Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 164 today, and we are talking about the topic of steps we can take to move forward, basically a follow-on from last week's episode, where we did speak about how we can reach our potential. In this episode, we're diving in a bit more of what are the steps that we can take today to making sure that we are moving forward in the right direction. So we'll be touching on a whole bunch of different things, like tips and tricks of how we can pulse check of our now, but also talking about some of the steps that we can start today for a better tomorrow, and also, how do we apply some of this mindset shift to enable us to actually progress forwards. How do we apply some of this mindset shift to enable us to actually progress forwards Now? With that all in mind, one thing I do want to just bring to everyone's attention is when it comes to taking action, when it comes to making progress or moving in the right direction I know all of this can sound very cliche.

Similar to last week. There's a lot of things that get thrown around, or you've heard it all before. I think cliches are great and, yes, they are overused, but they're said because there is a level of truth to it. Right, they're being used because they do work. People ask me oh, how did I achieve what I've achieved today? It's like, oh, a lot of hard work, that's true, and that's the cliche. But what are the details behind it? So I wanted to dive into some of these different cliches and help break them down a little bit better, so we have a better understanding. Because at the same time, we don't always understand what are the steps required to get us to where we want to be. Sometimes we realize that maybe it's not as pretty as we expected for that end result. We go to take all this effort and take action and then we get into the nitty gritties and realize this is not pretty like the outcome that I see other people having, but that's the reality of it. So I do want to address some of those ideas and perspectives as well. But, as I said, firstly we're going to touch on some of the cliches and then we're going to get into the meat of the conversation. So buckle up, let's roll the intro Cliche.

Number one is just do it Now. We've heard this all before from nike, and it's a phrase often used to encourage immediate action what are you going to do about it today? And it's to discourage this overthinking mentality where we get stuck in our heads. And I will encourage you after this episode. What is one thing that you can go do today? Just do it to get motivated or to get taking action in actually making progress and moving forwards. And I think this one makes sense.

Number two is no pain, no gain. Look, it's a bit of an oldie, I don't even know where it came from, but again, basically saying that if you want to have the greatness, we're going to have to go through the thick of it, and it might mean that there's going to be some hard work, some pain, and we're going to have to endure maybe some things that are just necessary to ensure that we do achieve the significant results that we want. And there is that other saying of short-term pain for long-term gain. No pain, no gain. You get the point. Number three is Rome wasn't built in a day. Now. It's a reminder that there is always going to be this huge, significant achievement that we can look towards and that it's possible to actually make that happen. But the reality is it's going to take a lot of time. It's going to take a lot of patience and a lot of hard work. We cannot expect instant results. It just doesn't work. So understand that. Whatever your Rome is, it wasn't built in a day.

There is this funny one which I always use myself is the early bird catches the worm. Mentality around this one is to underscore the benefits that when you start early or when you take action today, you're actually able to get ahead and be able to apply yourself or maybe get the better opportunities. It's that simple. Number five is keeping your eye on the prize, and this phrase encourages us to focus on the goal at hand, our bigger goal that we want to be doing, and using that to help us stay, I guess, not distracted. If we're focused on this, we're not going to get distracted on all these little side quests and all these different things that are coming and going. And when the difficulties do come along, when we keep our eye on the prize, we're able to stay focused and true to where we're going.

Number six is action. Speak louder than words. Look, I can talk about this podcast, I can talk about all these things, but if I'm not taking action to grow my business, my life, none of it really matters, and I think that's super important. We can talk about it all we want, but if we're not doing anything about it, it is pointless. So acting is doing, or acting, and doing is more impactful than merely just saying it.

Number seven is failure is not an option. Look, this one is usually to instill like a lot of determination into people and build that mindset. I think it's unrealistic because there are going to be things that are going to work out, but from that we adapt, don't give up. If things don't work out, how do we change it? How do we move forward? That's probably the better way of looking at it.

Number eight is step out of your comfort zone. Look, we spoke about this in last week's episode. How do we reach our potential? And that is from stepping outside of our comfort zone. So it's a common suggestion that in order to grow, we can't continue to be who we've always been. We've got to be doing something different, and that is stepping out of our comfort zones.

Number nine is fake it till you make it. Look, I think there's a huge truth to this that, in order to get to where we want to be, there is no right way to get started. You just got to start figure it out, bluff it a little bit, put yourself in a position where you're still figuring out on the fly, faking it till you make it. And then you do make it, and then it's just it's up from there. And the last one, number 10, is go big or go home. Now, this one does challenge people to have this, I guess, commitment to fully embracing their endeavors rather than just taking it half-hearted. But it can be a bit of an overwhelming lack of work-life balance mentality, but the idea is that if you're going to do it, let's do it right and let's bring all things to the table rather than just slowly do it, because if you're not going to be serious about it, you may as well just go home. So, with that in mind, let's dive into some of the tips and tricks that we can take to, I guess, have a bit of a pulse check of our now, and there's three points that I will address.

Reflective journaling Now, for me, I don't write things down. This is like my reflective journaling Me coming here each week talking about some of the things that are top of mind. The different things that I've been thinking about for the week this week, obviously being how do we take steps to move forward? And I think when we do some reflective journaling about how we progress how was the day, how was the week, how was the month it does help us start to identify a number of different patterns. We can start to see how our behavior is and some of the different things that need attention right Now. Of course, this is not that exact journaling, but what I can do from this is I understand I know what I need to know now go do, because I've been talking about it or it's resonating with me in a different way. But I also use a lot of previous things to like previous data of where I've gotten to get to here I mean what I've done to get here and that enables me to then be able to reflect on that, to see that, okay, these are the steps I've been taking. It's working. Let's keep doing that, or let's double down on that, or let's change this, or let's no longer do that as I progress.

I think the other one is then we can get that pulse check from feedback from peers or mentors. It's very easy to be discouraged when people give us feedback, so we need to find the people that are going to do it with kind, candor and look, you want to have trusted friends and family members or mentors that are going to provide you an external perspective that aren't in the thick of it themselves, but they also are doing it because they love you, not because they're out here to hurt you, and you don't want someone giving you things that you want to hear. You want people giving you things that you need to hear. The other way we can do some pulse checking is with the use of apps or tools. Now, this might be using some mood trackers, it might be using productivity apps or just tracking your state of how you are per day. Look, this is more mental I'm talking about in this point. But using tools or different applications to be able to track your progress, to see how you're going and how you're feeling, I think is super crucial for me. I'm always tracking my data that soon tells me if I'm up or down in terms of happiness, and I think being able to track your emotions on a daily basis would be a good one, because you do it for 30, 60, 90 days, you're going to have a very good understanding of what's triggering what.

Now that we've got some of the tips and tricks, what are some of the things that we can start today, like today to take action on, and I want you to do that yourself for a better tomorrow. The first one is prioritizing and planning, and a few weeks back we spoke about top of mind. When there are things top of mind, we need to go through this process of really understanding what is urgent and what is important. Right, because there's a lot of things that are always on the top of mind, but when we start to prioritize the tasks that align with small, short-term and long-term, we can know what to work on.

There's things that I want. I want a warehouse for my business. That's still a bit of long-term thinking, like when I say long-term, it could be three to six months. But short-term, what are the things that I can be doing today that are important? They might not even be relevant to the warehouse, but they're things that are more important that I need to address today. But there's also things that I can do today that are going to help us get closer to that three to six goal, three to six month goal as well. So there's things that we need to do today and there's things that we can shelve and come back to and get to later. There's still a priority, it's still important for me, but we can plan for them and not take action on them, whereas there's things today that we need to take action on and that we need to stop just planning about them and just do them. I think the other part is the thing that we can do today is starting to set those small and achievable goals. What are the one things or the two things or the three things that we can do today? That's going to get us towards where we want to be. So that's setting daily goals that contribute to larger aspirations, and I think this is important.

There's that book called Atomic Habits, or building that 1% per day in terms of productivity or in terms of improvement, so creating that momentum. The time's going to pass anyway. So maybe if you just did one thing today, for the rest of the year it's 365 times, whereas if you were doing it once a week, it's only 52 times a year. You see the difference.

The other one and this one has worked really well for me is establishing routines. When we have an understanding of why the routine works so well, it will change your mind right. For me, it keeps me rooted, it gives me a backbone, it gives me something to fall back on, it helps me with supporting my personal life and my professional growth as well. It enables me to stay rooted to the sense of I know what I need to do to get to where I need to be, and all these different things enable that. So whether it's running, whether it's spending time with family, whether it's not for me I don't do morning meditation, but maybe for you it's morning meditation, or doing a reading thing, or spending some time playing some games with your kids, or whatever it may be have those routines in place to ensure that you are getting the positivity and the flow and the needs catered for that you have in your life. Otherwise, if you're trying to cram things in, it just doesn't work.

So the gold of this episode is really now to the mindset shift, and the first one is having a growth mindset. When we have a growth mindset, we have to understand there's always going to be challenges that come in life, but at the same time there's going to be the same amount of opportunities and even more. When these obstacles and challenges come, we need to look at them as the opportunities to grow. When we do adopt this mindset or adapt to this mindset of when things and challenges and problems come our way, that we're taking them head on to work through them, to walk around them, to get past them, to challenge them, to beat them and to conquer them, we're basically giving ourselves the permission to grow, to learn, to figure out how to become someone that will never have to deal with this again in that hard way. Next time we'll know how to deal with it. Next time we'll know how to address it, and this is all about becoming a better version of ourselves. A whole episode on this last week, right? So that growth mindset enables you to transform into something better by simply turning our mindset around. From when something's a challenge, when something's an obstacle, let's make it an opportunity to become or conquer or to be better at what we are doing.

Number two mindset shift is gratitude. We do not take on gratitude enough when we shift our focus away from me in the sense of I wish I had this or what about that, and actually not actually spend the time to really just reflect on seeing how good we have it or grateful for what we do have or the moments we've been able to spend. We lose, lack of bigger picture. But I think by having the gratitude it enables us to have a better approach of looking big picture of who we are, where do we stand in life, and it gives us this positive outlook to life as well. Like at the moment, I've seen the best growth I've seen in my business for the last 12 weeks than ever. But I'm here and I'm still thinking, oh, how do I change this? Oh, this still isn't good enough. But I do need to stop and just smell the roses and realize hang on, chris, we are doing so good. We've never been in this position before and at this period of back-to-back growth. So take a moment, reflect on it and appreciate it. And when we do that, it helps us realize that, okay, let's just slow down for a moment, let's just have a cup of tea, have a sip, take a breather and let's charge on after that. So remember to be showing that gratitude, but also taking in the moment and celebrating those wins.

And the last one is embracing change as a constant. Change is here to stay. It's simple as that. You're never going to be able to avoid the change, because there's a lot of things that will come that are out of our control. Now, you can control as much change as you want in terms of your own world. What you can control sure, control it, that's great, but there's a level of things that you cannot control and you need to figure out ways to work through that. So if we embrace it coming back to some of the growth mentality as well as these obstacles come, let's not be aggressive against them in the sense of pushing back or not letting them come to us. We need to find a way to embrace them and deal with them in our lifestyle. Like when the pandemic hit, we had to rise up and find ways to still continue to do what we did and not let it take over our lives. It did take over a lot of our lives, like components of it, but we still pushed through. That is the same mentality. So that's what I have for you today, and I think it's super important.

Again, I love the cliche side of these kind of things, these little short, little points, little tips and tricks that we can look at from a different perspective. At the end of the day, it all still comes down to that. If you want to move forward, you need to be moving forward, and progress is never going to look sexy. It might sometimes, but not always. It's going to be those bad days, it's going to be the days where you don't feel like doing it. It's going to be the good days as well, and it's going to be the everyday days as well, but that's progress. And if you do want to take steps in making forward, start today on making progress. What are the things that you can do? Whether it's leveraging some of these cliches, whether it's using some of the tips and tricks, maybe it's working through prioritization. Maybe it's working through prioritization, maybe it's working through setting some new goals, or maybe it's establishing a better routine. But the key thing here is understanding that if you do want to grow, you need to have that mindset. If you do want to achieve growth, you need to have the gratitude and, at the same time, change will come as we plan to move forward, as we have all these great ideas and figure out how to fit that change in as well.

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