because you are a life coach doesn't mean you have it all figured out... infact the opposite. I believe that we should always be striving to be our authentic self and course correcting and re-evaluating constantly is how we grow, develop and achieve.

Back to my action plan after feeling like I have been out of action for a few weeks...

Let me give you some personal history. I am 51 years old, I have a coaching business working one on one with clients, I have a 22 month old son, a supportive and hardworking partner, a thriving holiday accommodation business which we manage and operate ourselves without help (yes, cleaning, laundry, bookings... the lot. Thank goodness we opted to not offer food!) plus ongoing renovations both in our home and business which my partner completes himself. Our son attends daycare two days per week because we want this for his development and those two days I can achieve a lot of work in our business without him pulling at my apron strings - or in his case trying to flush things down the toilet or destroy all of the bed making I have done! - one step forward 2 steps back! That happens on the other 5 days he helps me clean!

I am not a fan of saying 'I'm busy' because what does busy really mean... infact this being 'busy'or what we think is busy has been part of my problem lately.

I won't bore you with the daily run sheet of my life albeit to say I love my love but want more and that more stems from life coaching - I want to build my business as I love what I do and I know I offer value and results however, after reflection this is where some of my current issues stem from.

During March and April I really started to spend time looking at ways to build my coaching business and now I feel overwhelmed. This stems from the opt ins and subscriptions I have selected, reading these selectively and listening to webinars is making me feel inadequate - the opposite effect of what I wanted. I spend too much time on the laptop and devices, I procrastinate by 'doing housework stuff' which isn't necessary and I asked friends to help with a questionnaire about a coaching niche I want to pursue and I got very few responses which upset me and to wrap it all up I am not using my time wisely or productively outside of work I am obligated (and love) to do (run our holiday accommodation business and bring up my son). So, I've decided its time to clear the decks and start again on MY terms. I've subscribed or 'opted in' to Facebook adds and 'suggested' sponsored links with a genuine interest in their messages and contact however, I have overloaded myself with information I now rarely look at let alone put into practice. So, my solution for today's task was to unsubscribe! I feel lighter already.

Wanting to build my coaching business is the catalyst of these subscriptions but unfortunately it's actually sapped my motivation to build the business because of all the sales talk, the positive testimonials of coaches going from zero to $$$ in 30 days and all that. Let alone the technical details of starting sales funnels, traffic and landing pages - my mind was about to implode!

This is my story but it can so easily be yours too. You may want to develop your business, create a better body, get more motivation, start a healthy lifestyle, have less anxiety, build positive relationships and when you go to try and better these areas in your life you are inundated with information and free tools, FB groups and before you know it your emails are overflowing and you are being smothered by all of this well meaning information but it just overwhelms you and the result is INACTION as opposed to what you desired - ACTION to get you into a better place!

I am working on this series of blogs in real time, I haven't written them as a program or pre-chosen the route - it's happening in real time and I'm experiencing this all with you.

Come on this journey with me and the first step I have commenced today is to... start your housekeeping and UNSUBSCRIBE. Yes, you read that right. Whilst following some inspirational entrepreneurs and learning from their valuable and relevant content is how we develop new skills it's time to clear the slate. The idea is to start afresh. Clean out your cupboards so to speak and re-stock them with the information and content you CAN and WANT to read and consume. The content you make time to read is the ONLY content you should have on your FB feed or email inbox.

It may sound ruthless but its not... you are doing yourself a favour plus those people and sites you follow and subscribe to will thank you for not wasting their time in the long run. They need to concentrate on the likes and subscribers that love their valuable content. Plus you may re-subscribe once you start to re-stock your cupboards with the content you have time to read and consume.

My suggestion is - 1. Go to your inbox and select each email that you haven't read and UNSUBSCRIBE; 2. Go through your Facebook feed and select to hide post/snooze for 30 days/Unfollow those that you don't read anymore and that clutter your feed - I have unfollowed because I know I can follow again when I'm ready to re-stock my cupboards.; 3. Go to the closed groups you subscribe to and select to leave the group.

I feel amazing after having done these 3 steps. I can now see my friends posts on FB without having so much busyness in my feed and read the emails I have in my inbox. I look forward to seeing suggested posts for webinars that I can schedule into my diary and actually attend in real time! Yippee, I'm excited.

That's day one accomplished and I feel lighter and already less overwhelmed.

These are my suggestions for today and I hope you find them useful. Read tomorrow for some more de-cluttering so that we can all get back in the drivers seat and aim for success - as we define it!

Bye for now.

Dawn