A few months ago, I made the decision to take the motivational lifestyle aspect of my personal blog & launched an online business out of it. I am and have been an advocate for personal growth, working on accomplishing your goals and remaining positive in the time of great adversity for a very long time.
After investing money and time, learning and implementing all that was being taught via the workshops, webinars & online training, I somewhat felt at a standstill. I felt "what was the point". I thought that if I followed all the steps and implemented all the mechanisms I learned, progress would happen. But I that didn't happen. I almost gave in & threw in the towel. But as always, the universe is watching, guiding and reminding me to take one more step. Talk about feeling like a fraud, right? After all, my purpose is to motivate & help others to work on achieving their goals.
So what changed? One "Sunday to be exact", I woke up feeling exhausted both mentally & physically & I knew that something was wrong. I began to second guess myself. Why wasn't I receiving signups for my then titled Clarity Webinar? Why wasn't my course selling as much as I wanted too, why this & why that? It was at that point that I needed to tune out. So I decided to shut out from anything work related & do something fun. But how long would I be able to escape the reality?The reality of feeling like a failure? HOW WAS I GONNA REGAIN MY MOJO?
Again the universe heard my calling because, on Monday morning, awaiting me on my timeline was a mini pep talk from a Clarity Coach. Naturally I hopped on over to her site, and signed up for "How to go from being stuck to 6K months". This mini 2 part podcast opened up such a wave of relief & clarity for me. It made me realize that my mindset was fixated on "what if no one signs up?". I was focusing on the problem and not on creating a solution. I was doing what I was taught & coached to do instead of streamlining it to suit ME. Not only that, every other post I've read during the following 3 days kept reminding me, to DO WHAT I LOVE. To REDEFINE my Purpose; Revisit, Simplify, and most importantly "It's ok to fail sometimes", as it presents an opportunity to be motivated all over again, and let's just say edit your plan.
Here are 4 Things You Could do:
#1 Re-Defining Your Purpose: After listening to the first podcast I had to thank her. I was also eager to listen to the second podcast and when I received it I was on a bank line.Surprisingly with 30 persons during the lunch time rush. This presented an opportunity to learn something more, realize my TRUE AUTHENTIC WHY, & take some notes on my phone. It also led me to download a copy of "Think & Grow Rich". Which by the way the first lesson is all about your purpose & having a BURNING DESIRE to achieve that GOAL. As it turned out, I was straying away from my purpose & my goal. I was being distracted by all the thrills being thrown my way. If you get distracted by the temporary failure, get a pen and paper and rewrite your purpose. What are you doing & why are you doing it? Surround yourself with materials, publications, blogs, and podcasts to help remind you and bring you out of that slump.
#2 Evaluate The Situation: I gave myself a quarterly goal which at that point I should have been at a 6. But it felt like a struggle to move on from number 4 on the outcome grid. Let's say your ideal outcome is at 10, draw a scale of 1-10 and mark out where you are on the grid. Then, figure out what went wrong after that. What is preventing you from moving on to the following number? Sometimes the one obstacle can be hiding right beneath our noses, but because distractions we fail to realize it. Instead of ignoring it and moving forward, tune out, address it and then think of your next big step.
#3 Ask for HELP & Keep Progressing: I honestly believe in doing it right. If I am going to do something I want to do it right. And unless I haven't identified what the challenge is, creating value is not possible for me. And that leads to frustration. After analyzing the situation, the big picture became clearer. After also speaking to a fellow entrepreneur within a Facebook group, she made me realize that I was being too generic in my marketing tactics. The purpose was written all over my posts, my bio, my resources, however; the sales pages lacked the purpose. Which of course resulted in the low response rates.HOW COULD I NOT SEE THAT? Of course, sometimes it helps to have a second pair of eyes. If you can't figure out the problem, ask someone for help. After you've identified your problem, redesign the plan from there on out, and keep progressing.
#4 Celebrate Small Accomplishments: Regardless of the moment, one of the ultimate best ways to lift yourself out of the slump is to be grateful and celebrate. No matter how small you think it is; "Celebrate it". Maybe at the time you were working on that minor milestone it seems like a mountain, but you did it. And if you did it once, you can definitely do it again! There is no direct path to success, nor is it objective. Everyone has their own definition based on what their desired goal and outcome is, and if I have learned one lesson is that I should focus on my version and not anyone else's.
Follow Menellia Valcent on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VelvetHue