Happy New Year!  Has today found you resolutely jotting down your New Years Resolutions? The same ones you didn’t stick to last year?

Don’t beat yourself up! There are lessons to be learnt in failure. I know I’ve learnt some of those lessons this year! Most ‘instant success’ comes from hard work and consistency over time, and so it’s important to NOT give up. 

In this episode I share with you three of the lessons that I’ve learnt that could completely change how you approach (and stick to!) your New Years Resolutions this year.

Show Notes

The three lessons that I’ve learnt in 2019 that could benefit all of us in 2020:

1. [02.39] If you want to get something done you’ve got to pay a lot of money to the right person to both teach you, and to hold you accountable.

2. [05.31] Patience.

3. [08.45] The importance of Bare Minimums.

As you go into this next year, take on board those three lessons and spend some time reflecting on how you can put them into your life.

Bring on 2020! I know that you have what it takes to make your New Years Resolutions a reality. Use these strategies, and by this time next year you’ll be a step closer to YOUR vision of your future.

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Related posts and episodes

Quotes from this episode

“It takes time to build a business, it takes time to build a following, it takes time for people to say yes.” – Lisa Linfield

“If you give up, you could be throwing away the most amazing gift” – Lisa Linfield

“Good old-fashioned persistence, consistently, is what is needed.” – Lisa Linfield

Transcript

Lisa Linfield:                       00:09                     Hello everybody and welcome to today’s episode of Working Women’s Wealth. Happy new year. It is 2020, and I can’t believe that it’s the first day of a new decade. It really feels good to say that. I think 2019 was a good decade, but goodness, it was hard and definitely these last few years have been a hang of a hard decade. So I am looking forward to this brand new wonderful decade. As I look back on the year that we have just finished, I feel I need a bucket of gin and tonic, not just a glass, a whole entire bucket, and an extremely long holiday. The good news is that by the time you listen to this episode, I will be on holiday and I’m sure to have had many gin and tonics along the way. As I’m recording this, I leave tomorrow and I could just scream. It is quite chaotic in South Africa at this time of year, because not only do we have the normal year end stuff of Christmas and family, we also have our huge big summer vacation.

                                                                                So we have that kind of combined thing of the school year end, financial year end, and trying to get everything done before you go on vacation. I’m so looking forward to my Christmas and new year break that is at our house in the river with a whole bunch of family for a week, and also two weeks of just John and I and the kids. It is absolutely wonderful to join you on this new year’s day, and look back at a year that I seem to say every single December, next year can’t be as hectic as this year has been. I guess to a certain degree that scares me, because we can’t keep saying that as a world. Everyone I speak to says, “My goodness, this year just goes faster,” and maybe it’s an age thing. But I do think that with the social media it has really sped up everything that we do.

                                                                                One of my big areas of thinking as I embark through this year is going to be how do I create more space and slow it all down? I wanted to look at three lessons from this year that I’ve learned that might be of benefit for all of us to make sure that we consciously take into this new decade. The first learning from this year is that I have completely reaffirmed for myself, one of my key teachings on how to make sure you get the big things done. I always say that if you want to do something, you have got to pay money to the right person to first of all, teach you and second of all, hold you accountable. And you’ve got to pay a lot of money, money that hurts you to part with.

                                                                                This year, my one thing for the year was that I wanted to focus on writing a book. I do an 18 month planning cycle every June, July. And when I gone through my planning, the year before I had looked at the fact that this book was something that I wanted to do, because it was a key foundation for building Working Women’s Wealth for many different reasons and will enable me to reach my goal of teaching a million woman.

                                                                                But by mid year when I did my June, July review of the 2019 year so far, and also looking back on my planning for the next 18 months, I still hadn’t managed to do it. And my big target for the calendar year of 2019 was write the book. So I went out and I sought the most amazing book coach I could and I paid a whole lot of money to do a six month coaching program, which I’m just over halfway through. His process so far has been amazing, and the four of us that are in our group have spent six weeks planning our books and then writing. And I wrote the entire first full manuscript of my book in 27 days.

                                                                                It took me three weeks to do my edits and literally this weekend it has gone off to the first editor for input. There are three editors when you edit a book, and that means that in three and a half months I have been able to go from a place where I hardly knew what I was going to write about, to having a full book in the hands of an editor. And trust me when I tell you that it’s not because of anything special to do with me. It’s because I paid money that hurt my back pocket, and I made sure that I rocked up at every single Tuesday group coaching program.

                                                                                Our coach was excellent, but I had to do the work and I had to be there and I had to deliver, which I did. My very first coaching session, I was still in bed from surgery, so it really was something that I truly committed to. I had no real clue about what I was writing about, what the transformation I was seeking was going to be, but because I had faith in the process, because I did the work, I’m going into Christmas with the amazing sense of freedom. A, because the book is now in someone else’s hand, but B, in the sense of knowing that I’ve achieved my big, hairy audacious goal, or the one thing as the book talks about.

                                                                                The second lesson from this year that I don’t think I’ll ever master, but it’s really been a year that has been a lesson in patience. There’s a saying that’s says that you always overestimate what you can achieve in the short term and underestimate what you can achieve in the long term. This year, sales for Side Hustle were, in my opinion, going to take off. It was going to be a runaway success. You see, I’d had a very successful beta pilot launch last year. Everyone loved it and I’d made the changes that the people who did the course suggested that I should do. So I knew in my soul that this was a phenomenal course that could really provide women with the tool set to start a new business, to give them the freedom, in terms of financial freedom, and in terms of freedom from work and all of those good things if they stuck to it.

                                                                                I knew that the recipe worked and that it could help people start a business, and I knew that it was even better because I had listened deeply to the people who had joined me on the beta course and taken on board their feedback. So of course it was going to be brilliant and everyone was going to buy it. The bottom line is, although I did far better than last year, so this year was definitely a massive growth on last year, I came nowhere near to the over ambitious targets that I saved myself. I think because I thought it was going to be such a success and I have so much faith in the program, that I said really high targets. So as I review my year, my personal thing is that I wouldn’t put it into the success column.

                                                                                If it was left to me. I would say that this year in terms of sales of Side Hustle was a failure, and I guess that’s because I set really high targets, but I’m going to actually put it in the middle column, the lessons learned column. You see, it was in the last two months, in addition to everything else, I did an online course and in the introduction webinar, the woman that I was learning from maintained that this was her 37th time of training that course and it was phenomenal.

                                                                                I stopped and paused and went, you are getting cross with yourself after four or five times of selling the course. Yet, this is her 37th time. And what was amazing was as a participant, I was able to watch the chat column and it lit up with people saying things like, “Well, I’ve been thinking about doing the course for the last four years,” or, “I’ve been considering it for the last seven years.” And I was thinking to myself, “Oh my goodness, it really is true.” It was like a message from God on patience, for him saying, “Lisa, it takes time to build a business. It takes time to build a following. It takes time for people to say yes to the things that you have and you need to consistently stick to it.” And it really is such an important lesson for all of us. And the irony is these are the lessons I teach in my course.

                                                                                I mean, there’s a slide that I’ve got, that’s got one word on it which says consistency. And I talk all about these things, about how long it takes and yet I struggle, because I think all of us fundamentally want things to happen quickly. We want instant gratification. We want instant success. We want it now.

                                                                                The third lesson was on the importance of bare minimums. Now, I haven’t spoken much about it, but this year has been, I guess a wave, you know those wave like motions, there’s been ups and downs and ups and downs when it comes to discipline with my health. So as you all know by now sugar is my go to hit of choice when it comes to being tired. And I had a pretty good year health wise, I’d implemented the 5:00 AM club, I was up in the morning, doing my exercise, but in late August I went for surgery, and I completely underestimated how brutal the surgery would be, and how long it would take me to recover.

                                                                                I have had many surgeries, I struggle with my health and so I thought I was an expert in them, and I thought that I’d be up and about and I wasn’t. So it was only late October when I started to surface from a health perspective. And the problem was that even on a good year, mid October to mid December, my two toughest months of the year, and usually the beginning of October sees me kicking off the ultimate discipline push of note. I give up sugar, I exercise daily, and I really have a strong focus on clean eating and living, because without it, I will never make it through those two months. But starting October, I was even unable to sit, let alone make it to even 50% power that I needed to get through October. So I began a love hate relationship with sugar over the past two months.

                                                                                I eat it. It gives me that little high, it gives me the ability to do whatever I need to do, have a webinar, do a podcast, all of that kind of stuff. And then it gives me the low that comes from sugar. So through a normally busy period, and coming off a negative health base, writing a book from scratch and all the things that I’ve needed to do, I truly have felt like… You know in those James Bond movies where the guy is holding onto the helicopter’s landing skit. And that’s what I feel like I’ve been doing is these last two months, I’ve been holding on to the whirlwind of work and social and children’s commitments that I’ve needed to do with the tip of my fingers. Why? Because I have struggled not only with my health from the surgery, but also because of the added, not bonus, but the added negative of, I guess relying on sugar to fuel me through this period.

                                                                                And when the wheels fall off, I am so grateful that when it comes to my health, I have two bare minimums in my life. These are the safety nets that keep me on check when all else fails. The first safety net is that of my personal trainer, that even at my worst, I still go to gym twice a week. Despite even being unable to sit or have any intraabdominal pressure, so pressure inside my stomach, I still went to my trainer. I’ve always said to him that even in those periods I go because it’s for my head. If I stop, I’m going to get out of the habit and I’ll give it up forever. Also, it’s quite amazing how quickly you gain your strength back if you have been consistently exercising. And for me, I’ve been consistently exercising for way more than seven years now, and even three months after surgery, which I am now, I’m strong as I was before physically from a gym perspective.

                                                                                So you regain it back quickly if you get back quickly if you don’t leave it go. But it’s another example of why it’s important to pay for accountability, because I think if it wasn’t for the fact that I paid whether I went or not, I have told myself that it was perfectly okay that I start in January. I’ve had the surgery, the end of the year is terrible, I just don’t have the strength and so I’m not going to get back into it. Whereas now I’m going on holiday with a strong body. And I would have started in January, off a way lower base than I am now. I’m going on holiday as strong as I was before the operation.

                                                                                The second safety net that I have is that I never eat gluten. So as bad as I get, I still never ever eat it. I haven’t been eating it for 19 years. I stopped in 2000, and at that stage there were no substitutes. But now there are. So even though I haven’t had a very good eating time, I have even had substitutes such as gluten free cheesecake or carrot cake. But I still never touch the gluten. It’s a lesson that for me always reminds me that all of us have an area of life we struggle at. It could be our health, our eating, or it could be our exercise, or it could be our money or it could be our work or it could be anything. But you need to make sure that you have non-negotiables that become bare minimums. If you’re supposed to be making a sales call every single day, you have a bare minimum that at least once a week you’re making your sales calls. Whatever it is that you’re struggling with. It is such a useful tool.

                                                                                So as we go into this next year, this 2020, this new decade, I want you to take on board these three lessons and spend some time reflecting on how you can put them in your life. Firstly, if you want to get something done, you’ve got to pay a lot of money to the right person to firstly, teach you and secondly, hold you accountable. Money that hurts your back pocket or your bank account enough that you won’t even consider not showing up, even if you’ve just had surgery, that you will be there and that you will do the work that you need to do. As I said, my book is with the editors and in such a huge year, that’s only because I followed this principle.

                                                                                Principle number two, it takes time and consistent hard work before the results will show. If you give up, you could be throwing away the most amazing gift, whatever it is, of health, of wealth, of work, of happiness, of freedom, whatever it is that you’re wanting. The work comes first. The results come afterwards, and you may have given up just because you thought it would be instant gratification that this would suddenly work and you’d suddenly feel a million bucks. I find that good old fashioned persistence consistently is what is needed. Thirdly, make sure that in those areas of your life that you struggle and for each one of us it’s something different, put in place bare minimums, whether it’s date night once a month that you try and aim for once a week, but at worst to make sure you go once a month, or like me that I put in a personal trainer or whatever it is, two hours a week on your side hustle when you should be spending it every single day.

                                                                                Whatever that bare minimum is make sure that it’s a nonnegotiable, that you never ever, ever get down to zero. That there’s always at least a lowest bottom element that you are consistently doing, because we all go through phases where things are better and worse for us, and we need to make sure that we don’t lose sight of the absolute most important tree trunk things in our life, the things that hold us strong and steady. Have a great year, my friends, and I can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store for all of us. I’m Lisa Linfield and this is Working Women’s Wealth.