Author Your Life
Author Your Life
The Power of Small Daily Action Steps
This minisode covers: breaking a goal into actionable daily steps and taking it one day at a time, committing to the process, the power of the mind, visualization and imagination.
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Music: Jason Kay
Cover Art: Angela Spellman
Welcome to author your life, a podcast about making bold moves and big changes, living life powerfully on your own terms, outside social norms and expectations. Through conversations with inspiring individuals who forge their own path in life, we'll explore what it takes to face your fears and go after your dreams. You are not a victim of circumstance, you can always begin again, start a new chapter and rewrite your story. This is author your life. And I'm your host, Julie B. Let's get the conversation started. Hello, friends. To kick off today's episode, I'm going to read you one of my favorite quotes. Every day is an opportunity to make your life the way you want it to be. Anything is possible when you work towards it one day at a time, skip a day and you lose momentum. Try to do it all at once. And you burn out steadily, consistently work making every day count. And you will reach your goals. Today is a chance to grow to do a little more than yesterday. A little bit better, a little bit more effectively. Anyone can do a little more, learn a little more and grow a little more each day. Soon, with consistent effort. Those little bits add up to major accomplishments. Is there something you want to change? Today is the day to start changing it. Is there a new customer you want to land? Today is the day to start making it happen. Do you need to lose weight today is the day to start doing it. Not next Monday or next month. Today. You deserve to reach your goals as soon as possible. Control today, and you control your life. That quote is by Ralph Marston I found that somewhere searching on the internet back in 2012 when I was contemplating competing in a figure competition, and at the time, I had never had a really true solid exercise routine. In in my life. I mean I I ran a little bit here and there when I felt like it. I went to the gym and did some cardio and some weights again, whenever I felt like it. Never consistently. And here I am faced with this goal of having a ridiculously chiseled body standing up on stage in a spotlight in a teeny tiny sparkly bikini. With a fake tan and fake eyelashes and my hair all done and walking around and like heels pretty much like on display. The only way that you can be in that position is if you put a plan in place to train. And I'm talking like five to six days a week training, hard weightlifting, really diligent about your eating. And if you mess up the plan, you know, maybe you're like, Oh, I'm only going to do three days a week. The results show on show day. And there's a lot more to it than that. But in a nutshell, I was faced with the idea of committing to a goal that was going to require me to commit to daily actions for months leading up to that goal as a very, very daunting idea. And when I found this quote, it just really hit me at the moment. All I needed to do was workout that day. So today say today is Tuesday. Today. I need to go to the gym after work and do my workout. Don't worry about tomorrow. Don't worry about the next day. Today's the day tomorrow. Then I'll worry about tomorrow. So on Wednesday comes Wednesday, my focus will be, I'm going to do my workout today. And it really is about taking whatever your goal is, and breaking it down into these really actionable steps that you can do every single day. And like just using my fitness example, if I continue training, and I take that approach, five days in a row, next thing you know, at the end of the week, I've completed my five training days for that week of the cycle. Now, if I'm sitting around on Sunday night, looking at the week ahead, thinking, oh my gosh, and I've never done it before, I need to go to the gym five days this week. Oh my god, I can't I can't even dream of it. That sounds so overwhelming. But if I just say, I want to go to the gym today, and I go, and then tomorrow, I say, I want to go to the gym today. And I go and you just take it one day at a time, by the end of the week, turn around and look and say wow, I went five times this week. And I'm using the fitness example because that that really is when and where I found that quote. But at this moment in my life, it actually is really resonating with me with this new morning routine that I just developed. Okay, you must know that I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever been a morning routine person. I've been the my alarm goes off. I'm going to hit snooze. Sometimes I turn it off completely fall back asleep. oversleep leap out of bed, grab my clothes in like a hurry. Like maybe I will have time to like throw a tea in a travel mug and grab my bag rush out the door, there's still like sleep crusted in my eyeballs. And like it just like every morning was literally a mad dash to get ready and get out the door. Not even on time, when a reasonable time, I was never actually on time for work, or whatever I needed to do like the very first event of the day. It like that is how the day started. And currently, I have so many goals, one of which being that I want to get myself in the right mindset for my future. And I want to work on imagining and dreaming and visualizing what I want my future to look like. And when you think about the power of the mind, and the imagination, your brain literally does not know the difference between something that you can imagine and dream up. And like picture in your mind's eye compared to something that you're looking at in real life. Like those two images, the imagined image and the physical image that you're looking at, activate the same parts of the brain. It's just like if you're practicing a sport, and you want to do like a mental rehearsal, and you're just sitting there imagining yourself on the field scoring the goal that activates same parts of the brain, as when you're actually on the field scoring the goal. So mental rehearsal and visualization is such a powerful tool that I have literally have not been using in my life. And I want to start using, and I started two days ago. So part of my new morning practice is that all I'm spending three to five minutes every morning, dreaming of what I want to create in my life. And it's challenging, because I never really thought very clearly about what I want my future to look like. And today, it's already easier than it was yesterday. And today, it already feels a little more real than it was yesterday. And the mental muscle is just like a physical muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. And the more you practice something, the easier it gets. So even if I'm only doing three minutes a day of visualization, those three minutes or so I got so much out of it. It does not sound like much time at all. But when you set the timer and you just say I'm not going to do anything else for this time, these three minutes this is all I'm going to do. You'd be surprised how much time you have available and how much you can accomplish in a very small fraction of time. And I'm the first to tell you, I'm not preaching. I'm figuring this out for myself. But that is what I've discovered so far. And the idea of it Practicing every single day, every single day, just every day for three minutes, I do visualization. By the end of the week, I've spent 21 minutes visualizing my future, that's 21 minutes of mental rehearsal, that my brain is starting to see that this future is going to be real. Now you add that up over a month, that's like 80 something minutes, that's like an hour. But you can kind of see how the time will add up. And you can apply this to when he's running, because I'm a runner. If I'm going to go out for a run, I've had times in my life when I I'm like running regularly, and then I've had times when like, I completely fall off the bandwagon. Every single time that I want to get back into it, I always start out with like a 10 minute run. And then the reason is because it's so small, that it's almost laughable. And it's like, no, I can totally do this. And then you do and you feel successful. But it's not so much. It's not like two hours, where I'm going to be burnt out super sore, completely exhausted, and be like that was too much. There's no way I can do this tomorrow, I cannot I can't possibly do it again. So you always want to start with those really small, manageable action steps that you can do every single day, and the smaller the better. Do not underestimate the power of small, daily action steps. Thank you so much for joining this conversation. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to leave a review a five star rating. Be sure to hit subscribe to catch all future episodes. I would love to know who's listening and your biggest takeaway from this episode. If this podcast was valuable, please share with a friend. Take a screenshot and post to your social media. Hashtag author life podcast and tag me. It's Julie B underscore Your support helps this podcast grow. Until next time, friends. Keep writing your story and author your life