Afraid?
- Take a business loan
- Hire a marketing strategist
- Quit my part time job
For me, overcoming fear is less difficult than other obstacles. I'd spent almost a year thinking about what my biggest fears were and specifically doing things to trigger them. Still, fear is pervasive and as often as you're alive and making decisions, you'll find new things you're afraid of. I'm super excited that, as of today, I've checked off all three of these!
Tired?
- Exercise
- Cook dinner
- Smile
These are harder because they're ongoing, rather than things I can easily check off of a list. However, I know I can make solid commitments to my schedule because Ryan and I have done that with Friday night date night. It's our time to be a couple, resolve issues, and remember why we married each other. So if I just apply that resolve to my workout schedule, I'll be able to make that happen. And I know from experience that working out regularly decreases my stress, gives me more energy, and generally makes me a happier and more fun person to be around. Not to mention that the consistent element in the routines of busy, successful people is exercise. No matter what other weird stuff (affirmations, journaling, email, snorting Kombucha) top CEOs and innovators do, they almost always have some sort of workout in their morning routine.
Short on Time?
- Pursue new friendships
- Start a Meetup
- Learn new skills
Time is by far the trickiest obstacle to overcome. At some point you just have to admit something is not a priority and stop whining about it. I'm trying very hard to prune back and just keep the basic priorities I need to be happy so that I can do a better job at them (family, business, health) BUT I also think some of these can be squeezed in with a little bit of creative engineering. For example, learning skills by myself through classes wasn't working. But I can hire an expert to teach me one-on-one and I'll learn faster, without having to skip through fluff that doesn't apply to me. New friendships are harder, but my ongoing friends have begun scheduling our next hangout before leaving the current one and that helps immensely. I might try to implement this among all my social groups. And starting a Meetup might remain a wishlist item for now. I love the idea of it, but it really is time consuming and I know it's not a priority.
