November Goals: Review

My November Goals:

1. I will easily craft a dedicated space in my house for meditation by November 30, 2019.

2. I will easily reach 30 deep, consistent, improved-form push ups by November 30, 2019.

3. I will easily stop working and begin winding down for sleep by 10pm for the entire month, until November 30, 2019.

4. I will easily create 1 new YouTube video by November 30, 2019.

Dear November Self,

You have forgotten your own rule: realistic goals don’t excite you. They don’t get you motivated. They don’t make you get up in the morning and think, YES! This is going to take all I’ve got, and I’m ready to tackle this challenge! Instead, realistic goals make you fall into the trap of thinking you have time, thinking you can easily pull it off. November Sarah, you convinced yourself that what you needed was rest because you were tired when what you really needed was a goal exciting enough to wake you up.

Therefore, I’m sorry to report, that you didn’t achieve a single one of your November goals. Wow. What a learning lesson. You need to taste your own medicine, walk your own talk. It’s so much worse to aim low and not hit your goals, that it is to aim high and not hit your goals. You aimed low, and a low goal wasn’t motivational enough to even attempt it. You did push ups just ONCE this entire month! By setting low goals, you set yourself up to fail.

This December, you must not forget that you thrive when you are inspired by a challenge, and pushing your limits is what you do best. Don’t dull your potential with realistic goals. Ignite it with impossible ones!

This lesson is probably far more important than achieving any of your November goals. Not only is it important that you learned this in time for December, but you learned this lesson in time for 2020, and a new decade ahead.

Girl, push. your. limits.

Love, future self x

P.S. Your December goals better be absolute fire 🔥

Design your life

You know what drives me absolutely crazy? When I see someone letting life happen to them.

I don’t care whether your ideal life is being a high flying executive or a bus driver, but you better be designing it yourself. You better be absolutely crushing it as a bus driver. You better be passionately in love with driving the your executive job. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do it on purpose.

You can let life control what happens to you or you can control what happens in your life.

Don’t get me wrong – you don’t have to actually HAVE the lifestyle you are designing yet. Design is a process. You’re constantly writing the next chapter, so there’s no rush to get anywhere – but you cannot sit back and let someone else write your story. Or else you’re going to wake up one day and realise you’re living someone else’s life.

If reading this makes you think – uh oh, I’m not taking control of my life – then here are some easy things you can do to start taking charge right now.

1. Purposely create a vision for your life.

2. Write it down, cut out pictures, create a vision board.

3. Look at it every single day, and actively take small steps in the direction of the vision.

Take a look at my Humble Vision post to learn more about how to do step number 3.

I’ll say it again: it doesn’t matter what you do, just do it on purpose.

Two kinds of cool in this world

Ever since I was a small kid, I’ve tried to be like other people. I’ve had idols and obsessions and admired others deeply – including a Hannah Montana phase that those who knew me in 2006 will never, ever, let me live down. I’ve just always admired people for being cooler, funnier, and more attractive than I am. But over time, I’ve come to understand that the people I most deeply admire in this world are not the ones who make me want to be like them, but the ones who make me want to be more like myself.

There are two kinds of cool people in this world.
1. The kind of people who are so cool you want to be more like them.
2. The kind of people who are so cool you want to be more like you.

The second kind makes you think, ‘man, I want to be as good at being me as they are at being them.’
The second kind makes you feel like being you is the coolest thing you can possibly be.

Thanks to the second kind of people, I’ve never had to ‘find’ myself, I’ve never felt unsure of who I am or what I stand for – because I was always building myself. I know who I am through and through, from the day I was old enough to conceptualise what ‘being myself’ meant.

Also thanks to the second kind of people, I’m strong-willed, I’ve never touched alcohol (ever), and I’m quite comfortable telling you that I don’t enjoy skiing, yoga or video games and I probably never will. The beautiful thing about the second kind of people is that by being fully themselves, they influence more people be fully themselves, which influences more people to be fully themselves. and it the cycle continues.

So how can you be one of the second kind of people? Be completely you – because by being yourself fully and completely, you unconsciously give others permission to do the same.

Be Your Own Lucky Charm

Did you ever see that 2006 Lindsay Lohan film, Just My Luck?

Okay, so Mean Girls gets most of the Lohan fan attention – and for good reason – but Just My Luck is highly underrated. Stay with me here, it’s worth it.

Here’s the deal:

New Yorker, Ashley, is a good luck charm. Everything goes her way, all of the time. Like, always. She’s just always lucky. Voted prom queen – at a school she didn’t even attend, wins every time on lotto scratchies, pouring rain turns to sunshine the moment she steps outside.

Even when it seems like something has gone wrong (aka, dry cleaning mix up right before an important event), it turns out to be a blessing in disguise (aka, mix up was with Sarah Jessica-Parker’s dress, so she gets to wear that instead).

Of course, she has a fateful kiss with a perpetually unlucky stranger (hello, Chris Pine), and ends up switching her luck with him and everything goes horribly wrong. It’s a brilliant girls night in film, watch the trailer if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I digress. The point is, we should all take a leaf out of Ashley’s book. You know when things just go right? The traffic lights go all green? You find $20 in a coat you totally forgot you had? You get unexpected good news?

For that moment, you feel like the luckiest girl (or guy) on the PLANET.

But guess what? Good luck is happening all around you, all the time, you’re just not noticing it because it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary.

• There’s exactly the right amount of oat milk left for a cup of tea. Nice.

• You were running late to work but your boss was even later. Phew.

• Your phone is on 1% but somehow lasts for another 15 minutes. Yas.

Even things that seem like they aren’t good luck initially can actually turn out to be good luck. For example, missing the bus but meeting someone amazing at the bus stop, or dropping your half-eaten icecream and being gifted a whole new one for free.

I like to imagine that, just like Ashley, I too only ever have good luck. I pretend, for a few hours, that I am the luckiest girl in the world. During that time, no matter what happens, I imagine I’ve just rolled a 6 at life.

Even if it seems bad, I try to feel lucky. Because even the bad things in life can be good if you look at them in a different light.

It’s kind of an alternative way to practice gratitude. Plus, it feels SO good, walking around feeling like the luckiest person in the world – choosing to feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Someone has to be the luckiest person in the world. Why can’t it be you?

P.S. If you need some inspiration for your Luckiest Person in the World Gratitude Practice (I can trademark that mouthful, surely?), check out the whole movie here.

P.P.S. The Luckiest Person in the World Gratitude Practice (man, it needs a better name), is in action in another phenomenal movie, Legally Blonde, as seen below:

2020 Goal Setting

Tonight I snuggled up with my journal and did some good old fashioned goal setting.

Except it wasn’t old fashioned at all. The old fashioned way tells us that we should be setting “SMART” goals. You know, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound.

What a load of BS.

I’ve watched my clients set realistic goals, I’ve watched myself set realistic goals, and I’ve watched strangers set realistic goals – and quite frankly, they’re a flop.

Realistic “SMART” goals don’t make you jump out of bed in the morning with delight and passion.
Realistic “SMART” goals don’t make you take bold action towards your dreams
Realistic “SMART” goals don’t show you what you are truly capable of.

They keep you stuck. They keep you playing small. They keep you running on the spot.

What should you do, then?

Set an impossible goal. Something that feels so unattainable and unrealistic for you right now.

Why?

Because setting an impossible goal gets you excited. It makes you move across the world without a job or a place to live. It makes you leave a bad relationship. It makes you invest in yourself.

Impossible goals make you bet on YOU.

If there’s just one thing you do when you set your 2020 goals, please please please don’t let them be SMART.

Limiting beliefs

Beliefs are thoughts that we think often enough that they seem factual to us, even if they aren’t a fact.

That means that sometimes, we create beliefs that limit us, and they were totally fabricated in our own minds to begin with.

Here are some examples of common limiting beliefs:

1. Money doesn’t grow on trees

2. I can’t go after my dreams because I might fail

3. I can’t be myself or I will be judged

4. I’m not good enough/smart enough/beautiful enough to do X

A limiting belief is not a fact. It’s only a thought that we’ve been thinking for so long we can’t distinguish it from fact.

And what do we do when we believe something? We act accordingly. You believe you can’t go after your dreams? You won’t.

Changing your beliefs is paramount to changing your actions, and your results.

The good news is, if a belief is a thought we think often enough that they seem factual to us, then we can choose our beliefs.

in order to change your belief, you need to think a new thought enough times until it becomes a belief.

Examples of empowering beliefs to replace the limiting ones:

1. Money doesn’t grow on trees / Money is made by the value I bring to the world

2. I can’t go after my dreams because I might fail / Success is built on pile of failures

3. I can’t be myself or I will be judged / When I show my true self, I give others permission to do the same

4. I’m not good enough/smart enough/beautiful enough to do X / I am enough

Here’s the thing: saying it once isn’t enough. You have to think that thought so many times it becomes second nature. Tell yourself your new empowering belief every single morning.

Waking up? I am enough.
Making a cup of tea? I am enough.
Getting the post? I am enough.

Write down your top 3 limiting beliefs, and then write the new belief you would like to believe next to it.
Make it a habit to repeat your new belief every day, over and over.

The Fear Assignment

If someone gave you a book of everything you were afraid to do, what would you do?

Your job is to open it to page one and start working on it.
Your job is to read it like a sermon to the choir inside your head.
Your job is to turn that book of fear into a book of accomplishments.

What is on your page one and what are you going to do about it?

What do you do?

What do you tell people when they say, “what do you do?”

People remember the first thing you say.

Option a) tell them what you do to earn a living 

Option b) tell them what you’re passionate about

You do both of those things. Maybe your a and b are the same thing. Maybe they’re not. It’s your choice how you see yourself, and how you portray yourself.

If you want to be a writer, and you write, but you also work at an office in the day, you can answer the question with “I‘m an office worker” or “I’m a writer.”

Both are true.

But what is on your dream business card?

Writer?
Singer?
Producer?
Firewoman?
Chef?
Scuba diver?

Start doing that thing. Then, we people ask you what you do, you get to start living into that reality.

Write yourself a business card, and introduce yourself as that thing. Starting today.

The Self-Coaching Model

Every once in awhile I come across a universal truth that makes me think, “Yes! This is exactly what I’ve been thinking, only this person has said it so much more eloquently – why didn’t I think of that?!”

This Self Coaching Model, formulated by Master Coach, Brooke Castillo, is one of those truths. It’s a formula used to solve any problem.

I just can’t deny the beauty of it.

Your circumstances affect your thoughts, which affect your feelings, which affect your actions, which affect your results.

Here is what Brooke shares about each of those:

• A circumstance is a neutral fact.

• A thought is a sentence in your head about a circumstance.

• A feeling is a vibration in your body caused by a thought.

• An action is what your feelings cause you to do.

• A result is the consequence of your action.

You can’t change a fact. But you can change a thought. That means, in order to get different results in your life, changing your thoughts will automatically affect your results (because it affects your feelings, which affect your actions, which affect your results).

Therefore, if you want to change the results you are getting in your life, you have to change your THOUGHTS. So much of the time, we try to change our actions without changing our thoughts, so our results don’t change.

Think about it in terms of smoking. So many people try to quit smoking by changing their actions. But if they haven’t changed their thoughts.

Circumstance: Smoking
Thought: Even if I stop, it won’t make a difference.
Feeling: Lethargic.
Action: Don’t stop smoking.
Result: No difference is made.

Results don’t change by action alone. They need the thoughts to be aligned with the action.

What if instead, the model looked like this:

Circumstance: Smoking
Thought: I can go without a cigarette for a day.
Feeling: Determined.
Action: Doesn’t have a cigarette today.
Result: A difference is made – a day without smoking.

The elegance of this model is the simplicity. It works every time to change your results.

Change your thoughts, change your life.

People passionately I follow

I’m inspired daily by other people’s content, so today I thought I’d share who I follow so you can get inspired by them too. Here, I have a collection of artists, bloggers, coaches, authors, and people I admire in general. These are the main people whose content I check weekly, sometimes daily. The kind of people I don’t need to get social media notifications about – I just naturally think of searching them to see if they’ve shared anything new.

Brendon Burchard
High Performance Coach

The Minimalists (Joshua Fields-Milburn & Ryan Nicodemus)
An alternate way to live

Janni Olsson Deler
Swedish Fashion & Lifestyle Blogger

Minimalissimo
Minimalist design blog

Susi Kaufer
Mindset Coach

Derek Sivers
Entrepreneur, founder of CD Baby

Marie Forleo
Author and Host of MarieTV

Mel Robbins
TV presenter and speaker

Gabby Bernstein
Spiritual author and speaker

Marianne Williamson
Presidential Candidate

Gretchen Rubin
Happiness & habits author

Gary Vaynerchuk
Entrepreneur and investor

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writer