In this video, you'll learn:

1. How do you know if you're tying your SELF-WORTH to your PRODUCTIVITY?

2. What's the PROBLEM with tying your self-worth to what you get done?

3. How can you begin to UNTIE your self-worth from how much you've checked off of your to-do list?

Video Transcript:

I want to know if you agree with these two statements:

Number one, “being busy is not a badge of honor.”

And number two, “productivity isn't the only thing that makes a person valuable.”

Now, I'm guessing that you agree with both of those statements However, it is so common that we tie our own self-worth to how much we get done. And that's a problem for a lot of reasons, which I'm gonna explain to you in a minute.

But first, let's go through a few really simple ways to tell if you may be tying your self-worth with your productivity.

1. First one is if you have feelings of guilt when you're not doing things. So if you're just flopped on the couch, do...

It’s a quote used to remind women that they don’t need to feel guilty when engaging in self care, but I absolutely hate it.

What's wrong with “You can’t pour from an empty cup”?

The assumption behind this quote is that the only reason why you should take care of yourself is so that you can be of value to others. Do you see that

You deserve to have a full cup simply because you are a worthy and valuable human. You don’t have to have a full cup so that you can be of value to others. You can just have a full cup.

Do you expect your parents to take care of themselves so that they can help you? Do you expect your friends to take care of themselves so that they can be of value to you? My guess is that the answer is no.

Your value as a human does not come from how valuable you are to others.

You don’t need to earn rest.

If there have been times when this quote was helpful for you, that’s totally ok. I see it as a starting point. The end goal...

The entire concept of "work-life balance" feels awful to me. I imagine a double sided scale that is constantly having weight added to it and you have to try to keep it in balance. If you add a little to the work side, then you're out of balance and need to add a little to the life side. Exhausting.

HOWEVER! Almost every entrepreneur I talk to makes reference to wanting better work-life balance, so we definitely need to talk about how to gain work-life balance as an entrepreneur..

Ready for the most important sentence in this post? 

Until you define what "work-life balance" means for YOU, you cannot reach it.

It's a very vague term. Do you want balance in how you spend your time, your energy, your thoughts, or something else? Is balance really more of a 80-20 ratio? Or 40-60? You get to decide! And once you decide on your definition of work-life balance, you can go about creating it. 

For me, work-life balance is all about mindset and being intentional. Whatever I'm doing,...

“Why aren’t I getting more done when I’m so busy everyday?”

In 2016 I quit my full-time job to be able to focus 100% on my online business (I was a personal finance blogger back then). With all of that extra time and energy to put towards work, you would think that income would skyrocket. That’s what I thought at least. That’s not what happened (womp-womp).

I was busy all day, probably working twice as many hours as I did previously. But, it was another year before I figured out exactly why my income didn’t budge when I was finally able to put all of my focus on my biz. 

Busy is not the same as productive. 

Hours do not equal money.

The word productivity literally means that you are producing something. 

Productive = producing. 

So when you’re busy or “working on” a project, you’re not actually being productive unless you are producing a result/finished product. 

I was busy all day, but I...

Some weekends go past in a blur. I didn't do anything relaxing. I didn't accomplish anything important. I didn't really even enjoy myself. 

Other weekends feel life-giving and I start the next week feeling refreshed, recharged, and excited to work!

There's one big difference between these two kinds of weekends and it's something that happens before the weekend even starts:

Setting my intentions.

Those life-giving, glorious weekends happen when I decide by Friday afternoon how I want to spend my time and energy.

If you want to set your intentions for the this coming weekend, here are 4 things to think about:

#1: SCREEN TIME. 

For me, this makes the biggest difference of all. 

I plan ahead of time what I want to use my phone for and how much Hulu I want to watch. 

• I might decide to only use my phone for texting with friends and family, but stay off social media completely. 
• I might decide to leave my phone plugged in next to my bed all weekend. 
• I might...

I'm not great at math, but this is a pretty simple equation:

When you can get more done in less time, you can earn more money while working less hours.

This means more time for projects that ignite your passions, more energy to connect deeper with your favorite people, and more money to give you options where you didn’t have them before. Win - win - win. 

But HOW? How can entrepreneurs increase productivity? There are four areas to consider when it comes to efficiency:

1. Ruthless Prioritization

Productivity doesn't mean doing all the things and cramming each day as full as possible. It's the opposite.

It means only doing the tasks that will move the needle towards your goal and letting  less important things go. I know, I know, it all seems 100% important, but I promise you that it's not.

Ruthless prioritization starts with setting one ultra-clear goal (usually an income goal).

From there you can figure out which tasks will help you make...

I had a busy day planned but didn't feel like doing any of it. As I sat drinking my coffee, dreading my schedule, I pondered calling a spontaneous day off. And while I occasionally do that as a fabulous act of self-care, on this particular day, I knew that if I threw my schedule out the window I would be disappointed in myself later on. 

So instead, I took 5 minutes and journaled about why I do what I do and here's what I came up with:

“I do it for me. To see what I am capable of and to experience the adventure. Part of the adventure is the full range of emotions that I feel today. 

I do it for my family. To pay our bills and give us options. 

I do it to put more money, power, influence, and options into the hands of women.” 

By the time I was done typing (yes, I type my journal), I was energized to take on my day. It was shocking how much my mindset had shifted in just 5 minutes, but that is the power of journaling. 

Strategic journaling is a...

My husband took a new job earlier this year that gave us a noticeable income boost (yay!) and we promptly started spending more money (hmm...).

Realizing the inflation of our budget caused me to step back and think about how we're spending our money and if we're spending it on our personal values.

Because here's the thing: I'm totally fine with spending more money than we used to five or ten years ago. We worked our buns off to get out of our poverty-level income and I want to enjoy it. But unless we are intentional with how we spend our money, we could easily just start spending money on everything -- including things we don't really care about.

In my quest to live intentionally and help others do the same, I've realized just how important it is to specifically and concretely identify your personal values. If you can't point to your exact core values, you won't be able to be intentional with how you spend your time, energy, and money.

However, once you have your values identified,...

I journaled daily all the way through middle school and high school. Want to know how I felt about every single boy I knew? It's in there. Want to know about the time I got in trouble for failing to get an A on a report card and how angry I was at my parents? Definitely in there.

All of the little details of my hormonal everyday life are written down in embarrassing detail for no one's eyes to see but my own. Seriously, no one else is ever reading those things.

I'm not sure when I stopped journaling. Sometime in college I think. But I picked up the habit again recently in a totally different way. . .

What journaling looks like for me today:

In my journey to become a life coach, I've picked up the journaling habit in a totally new way and it is truly transformative. 

I don't journal every single day and I'm not writing about what happened that day (8am: drank enormous cup of coffee. 8:30am: had to pee four times. 9am: walked dogs and got sunburnt.).

Instead, part of the...