Get a Vision and Get Out of Your Own Way

Seize the day. A saying most of us have accepted to mean living for the here and now. While this sentiment can make us feel more at ease, it can also be an invitation for complacency.

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That’s because “seizing the day” doesn’t look like a form of procrastination, but it is. It’s another way that you sabotage your success because you lack clarity, don’t believe you’re good enough, or spend your time on wasteful tasks. Instead of thinking about how your actions fit into your bigger picture, you rush into action because it makes you feel better about yourself. 

This artificial sense of pride will ensure that you stay exactly where you are. Why? 

Because you have yet to determine your direction. 

Having an end goal in mind ensures that you can appreciate the here and now without sabotaging your goals. 

Here’s why you need a vision:

Having a vision gives you a North Star to identify self sabotage.

Here’s the problem: you’re probably not aware when you’re sabotaging yourself or your goals. You may experience these incremental dopamine moments doing a number of seemingly productive tasks. You check a number of boxes off of your to-do list.  What reason would you have to doubt that you’re not progressing your goals, right? 

Wrong.

Your vision for your life and business is your North Star during your periods of uncertainty. It will guide your actions to ensure that you rarely, if ever, lose sight of your way. Having a vision for yourself makes navigating through the unknown a lot easier. It guides your next steps. 

While I applaud anyone with a bias for action, I also know that it can be a sign of insecurity. You may not feel confident or comfortable with where you are right now. Diving straight into action without much thought is a waste of your time, money and energy. It may make you feel better because you’re occupying yourself with busy work. Remember, you are the CEO of your life and business. That means that you need to call the shots about how your most valuable resources are spent. 

Having a vision will protect your time, money and energy. 

Having a vision for yourself determines the difference between activity and productivity.

You’re the CEO of your business and your life. That means that you understand how ineffective it is to be busy without an action plan. You spend the majority of your time doing tasks that won’t progress your goals because a part of you is afraid of the possibility of your dreams.  So you focus your energy on non-productive activities. This looks like a lot of busy-work such as: 

• Constantly amending your website
• Reposting motivational content on your social pages
• Buying every kind of business planner you can find
• Binging ‘best ways to…’ or ‘best equipment for…’ videos
• Listening to yet another ‘How I started’ podcast
• Constantly refreshing your Instagram feed checking for likes
• Perfecting your systems and sequences before your have a sale

As the CEO of your life and business, you should be in control of time spent doing tasks versus strategic work because you know what’s required for the bigger picture. 

Having a vision reminds you that you are worthy and deserving when you fail:

You will fail. It’s inevitable. It’s the price of admission for true success. Failure without a plan or vision makes you more susceptible to self doubt. It makes you more likely to quit because you don’t realize that this is all a part of the bigger plan. This phase of your life or business is essential for you to avoid imposter syndrome as you manifest your dreams. 

One reason that you may have resistance with creating a vision is because you can’t visualize your success. You’ve grown accustomed to losing or playing small. Maybe you believe that success only occurs through stress, struggle or chaos. 

You don’t realize that you’re setting yourself up to fail. You’re cancelling out all the work you’ve done because you don’t believe you’re worthy of true success. 

With a vision, you are the CEO of your life and business. You are in control. Without one, you’re at the mercy of someone else’s vision. You’re under someone else's control.

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Take Control of Your Life | Free yourself of the things that no longer serve you

I read a quote recently that said “the more you let go, the higher you rise.” It made me think a lot about the rapidly approaching new year. It feels like 2020 came and went in the blink of an eye and yet it was met with many milestones for our country but also many of us individually. For some, those milestones triggered a host of negative emotions and energy that we didn’t know what to do with. Sadness, hurt, resent, and anger just to name a few. These are emotions that, given the opportunity, will paralyze your life’s momentum. 

It can make you feel hopeless. Even powerless. 

But there is hope in knowing that you have the power to free yourself of the energy of your 2020. You have the power to free yourself of the things that no longer serve you. 

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So many of you are harboring shame, guilt or unfounded fears that are not allowing your business or life to soar. 

You have so much more in you than you know. I’m 100% certain that you’re just scratching the surface of your potential. You just have to find the courage to release your past. It’s time to declare yourself independent of the things that no longer serve you. It’s time to release the energy, habits, mindsets and people that have not allowed you to rise to your potential. 

You have control of your life. You are co-creating this beautiful vision with the Universe. Remember that your feelings of powerlessness only occur when you lack boundaries and control. 

Here are two things you can do to free yourself from negative emotions:

Audit your support and success systems frequently.

Take 30 minutes and review how and with whom you operate your day-to-day. Ask yourself these questions: 

• Does that interaction deplete you or energize you? 
• Does it make you feel shame or strong? 
• Does it have direct or immediate impact on my goals? 
• Does it make me feel discomfort because I am outside of my comfort zone?

Just because it causes you some discomfort doesn’t mean that it’s not serving you. Just like a muscle in your body, courage, confidence and faith require stretching and movement to grow. 

Find people just a few steps above you.

I’m a mom of three. 

When I had my first, my friends with toddlers and preschoolers would give me advice or tell me how they handled a situation. While I appreciated it, I also know that memories of the newborn phase or having multiple kids under age six phase eventually goes into a black hole. 

You only remember the milestones. So I intentionally sought out moms who were recently out of this phase. 

I used to follow individuals who were already living my dream. 

I thought it would make me work harder to get there. Instead, it made me more anxious and impatient because I wasn’t there yet. I still follow a few folks who are about 3-5 years ahead of my business journey, but I’ve felt it more impactful to find people who have recently graduated from my current phase in life or business. 

I’ve done this for a few reasons:

1. The physiological responses to the stress of it all is fresh. They remember how it feels to be where you are on a granular level. This means they’re truly able to help you navigate through the tough times. 

2. It makes it easier for me to identify the very next step. In my personal development company, I help overthinkers become action takers. Oftentimes, the reasons most women are not taking action towards their goals or dreams is because it feels too big. Breaking it up into steps makes the journey feel more obtainable and they’re less likely to jump ship. 

3. You can manage your mindset better. It’s easy to dismiss the success of others as luck or having help. That mindset only limits your potential. By watching someone not too far ahead of you, you can trick your mind into releasing the limitations. 

Remember you are the master of your life. You have a choice in how 2020 ends and 2021 begins. Click here to download your free template to help you identify what to declare no more to in your life. Take control of your life!

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The problem isn’t that you doubt your gifts or talents. The problem is you doubt yourself.

What to Do When You Don't Believe You're Good Enough for Your Dreams

You know that the gap between dreaming about your purpose and living in your purpose requires you to deviate from almost everything that makes you feel safe, comfortable, or confident.

You allow your fears to keep you exactly where you are instead of taking action towards your purpose. Your doubt makes you question your worthiness to dream that big.

You allowed yourself to believe that you’re not good enough for your dreams. 

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How you feed into your fear-based mindset 

Here’s the thing: when God assigns you a talent, skill, or gift, he does so with the intent to carry out a purpose.

Make no mistake about the fact that His will will be done. His intent will be carried out. If you continuously dismiss or ignore your calling, he will assign that gift to someone else.

Choosing to ignore your calling is passively asking for God to pass you by. 

God qualifies the unqualified. 

Your friends, parents, manager, and partners are not in the business of assigning purpose to anyone. God is. You spend energy trying to convince them of your calling and you waste time filtering your faith through the lenses of those who lack sight for your calling. You then start to waste more time and energy by finding ways to adopt their opinions as your truth. 

Each time you start dreaming again, you remind yourself of these opinions.

This is the vicious cycle of strengthening a fear-based mindset. You have always had the truth. You chose to bury it under a sea of insecurity and fear.

What’s triggering these mental messages

Having a dream, big or small, takes courage. It requires you to stop and resist the currents and conditions of a trajectory that many of us unknowingly agreed to. You are required to seek the possibility of things you have been told did exist.

That is a scary place to be and it may require you to take this journey alone. We are seeking validation or confirmation from people who never realized their dreams. Those people may have the best intentions, but they’re no longer able to guide you without some level of impact from their failures. They’re the ones who have inserted the subconscious beliefs that you are trying to prove wrong.

You must seek out those who have already dispelled the thoughts that you have about yourself or your ideal life.

How to productively seek out more successful people without getting triggered

Seeking out people who have successfully navigated through your current phase of life may trigger your insecurities.

It’s natural for us to judge others successes and overlook their journey to success. The intent of seeking out successful people is to force your mind to seek out the objective facts about this person.

Your ego will tell you to believe that this person was better off than you. You may believe that this person had more resources than you and that's why he/she was successful. It will make you think you should believe that you’re not good enough as a survival strategy because it doesn’t want to challenge what it believes to be true about how you got to where you are today.

The best way to seek out success stories is to be intentional about finding information on a successful person’s early stages, failures, candid conversations, and moments of similarity to your feelings or mindset.

The intent behind this practice is to give yourself permission and grace to be mediocre. It’s an opportunity for you to normalize starting small and building as you learn.

You will approach a new level of fear or insecurity with each new stage of faith. Trust that when you lean into your calling, God will present you with the resources you need to navigate through it.

Looking for more motivation and tips on achieving your goals? Check out Nesha's website!

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How to Reach Your Goals Without Support

Ask anyone who has achieved noteworthy success how she got there, and the answer that will come up in a variety of ways is you don't do it alone. As entrepreneurs, we are encouraged to seek support and encouragement from the people around us because it's next to impossible to move forward alone. The bigger your goals are, the more support you need to navigate through the unknown.

But what happens when your friends and family don't get it? What if there's no one to turn to for guidance? What then? I promise you can still reach your dreams without support.

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Why do we seek support? 

Many of us think that we must have everyone’s buy-in to succeed at our goals. We want our friends and family to be our biggest cheerleaders and pick us up when we're down.

The truth is, we often limit our potential to what our friends and family believe to be true about us – not what we know to be true about ourselves. When our expectations are not aligned with their ideas, we experience disappointment and inadequacy.

We tell ourselves that those feelings give us permission to abandon our goals before we even start. After all, our loved ones have our best interests at heart, right?

Why you don’t want everyone’s support:

The tricky thing about ambition is that it can trigger insecurities in others. Your audacity to choose an alternative way of thinking or living from the people close to you forces your loved ones to consider their self-imposed limitations. That experience can be unsolicited and unwelcome. Individuals who aren't equipped to handle those emotions can become negative, evasive or imposing.

Here's the thing: you don't want everyone supporting you if you don't know the intention of the enemy they're sending your way.

What it is that you truly seek: 

Instead of stressing about their approval and support, consider why you feel that their support means so much to you. Understand the source of your desire for their support.

Is it a skills or competency gap that they will help you fill? Is it financial? Or could it be that you are struggling with genuine faith in your ability to realize your dreams? Is it that you choose to quit to avoid disappointing yourself and blame a lack of support? Could your need for support stem from your lack of confidence in your capabilities?

How to reach your goals without support:

1. Have an understanding of who your goals impact outside of yourself. You are more likely to stay committed when you grasp that your ability to take action will positively change someone else.

2. Create a bias toward action. Minimize the time you spend thinking about your lack of support and instead, focus on taking courageous action. The more action you take, the more confident you will become.

3. Build a network. Posting status updates won’t be enough to give you a sense of support. It will just keep you in the habit of thinking that likes and comments equal support… and they do not. Instead, proactively seek out individuals who are working on similar goals and spark up a conversation.

4. Remember that your loved ones may not always understand your dreams. Your family is programmed to seek stability and security for you, and your big goals challenge that. They may very well not get your vision for your life until you’ve realized it and they see the outcomes. Manage your expectations accordingly.

5. Protect your vision. You’re more vulnerable when you expect support from people who don’t get what you want. Until they understand, you may have to minimize the information you share with them to ensure that you’re not welcoming unsolicited ideas that you’re not prepared to fend off just yet.

The reality is, the higher you climb, the lonelier you will feel.

That’s one of the reasons it’s so essential to surround yourself with the RIGHT type of support. Don’t allow a lack of support to compel you to give up. Deserving your dream life doesn’t come with the contingency of support. You are worthy. You deserve your dream life. Your future is waiting. You don’t need permission to answer your calling.

You want to work on attracting and creating the RIGHT type of support system. That may require you to release the expectation of support coming from your family.

If you want to fill up your Instagram feed with positivity, motivation, and tips to achieve your dreams, follow Nesha on Instagram.

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Starting Over with Your Goals | Why You Quit

I don’t know you, but I’m willing to gamble that this is how you typically set goals:

Gets inspiration. Googles ALL the things. Buys ALL the things. Watch other people crush their goals. Gets anxious. Accepts that you’re not ready yet. Decides to start another time. Who do you think you are to do something so bold anway, right?

I’d also be willing to bet that if it’s that easy for you to quit, this mindset presents itself in other areas of your life as well.

Do you give the silent treatment to your partner when he/she opposes your views? Do you stop going to the gym because you can't tolerate the soreness? Do you abandon your budget the moment you get in your feelings? 

How many times have you changed your mind about changing your life? Each time you decide to say ‘yes’ to your insecurities, fears or ego, you are saying ‘no’ to changing your life. Imagine how much further along your life, business or relationships would be if you decided that quitting wasn’t an option.

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Why we start over

That anxiousness you feel when you are about to quit your goals is your insecurity getting triggered. There could be a number of reasons why that’s happening; here are just a few: 

• You underestimated the amount of work required to achieve your goal. 
• You overestimated your commitment to the goal
• You’re surrounded by low-standard people 
• You forgot that you didn’t always know what you know now

Starting over is okay

Many of the people you admire aren’t successful by accident. Yes, they have their talents and their gifts. But they’ve also mastered the art of starting over with their goals. You only see the tip of their iceberg. They rarely show the moments when they’ve had to pivot or start over with their goals. It may not feel like it now, but starting over can be the greatest gift to your growth and success if done right.

Starting over without a plan is not okay

You are setting yourself up for failure if you think you can just keep doing the same things over and over again and get a new result. That’s a complete waste of your time. I’m not in the business of wasting my time. Neither are you. The more time you spend attempting to solve the problem your old way, the longer it will take you to get there.

Objectively review your failures

When we perceive an experience as a failure, it’s incredibly difficult to discern the lesson without experiencing the feelings. Here’s how to do it:

• Recall the event as if you’re witnessing it. Pretend you’re just a stranger in the room, silently observing everything play out. 
• As you are recalling it, tell yourself “I am more than this moment.”
• Examine the contributing factors that you had control over
• Remember that as a stranger observing, you can’t know anything about what you were feeling

Create a better action plan

Use the lessons you’ve learned and allow them to guide you through your next action plan. Now you have data points and better directions. You’re also more equipped to take on this journey. If you need to take a break to center yourself before you start again, then do so. You may not see the results, but that doesn’t mean you’re not succeeding. Under the surface of those feelings, you are creating a woman who’s stronger and more resilient. Create an action plan that sets her free.

Your message matters. What you have to offer to the world matters. Don’t attach yourself to the channel in which you share it. If you have to start over, don’t abandon the message. Just change the channel.

So if you hear me telling you that you can expect to have to start over, then what are you going to do to ensure that you don’t quit?

Want to learn more about personal development from Nesha? Check out her website!

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