Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager

4 Personal Breakthroughs That Led to My Best Business Quarter

April 11, 2022 Heather Sager Episode 144
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
4 Personal Breakthroughs That Led to My Best Business Quarter
Show Notes Transcript

In this final episode of our 3 part series I'm sharing my personal habits for maintaining high energy and mental resilience so I can show up in my online business and attract clients.

I just wrapped a 75 day mental toughness challenge and I’m sharing with you what motivated me to complete one of the most intense challenges on the internet— 75 Hard, TWICE.

For 75 days I worked out 2x a day for 45 minutes each, (one of which was outdoors regardless of weather), drank 1 gallon of water, read at least 10 pages from a non-fiction book, took a daily progress photo, ate super clean (with no cheats, no dairy and no alcohol)…

All while having my highest podcast download month, signed my largest 1:1 client contract, spoke on my first live stage of the year, and had the biggest ever launch for my program.

I believe that your energy, emotions and attitude impact how you show up in your business. And as a personal brand using your voice on live and virtual stages, you must have strategies in place to show up at your best— not leave it to chance.

So tune in to hear my top 4 insights from my experience (some may surprise you) and get ready to be inspired to elevate your life + business.


 EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

➡️ https://heathersager.com/episode144/

🔗 Grab the latest FREE resources: https://heathersager.com/start

🔗 Browse all episode shownotes: https://heathersager.com/blog

👋 CONNECT WITH HEATHER:

Work with Heather: https://www.heathersager.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager

If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.

Well, hey friends, welcome back to another episode. Today we are freaking celebrating because at the time that this episode airs, I have completed the most insane challenge ever for the second time. And I'm here today to tell you all about it not out of encouragement for you to do the crazy thing that I did, but to share with you the lessons that I learned by spending 75 days of being very intentional with my time, choosing to do things the hard way in an effort to build mental toughness. I'm going to tell you what I learned, what I'm taking forward, and most importantly, how this could help you reach your next level in life and business. So if you're new around here, you might not know what I'm talking about. But if you listened to the show before you'll know that I, last year, and right after my birthday was actually March of 2021 had survived a year of the crazy pandemic.


Oh I laugh because it was so painful for many of us who had children at home who think for me, I definitely snacked a lot. I manage my stress in unhealthy ways. I found myself becoming a fan of Boxed Wine. I know I used to knock it. I was totally judgy around the box wine and then I was hashtag box Rosae all day live. I just was not feeling so great. So cut to it, March 22 2021, I took on a challenge that was pretty freakin cuckoo pants. I had seen, the 75 Hard challenge is what I'm talking about. I'd seen the challenge. I saw people post about it on Instagram previously. And when I saw it, I said oh my goodness! These people are like in frickin tense, intense. And I was like, good for them. But oh me, oh my, oh no frickin way. 


So real quick, let me just tell you about the challenge. And that again, this is not an episode about the challenge. This is an episode wrapping up our three part series around health and developing habits and awareness for how we can better show up in our lives and businesses. The last two weeks, if you missed it go back, I had two amazing guests come on where we talked about the power of sleep and brain fog and really showing up in the best way, especially when we're speaking to our audiences and growing these online businesses. So go back, two episodes and listen to my interview with Tanessa where we talked about the power of sleep, and last week we talked to Renea all about understanding ladies, how our bodies work but more specifically how our energy changes throughout the month and how that actually becomes a tool for us in planning out our businesses and our visibility experiences, so I wanted to bring those guests in to talk about health in a different way. 


And this week, I'm gonna pull the curtain back around some of my specific habits around how I show up with a good attitude even when life is going crazy pants, how I have the energy to continue to show up on stages to talk like I talk, to speak like I speak, to show up in the way that I do and do it without that nagging constant voice telling me that I'm not good enough or second guessing everything or tearing myself apart. I have developed a very healthy mindset and a very healthy body, and this episode isn't to tell you what to do or not to do. But if you've been feeling like you're sluggish or you've been not feeling so great about yourself whether it's your body or your thinking, have you just been hungry for something different? My intention with this episode is to share with you some realness about what I've been going through, what my journey has been like and if something resonates with you, hopefully it sparks an interest to you to take ownership and do something. So that's it, that's the agenda if you're looking for a business podcast around the tips for speaking I got a ton of those so maybe scroll to a different episode but if you're hungry for unlocking a little bit more spark in your life and feeling like you are building something amazing and really making traction and feeling great about yourself, well then this episode, my friend is for you. 


So cut to it, last year, 75 Hard challenge let me just clarify what it is, for 75 days, this episode was designed by a dude named Andy Frisella. He's the CEO of a nutrition company. I'll be point blank with you. I'm not a huge fan. I mean, he's great. He's got something awesome. I really appreciate his challenge but he's just not somebody that I follow a ton online. But I have mad respect to this challenge he created and it's this idea around how do we build mental toughness. Now he created the challenge based around I think it was David Goggins, who was a former Navy SEAL. I read his book last year, super great. But he ran a crap ton of marathons in a very short amount of time and Andy was like, dude, how'd you do it? And the guy was like, look, it really wasn't physical. It was really about mental toughness. I mean, we get in our brains, we talk ourselves out of things. Like think about when you're working out or you're doing something challenging. We talk ourselves out of going with going further, we've done enough, this is good enough. It's just fine, or we excused away and come up with reasons for why we just couldn't possibly do that thing. Our schedule is way too busy, oh, I need to sleep. Like sleeps most important, I got to sleep in today. So I told us we had to sleep, so I got to sleep and I gotta skip my workout. We excuse away. We logically protect ourselves from being uncomfortable. 


But the thing is to achieve anything great in life, to achieve great things in business, to achieve great things in health. It requires us to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. But if we know that our brain is going to stop us from that it's going to protect us, we have to learn how to work through it. So one of the things that I was struggling with in the pandemic as in probably many of you, I was really struggling with making better choices to be consistent with my habits when schedules were off. Kids were, I mean, all over the place, trying to figure out Zoom school and preschool and school happening, to school not happening. Do we have childcare? Do we don't have childcare? Oh my gosh, I'm running a frickin business. Oh, it was a lot, right? And I think like many women and parents or just anyone through the pandemic, we started sacrificing thing around ourselves, our own health habits, our own free time, our own everything just to figure out how to keep moving. 


But a year into the pandemic, I had to ask myself the question around, okay, like, at some point, I gotta move on and figure out a new normal and that shifted for me in a lot of ways. I went through season of pandemic where I got the Peloton app back right at the beginning where they gave it like a 90 day trial or something crazy. I got on my cheap Amazon bike that we had at home and I did the Peloton and I remember very clearly in the summer of 2020 on my bike, I just needed, Mama needs 30 minutes like shut my door. I need 30 minutes and I tuned in for a Kendall mental health day ride.It was the first one she did, spring or summer of 2020. And I remember just I needed a moment and I realized that when I started crying in the middle of a ride and I just needed to feel all the things and that was the first clue of oh, maybe I need a moment for myself.


Moving into January, February, March of 2021. I was trying to figure out the new normal my business. My kiddo was almost back to a pseudo in person school and I need to do something and on my birthday of 2021 I felt like absolute crap. Literally, I mean, I didn't literally feel like crap. I physically felt like crap. I had been eating a lot. I had been really taken liberties with sweets and snacking. I love, I love snack foods. I love kids' snack foods. I love sugar and sweets and I was really going to town and one of my really dear friends who lives in New York. She did the sweetest thing. She ordered from that company, Crumbl, which are huge ass cookies that are so delicious. She ordered a box of those and had to deliver to my house for my birthday and I ate almost the entire box in the span of a week. I give a little bit to my kids here and there but I didn't want them to eat them because I ate them. I frickin hate it and I felt terrible. I was waking up every day with a headache. I was feeling sluggish all while showing up for my business and still continuing to do this important work, recording the podcast. I was functioning. I felt good but I physically felt terrible. And I'd gained weight but honestly I wasn't really worried about that so much as how I felt. 


I felt like I had released control and my power in any capacity just to whatever was happening in the world. It was just a mode of survival and I reached a break where I no longer wanted to be just in survival mode. I wanted to feel good every day when I woke up. I wanted to feel the vibrancy. I wanted to, I wanted to walk the talk. And I say that because I look back a year ago, my podcast episodes were fire. They were all real great. I meant and believed everything that I was saying, and I knew that in order for me to do the work that I know I'm here to do, I needed to feel at my best. I needed to be at my best. And for me, my habits and my health are a big piece of that. I know if I'm being real honest with myself, when I am active, when I am eating well, when I physically feel well, I show up better, I have a better outlook on everything. There's an impact, a rippling effect for when I feel great versus there is an opposite effect that when I'm not feeling so great about my body or myself, or I'm physically not feeling well, there is a negative vortex that happens in other ways. Business becomes becoming harder. I start really questioning whether or not things are working. Everything just has more of a negative sphere. 


So personally, for me, my energy and the ripple effect when I focus on healthy habits and choices, that means eating food that makes me feel good. It means moving my body in a way where I'm breaking a sweat every day and that I am flexible and not sore all the time. These were things that were important to me. So fast forward March, it was actually March 20th 2021, I'm scrolling through Instagram and I saw my friend, Frannie, post that she had just completed this crazy 75 Hard challenge. And I'm like, holy crap. Frannie did it. And if you are new to the show, I actually did a conversation with Frannie. She and I talked about our experiences with 75 Hard and I'll link to that episode in the show notes so we talked about it. Because on that day of March 20th 2021, I saw that she did it and I was like, alright. Frannie can do it. I could totally do this. So I looked it up. I listen to one podcast episode about it, figured out all the details. I remember I was in the passenger seat of my car with my husband driving. We had to drive up to a small town about an hour and a half away from where we are to go pick up my kids. They spent the weekend with my sister on our farm. And I told him, I said, look, I'm going to start this crazy thing on Monday and I'm gonna need your support. It means that I'm had to plan out my meals. I'm gonna have to work out twice a day which means I'm gonna need your help, like covering the kids. And it's going to be some work but I really needed this for myself. And my husband who was super healthy, super into fitness, super into being very disciplined about his food. He of course was like, alright, babe. I'm here to support you like, what do you need? What do you need? 


So here's what it is. These are the tasks. Every single day for 75 days, you workout twice, 45 minutes for each workout. They have to be separated by at least a few hours. You can't do it back to back and one of them has to be outside no matter what. One outdoor workout, one indoor workout each 45 minutes every single day for 75 days. On top of that every single day for 75 days, you take a progress photo, it could be in a swimsuit, it can be your underwear, it'd be naked. I don;t freaking care but you got to take a progress photo every single day. And number four, you read 10 pages from a personal development style nonfiction book, something focused on self betterment. Number five, you drink a gallon of water a day. Yes, 128 ounces of plain water, no extra fluff, no spritzy whatever fancy like actual water every single day. Number I think seven you follow a diet. 


Now this one I'm going to clarify because a lot of people make this into some kind of meal plan program. The instructions are you follow a diet. You choose what you're going to do for 75 days and you stick to it. And then last one, there's no cheat meals. There's no cheat meals, alcohol, desserts, sweets, that kind of stuff. There's no like saying that, oh, the cheese pizza fits my macros. No, the whole point is that you're making healthy, intentional decisions. So this sounds a little crazy town and you're like what the heck! Heather, why, why, why why? But for me, it wasn't about all of those individual things. And I knew that if I focused on those things, that I would feel better. I knew that if I was working out twice a day, if I was eating healthy making, like healthy decisions, of course, I would lose a little weight I would firm up. I would be a lot more flexible and not in pain, everything like it would all into the result I wanted but it wasn't really about that. I wanted to, here's the thing. I wanted to be able to keep the promises I set for myself. I don't know about you, but I had a really bad tendency of I have to workout this week and then get busy on calls or how to do something with the kids and I would easily dismiss it and be like I'll start next week or I'll start tomorrow. I broke promises to myself constantly and I was sick of it. I was sick of the results that I was getting for that lack of integrity. So I needed a huge kick in the pants in a big way. Clearly, I need to do something about it. So on, I planned it all out on March 21 and I started that Monday. I listen to the podcast for the first time on a Saturday. Sunday, I sat down and said, what the heck is this about? I came up with a plan and I started on Monday, March 22. And the first time I went through 75 Hard I completed it and I felt on top of the frickin world and it was so good and I did that episode with Frannie that you can listen to all all through it. So the big question is Heather, so what do you mean? You just said, you finish it again? Why did you do it again?


Here's the thing. After I did it last time, I got my second vaccine shot. I got really sick after and then I went on vacation. And after vacation, we came back. It was August. It was summer and it was nice outside. And then it became fall and then we became busy with school. And then oh my gosh, it was the holidays. And the holidays like oh man, so many memories there. Things slowly, some of the habits stuck, but it was easier to excuse away some of those little habits like reading every single day 10 pages no matter what. Drinking all the frickin water, no matter what. The workouts, I don't need to do two of those a day. And trust me, I don't do anything crazy town. But it just became easier to bring back those excuses. So come Christmas this year, I knew I'm like, I'm gonna get back into it. And I made the decision, okay, well, let's just do it again. Let's do it again. So I started it after Christmas on December 27 and I was going strong. I was two weeks in and on day 15 my little one caught the virus at daycare and wiped out our entire family. We were down and I went down real hard. I was down for probably two weeks in total, which totally wiped it out and I made the commitment to get back into it so I restarted it. Obviously, I just finished it. 


And here's what I wanted to tell you with all of this. There are five, actually I was going to focus on four. There are four main things that I wanted to share with you today. And it isn't about the, Heather, but what did you read? What was your workout plan? What was your meal plan? I don't, but those things are important. There's four really, really important life lessons that I have, I knew, but I live these last 75 days. The time I'm recording this is Day 73. I will finish in two days so I'm not done yet. But when you listen to this, I will be done. And I will be, I will have had a slice of birthday cake because Levi turns four on Saturday and we'll save the cake and I'll eat it on Sunday. But there are four big things that are on my heart that I need you to hear. And someone somewhere needs to hear this message, and again, it's not about what I ate or any of those other details. But there's four really, really important things that, to me were way more powerful than any physical transformations or even have the mental toughness to get like there's we got to have this conversation. 


So if you are feeling this pull of like, I'm craving something, something in my life, something in my something to help me really just get in the frickin game, the kick in the pants to get moving. I want you to hear this. So here are the four big insights I had for my second pass at 75 Hard. Number one. Sometimes the hard path is actually the easy path, and said differently, it's actually sometimes the easy path is actually the hard path. When I did 75 Hard the first time, I learned pretty quickly that there's no way I could go all balls out with two big workouts every single day. That was just not smart. So I adopted something last time which was my outdoor workout was a daily walk. And that daily walk was kind of a workout and a nice brisk pace in the morning. And it was wonderful, but it felt a little bit at first like I was cheating, like walking can be a workout. But I started adopting the mindset that sometimes the quote-unquote easier way is the harder way. Because our brains tell us that oh, I have to be sweating. Oh, it should be hard. It should be physical. But actually the smarter way is to understand that our bodies actually need different things stretching. We need foam rolling, we need strength training, we need a physical movement. So for me, I'm been always the kind of person that felt like workouts needed to be super intense and sweaty. I really learned that first pass of that walking give myself grace with walking and sometimes adding yoga at least once a week in my workout program. That felt much harder for me because I was like, oh, but it was actually what I needed. So the quote-unquote easy path of the yoga and walking was actually the harder, that was my hard, that was my 75 hard because it went against my inner narrative. 


So into this round my second round of 75 Hard I adopted that, but it went even further. So last summer, if you listen to the show, I've talked about this multiple times, at the end of my 75 Hard journey, I went down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a couple things that were happening with my body. And I won't get into the specific story because it's a little TMI. But I discovered that I had dialysis recti, which is a separation of the apps which happens to a lot of women when they have babies, their bellies get bigger, their abs separate. Well, some of us, our abs don't actually go back together. But for a lot of people, they don't even realize it. Like me three plus years postpartum, I had an a separation, the distance of five fingers. So hold your hand up right now and look at your fingers that will add one more finger. That's how spread apart that was the distance between my abdominals. And I had been living that way for more than three years. And I had been physically working out pretty intensely at that point, for quite a while when I discovered that I had that. So it means that I had to do rehabilitation therapy to fix that situation. And I will tell you that I tried it a little bit last summer, and I was so annoyed by the dumb exercises of breathing and trying to figure out how to hold up your pelvic floor while breathing diaphragmatic breaths and blah blah I hated it and so I ditched it. I was like, man, I'll do it later. 


So when I started out this year thinking okay, 75 Hard journey, my 75 Hard was actually doing the quote unquote, easy thing that was the hard for me. So here's the thing for the last 75 days, I actually just finished this program, what I'm about to tell you last week, but I said I'm going to finish the 90 Day AB rehab, which was a mixture of diaphragmatic breathing, there were ab exercises, there were strength training exercises, there was cardio all mix within over 12 weeks, but my commitment was I'm going to finish this damn program. So I started that program on December 27 then I just actually finished it last Friday. So for me, this was the mantra. Last time I learned that the walking was a really positive beneficial thing for me as way to start my day. This round, I realize that holy crap that quote unquote easier workout, oh, the transformation. And let me just give you this peace, not only have my abs pretty much closed, that little like lower belly pooch situation ladies who have had kids, you know what I'm talking about, that has gone in. I have an almost entirely flat stomach now which I have not had that in well since I had my very first baby seven years ago. But beyond that, I have had back and hip pain for seven years since the birth of my first child. I've had hip pain. My hip is always constantly off that I have to go to the chiropractor all the time. And I always chalked that up to oh, it's carrying the baby on your hip. Well, no, what was happening was my core was so weak, that I was having back pain, I was having hip pain, I was having knee pain, I was even having an ankle pain. When I walked I had a tendency to roll my ankles, all of that stability came from a lack of stability in my core. And since I have healed all of those things, it has been a game changer in physically how I feel. The soreness, the hip pain. I went to my chiropractor last week, and she's like, holy crap, your hips are in place like this is magic. 


So for me, lesson number one is that sometimes the lesson we need to learn is to actually slow down for a bit and do the quote unquote basic foundational thing that we think we're past. That's actually the thing we need to work on. I think about that in business too. How many business owners, like we just need to like, hold on for a moment, let's get our house in order, and actually do the thunder fundamental foundational things that will have the biggest impact, but they don't feel sexy because we wanted to the shiny objects, like do the reels or I don't know whatever else comes to mind. But if this is resonating with you, if there's something that you have the same tendency that you think you have to do all the hard exertion. What if you actually chose the quote unquote easier option? It's harder because mentally you don't want to do that. But what if that's exactly what you need? That was my big aha takeaway that I'm gonna take moving forward is how can I bring more ease into my life to get bigger results?


Number two, this one was really, really, really important and it was the you must pre decide what you're going to do. You need to pre deciding to remove the decision making process from moments where you're going to make bad decisions. Like this is true for business, productivity during the day. But it was especially important for me as I planned my 75 Hard. So what this meant for me is having the non negotiable of the I will do these things every single day. It is not a matter of if I'm going to do that. It's a matter of when. So for example, if you follow me on social, you saw me post about this within the last couple weeks. For the first time, this round  of 75 Hard. I traveled on airplanes and at hotels. I had two trips to California back to back and they were very long days. Just because I'm traveling, just because I have an early flight, just because I have a 10 hour mastermind day does not mean that these things can't happen. So it's a non negotiable. The question is not if, oh, am I going to be able to work out? No, it's when am I going to work out? Having that pre decided I do not eat birthday cake. I do not eat Easter candy. I do not drink alcohol. I do not like, you already know like, I workout twice a day. I go on a walk every single day. Having that pre decided it removed any kind of negotiation with myself or my schedule or anyone else.


So a big lesson I learned with this is I have to pre decide what are my like, draw the line yeses and noes in life. Either I drink alcohol or I don't. Either I, maybe that's a really weird one to think about. But either I work out or I don't. Either I, like in this situation it was, my mind is blinking here a little bit. You can see me talk and be thinking here in real time. But just trying to think of, and I'm still working through okay, how is this gonna apply, right? If this program is over, I'm not gonna have these absolutes. I'm gonna have a glass of wine. Not every night, but I am going to have it. Am I going to work out every single day moving forward? No. But I am going to be moving my body seven days a week, every single day. Do it twice a day? No, but I will be working out every day and some days that might be a walk. 


I think the lesson through here is the we don't make the best decisions. Like think about when you go to the grocery store when you're hungry, do you buy the best food? Like do you make smart choices or I make terrible decisions like all of a sudden I come home with that little can of Vienna sausages, for some reason, because they were doing samples of them. I don't even like those things but I bought them because I was hungry. We make stupid choices when we are hungry. We're not in the best choices when we're short on time or feeling tired or whatever other feeling comes in. We need to predetermine what our non negotiables are. And I would argue that that list should not be very long because then you kind of suck the joy out of life. But I know that's one of the things I'll be doing is determining what are my non negotiables. Can I put some parameters in place for me to free me up from making those choices in the moment and allowing me to make the smart decisions now that I know will propel me in life helped me with my health, but it won't give me that room for negotiation. That doesn't mean I'm gonna be controlling all those things. I'm gonna eat desert, I'm gonna drink alcohol, I'm gonna I'm gonna build a life that I really enjoy without being restrictive. However, I also still want to maintain strong health. And I know the things that impact that and not so I need to make sure that I'm aware of that. So my takeaway from that is, we have to determine what are our predetermined boundaries or predetermined non negotiables, whatever that looks like for you. I think we all have them. But setting that up, and even if, just side note, even if that's short increments. So for me, I love a frickin challenge. Like, there's nothing wrong with me for saying that I wanted to jump in this challenge to this challenge. Like I like challenges. Give me the, I want to do this for 30 days, I'm gonna start setting challenges for myself, the 30 day meditation challenge, doing a 30 day journaling challenge. I like that. That works for me. It doesn't work for everyone. But if you're the kind of person who thrives on challenges, that's cool. Use that to your advantage, start setting your own.


Number three, this goes hand in hand with what we just talked about but when you schedule it, you make it work. So your schedule will mold around your priorities. I think previous to 75 Hard even though I know this wasn't true. I really subscribe to the belief that look, I have a shit ton of things on my calendar. I have the school drop off, I have the whatever drive to daycare, I have these meetings on my schedule, I gotta record these podcasts, I have the email. We have all of these things on our list. And we look at that and then we say how do we fill in the other things around it? How do we where are we going to work out? Where are we going to do this? We're like, oh, I can't eat lunch today. It's gonna be at my desk. I can't even run downstairs and get a glass of water. We come up with all the reasons for like, Oh, where are we going to sneak it in? It doesn't work that way. And I know you can roll your eyes with me because I rolled my eyes at people who said this before but you have to schedule for the things that matter first. You have to schedule the things that matter first. And for me, what that has looked like is I know, I need to get in my morning walk before the kids wake up. I know that has to happen. Otherwise, the days that it doesn't happen, I do have a backup plan because it doesn't happen every single day. But I know that if I don't work out or if I don't do my morning walk before the kids wake up, the domino effect of that is going to lead to not the best experience and I would like to be a happy camper when my kids wake up. It just helps them start the day better. 


So what that means working backwards is I need to be up between 5 to 5:15. I know I hit out that door between 5:15 and 5:30. I know 45 minutes is going to put me home between 6 and 6:15 which gives me 45 minutes or so to drink my coffee, to stretch, to journal, to do my reading for the day. All before I wake my kids up at seven o'clock. Sometimes they wake up early and they crawl on my lap and they know mommy's reading time they can sit with me. But I'm not going to be talking with them or chatting with them or helping them with their breakfast or anything because mommy's in her reading time. My kids know that. They love it and they will bring their books up and join me. 


What I'm saying is the I know that that's my block for doing that. I also know that I got to do my afternoon workout. So I know I grabbed the kids from school or the bus stop whatever day it is, a little bit different schedule each day, but I know that when they come home, I set them up in the playroom to play Legos or some days. I'm like, dude, watch your shows. Cool, get on the screen. I don't care because mommy is got to do her afternoon workout. There's no excuse there. But I know I have a window that if I don't get my workout in the window, there's like a red light, green light, yellow light system. I said that kind of mixed up but you follow me. In my head I know, if I haven't started getting on my workout shoes by a certain time, I'm approaching the yellow light mode. And if I'm constantly in the yellow light mode of like, it's going to create stress and tension around dinnertime and bedtime and all of that. If I'm constantly in the yellow mode or the red mode, it's not going to feel good or I'm gonna start getting resentful and I'm going to be unhappy mama and the whole house is unhappy. 


So for me is I know I have this target time of when I'm gonna do my afternoon workout. I try to go for that every day. But I know 30 to 40% of the time, I'm going to be a little bit yellow. Some nights it has happened. It's in like the red where I've been doing my workout at 9pm. I don't love it. I don't want it to happen. But because it was already preset that it's happening. It'll happen. But just knowing that your ideal pictures, it's not going to green every single day but when you schedule those things, here's what happens. You actually start noticing that a lot of the other things that are filled up on your to do list are not actually that important. Give you a really tactical example of this. I don't post on social media every single day. I don't beat myself up when I do it. Sometimes I forget to post about my own podcast on social. When I remember I'll post it but I'm not like freaking out going I gotta have all the posts even my last launch. Great example of this. I had what I call the laziest launch ever, which really wasn't lazy, y'all if you experienced it in the Speaking Workshops, it was a three part live series showed up in a Facebook group. We had promotions and stuff going on. It converted at 30% which was incredible. But I think it was a lazy launch because I chose not to do things that I didn't have time for nor did I want to, like there was no sales page for the launch. There was no big webinar. There was not a ton of emails. I had all these things that I quote unquote should be doing but because of my time being filled with the other priorities of me, my health, my personal development, my family, my private clients and running my program that took up the time and then there wasn't time left for those things. So we actually ended up asking ourselves like, what can we let go of when we no longer had the capacity and you'll notice that a lot of those things that felt important, actually, nobody's gonna die if they don't happen and you'll be surprised that not a lot of any impact will happen. So going back to it pre deciding and then scheduling the important things first, and then back end and to be able to release the things that really are not that important.


Lesson number four, there is always a next level. There's always a next level which is both exciting and also it can feel a little and what I mean by this when we think about business right there's always that next thing we got to learn, oh now that I've mastered email marketing, now I got to figure out evergreen funnels or now that I figured out just got going on Instagram, now I got to figure out real like it's always this next thing which can feel like crap. I have so much further to go. Yeah, crap like how awesome you've so much further to go. Where you are in your life right now? If you look ahead you have, there's so much more, so much more life to live and the life is precious and we never know how much time we have. But can't like, we have to start thinking about growth is constant evolution. So of course, there's always a next level. 


We can use that as a question of curiosity to start thinking about, like, oh, what's my next level? So, health, your habits, your how you approach your productivity, your relationships, any of these things in your life that you're trying to improve, it's not an area that you're going to check the box and master where it's the oop, I did a challenge, I'm good here. No, it's a constant thing. An example of this, look, I went balls out last spring. I did 75 Hard and then I had. I did it again because I had lost some traction. There's always a next level. Sometimes that next level is the we got to catch back up the ground that we lost. We back slid a little bit which is okay. It is going to happen. But sometimes that next level is really leaning in and saying how am I really going to refine this? I know for me that was really about that slowing down. I had to heal my core. And now I'm asking different questions around. Okay, hold on, now that I have my core together. I wonder, could I have a six pack? Oh, no. Like, why am I, I don't know. I just think that would be cool. Like mom of two kids with a six pack, why wouldn't I try that? I don't know why that's exciting for me. 


There's always a next level. You're gonna laugh at this specific goal. I'm now setting goals around my fitness. Okay, I'm super tall. When we meet in person I have very, very long legs. I'm 5'10. I have really long arms and with my long arms, it's really hard to do a push up. Like I don't think I've ever done a real push up in my entire life. My arm is like the size of like the, pretend like you're holding a pop can like a soda can in your hand that that around this. My arm is like that size all the way up and down. Like it's like a twig. I have very scrawny, very long arms. The idea of going all the way down to the floor and then back up feels impossible. I have a goal to do 10 full real push ups on my toes which for some of you might be like, okay, that's dumb, or she can't do a push up, or I can never do that, wherever you are with that. That's one of the things that's exciting to me, like I want to learn to do, not learn. I want to build the strength to do 10 push Ups. That's on my goal list.


I'm sharing these silly things with you because these are things that I'm thinking about, of what's the next evolution for me in certain areas. I'm exploring things with my food. Last year, I learned a lot more about understanding fiber and the correlation between fiber and plant based eating with your microbiome in your gut. Yep, I went real geeky and read a book around that. I'm starting to get more curious and understanding my digestive tract and how foods impact things and in exploring with the plant based versus vegan versus, I mean, not. All these things I'm looking at. I'm playing with and exploring different things and trying to better learn how my body functions, how I thrive, what makes me feel good, what makes me not. I'm being very curious. 


There's always a next level for learning. And what I'm doing is instead of pouring everything in my brain into online marketing, I am allowing my business to flourish and breathe by learning some of those things, really honing in and being intentional with my time and my business. But I am adding learning around my health and my body and optimizing my habits and my sleep and exploring things like last week, understanding how my cycle impacts while everyone around me and then everything within me. I'm asking these questions because I'm curious. I'm a learner and if I'm not careful, I'm going to pour all of that attention into my business. And pretty quickly, all of my identity and my life and everything is tied up to my business success, and you and I both know that it's not healthy. But for me being able to work on my personal development, my health, my wellness, my relationships with my kids, my husband, my friends, my family, those are areas in my life I'm pouring into. So for me, those were some of the lessons that I learned. I'm also very, very proud of my progress. I'm very proud of being able to heal my core. I've also healed some of the digestive issues that I've been having, that hip pain. It has a lot of things here and what's funny is when you look on the scale, I am the exact same weight now as I was when I started the program in January, which for a second I was like oh, but let me tell you my booty is looking real nice. My stomach is looking great and all that's wonderful from the physical sense, but I feel, not only great physically, I feel energetic, I feel strong. I don't have issues with being sluggish throughout the day except for that one night when I stayed up way too late binge watching Bridgerton a couple like last week. But I feel good, I feel freaking good every single day but beyond that I feel empowered. Because for the first time in my life in the last 12 months, these last 12 months, first time in my life, I'm starting to trust myself and starting to ask better questions, not questions about whether or not I fit in pants or about a workout or surface level things. I'm actually asking questions from the inside around how I feel, how I want to feel, how different things impact me, exploring different meal plans, different food options, different ways of being all related to coming back to how I want to feel and how I want to show up in my life. And that's the takeaway that I want to give to you of, I don't care what challenge you do whether or not you do a challenge, but I want you, if you are reaching for more in your life, you're asking yourself questions. Sometimes we can be inspired from someone else. But at the end of the day, we have to take that inspiration and put it within ourselves and say, okay, what am I going to do about it? What am I going to take ownership on in my journey because it is my journey and nobody else can walk it for me. That's the message I want to leave you with today. 


If you think about wherever you're at in your health journey, in your mental health journey, wherever you're at, get help, if you need it. Find someone to talk to if you need it, start journaling and asking yourself questions but start saying what is my next level look like for me and what lessons might I need to learn to reach my next level? So here I am signing off. Second round to 75 Hard, what am I keeping? I'm keeping a lot of it. I'm going to keep the box. I'm gonna keep progressing with workouts. I'm definitely going to be still be doing strength training and running and all of those things. I'm still going to be keeping the water. I'm definitely keeping the reading. I don't think I'll be taking daily photo. And I will be I'll be eating in ways that are going to feel good for me. Hmm, I definitely eat a slice of cake on Sunday. This isn't about restrictive. It's about empowerment of me really understanding myself and creating habits that allow me to enjoy life and feel great along the way. All right. I hope you found this episode today. insightful, empowering, inspirational, whatever. I hope I met you at a place where something that I said resonated with you and if anything, it was an entertaining insight around why this crazy chick is doing these challenges. And if you've been following me long on Instagram, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your kind messages, all of your encouragement. I love reading every single one. I appreciate you being here so much and I am excited to dive back into some business content over the next few weeks. So stay tuned and I'll see you in the next episode.