In American culture, it’s very popular to discuss goals around the new year. From the day after Christmas, into the first half of January, goal setting tends to dominate our dialogue.
Personally, my FAVORITE time of year to revisit goals and jump into massive action is August, and here are the reasons why:
Most people are deadline driven
The average person is deadline motivated. Most of us tend to focus on the urgent needs in front of us and put on the back burner the items that can wait. When a goal for the year is set in January, it’s easy to defer taking action. There is a wide gap between the starting line and the deadline.
The nice part about August is that you start to get that urgency feeling. OOF! Seven months have already passed. If I am going to hit this goal by the end of the year, I better start jumping on it right now. Summer has passed and the nearness of the end of the year starts to add that necessary pressure.
Summer Vibes are Dwindling
When summer hits, many people take their eyes off their goals. It’s very easy to set it all aside when we take a vacation and mentally want to check out. However, it’s also very common that we forget to pick the baton back up when we return home. The general feel of summer is to chill, which doesn’t coincide with taking massive action toward our goals.
August is the perfect transition. We mentally feel like it’s time to tuck away the flip flops and get out the running shoes.
Routines Matter
One of the most important aspects of achieving goals is to break them down into habits and to build those habits into our routines. For many people, the summer is full of interruptions to the routines. Whether it’s traveling, house guests, kids at home, or many other factors, the daily rituals can be more challenging. With August comes a return to normal, and it’s much easier to habit-stack those daily rituals that will lead to success.
If you would like to use a proven template to model your goals in a way that will help you be successful in achieving them, click here for an example of how I design mine.
If you feel stuck or have been stagnant with achieving your goals, click this link to schedule a complimentary strategy session.
I heard this phrase the other day that I cannot get out of my mind.
Your favorite self.
It’s just three words, but the inferences of the phrase say so much more.
Phrases like “your best self” and “your potential” and “step into your greatness” have always left me feeling off. I have used them each countless times as I couldn’t find words in the English language to describe that gap between who we are and who we want to be.
The reality is, most of us feel a gap. A gap between here and something else. That something else has always been hard to define.
Ironically, what I have learned in my own growth, and by helping so many others, is that rarely ever is that gap something to be achieved or something to strive for in the distance.
In most cases, that gap is inverted. It’s the gap between who we truly are deep down and the version of ourselves we are presenting to the world.
Possibly, we are living a version of ourselves that school trained us to be, who we believed our friends admired, who our families raised us to be, who we saw idolized on the big screen. The stories in our minds of who we should be can come from so many places. But the reality of who we really are is something only we can uncover.
And that introspection, that depth, that unlearning, that awakening…THAT is what I want to see come alive in others. I want to offer a match to a flame that has just been sitting dormant, ready to be awakened.
That is your favorite self. The one who when you get a glimpse of her [or him or them], you beam with joy. The self that allows you to fully relax. The self you fear to show the world because vulnerability fills your veins when you imagine how people may respond to what they see.
Your favorite self is the one that allows you to live in peace, to tap into the flow all around you, to live the life that’s calling you.
Today, my wish for each of you is that you will release one more layer or story or roadblock that is standing in the gap between who you are today and your favorite self.
[If you think you may want a coach to guide you through this journey, click here for a link to a free strategy session. Options begin at $29/month]
OOOOF! I’ve done it before and now I’m doing it again. I am publishing on the internet something very personal and vulnerable to me because I believe it will help others.
In the 10-week course I teach, we spend a couple weeks laying the foundation of how to set effective goals, why it matters to have a why, evaluating where you are on the wheel of life and creating a vision for what you want to create.
Then, for the next seven weeks we dive deeply into each of the seven spokes.
Lastly, we use the final couple of weeks to wrap up all of that content and write your vision plan to create the life you want. It’s written in such a way that you are significantly more likely to follow through and achieve your goals.
Between now and the end of the year, I am going to write about my experience setting these goals and the path to achieving them by the end of the year.
The last five months of the year can be so incredibly powerful if we choose to harness the opportunity. Any of those January goals that were set and not accomplished, can still be done.
I have a personality that is heavily driven by deadlines, so the end of the year is when I put my blinders on and get to work.
Over the next five months, I am going to explain each section of this vision plan, and will be showing up on Instagram almost every day in my stories to track the progress of each spoke.
I have a pretty clearly defined reason for doing this, and I’ll happily share my motivation with you.
The purpose of this blog and my entire coaching practice is to motivate and inspire people to create the lives they desire. I want you to be your absolute favorite version of yourself. Publishing my goals and publicly tracking them will make it crystal clear and obvious how the path to your success (however you define it) is paved in the small, daily decisions made over an extended period of time. It requires lots of self-love and grace. And it’s messy.
Now, let’s track my beautiful mess for the next 23 weeks.
If you have life changes you would like to create and are curious to see if hiring a coach may be beneficial to you, click here to schedule a complimentary strategy session with me. In this one hour call, I will walk you through an exercise that will give us a clear picture of where you are and where you want to be and then we will discuss the best next steps for you to get there.
After 30 years of being unable to consistently keep my house clean, I have managed for the last month to have a clean house every single day. It’s a trend I plan to keep (though I know there will be bad days, obviously), but the work it took to get here is not what I expected it would entail.
Last week I published the list that is keeping my family more organized. Today, I want to give you a behind the scenes look at what has been happening in my mind and the actions I took to create these changes.
Before I dive in, I want to explain why I wanted to create this change. Let me be clear, you can live a happy, fulfilling amazing life and live in a messy space. The cleanliness of your home and your worth/value in the world are NOT attached. You do what’s best for you. The reason I wanted to make this change was because the clutter and the mess were a constant source of stress for me.
Now that I am working from home, it was not sustainable for me to keep it messy. It was creating anxiety. I also found that it was very hard for me to create when the house was a disaster. Literally half my work week is content creation, so something had to give.
First and foremost, for years I have been studying life changes and chose the coaching certification program I did because it was based on five decades of studying sustainable life changes. Therefore, I already understood some core principles, which I applied to making these changes in my life. Before I started, I fundamentally understood that:
The best way to change your life is to change something you do daily
Focusing on ONE HABIT is more successful than tackling many at one time
Changing your thoughts and what you believe to be true are the best way to reclaim your power
Last week, I blogged about my list on the fridge. This tackled bullet points one and two above. I had to put on paper what needed to be done daily and then create the discipline to use that list as my guide.
For that last bullet point, the more we understand ourselves and the way our brains work, the more we can use this information to our advantage.
To give you a glimpse into what is beneath my surface:
I am a D on the DISC assessment , meaning my mind is HIGHLY task oriented
I am an Enneagram 7, meaning I love to follow my whims and am easily distracted
I have ADHD, meaning I legitimately forget things I start on a constant basis, and I have a tendency to hyper focus on projects that may or may not be relevant
Obviously, those are ridiculously shallow synopses of terms I used above, but those are the facets of the parts of me that manifest the most in how I do, or do not, keep a clean house.
In addition to understanding these things about myself, I also recently learned from a therapist that there are many reasons some people have a hard time keeping a house clean. ADHD is one of them, but another is the language they were raised with. This one was a HUGE “aha” moment for me.
I have literally been told my entire life that I am terrible at cleaning. Obviously there was probably some truth behind this, but the reality is, our brains absorb and believe what they are told. So since for 34 years my parents, siblings, husband and yes, even my 7-year-old daughter, have told me that I’m not good at keeping a clean house, I believed everyone. I accepted this as a truth about me.
The belief I held was that there are two types of people in the world: those who are good at cleaning and those who are not. And I believed that I am one of those people who are not.
It was about a month ago when I realized that it was highly possible that this was a programmed belief, and I may be able to change it. So I ran an experiment.
I decided to try on a new me.
I began to tell myself every single day that I am someone who keeps a clean house. I am someone who values and prioritizes living in a clean space.
It sounds so, so simple but inside it felt extremely strange. It felt like wearing someone else’s clothes to say those words to myself. I was trying on a new identity and experimenting what it felt like.
The list I published last week was birthed out of first changing what I believed about myself. I started with believing I was someone who lived in a clean house. Then, I asked myself “for this to be true, what needs to happen?”
I realized that many daily habits had to change, so I put them on paper.
The hardest part of all of it honestly was I had to prioritize and accept the reality of how much time it takes. Adding steps into my morning and evening routine meant there wasn’t as much room for other things.
For me, those changes manifested in two ways. The phone had to go. I cannot check my phones in the mornings or evenings. Even for 5 minutes. That little notification can derail me. That five minutes I took to reply to a DM was the 5 minutes I needed to use to put away everything sitting on the kitchen island.
I also have to go to bed earlier so that I can wake up earlier. My “put the kids to bed and then unwind with scrolling” doesn’t fit anymore. And I’ll be honest, it’s hard for me. I am training myself that I cannot sit on the couch and relax until my list is done. Often times the conversation I have in my brain sounds exactly like my battles with my 7 year old. “BUT I DON’T WANT TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and then I remind myself, “Sophia, you are someone who values keeping a clean house. This means that before you sit down you need to finish your list.”
Here’s the hard truth guys, I’m going to complain either way. Have you ever heard that saying that life is just about picking which pain you most want to avoid? I don’t get the option of avoiding pain. I am actively choosing which pain is worse. The pain of doing my chores when I am tired and don’t feel like it or the pain of waking up in the morning and feeling overwhelm everywhere I look.
In case you didn’t read last week’s post, please note that one of the greatest benefits of publishing the list on the fridge is that it empowers my family and everyone is helping to contribute to the work more, and I decreased my mental load. So the reality is, we are ALL powering through doing more of what we don’t feel like doing. I want to make it clear that I am not carrying the burden of the house alone.
Until we can afford to hire a maid to come and clean up after the family every day, we don’t get the option where we get to both have a clean house and not have to do the work even when we don’t want to.
The last thing I want to touch on today is grace. As you read this blog, please meet yourself where you are. When I worked full time 45-50 hours outside of the home with a five year old and a newborn, keeping a clean house simply WAS NOT AN OPTION. Changing thought work and habits was irrelevant information. It was survival mode to keep everyone fed, clothed and where they needed to be each day. The only goal I could aim for was to not have filth. Getting dinner cleaned up so no food sat out was the only goal I could aim for and often times I fell short.
The reason I moved this goal up to the top of my list right now is because I am in a season of my life where I am the only thing standing in the way. I work from home. I have a less than five minute commute to drive the children to childcare and about half the time I have the support of a second parent to help carry the load.
Please, take in all this information with a grain of salt and honor yourself with where you are and what is realistically attainable for you. Every single day from 6:00-8:30am and 5:00-8:00pm we are dedicating to the daily habits on those lists. It takes 5-6 hours of my day EVERY SINGLE DAY to take care of my family’s needs, my needs, and keep it tidy. If you do not have the time for how it would translate in your life, then find the most realistic habits to bring you peace of mind that are sustainable.
Let me know in the comments if any part of a behind-the-scenes into my mind was helpful you!
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Sophia Hyde is a certified life coach. If you would like help creating sustainable life changes in any area of your life, schedule a complimentary strategy session with Sophia to see if working together may be a good fit for you.
I have found the simplest solution to keeping my house cleaner, alleviating mental load and stress from my plate, and getting out the door easier.
As I shared last week, recently our family had a lot of changes that led to overwhelm, decision fatigue and a heavier mental load for me to carry. I knew this wasn’t sustainable, so I had to find some solutions to lighten my load.
I ran an experiment for the last two weeks that has proven to be wildly successful.
I created a list for everyone in the family for their daily rituals that stays on the fridge. Anything that needs to be done daily in the house is written down, visible for all to see.
Initially I wrote it all down because it was too much for me to carry in my mind. I was regularly forgetting small details. I needed a list to reference to keep me on task in the mornings and evenings.
What I discovered was that by getting it out of my head and onto paper for everyone to see, the whole family was empowered to step up.
Every time my daughter would ask, “Mom, can I play yet?” I could just say “You tell me. Check your list.”
Previously, I would have started drilling through the questions, ”Have you brushed your teeth? Did you pack your bag? Have you filled your water bottle?” Etc.
This solution has also helped alleviate the confusion of my husband’s role. His work schedule is all over the place. About half the time he is here to help, and half the time he’s not. Therefore, he was always looking to me with those same questions, “How can I help? What else needs to be done?”
By making these lists, I am not only keeping myself more organized, but I alleviated stress. There is less on my plate, my house is staying so much cleaner, and we are getting out the door earlier.
I am also going to bed every night with a clean house. Never in my entire adulthood have I been able to manage keeping my house clean daily.
Consistent daily habits is where it is all at, my friends.
Your family’s daily rituals will look different, but I have posted mine here for inspiration.
If you decide to run this experiment too, please post and tag me in your lists. I would absolutely love to see your rituals and hear if it works for you!
Last week when I was listening to Glennon Doyle’s recent podcast on overwhelm, I found myself with tears running down my cheeks while putting away laundry. She pierced my soul in all the places that I know so many women can resonate.
Decision fatigue and mental load are very real, and they overwhelm women at a disproportionate ratio to men.
Over the last few years I have done extremely well simplifying my life, so there are very few mundane decisions to make on a daily basis. However, a month ago, it felt like the rug was wiped out from underneath me, and I was drowning in overwhelm. I want to spend more time talking about how we manage this than writing a novel about all the shit that hit the fan at the same time, so here’s the brief summary:
In a four week period of time I had two out of town trips with small children (note, these are not vacations. Traveling with children requires more demands than staying home, parents…feel me on this one). One of those trips was for my seven year old to undergo some intense brain scans at the Amen Clinic. Following that, they placed her on five new supplements to take three times a day (all of which she hates the taste of), placed her on the elimination diet and eliminated about 20 things she can’t have in her diet for a month, and prescribed daily breathing exercises and 30 minutes of daily exercise. All of this while my husband, who normally does all of our grocery shopping, cooking and a majority of the chores, took on several temporary large work projects and was working 80 hours a week, unable to help me with anything around the house or the kids. As if that wasn’t enough to make me feel stressed, we were thrown two stomach viruses, a UTI, the Hand, Foot and Mouth virus, swimmers ear and both pets needed vet ER visits. At one point I went to an urgent care clinic 4 times in 8 days, each for a different human/pet.
A week into the start of this, as I could feel the pressure rising, I decided I couldn’t produce content for a hot minute. I didn’t know how long the season would last, but the brain power it requires was too much. After 18 straight months of producing a weekly blog, I had to press pause.
It felt like one of those movie scenes where someone walks into the room with a large map in their hand. They walk over to the desk, use one arm to push everything off the surface in one fail swoop and then drop the map on the table and demand, “Here. This is where we are going. Let’s determine the path.”
On that seven hour drive home from Atlanta at the beginning of June, when I was processing all that had to be managed (and didn’t even know the additional bombs that would be dropped), I made the decision that all I could handle for a quick season would be showing up for the clients who have already booked me, and making sure that each day myself and the two kids were taken care of and the house stayed relatively clean.
This week, on Monday, I finally came up for air when, for the first time in 4 weeks, both children were dropped off to child care, and Brandon was home. I came back to a quiet house and for the first time since the middle of May I was able to ask “what does my business need from me today?”
I decided to delve into the weeds with you this week because I know you have all felt this before, and I am here to tell you this:
It’s okay to drop a ball.
In case you need to hear it in different words: if you need to neglect something in your life for a hot minute to take care of an urgent priority, you can.
I once heard a working mom on a podcast say, “Balance looks like a juggling act where I am always figuring out which balls I can drop now and pick up later. The thing I am always trying to watch for is that I don’t let a glass ball fall.”
I know that people love to look at moms and say we are “superwoman,” but can I just say the opposite? What if we actually aren’t? What if we just own our humanity and our limitations and stop believing that we have to achieve perfection in every category.
As I mentioned at the beginning, decision fatigue is real. Mental load is real. We can only process so much information in one day.
Sometimes a work project may dominate all we had to give that day, so we just order pizza and tell the kids they can skip bath and sleep in their clothes as long as they brush their teeth before they get in bed. Yes. I’ve done that. Many times.
Sometimes it looks like running from one commitment to the next for so many days in a row that the house looks like a tornado came through and it takes you two weeks before you finally have a chance to put everything back in order.
Sometimes it looks like admitting you need help. Maybe you are in a financial position to hire the help and you can pay someone to take over the laundry, come clean weekly and/or prepare all your meals for you. Maybe you aren’t and you have to admit you’re at the end of your rope and ask someone to just take the kids for a chunk of hours because you need time alone at the house.
Letting a ball drop is part of the process.
Obviously there was a little voice on my shoulder saying things like “you can’t afford to stop producing content. That’s how you grow your business. You won’t attract any new followers or clients if you aren’t putting yourself out there.”
But I chose to ignore her. I listened to the voice that said,
“Or maybe it’s really important for you to go dark right now. Actions speak louder than words and you need to practice what you preach. You can’t preach priorities, rest and self-care if you don’t insert your own boundaries when you need to.”
I would have been no good to my children or my clients if I was over-extended. I chose to let something go so I could maintain high levels of energy and a clear mindset.
I’m not gonna lie…it was hard. I had flashbacks to 2015 when I tried staying home and being the predominant caretaker. My husband told me it was the hardest period of our marriage to be around me. I am a fish out of water spending all day cooking meals and cleaning the mountain of dishes from the cooking and starting over, but I chose to choose joy. I chose to make it an act of love, and I CONSTANTLY reminded myself that it was temporary.
As I write this post, Brandon is currently folding a week’s worth of laundry. He’s back, and the children have returned to full time daycare. All the humans and pets are healthy again. It feels good to be back.
*Side note, I am deeply aware that many women do not have a husband that carries half the load, nor can take step backwards in business knowing their spouse can pick up the income needs. If you are a single mother trying to wear every hat and may not have a strong support system around you, please don’t get trapped in comparison. Each of our paths are unique. The message I would hope that would resonate with you would be that if you have that many more balls to juggle, then give yourself more grace when the balls fall, because they will. You are allowed to be human, not superwoman.
Sophia Hyde is a certified life coach who helps individuals accomplish their goals by identifying behaviors and mindsets that need to change, releasing guilt, and stepping into their potential. If you would like help achieving your goals and getting “unstuck” click here to schedule a free strategy session with Sophia and discover if coaching may be a good fit for you.
Guys…seriously…this is how much I love you and want to make my message GLARINGLY obvious.
Today I made an Instagram reel, in a bikini, of me dancing. The text said,
“My 3 step process to get your body bikini ready this summer:
Buy a bikini
Put it on your body
Have fun”
Last summer I wrote this blog post about how to manage the weight loss struggles that so many women face. The first step truly is a positive body image.
We cannot hate our bodies into health.
If the core motivation for making “healthier choices” is shame for how you feel about your body, then there is a very small chance you will sustain the weight loss. Eventually, a binge is likely on it’s way. The emotions of guilt and shame have a sneaky way of snowballing on top of each other like an avalanche until it all comes crashing down.
However, we can LOVE our way into healthy choices.
I do not preach or teach giving up alcohol as a lifestyle choice. It’s completely up to you. Personally, about a year ago, I gave up wine permanently. It wasn’t about the sugar intake. It wasn’t about the calories. It wasn’t about a special program I was following. It was simply because over and over again I was waking up the next day with a fog and a slow start. Keeping up with two small kids at 6am is tiring enough. Wine was making it harder.
I simply decided one day “I don’t enjoy this. The taste of wine does not outweigh the struggle the next day.” I made the choice out of love for myself.
I CHOOSE to eat vegetables and less processed foods because I enjoy the feeling of more energy. I choose carefully when to take in lots of carbs because I weigh the love of the food against the energy crash that comes. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes it’s not.
The love of my body is what motivates me to drink over 100oz of water a day and get a full night’s rest. The love of my children and wanting to be around when they are old is what motivates me to get my heart rate up each day.
I danced on the internet today in a bikini on Instagram and TikTok because I desperately want to inspire you to love your body too. Exactly as she is right now. Because your love for her is what will motivate you to make sustainable, long lasting, good choices.
Now, go buy that bikini and tell yourself how beautiful you look in it.
Happy Summer,
Sophia
P.S. My 10-week course “You Deserve to Thrive” is launching May 31. The cart will open on May 18 for registrations. If you want first dibs on a pre-registration discount then sign up here. As soon as I wrap up the details, you will get the first notification.
P.P.S. If you do not already follow me on Instagram, my handle is @thesophiahyde. I have mapped out a plan for that account and will be moving most of my free content over there.
Many of us are plagued with worrying. Even if we don’t recognize it as a worry, we find our thoughts often drift to the same concerns time and time again when we are driving down the road or sitting alone in the quiet.
Oftentimes, without the tools to manage those thoughts, people will manage by overriding them.
“I need to take my mind off of things,” is a common phrase. This may manifest as watching TV, playing video games, scrolling social media, drinking or other common habits to drown out the noise.
What if I told you that you have the ability to release them whenever you want?
It’s true.
Despite how little control you may feel over the things you wish could change, you do not need to hold onto them. You can release them from your thoughts, and therefore, release them from your body.
All of the emotions we experience are felt by our bodies. Stress causing a heart attack is one of the most often we witness. But happiness or anxiousness can make our heart race or our palms sweat. Sadness makes us cry, right? Our bodies and minds are highly interconnected, so it’s important to understand that those worries and concerns are manifesting in your body somewhere as well.
This week I am going to offer a guided meditation on how to release your worries. I used this technique with a client this week and realized it’s probably a healthy tool for many of us.
If you are interested in learning how to release your worries and concerns from your body and mind, join me on Sunday evening at 9:00pm EST to learn a 15 minute meditation practice that you can use at any time.
Sometimes, I will use this technique in a quick five minute window in a parking lot in the quiet of my car.
This technique would also be very beneficial if you like moving meditation (such as walking or running). You could easily visualize this while exercising and release worries or concerns from your body and mind.
If you would like to join us live on Sunday evening at 9pm (great way to prepare yourself for the coming week) then register here.
Yesterday I sold my baby. My car for the last 5 years was so precious to me. She helped us save $25,000, so I want to tell you all the lessons she taught us.
I have found that one of the largest financial mistakes many people make revolve around their car decisions.
When I was 20, I was not very wise. I bought my “dream car” that ended up being a financial disaster for us. At the time, these were the questions that mattered most to me, and they are the questions most people rank highest:
Do I like the aesthetic of the car?
Can I afford the payments?
How old is it?
THESE ARE THE WRONG QUESTIONS!
It’s not that they’re irreverent questions, it’s that they are not the MOST relevant.
After 10 years of no car payments (no waisted money on interest), minimal repair bills and THOUSANDS of dollars being reallocated to other parts of our budget, I want to share with you the RIGHT questions to ask when buying a car:
What are the maintenance reviews?
You can scour the internet for all the mad people. They complain about everything. Before purchasing a vehicle, we read all the horror stories and look for common themes. Many vehicles start needing major repairs around a certain mileage point. Maybe it’s a transmission at 50,000, or an engine at 70,000. There are almost always patterns. Look for a car that people love to rave about, verses complain about.
You can literally google “Cheapest cars to maintain” and read about the annual maintenance of vehicles. Those lists were how we made a decision on my husband’s car. It was consistently on every rating list of cheap to maintain, and it’s proven to be true.
How much life does this vehicle have?
Years on a vehicle are not very relevant. You want miles. You can have a one year old car that someone drove back and forth across the country or a ten year old car that was a grocery-getter. Read the reviews online about which mileage point the vehicle is typically at when people have to drop major cash on repairing it. Some vehicles you want to ditch before they even approach 100k.
Keep in mind, it’s not as important how many miles it has right now. The right question is “how many more miles until I have to sink a lot of money into repairs?” Both the cars we bought in college were SUPER low in mileage, and we thought that was good. Wrong. That was EXPENSIVE. Let someone else take the major depreciation hit. Buy a car that has tons of life left in it, but has taken a huge chunk of its depreciation already.
My baby I just sold was a 2000 Toyota Avalon. We bought her in 2016 with 94,000 miles. There were abundant reviews showing us they very regularly get over 300,000 miles. So yes, I bought a 16 year old car. However, she was a teenager in mileage terms and had tons of life left to go. I was able to sell it for only $2,800 less than what I paid after 5 years. The average car payment in America is $500 right now. You do the math. I saved a ton.
What does the local mechanic say?
I always talk to three different people who work on cars regularly to get their thoughts on a vehicle. They see the horror stories. They know what cars are in their shops constantly and which ones are a breeze to own. I am currently in the market for a minivan and narrowed it down to two based on everything I read online. I asked two local shops and both of them said “Oh definitely the option b. We are constantly having to work on option a. If you have an option b, we will hardly ever see you in here.”
Is the title clean?
Make sure you read the Carfax report. Sometimes something that looks like a great deal is because it’s been through a major repair. Maybe a flood. Maybe a car accident. You want to know the history of the vehicle to make sure you aren’t walking into a trap.
How much does it actually cost?
Many people just look at the payment, but there are many other factors to consider. How much will it be annually to maintain? How much does it cost to ensure this vehicle? What is the gas mileage? Does it take standard or premium gas? How much do these type of tires cost? Many people see an affordable payment, but don’t realize all the surprises hidden in owning the vehicle.
Best of luck on your next car purchase! I hope our mistakes help you avoid making the same ones we did!
Did you know that every now and then life will hand you a gift you probably won’t recognize?
When we have a major life-changing event, we are presented with an opportunity to create new habits at the snap of our fingers.
Traditionally, changing too many habits at once is nearly impossible. For most people, your brain experiences overwhelm, and after a brief period of time, you will revert back to what was comfortable. It has been proven that tackling one new habit at a time will set you up for the best long-term success.
However, there is one exception.
When you experience a major life change, you are forced to create all new habits at once.
Most of the time we are not consciously aware of this opportunity so we just stumble along until we find a new normal.
If intentional, you can set yourself up for great success, whether the new life change is positive or negative.
Personally, I am encountering this right now. Tomorrow is my last day at the job I’ve had for four years. Beginning Monday, I am officially self-employed. Everything about my routine will be changing. For four years I have had to shuffle every aspect of my life around the concrete blocks of 8:00-5:30pm being consumed by a full-time job and the commute to and from there.
Suddenly, come Monday morning, that giant block will disappear. Because of what I know about habits, I am choosing to consciously move into this space. Since I will be instantly forced to create new habits around my lunches and snacks, morning routine, evening routine, and time constraints, I can design them with intention.
This morning I sat down and reflected on my goals I set for the year. I attached every single one of them to a daily habit that could help me get there.
My challenge for you is that next time it feels like the rug is being pulled from underneath you and everything is changing in one moment, choose to see the opportunity. Regardless of whether the reason for the life change is positive or devastating, you are being handed a fresh start and can design your new normal. Choose your habits wisely and with intention.
Got a question or wanna chat about this topic? Text me at 813-946-6706.
