As Entrepreneurs, it is VERY easy to fall into overwhelm or burnout and STILL not achieve your goals. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There is a simple, yet powerful, process I use over and over again to help me define my goals and take action to achieve them, without the overwhelm or burnout.
In this episode, I break down the exact step-by-step process I use to achieve my goals. And sometimes, I don’t even realize I “need” this process until I’m overwhelmed by current circumstances. So when I start feeling that way, I revert back to this process. And, every time I work the process, it helps and I’m able to see the path to success.
Tune in to hear:
- How I define my goals
- How I take my goals and break them down into actions
- How I take action and turn it into habits
- How habits impact my success
Know that you are not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Those feelings are valid. But it’s what we DO with those feelings and how we work through them that determines if we will achieve success or not.
After you have a listen, share your feedback with me on Instagram! Tag me or DM me @emilyhirsh – I’d love to hear from you!
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
And, and the, one of the biggest reasons that people get overwhelmed or they get frustrated is because they don’t have a solution to the way they’re feeling. If I feel super overwhelmed in my business, if I feel like I don’t even know what’s causing the overwhelm, but everything’s coming at me and it feels like there’s no end in sight. But if I know I’m feeling overwhelmed, here’s why, and here’s what I’m gonna do to solve it. No problem. I can handle the overwhelm.
You are listening to the, not for lazy marketers podcast, episode number 384.
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast and happy Tuesday. I am coming to you after just having a kid free three nights with my husband. And if you follow me on social media, you might have seen, um, some updates on that, but it was so much fun. And as I’ve kind of talked about here and then shared on social media going into 2022, I didn’t really set a lot of goals like I normally do. And instead I planned my whole year with experiences, traveling family trips, trips with my husband, trips by myself, just different things that I could do to create memories. And I set a goal to do something I normally wouldn’t do every month, this year. And so this month I went to Utah, we went snowboarding and hiking, and it was just three nights, but it felt like a long time.
And those of you with kids understand, like that’s incredible to get three nights without kids and, and the good sleep and the one-on-one time. And I was like, “I’m glad we still got it” to my husband, because I feel like you never know, when you take the kids out of the picture, it’s like, “are we gonna have stuff to talk about still?” Because all we talk about is kids. It feels like, life and todos and all of that. So it was so much fun. It was so good. And I’m feeling so grateful that I put the priorities this year around memories and just living life in front of the daily grind. And I have, you know, Hersh marketing that is very demanding. I’m building a software, which is extremely demanding. I have three kids. And so the demands on my time and my to-do list, haven’t changed, but my priorities have this year and putting forward the things that are the most important to me was my commitment going into this year.
And I’m happy to say that so far, three months in I’m living up to that. So today what I want to dive into in the pro- in the, in the process, cuz I was about to say process in the podcast processes. Seriously. Like I say that word a hundred times a day, I feel like it is my process for handling overwhelm or handling a situation where you’re not meeting goals. Like you don’t feel in momentum, you feel frustrated and this can be relevant for business, for personal, for anything in your life. And I was having a conversation with someone recently where I kind of explained this to them. They were feeling frustrated. They were really frustrated that they weren’t hitting certain goals. They felt like every day was just, they were being super reactive and they weren’t in control of their life. They, it just, wasn’t what they wanted it to be like.
And I think one of my secret weapons is I have the ability to say, this is what I’m gonna do. And then I do it or like, this is what I want my life to look like. And then I make it happen. And I feel like in the past I’ve always been like, well, I just do that. Like I’m just born that way. That’s how I am. You know, nurture vs. nature. I don’t know probably a little bit of both, but it is one of my superpowers and it is how I have created a multiple seven-figure business. How I’m a mom of three, how I “do it all” (I don’t), but how it looks like that. And I’m able to show up in the best way possible in all the areas of my life, health, relationships, business, my personal life, all of that. And it’s also to do with this process, it’s to do with how I handle these things.
And so I shared this with someone and they’re like, you have to share that because it’s so good. It’s so simple. And this could help a lot of people. So if you are in a situation where right now, maybe you feel overwhelmed, maybe you feel like you’re not reaching a certain goal or you’re not reaching certain growth levels that you want to reach. Or maybe just every day, you don’t feel that “momentum” feeling, you know what I’m talking about, where like every day you feel in flow and things are working out and your business is going well. And you’re able to manage all the things we all have weeks where we feel that. And we don’t feel that. And so if you’re in a place where you’re not feeling that, right, this might help you. And again, it can be related to personal life business, you name it.
So here’s my exact process and it is simple, but I hope it helps you guys. The first step is you have to list out everything that’s causing you, overwhelmed or everything that’s causing you frustration. So if right now you’re overwhelmed or you’re frustrated or you just feel like I am not where I want to be. You have to sit down and list out everything that’s causing that. And you have to be really honest. So let’s use an example. Let’s say let’s use myself. If I was to have done this a couple weeks ago, I was feeling way overstretched with my time. I felt like every minute of my time was accounted for, I couldn’t be fully present. I had way too many meetings on my calendar and I had too many to-dos and I was like, if I even triple myself, I wouldn’t be able to get things done.
That’s a problem.
So I sat down and I listed out everything that was causing the overwhelm. I listed all the meetings that were, you know, too many. I can’t be in meetings 25 hours a week. How am I gonna get anything done? I listed out places in, in my house or with my kids that I could have gotten support, but I wasn’t. And I was taking on specific roles, planning all the details of my kids’ birthday party. took that on. I could have asked my husband for help. I didn’t. So I listed out all the places. And so you have to sit down and really ask yourself and be truthful. What is everything that’s causing overwhelm or causing frustration or causing you to feel like you’re not in momentum and that you need to integrate personal and business because they go hand in hand.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed in your business, it could be because you don’t have the support in your house. That’s gonna give you the right amount of time to focus on your business. Or you’re being interrupted 15 times a day by your kids. So you feel bad and then you’re not making progress in your business. Be honest and list out every single thing that’s causing that overwhelm or that frustration. The next thing is, and this one’s really important. You have to list out, not even list out, but describe, as if you’re telling a story, the best case scenario in regards to the issue you’re having. So a lot of times I do this in the sense of like my perfect average day. I love that exercise. If you were to sit down and actually describe to me from the minute it up to the minute you go to bed, what would your perfect average day be?
And it has to be an average day. It can’t be like “I would be in Hawaii and I’d be sitting by the beach”. Not like that. Like the days that you have real responsibilities, you have kids. Like those things don’t change. You have your business, you have to make money, whatever your responsibilities are, what would your perfect average day be? Like, what would your morning routine be? What would you eat? What would your house look like? What would your neighborhood be like? What support would you have in your life? How much money would you be making? What would you spend your time doing during that day? How would you prioritize your health? All of those things- every detail, the more detailed you can be the better. And I do this exercise at least every three to six months. And the crazy thing is I can look back on times.
I’ve done this exercise like three years ago and I was describing the house I would live in, the neighborhood I would live in, the walks I would go on. And I’m literally living that now. Like, it’s the craziest thing, but there is something to putting this down that then even if it’s subconscious, you start taking action towards it. If it’s not your perfect day, the perfect outcome. Like let’s say, you’re frustrated with your business or you’re frustrated with the support you have in your house. What’s your perfect outcome? Forget about money. Forget about like, oh, that’s not gonna work because my husband does X, Y, Z, or I don’t know someone who can help me, like forget about all those things that you tell yourself. The minute you start coming up with those solutions and just forget about it, but list it anyway. Imagine that money wasn’t an object, obviously be realistic. Like, don’t be like, I have a million dollars and I have zero today. Be somewhat realistic. But also don’t limit yourself to the point where you’re like, well, that’s not possible before you even try it, list out that perfect outcome. If it’s your business growth that you’re frustrated with fast forward in a year and just list out here is exactly where I want to be. I’ve done this with my marriage. I’ve said my marriage is gonna feel like this. And I list out all these things. We have fun. We travel together. We laugh, like whatever, all those things, I’ve done this with my relationship with my kids. I’ve done this with my business. I do this all the time. And I do this with my morning routine. Like, let’s pretend like my kids aren’t waking me up at different times or I’m not tired.
What would my perfect outcome be? What’s the best case, perfect scenario. And describe it in detail.
Now, once you have that, you can list out the actions that need to happen in order for that to come to fruition. And you can list out actions that are immediate. And then there’s the long term. There’s immediate actions and there’s long term actions. And so if you list out your perfect day and you have have a certain level of support, or you have a team member, a VA or a nanny, or you are working out every day, like whatever you put in your day now dissect that out and put down the actual actions that would need to happen for that to come true. And it’s not gonna be overnight most likely. But then what happens is the overwhelmed starts to go away because now what you’ve done is you’ve clarified where you’re frustrated, you’ve clarified, where you’re overwhelmed, you’ve described the situation or the outcome or the change that you exactly want to make.
And then you’ve put the actions that need to happen in order for that to come true. And so getting you out of that overwhelm is now really clear. And, and the, one of the biggest reasons that people get overwhelmed or they get frustrated is because they don’t have a solution to the way they’re feeling. Like I feel super overwhelmed in my business. If I feel like I don’t even know what’s causing the overwhelm, but everything’s coming at me and there’s no end in sight. But if I know I’m feeling overwhelmed, here’s why, and here’s what I’m gonna do to solve it. No problem. I can handle the overwhelm or if I’m frustrated about something and I don’t have a solution, I’m so much more frustrated than if I’m like, I’m super frustrated today, but here’s the three things that we’re gonna do to solve this and I’m gonna be better.
And then I feel much more stable. And in momentum, the key with this is that everywhere you have to be specific. So you have to be specific about what’s causing the overwhelm and the frustration you can’t just say, like, I have too many meetings, you would have to say, I have too many meetings. I’ve met with these people too many times. This drains my energy, or I have too many hours of meetings on my calendar, or I need to be more efficient.
You have to be specific and you have to be specific with the best case scenario you’re describing and the actions that you’re gonna take in order to bring that to reality. So here’s an example. Like if you’re like, I want to start working out, that’s not specific. Just start working out. It’s like when? In two months? How many times a week? When are you gonna do it? I’m gonna work out three times a week at 9:00 AM.
Like that is specific. There’s no arguing it. If you said, oh, to grow my business, I want to make more content. That’s not specific. Okay. What does that mean? How much content, when are you gonna make it? What type of content who’s gonna help you with it? Are you doing it all by yourself? Instead specific would be, I’m gonna record one podcast a week on this day at this time, and I’m gonna get this support, editing it, or I’m gonna do it. So everything you do, the key is that it’s specific. And that there’s no room for interpretation. I often find sometimes that when I’m not meeting my goals, it’s because I wasn’t specific with them. So I could put like this actually just recently happened to me. I was coming off the 75 hard challenge. So I was trying to redefine “what’s my diet gonna be because I’m not on the challenge?”
And so I was really general. I was like, you can have a snack a day. You can limit it to one treat. But I was like, okay, well, does it count if I go to the coffee shop and have a drink that’s a sweet drink? Is that sweet? Maybe it depends on the day if I would classify it. And so that’s where you’re setting yourself up for failure. If you’re not really specific with your goals, because then your brain is gonna ignore them is gonna be like, well, there’s too much room for interpretation on that goal or that action. And so I’m just not even gonna do it. Okay. This process, what it will do is allow you to take control of your time and realize, and this is the, the most powerful thing about it. Like if you go through this exercise, you will realize it, every problem, frustration, overwhelm, all of those things are solvable and you are in full control of it.
And so people ask me like, how do you manage your health and, and being a mom and your business. And it’s like, because I intentionally define what that looks like. And then I implement the actions and the habits – habits- they are huge. Here. I implement those that are associated with getting to where I want to be. And there’s something so powerful about going through this, like a three step process of defining where you are right now, and then defining where you want to be without limitation and then defining the actions to get there. This is something that I would recommend doing, anytime you feel like you’re super overwhelmed or stressed, but also every month, every quarter, every year I follow this process and do my own personal planning. So every month I have, I look at my annual old goals that I have personally. And I look at if I am making progress.
And then I put goals towards that. And then I define habits. And I do that every week too. Like I, I replicate the process and that’s the only way I’m achieving these things is because I’m, I’m following this process. And it’s a really great thing to do if you’re currently in a place where you’re overwhelmed or you’re frustrated, or you’re just like, I’m not hitting my goals a quarter into this year and it’s not where I wanted it to be. The powerful thing is that you have the ability to take full control and make the change. So this was a short but sweet episode for you guys, but I was talking to someone about this and they were like, you have to share this. Like, it’s really simple, but it really is powerful. And I hope that it brought you guys some value. Send me a message on Instagram, if it did. And otherwise I’ll talk to you guys on Thursday.
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