Entrepreneurial: Introspection & Routine Building

This is the first installment of my new feature, Entrepreneurial; a monthly journal entry chronicling my experience as an entrepreneur, my victories and failures each month, and the lessons learned along the way. 

Hello my lovely readers! Welcome to my first installment of Entrepreneurial, my monthly business journal. When I first suggested the concept of this blog feature, many of you were incredibly supportive so I hope you enjoy these posts and that you learn a thing or two about the realities of being an online business owner. It’s not an easy job, but it is fun to be able to wake up and have complete control over what you will be doing. I like it. And most of all, I really want to remember it. I think I may have some sort of long term memory problem, because unless I write things down, I forget them, and I often can’t recall the things that happened the day before. Actually, one day last week, I completely forgot what I had done all day and what day it was. My husband was only moderately concerned. Now, I don’t think their is anything medical wrong with me, I just think I have too much information in storage already, so new items just get kicked back out of my system. I’m not very happy about this, and I wanted to do something to change it, find some way to chronicle my journey as a business owner, but most importantly, have a record of what I was doing so that I could keep my eye on the big picture. So, this year I started journaling. You may have seen my disc bound day per page planner/notebook/journal combo in a recent video, I’ve been faithfully writing in it almost everyday and if I do forget, I go back the next day and fill in what I was working on to the best of my recollection so I don’t forget about it. I’m the type of person who gets really excited about a project, starts it, gets it nearly done and then forgets about it. It’s funny because for all the content and products I create and launch, I probably have about twice as much nearly completed that just lost steam or I decided to change direction on. The journal has honestly been very helpful at forcing me to remember what I was doing and why I was spending time on a certain project. I actually started catching myself before I would start a random project that was off topic because I recognized I was about to distract myself from what I really needed to work on. So, I’d say that the journal is working, it’s like my accountability buddy and sometimes it’s like a therapist for me too. If I’ve had a bad day or made a mistake, I vent to my journal and make a plan for how I will course correct and learn from my mistake. I’ve been doing this with some new routines for the year which have actually started to take root. If you want me to do a video or another blog post where I go into the way I use my journal, let me know and I will!

So, let’s talk more about my results for the month. If I had to suggest an overarching theme for January, it would be Introspection. I spent a lot of quiet time this month alone thinking. Not planning, not strategizing, mostly thinking. I thought I had done all the necessary thinking about my business back in December, but apparently, there were more thoughts stuck inside of me that really wanted to break free. I finished a number of books this month, most of them were fiction reads I listened to during the day to keep myself entertained, but for the most part this month felt very quiet. It was a good quiet though, because I never ended up taking an official break from my business at the new year and I quickly realized that not taking a vacation was a grave mistake. By the end of the month before my Charmed Life Master Class launch, my sanity was hanging on by a thread! In fact, within an hour of completing all the work for the master class, my husband and I booked a vacation that we will be going to in just a few short weeks! It will be the first week off I have had since Aruba in June, and technically that was just five days off and I did a good amount of work while I was there, so not a true vacation really. So it was this stress of being worn out from 2015 added to the pressure of a major creative endeavor that left me wiped to the point that I was unable to focus on blog posts, and even creating my videos for the month was like pulling teeth. It was like I only had a certain amount of creative energy to use, and if I put it towards the master class, there was nothing left for other areas. Ultimately, I decided that it was fine, I just had to go with the flow and not get too wrapped up in what I wasn’t doing because I had something important on my plate. If you’ve ever wondered how it is that I get it all done, I think you now have your answer; I don’t always get it all done. If I can’t make it all happen, I have to identify what my priority is and focus on that, and then take it one day at a time!

So, now that we know what went wrong this month, let’s talk about some victories. Like I mentioned earlier, this month I launched my Charmed Life Master Class, a personal development course that teaches you my strategies for creating the life of your dreams. Other than the launch of the new master class which was a major victory for the month, and the success with my daily journaling, I also was able to slowly build up some positive routines. I had been very lax in November and December in terms of my daily schedule and so it was hard to get into a groove in January. I was extremely tired from being mentally tapped out and it took me a few weeks to get my regular schedule back. Thanks mostly to my journal, I was able to retrain myself to wake up early in the morning, and then I started to build up a morning routine that kept me awake all day without needing to take a nap in the afternoon. This was a major success, because I was really worried that I might never be able to wake up before 9am again! Now, I’m waking up between 6:30-7:30 with my husband and getting straight to my morning tasks. Another positive routine I have built this month is my meal planning. I have gotten back into the habit of cooking myself fresh meals instead of eating packaged food that’s filled with junk! I’m back to eating plenty of fruits and veggies, healthy snacks and I’ve been making the most drool worthy Pinterest dinners! Finally, I’ve also built up a self-care routine that involves a simple but consistent skin care regime and weekly lush baths. Overall, I am very happy with what I have accomplished this month. Although many of these items were not directly related to my business, trust me, building up these good habits and routines is going to make a world of difference in my business!

xoxo,