When we focus on the problems, we often create EVEN MORE PROBLEMS and WASTE TIME!!
The next time you face a problem, notice how it’s making you feel.
DO YOU FEEL
☠️ Defeated
😡 Angry
😠 Frustrated
😱 Upset
🥹 Hopeless
THEN, STOP AND ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION.
Now, go do that one thing.
Focusing on the solution will help you solve the problem quicker than focusing on the problem!
As a special education teacher, I learned some
goal-setting secrets that will improve your results instantly!
None of that vague stuff like create more post, get a new client, or become more organized.
In the classroom, I never said,
“The child will learn to count change.”
In special education, we are specific! A written goal sounds like this.
“When given pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, the student will count change up to one dollar with 100% accuracy!”
Humans make mistakes, so 100% mastery is only sometimes going to happen.
Mastery goal criteria sounds like this.
“With 90% accuracy in three out of four attempts, the child will be able to X.”
For reading, I wrote things like,
“The child will, when given 2nd-grade text, read with 80% accuracy in 4 out of 5 attempts.
Remember you are human!
Set the dates when you’ll reach that goal!
“Between now and September 30, 2023, I’ll create and post four IG posts each week, with 90% accuracy!”
But here’s the kicker, the time frame is your cheerleader, not the party crasher!
If you don’t reach it in time, don’t give up, just keep at it!
If you keep trying, you’ll eventually get there.
I’m not telling you this to make goal setting feel more complicated.
Being precise is the fastest way to reach your goals, boost your confidence, and keep you motivated on what it really is you want to accomplish!
Check your goals… if you even remember them!
Write your goals down and look
at them often.
Each week when I was lesson planning for my students, I pulled out their goals to make sure what I planned was focused on their goals.
Did you look at your goals this week before planning out your actions?
Specific, vauge doesn’t make you fail less, it makes you fail ahead of time.
Mastery (decide ahead of time how many times, how often, and with what accuracy you will do each goal.
Time frames, they’re your buddies, not your enemies!
Write and review, if they aren’t reviewed often, most people forget about them.
Now go out there, create, and own your goals like a boss!
I grew up playing various sports, volleyball, and softball being my favorite.
When I entered high school, I made a name for myself at third base because I had a strong arm that could rocket the ball accurately to first, and I thrived on fast, quick, short hops and grounders that often seemed to appear in my glove magically.
Every day I went to practice I heard, “Porter, get on third.”
You know what I NEVER HEARD?
Because my specific skills made me succeed as a third baseman.
I didn’t need to be great (or even good) at any other position to succeed as a softball player and receive a college scholarship.
The colleges didn’t ask if I could catch a pop fly (I’m terrified of them to be honest). I’d rather have a ball come flying towards me at warp speed than wait, and wait for a pop fly.
And they didn’t ask because it didn’t matter!
They needed someone who could accurately scoop up grounders, short hops, and bunts and get the person running to first out!
Because my stories always relate to business and motherhood, here’s the “catch!” (See what I did there!)
Decide what skills you’re great at, what skills you enjoy doing, what skills sound fun to learn, and DO MORE OF THOSE!
I’m not crafty, and I don’t really enjoy them, so my kids didn’t craft (with me). I did, HOWEVER, give them opportunities to hone their crafy skills through other friends, and family members, I put them in classes, etc., and now my 20-year-old has a VERY successful wedding cake business.
I never said, Porter, well, I was Payne by then, I never said “Payne get out your crafts and work on them till you like them more, till you’re better at them.
So the next time you think,
“I ought to be better at (fill in the blank).”
I should spend more time on this “weakness” or “thing that I don’t like doing”….
Everyone is so much better at X than I am”
Let the other entrepreneurs (and moms) do their thing, you do yours, and together you will impact the world with greater success by focusing on your strengths!
I just got off a coaching call with a client who is decently happy in her business right now.
BUT
The one thing holding her back from being mostly happy is the one thing that her business needs more of.
It needs less of what “they say” you’re “supposed to do.”
It needs less of her judging what she is or isn’t doing.
It needs less scheduling of the things she HATES to do!
If you’re not loving your business (or motherhood) right now, ask yourself these questions:
If you’re not loving the results you’re getting, stop and ask yourself if your business (and motherhood) are getting the FULL, REAL YOU!
The you that creates results in ways that use her strengths, talents, wants, and in a way that she loves!
When I was a mom with three darlings under four, I was having a conversation with a group of church women about talents.
I hated this type of conversation because I believed that I didn’t have any talents.
Then, I thought talents were things that you could display on a stage or in a gallery. They involved papers with grades and high scores, musical abilities, art, sewing, or were creative in nature somehow.
The women I was talking with were putting together a talent show, and I was required to participate.
I told them I had zero talents.
They probed with ideas they thought I should be able to do.
I timidly snapped back with a racing heart and said I wasn’t talented if it didn’t involve a ball or organization.
One gal, laughed boisterously and said,
So, for the next umpteen years, I continued to say I had zero “talents” even though I KNEW I was talented.
When I was contemplating what area to coach women in, organization, time management, and productivity came up repeatedly.
BUT I SQUASHED IT!
And even then, I wasn’t willing to admit that my organization was a talent.
Now, wiser women, (sometimes) I’ve dedicated my coaching practice to using my talents to help you be organized and confident enough to USE YOUR TALENTS!
I know you have something spectacular to teach and share with this world.
If I can use my talents to help you have enough time and an organized schedule so that you can put your talents out there, then together, we can influence those around us and create a more significant impact in this world.
I’ve got you!
BUT I can help you have the time and organization to do what you were put on this earth to do!
Watch the 9-second video clip, that changed everything for me about why being organized is vital… (and a talent)!!
I just wrapped up my 35 Hard FOR YOU challenge last week and I learned a lot! I know the 65 participants did too!
I’ve got an offer for you that doesn’t happen every day!
I shared this offer with my 35 Hard FOR YOU group first and it was so well received I knew I had to share it with my email list too!!
Here are the details!
FOUR INTENSIVE PRIORITY WORK coaching sessions where we dive into what you WANT (not what you think you “should” want) but what you actually want and WHY (those are the most significant pieces) to have enough time and proper mindset to create the results you want!
I have developed a program that makes your WHY impeccably evident, full of truth, firm, and unwavering so that you stay committed to EVERY role/goal you want to excel.
When I taught special education, the IEP team would come up with a set of criteria to be able to consider the goal mastered.
That criteria usually sounded like this.
“Between now and July 30th, Ceri will, when given a change of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters be able to count the change correctly up to one dollar with 90% accuracy in three out of four attempts.”
Let the time frame be your guide, be your motivator, something to help you know if you’re making progress, not the final word or deflator.
If a child had not mastered the goal by the time set, we didn’t give up on or abandon the goal. We kept working until we mastered it. If a child hasn’t mastered the goal in a certain time frame, they still make progress. The child had learned things to help them, and if they keep working at it, eventually they become the master.
I don’t teach you this to make goal setting feel EVEN MORE complicated.
I actually tell you this to help you feel more CONFIDENT and motivated in your goals.
It’s so helpful to know exactly what you need to do and how often, in what amount of time, and with what accuracy to master a goal.
We’d master and stay motivated to a whole lot more goals if we took the time to make them very specific and create room for being human.
Between now and August 30, 2023, I will post 3 out of 7 days on Instagram with 90% accuracy.
That means you shoot to post 3 times each week and over the time set (between now and August 30th,) you have 10% wiggle room for your humanness.
Between now and Aug 30, 2023, when given a consultation, I will close 2 out of 4 calls with 100% accuracy.
Have you ever known a school teacher to quit mid-school year?
We are natural storytellers, and we often use that gift to our detriment.
I’m done for in the state of Utah.
I’m never going to get another job.
No one will ever trust me again.
To make it worse, I was supposed to begin working at the neighboring school district the next year. But since I quit, I just knew I ruined that opportunity.
The day after I quit, I got a call from the same district. They’re asking me if I’m available for an interview for a work-from-home teaching position.
During that job work-from-home position, I developed many of the skills and confidence I use now in my coaching.
Because that position had flexibility, it provided me the time to certify in life and business coaching.
“The more we practice looking in the rearview mirror and finding gratitude for the hard times we’ve experienced; the more we start to change our programming.”
Learning from the hard times is when the intensity of our fears in the moment of difficulty, will diminish!
That “worst thing that’s ever happened to you,” what are you enjoying now because you went through that experience?
I’ve recently become a fan of the show “New Girl.”
One of the episodes I watched recently was about two people deciding to “go all-in” on their relationship.
Their “all-in” included leaving their friends and moving to Mexico and did a few crazy things that they wouldn’t normally do for the sake of “going all-in.” At one point in the episode, they were captured by the Mexican police for their choices. To show their commitment while they were in “jail”, they all put their American passport in the shredder.
What crazy things have you found yourself doing for the sake of “going all in?
Going all-in is when you intentionally decide from your priorities what you’re going to do to get the results you desire.
Going all-in is staying committed to those actions and results! If the actions of your day aren’t getting you closer to the results you desire in your business and motherhood, I encourage you to take inventory!
Ask yourself, what can you do less of and still reach your results?
What actions can you do without, hire out, assign to a child, reconsider, or consider a huge bonus if you do them?
If you want to go all-in on your business and motherhood, but still feeling so new (even though it’s a while); I invite you to click here to schedule a free session with me.
Coaching will help you go all-in with purpose and a plan. We will discover the results you desire and make a plan for you to make that happen.
Ready to start approaching your motherhood and business with direction, a plan, and intention? I
I’m currently adding clients to my waitlist, so if you think you want on my list, schedule your free consolation to find out for sure just how done you are at feeling like the “new girl!”
Over the years I’ve learned many incredible lessons from dressing up.
Halloween, the season of dressing up, made it seem appropriate to share these lessons with you now!
My children are older and past the age of dressing up and trick-or-treating. I don’t know yet if I miss it! I kinda think that I don’t!
However, they aren’t past the age of throwing a party.
I will be hosting the High School Crowd on Friday and the Jr high goblins on Saturday. Lots of pizza, treats, games, messes, laughing, and scary movies will be happening!
Does anyone want to come over and help!?
We had just moved from West Virginia to Utah.
This picture was taken on my girls’ second day of school. The first day was the Friday before, and they went to school with wet hair because our power went out.
It’s their second day of school in this new state, and it’s spirit week.
There will always be an “excuse” that we can hold on to keep us from doing what we desire to do.
What excuses are you holding on to that’s keeping you from going after your desires?
Record snowfall and very low temps the day before Halloween canceled trick-or-treating this specific year. It wasn’t until November 4th that our state finally gave the OK to allow children to head out and collect all the candy.
We could have decided to bail because Halloween wasn’t held on the day that we expected…BUT we would have missed so much!
How many times have you said, it’s too late to __?
It’s never too late to get started!
If it’s a desire in your motherhood, in your business, or your personal goals, don’t let the expectations that it “should” happen by a specific time or that it’s “too late”, keep you from going after what you want.
Who really knows what qualifies as an “ugly sweater” anyway?
We appoint a judge for each ugly sweater party, and we allow them to crown the winner.
There are no other rules than their opinion.
Guess what?
That’s the same principle that I encourage you to apply to your motherhood and business as well!
You get to be the judge of what’s working and what’s “ugly” for YOU in both YOUR motherhood and business.
Appoint yourself to be your own judge!
You’re the only one qualified to decide if what you’re doing is working and getting you the desired results you want in all your life roles.
No one has the same results for their business and motherhood, so it WILL LOOK DIFFERENTLY for everyone!
If you’re the judge, on a scale of 1-10, how “ugly” is your business and or motherhood currently?
When my kids were little, they didn’t need a reason to dress up or to create something incredible. They got out the consume box whenever they wanted. They didn’t wait for a “reason” such as Halloween or Spirit Week.
On this snow day, they created an adorable play of an old couple that was reminiscing about their wedding day.
The grandpa asked the grandma, “Why did you marry me?’ Replied, “Because I wanted to”
Because you want to is a good enough reason to go after something you desire.
Finding the why, it’s all the rage and the thing business coaches hone in on a lot! I agree, the WHY is essential!
However, I also think because you want to is a significant enough reason as long as it motivates you to get the result you desire!
If it’s a desire or a passion, don’t be afraid to speak up and share it with others.
That desire was put inside of you for your reason.
Bonus lesson… keep it simple.
This costume, Tape Face, was a massive hit with my students. The best part, it took about 10 minutes to create, and I didn’t have to buy a single thing.
We often complicate our motherhood and business, making it more challenging than it has to be.
The next time you’re trying to solve a problem, ask yourself, “how can I make it simple?”
When most 9-year-olds were dreaming of dressing up as princesses, the latest fashion doll, or a bride, my cute 9-year-old wanted to be a police officer.
She didn’t care what others were doing or what was “typical” of girls her age.
She did what made her happy!
My Queen of Hearts was cast in the local play during this time.
She was cast so perfectly!!
As she as on that stage, being the VERY BEST sarcastic and demanding Queen of Hearts I had ever seen, I whispered to my husband,
“they nailed this casting role; it’s like she’s not even acting!”
She was confident enough in herself to give this role all her sass!! And she had a lot!
Be you, even if it’s not “typical” business practice or what “all the other moms” are doing.
Be confident in your role as the CEO of both your motherhood and business.