Accountability Without Shame

Show Notes

Last week, we talked about goal sticking. Not just goal setting but goal sticking. Making sure that your goals for this year are actually going to happen because it is the year of the fire horse. Last year was the year of the snake so we shed our skins. Some people had a really difficult year.

In the Chinese mythology, this year is going to be on fire, literally. So let’s make it happen for you as well. Goal sticking is a really great way to make sure that things happen.

Make Yourself Accountable

What do we need to do to make that happen? We need accountability. Do not wait. We need self accountability. As coaches, we are amazing at keeping our clients accountable. We are amazing at doing things for other people. How often are we good at doing it for ourselves?

Accountability without shame and making sure that your year is the best year ever.

I was speaking to one of my mentors yesterday and she asked me how good I was at time blocking. I am right at time blocking. Do I stick to my time blocks? No. Quite often it comes up and it says, okay, record the podcast. I go, oh yeah, I have not got my makeup on. Something else is happening. I will just move it. Then it happens that I have to do it literally an hour before the podcast is due.

This is not bad time management. This is what we do as humans. We push it right to the limit and we only have those accountabilities when they absolutely have to. Nobody is telling me I need to get my podcast out by 9:00 on Thursday morning. Nobody is making me do that except for myself.

I need to build that self trust in and you do too, because that is how things work. Not leaving everything to the last minute means it gives you freedom to be creative. Quite often we think that time blocking, setting out your week on Monday or Sunday afternoon is restrictive and it makes it more difficult. In reality, it is the opposite. It gives us so much freedom, especially if you put in those breaks first.

Break Your Goals Down

When you are thinking about your goal, what is it that you want to do for this year and what is it you also want to do for 3 years? Quite often we can overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in 3 or 10 years. Ten years sounds so far out, does it not?

If you have got that same goal and you are working towards it and you do not quite hit it, that is amazing because you are so much further along than you were. All those learnings can be rolled into next year. Sometimes when we do not quite hit it, we beat ourselves up. Goal setting is not for me. If we did that, we would never walk, never ride a bike, never have got our first job. We would never have started this business. It is really just a mindset.

Pick those things you are going to do and break them down. If you want more of that, listen to last episode, Episode 329, where I broke that down a lot more.

Do What You Are Best At, Outsource the Rest

Do you run on your calendar? Are you putting the times you need in for yourself? Are you putting in your sales time? Are you putting in your bookkeeping time, if you are still doing your bookkeeping?

That was one of the first things I outsourced and I have spoken about it a lot on this podcast. I gave my bookkeeper a shoebox with what I thought would take her 2 weeks. In 4 hours she came back and asked me where the rest of it was. That was my whole Christmas holidays previous to that.

Do what you do best, what you are good at. Bookkeeping is definitely not mine. To this day, 25 years later, I still have a bookkeeper and I will always have a bookkeeper because they are so much better at it. They know the latest tax laws, the superannuation, the GST here in Australia, in the UK and all the other things that we have in America as well.

Go Out There

Are you making those outreach calls? Have you maybe got a webinar and you are getting people to it? It is all very fine to book a webinar and go, yep, I am going to do it. It is not quite so great when you do not get people there. Make sure you are putting your marketing out there so people know you have actually got this thing on and they can come to it.

Self Care is Essential

That self trust is really important and rewarding yourself. How do you reward yourself? Do you have a to do list that has tick boxes? Do you have something on the wall that you tick? What are those little rewards you can do? It does not have to be big. Do you reward yourself by going for a walk in the afternoon because that is the end of your work day and you have done a good job? Is it a take a break thing and that is your reward as well? Do you give your brain a bit of a break and transfer out of the day to day and into leisure time?

Quite often we have real trouble separating work from leisure and making sure that in our planning we have time for our significant others. We have time for ourselves as well. That is so important, particularly when we are parents and we have children and things like that. Dogs as well, running around and taking care of. Making sure you are getting your self care time.

Track Your Time

Time blocking is a really great one because you can see it on your calendar. You can do it in colours and all the rest of it. I personally love Google Calendar because it syncs everywhere. There are lots of other different ones depending on what CRM you are running and that sort of thing.

Make sure you are using something that works for you. I have just done the 30 day video challenge and people are asking, what is the best tool? The best tool is the one that works for you now with a little bit of growth. Do not go too far ahead because you end up paying for things that you really do not need.

A really good thing to do is a time audit. See where you are actually spending your time. You might be a little bit shocked about how often you are on social media, how much time you do scrolling. Yes, you need to be aware of these things. They can take a lot of time, particularly if you do not have a hard stop.

Email is another way that our time gets sucked. You do not have to be in your inbox 24/7 unless you have some sort of service business where it is a help desk situation. Then that is probably not what you should be doing as the founder and the genius anyway. That sort of thing should be outsourced to a VA or somebody on your team.

Progress Over Perfection

When I did my video challenge, I did some filming with my chokes. They were a lesson in perfection. They would not do what I wanted. They were all over the place. I spent over an hour videoing, recording it and then putting it up. Instagram, in its wisdom, decided it was going to cut 20 seconds off my 1 minute video.

Guess what? That was one of the most watched videos in the series.

Sometimes we just need to press go and get it out there. That is what I talked about in my videos as well. If you have not seen that, jump over to my Instagram account, CathySmith_coaching and have a look at those.

You will see me raw and ready because some of them were hot and sweaty and some were more polished than others. That is how it works. That is how we connect with our clients. Getting out there, doing it and being accountable to ourselves.

I committed to 30 days. I did 32 because it was Christmas and New Year and I did not want Christmas Day and New Year’s Day to just be a generic video. Doing things like that shows you that you definitely can be accountable to yourself.

Links

Coaches Marketing Roadmap
Cathy Smith Coaching
Big Rocks to Making Your Goals Happen

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