The 10 Steps to Crushing 2018

– Hey everyone. What is going on? We are just getting started here. Ah. Feels good today, feels good today. Let’s make sure that everyone is jumping in. Get myself situated. Get myself situated.

 

Hello, hello. All right, so as you’re joining us today, this morning, this afternoon, this evening, wherever you are in the world, we love to hear where you are in the world. So do me a favor. Comment below with where you’re watching from, and we love to hear about all the amazing places that you are fans are tuning in. Do you even tune in on Facebook Live?

 

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We did one of these earlier in the month and everyone had a lot of value and a lot of takeaways to get out of this. And we’re gonna cover 10 steps, and hopefully you can get value out of all the steps. But my mission for you in this webinar is to at least get one takeaway from this and implement on it. So, that is, that is my intention for you. All right, we got about 100 people in and climbing. I don’t wanna wait, spend too much time on the intro, ’cause we do have a lot to cover. But if you’re just joining us, let us know where you’re calling in from.

 

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Great, so, we’re really excited with this. I got the whole BestSelf Co team on standby they’re watching right now. We got a private chat co to make sure that everything runs smoothly. Philadelphia. I’m not far from you. I’m about an hour away. Jody, Grand Rapids, Kissimmee. Myrtle Beach, Jason Merritt, I know you. Very nice. Houston. Perfect, perfect, all right. All right, everyone, let’s dive into this.

 

So what we wanna discuss today is, okay, how do we take that we’ve learned in 2017, reflect on it, fine tune it, tweak it, and then set ourselves up for success in 2018. And there is a process to deconstructing it so one it’s not so overwhelming, two, so your New Year’s resolutions don’t fall flat on our face, and three, you set yourself up to win and succeed in 2018. So halfway through the year doesn’t get by and it’s the summer and you’re like oh wait, what was I supposed to do this year?

 

Oh well, I forget, it doesn’t matter, and I’m already halfway through. So, what we wanna do is be intentional with what we’re working on in 2018 and make sure that we’re spending our time wisely on the things that are important, on the things that matter and yeah, the first step, so this is a 10-step process.

I got the BestSelf Co team going to be chiming in, pinning posts, please interact with everyone in the chat. If you know someone would benefit from this, tag them below, get them to watch this while we’re doing it live. It’s so much better live than it will be displayed afterwards, so after the fact. And this is being recorded so if you do miss something or if you have to jump off you can always come back and watch it and break it down step by step for yourself.

 

All right, so step one is reflecting. So what we wanna do is reflect on 2017. And the way that we like to reflect at BestSelf Co is we don’t wanna just sit and reflect and look back, we want to put some purpose behind it, we want to feel like okay, if we sit down and we’re going to reflect, we’re not just gonna do it to feel good or think about all the great stuff that happened, we need to learn from the past what went well, what didn’t go so well, what made us happy, what made us sad, and once we figure that out and deconstruct it, now we know how to move going forward. But before we go forward, let’s talk about how we break down and reflect on 2017.

 

So in 2017, the best way to do this is to get a sheet of paper, draw three lines down it, now you have four columns, and on the top of those columns, write successes, failures, happiness, sad. And what you’ll do is you’ll go through, start at the beginning, January 1st of 2017, go through your global calendar, or even better, if you’ve been using a SELF Journal, go through page by page in your SELF Journal and write down, okay, what did I do this day that was a win? What was the success? If you did something great that day or in January or February or March in 2017, write down the successes. Oh, you know what, I landed this big client. That was a huge milestone in 2017 for me. Great, let’s do more of that is 2018. Maybe you developed new relationships, maybe you traveled, maybe you celebrated something. Whatever it may be, something that was successful to whatever it is that you’re working on.

 

In the next column, you want to write down the failures. And what we’re going to do is figure out what didn’t go so well, so we don’t repeat the same thing over again in 2018. ‘Cause a lot of times what happens is, you know, we do these things and we think we’re helping ourselves but really, one, they’re just distractions, two, it may be a shiny object, meaning, oh, I’m doing this thing and it’s working out really well, but you know, this thing over here everyone else is doing so let me jump on that bandwagon, even though it doesn’t really work out well, and you don’t get any results from it. So stay on course, don’t do this shiny object, jumping back and forth. And what you’ll see is when you write down what didn’t go so well in 2017, now you know what to avoid and what that path looks like in advance. So when you’re about to implement that new diet, maybe it isn’t the juice cleanse that you did for 24 days and completely failed at it. Maybe you just take a more, a different approach in 2018 to get your health on track.

 

So the next column would be happiness. So what brought you joy, what brought you happiness? What occurred in 2017 that you would love to have repeated in 2018? So you have to figure that out, figure out what worked well and what didn’t work so well, and what brought you joy.

 

And then, the last column is what brought me sadness or dissatisfaction? And when you figure that out, it’s like, oh, well, you know what, this relationship really was a drag. Let me not continue with this relationship in 2018, because I spend so much time and energy and just like negative juice on it. And you’ll be able everyone loves little Riley’s bark, and it’s inevitable.

 

Everyone from BestSelf works from home, so at least whenever we’re on calls, there’s always a dog barking. So whether it’s my dog, Cathryn’s dogs, Justin’s dogs, there’s always dogs happening. So, I just, I don’t even hear it anymore, really. So now that we have broken down 2017 into what works, what went well, excuse me what went well, what didn’t go so well, what we enjoyed and what we didn’t enjoy, now we know, great, now I know to strip these two columns away and add more of, and add more of, hey Leslie, I’m in Jersey as well. Allison, thanks for loving the dog. And then add more of what’s happening in 2018. This puts us into step two. So that was step one, reflect on 2018.

 

Step two is visualize the life that you want. And what I mean by this is if everything were to go extremely well in your life, and you had everything that you want to achieve in your life, let’s future pace what it would look like, what it would feel like, what we would have, what we would experience, who we would be, who we would surround ourselves with, and don’t be confined to just 2018. Scale that out a little bit, three years, five years, 10 years, like who do you wanna be in 10 years and what do you want to experience and have in your life? And there’s a couple questions that you can ask yourself. What do I want to experience? Who do I want to be? What would I look like? So physique, health, mental state. Who I can surround myself with like what are the relationships that I have? And what I wanna experience? Those are all the questions that you can ask yourself. And what you’ll find is, is now that you’re putting yourself into the future of what you want to achieve in your life, in 2018, you can start planting the seeds together.

 

So, this is my favorite thing to do when out of all these steps, it’s step number two and it’s a visualizing the future. And really, really being creative and as big picture as possible. Because you’d be surprised how much you can achieve in such a short amount of time. So if you want to, and I really suggest shooting for the stars, even if you have no idea how to get there or what it takes to get there, really just go above and beyond.

 

If the world was just your canvas, and you could paint it any picture you want and create your reality, go for it, shoot for the stars, go big, and really put yourself and immerse yourself in this experience. What I want you to do is then write this down. Because once it’s in your head and it’s visualized, and you write it down on paper, now it becomes concrete. And now it’s like, okay, I’m as detailed as possible. So, here’s where I’m traveling to, and I’m with these people and here’s what I have, and here’s the house that I love or that I’m waking up in with my perfect spouse and whatever it may be, or growing my family, and just really enjoy it and feel what I’m gonna feel like if you had all that stuff already. And once you put it down on paper, then the rest is easy, because now we can just create a plan of attach to get there. And that’s what the rest of the steps are for.

 

So really, really just play with two. And don’t be so hard and think like, oh, well, how am I gonna get there? I have no idea what this looks like or I only can do this in, this is going to take so long and forever. You’d be surprised how quickly things can shape and take form once you put a some passion and feeling behind it.

 

So now, step number three. So could someone pin, I’m talking to the BestSelf Co team, because they’re all in here right now, so feel free to interact with them, give the BestSelf Co team some hearts, some thumbs up, because really without them, this webinar would not be happening. They’re the ones that do all the massive work on this. And in the next one, we’re setting up some software, so both Cathryn and I can be on this. So double thumbs up and double hearts for the entire BestSelf Co team. Ah, yeah, thank you.

 

So now that we have the visualization of our ideal future, a dream is only as good as the goals that you set to make those dreams a reality. So now that we have a dream, now we need to create a goal so we can break it down and make it very simple. And the way that we do this is through, through the smart goal setting system. And what we need to do is make things really concrete, so we need to put a timeline on them, on when we can hit that goal, how we can measure that goal, if we know we’re on track or not, and what action steps we would do to take that dream and make it a reality on a daily basis.

 

So here’s what I don’t want you to do. I don’t want you to write down goals like this, make more money. That’s not a goal. Another thing is like lose some weight. That’s not a goal. Because essentially with both of those, one, if you’ve lost one pound, you lost weight. If I gave you a quarter, and you stuck out your hand and I dropped a quarter in the palm of your hand, you just made more money. So, it’s time to get as specific as possible. If you want to lose weight, how much weight are we losing? Is it 20 pounds, is it 40 pounds? Is it a different health goal? I want to run a half marathon or do a triathlon or an Iron Man, what is it? And if it’s financial, how much do you want to save? How much do you want to make? Let’s quantify this.

 

Then we say, okay, by when? When are we gonna do this by? We put a date on it. So maybe your goal is to save $20,000 by the end of the year. Or your goal is to run a triathlon by whenever, it’s by the end of the year, 2018, right? So, we put these in place so we know, okay, if I have a goal, it’s specific, it’s measurable, it’s action-based, it’s realistic, and there’s a timeline to it. So we run it through this process to make sure that we know we’re on track to hit it. We can make adjustments as we go, and I hope that makes sense for you guys.

 

Thanks, so I’m gonna take this second to just read a couple of comments. Grace, we will post the highlights. We’ll post the highlights. Cool, cool. Thank you for the hearts, everyone. Great. Awesome.

 

So now it’s step three is like, okay, we have these goals. So just a recap. Figure out what went well in the past, figure out what you want in the future, create a goal so you know when to hit it, what it looks like when you hit that goal, put a timeline on it, so in this case 2018. How what we wanna do is figure out why.

 

So now we have these goals, and the fourth step is why do you want these goals in the first place? And this is the magic sauce, because what happens when you have a goal and it’s get my health back on track. Or lose weight by the end of 2018 and I wanna lose 40 pounds by the end of 2018. Or save $20,000 by the end of 2018, or $10,000 by the end of 2018. Why do you want these? Because what’s going to happen, and I’m gonna tell you what’s going to happen, and then I’m gonna bring it back and explain why it’s important.

 

So what’s gonna happen in 2018 is things are gonna come up that stand in your way to hit these goals. There are gonna be roadblocks, there are gonna be hurdles, there are going to be straight up walls, they’re going to derail you, they’re gonna throw you off course. It’s inevitable, it happens in everything that we’re trying to accomplish in life, whether it’s personal, whether it’s business, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s, whatever it may be, there’s always going to be something they are going to butt up against.

 

Some are small, some are huge, and a majority of them are out of our control, and it’s just inevitable, and that’s the way it is. Well, the thing that gets us through that wall, or around that roadblock, over that hurdle is the reason why we’re pushing toward something. Because if we don’t have the reason why we’re pushing toward something, it’s so easy to let those little speed bumps just make us give up.

 

So what we want to do here is say, okay, I wanna lose 20 pounds or 40 pounds by the end of 2018. Well, why do you want to lose 20 pounds? Because I wanna feel better, I wanna look better. I want to live a healthier lifestyle. I want to spend more time with my grandchildren, and that’s important to me, so therefore if I’m healthier in my lifestyle, and I get my health on track, I can guarantee, or at least hope to guarantee just a little bit more time with them in my life.

 

If I wanna save $20,000 by the end of 2018, well why? Is it just to have more money in the bank, or is it to purchase the house for your family to have a down payment on that home? Or is it to take your entire family on that one vacation you’ve been dreaming about for years? Like why do you want that goal? What is the purpose behind it? Because the goal of having $20,000 in the bank is not just to have $20,000 in the bank. There’s a reason why you want that.

 

And once you dig deep down into that reason, whoo, then any hurdle, any roadblock that comes up, you’re just gonna wanna bash right through it, because nothing’s gonna stand in your way when you have that why, that deep rooted reason why to get there. Does this make sense? I see people, I see people having to refresh this page, but it looks like it’s only a couple people. Cool. Sweet.

 

So now step five. So we went one through four. Can someone pin topic number four in this thread please? Hey, Marta, yes, you have. Cool. Great, so Georgina just pinned step four, so if you’re just watching, step four is define your why. Step five.

 

Step five is to plan your year. So now that we have the goals, and now that we have the reasons why, we need to break down this year. We need to break down the year of 2018. So I’m just making sure the team’s got everything they need. We need to break down 2018 into, into the big picture of everything that’s going to happen in 2018. So 2018 as a whole, you’re gonna have a whole bunch of stuff going on.

 

There’s going to be trips, there’s going to be vacations, there’s going to be birthdays, there’s going to be conferences, there’s going to be talking or speaking or engagements, or births or weddings or whatever it may be. There’s always something happening in the year that we know in advance. And when I was younger, I was like young 20s, I had a corporate job and at the corporate job they would come to me in the beginning of the year and say, hey Allen, what vacations and what trips do you have planned for 20 or for this year? We would like to mark it in the calendar now ahead of time so we can utilize your PTO time over the course of the year and so we make sure that people aren’t overlapping.

 

And I used to hate this process. I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing next week, how am I supposed to tell you what I’m doing in a couple months, let alone a year away? Because I was just in that young, carefree, I am in my 20s right now, Paul, I’m 29.

 

But when I was 22, 23 years old, and I had my first job out of college, they would ask me, hey Allen, how are you planning this, what do you have planned for this year? And I would just say, I don’t know. ‘Cause I didn’t, I would just shoot from the hip and just, you know, didn’t really map anything out as far as the year ahead. I would just play it week by week and see what happened.

 

Some friends called, and hey Allen, next week we’re gonna go on a surf trip to Wilmington. Great, count me in, I just have to request some PTO time. They’re like that’s the extent of planning in my early 20s that I would be doing. What I found was that it is so much easier, and you get so much more done and so much more accomplished and you just feel better about what it is that you have going on in your life when you plan out the entire year. And this is why we make a full year spread calendar. There is a reason, there is a reason for this. So, Cathryn’s saying, surf trip, whoo!

 

There’s a reason that we show the entire year, so you can look at it in a glance. And what we want you to do is take that yearly wall calendar and put in the blocks of time that you know you’re going to need. So maybe you’re going on a family vacation in the summer. You’re gonna put that. Maybe you have a conference planned, you’re going to put that in there. Maybe that triathlon is happening, you’re putting that in there. Or maybe there’s a bootcamp that’s going to happen in Q3 of the year, and you’re gonna put that in there. And then there’s a wedding and travel time, and this and that.

 

And then, guess what? Maybe there’s just a block of time where you do nothing, but you’re gonna claim that week for yourself and you just say, you know what, I don’t know what it is, but I know around this time every year, I sort of get burnt out. So I’m gonna plug in this block of time and just keep that as a buffer for me. And what you’re going to see is that oh wow, look at this year, it’s already half full.

 

Oh man, that means I only have about half the year to get to my goal that I want to hit, so now you’re being extremely intentional with your time. And when you can see the blocks of time that you’re taking off or that you’re going on vacation, or that you have things planned or that travel’s occurring, or whatever it may be, now how you operate in between those trips, travel, other people’s plans, weddings, whatever it may be, they’re really intentional and they’re really focused and you won’t dillydally and you won’t waste time, because oh wow, I am leaving in two weeks on a family vacation, and in between now and those two weeks that I’m leaving for that family vacation, I already can see that I have meetings here, I got a wedding in between here, which really only means that I got five full days worth of work that I can get done.

 

So now, let me make sure that if someone calls me and says, hey, let’s go out or can you meet up for lunch or come to coffee, it’s like, I only have five full days of work and if I don’t get everything that I need to get done before I go on this trip, then my whole trip’s going to be ruined, because I wasn’t intentional with my time and now you’re in this snowball effect. So it really helps you do these sprints to get to the next point. And when you work in those sprint modes, it’s so much easier to disconnect and stay focused at the event that you already have planned in the future which is the reason why you planned it in the future, because you want to do it, whether it’s a trip or a vacation or just some free time for yourself.

 

It’s like, this is important to me, so I’m gonna mark it on the calendar now, and if your head isn’t in the space that you’re working on or that you planned for, then you shouldn’t have planned it anyway or you weren’t intentional with your time anyway. So this will really help you map out, whoa! Out of the 365 days this year, I really only have 200 that I can get things done, so let me be extremely diligent with what I’m doing in those 200 days. So, that’s how we map out the year.

 

The next step, step six is deconstructing that year into four chunks, 13-week sprints and you guys know this well, it’s the SELF Journal framework. It is the 13-week sprint, the 13-week roadmap. And I’m going to read some of your comments, because they’re coming in a fury right now. They must have just like been batched or in the cloud somewhere and now I’m trying to catch up.

 

Oh, Cathryn, nice, you booked out 2018 already? I still haven’t. I want to consider merging midway through the year, that’s good. I need to be better and more intentional, awesome. Thanks, Leslie. I hope you’re getting value out of this. Great guys.

 

So now it’s step six is to deconstruct the goal, the scary 13-week roadmap that everyone is so scared about. It’s really not that scary. So it’s you take these yearlong goals that’s so, so big and scary. I think the yearlong goals are more scary than the 13-week.

 

And what we do and the reason why we do this is because one year gives you way too much time to procrastinate. There’s too much to happen, there’s too much to throw you off course, you can’t be narrow and focused when you’re working on it.

 

I’m reading the comments from the BestSelf Co team, people are saying that they’re booking in all their PTO time right now, ’cause we’re talking about the yearly planning. Everyone’s like, oh, book it in, book it in. So everyone’s fighting for PTO time at BestSelf. So now we’re taking this yearlong goal and we’re deconstructing it into a 13-week roadmap. And the reason we choose 13 weeks, it’s one quarter.

 

We are able to do so much time in three months, or we’re able to get so much done in three months, that you’d be surprised how much you can accomplish. But here’s the thing. 13 weeks is only three months away, so the end is always in sight, you can always see the finish line. So you’re always like, oh, well, there’s the finish line, that’s creeping up pretty quickly, I better not procrastinate. So let me just, so let me, I better not procrastinate, so let me take action on this.

 

And what you’ll find is that at the end of that 13-week sprint, you’ll be able to do a ton. So let me just do in here. Just dive in here. And the reason why we do 13 weeks is exactly like it’s up. I don’t wanna beat this, I don’t really wanna talk about the 13 week, because I feel like we have so much information out there right now. I might be doing you guys a disservice by not elaborating on the other ones. But if you want me to continue on the 13 weeks, I’d be more than happy to.

 

We can now break it down into weekly planning, if you want. Does that sound good? I kind of wanna help you guys out. You guys are spending your time here with me, with BestSelf. I want to make this as valuable as possible. So if you guys got and nailed down the 13-week planning, I’ll move to the weekly planning and we’ll go from there. Cool. Melissa says yes it does. Weekly planning please. Great, thank you for responding back, guys. Okay. Great, great, getting lot of votes for weekly.

 

Everyone shouting for weekly, weekly, weekly, cool. So just really quickly. If we need to go back to the 13-week planning, we can, but there’s, it’s been written about before, we talked about it several times, there’s videos on our Facebook about it. So it’s seeing your yearly picture, breaking it down into 13-week chunks, if you need to do something first before you get to the second thing, it’s just prioritizing where everything falls. And is it Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, and being able to go from there.

 

So now what we wanna do is break this down weekly. And so many of you have really, really been advocates of our weekly planning system, and it’s a system that actually Cathryn put together as far as mapping out and dumping everything that you have to do in the week out of your head and on to paper. And just getting it out, almost like a to-do list. Except this to-do list has priorities, and it will tell you, okay, what you should be working on, what’s high level, where things should fall, rather than just having a to-do list and checking things off. But what you’re going to do is you’re going to write this list out.

 

Give me one second, I’m gonna grab it, ’cause it would. I’m gonna grab this. So we created this Weekly Action Pad that does just that. So, this is how you should map out your week, because when you map out your week, you can plan for things in the future. So the Weekly Action Pad, you write your tasks in the middle, like a regular to-do list, then you say, what type of project is it? Is it marketing, is it meeting, is it calls, is it sales, is it health, is it fitness, is it personal? Whatever it is.

 

Priority. You put in the priority, how big is this? Does this need to get done this week? Yeah, okay, then let’s number it in priority. What needs to get done? The due date, when is it due this week? Is it due Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, when is it due? How long do you think this task is going to take? Okay, well, is it going to take 30 minutes, because it’s just a quick phone call that I need to have on Tuesday with so-and-so that I already know is planned? Great, 30 minutes. Or is it developing a new process in your business that’s going to take a lot of data mining and research and it’s going to take six hours? Well, if you know it’s gonna take six hours, maybe it’s good to chunk that out over the course of a week so it’s not so overwhelming. So put in estimated time.

 

And then the last is the END. And this is a little hack, and not many people, we aren’t very big on hacks, but a lot of people love it. Now END stands for Energizing, Neutral, or Draining. You know, does this task get you energized? Is it something creating where you’re all of a sudden time flies by and it’s like, whoa, where’s two hours have gone, this was so much fun! Or is it something like, whoa, the time is ticking, and this is taking forever. If I have to do another one of these tomorrow, I, you know, I’m gonna be miserable.

 

Finding out what brings you juice, what doesn’t bring you juice is extremely important in mapping out your week, because it determines where you’re going to place it in your day. So, we are big fans of batching. So we’re very creative people here at BestSelf, and batching for us is extremely important. So what I mean by this is because we’re creative people, when we wake up in the morning, that’s when we’re as full as possible. We can be as creative as we want. But as the day goes by, we sort of lose a little bit of steam over time.

 

We sort of lose a little steam over time, and then by the end of the day, we’re tired. And if we have to go back and do some more creative work, our tank is empty and it really is a struggle to do that creative work. So how we plan our days is important.

 

One, in priority of things, it’s, bye Darryl, it’s important on, okay, priority, this task is extremely important, I better do it first thing in the morning, because anything else on top of that is secondary. Is it energizing? Do the most energizing thing in the morning, the thing that brings you the most juice, the thing that gets you amped. And focus on the draining stuff towards the end of the day when you don’t have a full tank, you know, just like get rid of it. So for us, like I said, we’re big fans of batching.

 

And, oh actually I’m getting some BestSelf team members saying that they love using the Weekly Action Pad. Just uses it, Micah uses it. Awesome, glad to hear it, Just. Cathryn uses it. Obviously, she created it, so. It’s amazing. But, we’re big fans of batching. And one thing that doesn’t get us juice is meetings and calls. Ugh, they’re just the worst.

 

Meetings, where you have to sit and talk and make sure that everything’s moving forward is just like blech, it’s not fun. And what happens is when we have a meeting, let’s say it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and now it’s one o’clock and you just finished lunch. Well, you’re about to get back to work, but you have this meeting at three o’clock, you’re like ugh, well, you know, that meeting’s at three o’clock, so I better not start anything important, because I don’t wanna miss this meeting, so let me just do some little stuff in between. That is not the way it’s supposed to work.

 

You’re supposed to be intentional with your time. And the time that you do have, you want to really rock it. So, Cathryn and I both plan our Tuesdays and Thursdays as our call days or meeting days. So if anyone has to plan a call with us, if we have to have a meeting, it’s gonna be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And guess what, our Tuesdays and Thursdays are packed from the time that we wake up to the time that we go to bed, it’s really call, meeting, interview, this, that, podcast, whatever it may be, it’s full on with communication with other people.

 

What this does, this allows us to have Mondays and Wednesdays fully open to be creative, to come up with ideas, products, marketing, whatever it may be and just like really, really not be constrained into that mindset of oh, I got a call at three, you know, let me just be reactive. We’re able to be extremely intentional with our time. So once you figure out what’s energizing, neutral, or draining, you’re able to plan it out in your week accordingly, and we’re big fans of batching. So make sure you do that as well.

 

If you wanna check out the Weekly Action Pad, I think someone’s gonna drop a link in here, feel free to check it out. All right, let’s get to the next step.

 

Planning your perfect day. So how you want to plan your perfect day is actually very simple. It’s using the framework of the SELF Journal in the daily spread. And we tell you that, we tell you that, we tweak this over time, Cathryn and I have been using this system for literally going on four years now.

 

It started out as a blank moleskin, and we’ve tweaked it, refined it, created multiple versions of planning the ultimate day so we get the most accomplished. I need a sip of water, excuse me. Does that help you guys, does that help you guys in your weekly planning process? And the idea here is to do this on Sunday night, so Cathryn dubs it the Sunday success system.

 

It’s actually one of the videos and modules that we teach in the SELF Mastery Academy, how to break it down, how to map out your week, there’s spreadsheets and everything that you can do. We made it really simple with the Weekly Action Pad.

 

Hey, there will be a break down of everything that’s been highlighted at the end of this. So after the recording or after this call, the BestSelf Co team will jump in, give you a break down of all the action steps, all the 10 steps. Cool. So back to the daily structure.

 

So the daily structure is very straightforward. We want to be extremely intentional with our time. We want to be laser focused with what it is that we’re working on, and we want to leave some room for some positive intention. You can go to our website. If you know nothing about us, you just happen to come across us, go to our website, download the free pdf of the SELF Journal and you’ll be able to walk through this as I’m talking it over with you. So how we want to structure our day is being extremely intentional with our time.

 

So if we know we have a meeting, or know we have a client call, or know we want to go to the gym or planning meals, whatever it may be, maybe it’s a night out or a dinner. We want to mark everything down that we are doing in that day. So the best way to do this is in half-hour segments, ’cause most things take about 25 minutes. That gives about a five minute buffer until the next thing. Also known as the Pomodoro technique.

 

Anyway. So, when you wake up in the morning, plan out your morning routine, what does it look like? How long is it going to take? Then get into your highest leverage activity. Is that going to take two hours, is that going to take three hours, four hours? What is that? How long is it going to take? Then, we’re gonna go into maybe lunch. Then it’s meetings or calls. And then I’ve got an appointment.

 

Well, don’t just put the appointment in, put in the time that it takes to get to and from the appointment as well. So maybe it takes 10 minutes to walk there, maybe it takes a half hour to drive. Put your time in. And what you’ll find when you first do this, what you’ll find is that, oh my gosh, here’s a two-hour blank white space that keeps popping up, again, two hours here, an hour and a half there, another three hours here, and what you’ll be able to do is say, oh my gosh, I can fit so much productive time, so much productive activities in this window on time, and now all of a sudden you have a day where at the end of the day, you’ve done more in that one day than you’ve done in a week. And this is how Cathryn and I started just compounding day after day after day after day and win after win after win after win, because we’ve been able to cram so much in a day because we’ve been extremely intentional with our time.

 

Oh, I’m so glad, adding in travel time is life changing. Let me see this. Oh, I’m on my phone so I can’t read the entire post, but I’m glad that’s helped. Because I would, what would happen is, I’m so optimistic, I think, okay, as soon as this meeting ends, I can get to this meeting. Well, that’s not really, it doesn’t work like that. There’s travel time, there’s buffer time that needs to happen. And you can’t be in two places at once, unfortunately, or yet, so, so you need to plan in that travel time. The next thing that you wanna do to set your day up to win is to write your goals down every day.

 

Now, this is extremely important, because what it does is it activates your reticular activating system. It’s been scientifically proven that if you write something down day after day, you will subconsciously be able to point out things in your environment and in your life that will help you get to those goals.

 

So, say you write down, you know, lose 20 pounds by the end of 13 weeks, or by this date. What will happen is all of a sudden you’ll start seeing things like personal trainer, oh, wow, you know what, I actually am looking for a personal trainer. Here’s one right now. Or someone will just talk about it, and now all of a sudden you’re picking up on it. Or someone’s making a referral, and you’re like, oh, that’s weird, okay, maybe I should take action on it. Great.

 

Same as if you, if you just bought a new car, or if you’re looking to buy a new car. It’s like, oh yeah, let me go check out that car. And then you go check it out, and then say you don’t buy it, and you drive off the lot. All of a sudden, you’re like seeing that car everywhere. And you’re like, yeah, I guess everyone likes that car. That is your reticular activating system at work.

 

Because what happens, there’s way too much coming at us all the time between notifications, and environments and colors, and shapes, and sizes that we sort of have to self-mute everything for our own sanity, or else we just burst, because there’s so much coming in. But if we are intentional with what it is that we want to focus on, this is why writing it down is so important, now allow that to come into our environment and we’ll be able to pick up on it.

 

The last thing that we want to do is be able to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go so well. So, write down your lessons learned from today. What went well today that didn’t go so well? What worked well, what were some of the wins? What were some of the wins that happened today? Did you land a client? And this is a big one, because most of you in here are high achievers, mostly everybody, actually everyone at BestSelf is a high achiever, when we do something good, all of a sudden we think about the future.

 

Okay, what’s next? And we forget to celebrate that little win that just occurred. And what happens is we just focus on the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and we don’t celebrate what just happened, because you have to celebrate what happened. You have to celebrate the little things, so you can experience the big things when they do come. ‘Cause when the big things do come, you have to celebrate those as well. So writing down the little wins at the end of the day is extremely important. So, that was mapping out your day.

 

And last but not least, number 10 is reflecting. So goes back into what went well, what didn’t goes as well into the daily plan. And that sort of brings us back all the way back to the beginning of reflecting and making sure that we’re really intentional with how we’re spending our time and making sure that we’re learning as we go. ‘Cause we’re not gonna get it right right out the gate.

 

This is why football players, after every scrimmage or after every game, they sit and review tape. And whether they won, whether they lost, they’re reviewing the tape and the recording to see, okay, what went well in this play, what didn’t go so well? What can I do better next time? What should I do more of next time? And they just do it all over and over and over again. So, I hope this was really beneficial.

 

I want to invite you guys to a couple things. We have so much going on. There’s so much happening. We’re doing webinars now. I mean, that’s a feat in and of itself, ’cause we, I think we may have done one or maybe two last year, and we’ve already done three in 2018 in the first month. It’s really exciting stuff.

 

So, BestSelf Co is hosting a live event in March on March 24th in New York City. We’d love to invite you guys. If this content was valuable, we’re gonna bring the speakers, amazing people, we have everything lined up. The venue is awesome. Cathryn and I, we scoped it out. We will be there, the entire BestSelf Co team will be there. There’s only 120 spots. And out of those 120 spots total, I believe, we only have a couple left.

 

We made the announcement to the inner circle members first so they got first dibs. And if you’re not a part of the inner circle, you should really consider being a part of the intimate community of high achievers and people who want direct access to Cathryn, myself, our partners, our people, the dog Riley, Cathryn’s dogs, Peanut, Just’s dogs.

 

If you want access, we do monthly webinars, it’s a community of high achievers and it’s just a lot of fun in there. So, yeah, I think what we’re going to do, I think what we’re going to do is drop a link. Let me see, inner circle is great, come join. Yeah, Rick, thank you, man. That’s kind of you. So, Rick is inside the inner circle.

 

We have exclusive trainings. What you get is dibs like the BestSelf Unlocked event which is in March. So when we make those announcements, all those announcements go to the inner circle first, everyone in the inner circle get first dibs and they get 10% off anything before it gets out to the public. So they also received some pretty cool products already before everyone else. So we are launching some new products to the public in, I believe it’s January 30th.

 

On January 30th, we’re launching a new batch, it’s called the Everyday Carry Batch. We’re gonna bring them out in segments, but guess what, the inner circle already has them. So, it’s pretty cool. People love it, Rick says that he loves it. Len, BestSelf beanies and t-shirts. Well, this is a Shopified beanie that I got while I was in Toronto two weeks go from Shopify, the Shopify event. And Cathryn and I love Shopify, they’re great, so. We’ll take any smack to rep them.

 

Rebecca, you could be in the U.K. Oh, you’re talking about the Life event. Come, so Georgina, she’s part of the team, she’s in Plymouth, U.K. She will be there. I know we have a couple people traveling from California, Texas, Arizona, some people are jumping on planes to get to our event. It is one day, but it is action packed. It starts at eight in the morning, it goes until eight at night. The date is March 24th. So, it’s gonna be really good.

 

We have some amazing speakers lined up for you guys. I don’t wanna give the speakers names out just yet. I’d like to make it more formal, formal announcement than here on this webinar, just to do it more justice than I could just shooting from the hip here. But, the people that we have lined up are people that I love to, and I’m humbled that they’ve accepted to come and share their knowledge and experience with all of you. So yeah, that’s it, I don’t want to take up any more of your time.

 

So two things. One, if you wanna come to the event, it’s called BestSelf Unlocked. It’s on March 24th. You’re gonna get direct access to us, a lot of cool stuff, meeting people, like-minded people and individuals and high achievers. If you want 10% off of the BestSelf Unlocked event, join the inner circle. And not only will you get 10% off that event, but you get a whole bunch amazing perks, a community that will last outside of the event that will lead up to the event that we already have webinars of amazing people already planned for next month. And exclusive discounts and amazing stuff.

 

How does one join the inner circle? You go to innercircle.com or excuse me, innercircle.BestSelf.co. Cool. Stephie, I’m glad you enjoy this. All right, everyone, please, and even if you don’t come to the event, if you don’t join the inner circle, here’s what I want you to do. Just take action on what we share with you in this webinar. That’s all I care about. I just want you to take action so you can get results.

 

And if you take one takeaway from this, and take action on it and get a result, come back to the next webinar, take another, get another take away, take the action, get results, come back to the next webinar. I swear your life will change if you just do that one thing. Great, everyone. This will be in the replays. And I will talk to everyone soon.

 

Please give, before we jump off, just give me a heart and some thumbs up and some love to the BestSelf Co team, because they are freakin’ awesome, and then the next one, I promise Cathryn will be on this one with me, we were having some technical difficulties. Yes, thank you for the thumbs up, thank you for the hearts. We love the BestSelf Co team. Without them, this would not be feasible.

 

Thanks, everyone. Bye.