Tiny Steps of Action – Episode 446

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[00:00] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Hello, Prosperity thinkers. Welcome to the podcast. We’re going to help you learn how to view your past to make your present and future stronger. And Kim has an excellent example on how to do this. Well, thank you, Spencer. This is a fun one. And I think I first heard the idea from Tony Robbins. So like all good entrepreneurs, we have lots of coaches in our lives, lots of mentors, lots of people that we learned from is always looking for the learnings. And yes, learnings is a real word. And what I picked up on was an idea that was super valuable to me and helping me look backwards, which a lot of individuals are very good at looking backwards. They are historically based, especially if you have a Colby profile that initiates

[00:56] in FactFinder, you’re very happy to go back. However, if you have a Colby profile that initiates in Quickstart, and if you don’t know about Colby, check the show notes, there’s a great link there. If you initiate in Quickstart, you do not like to look backwards. Like my team typically on Monday knows not to ask how the weekend was. I am so about the week ahead. Well, okay. So here we are at the beginning of a year and it is common and valuable to look backwards. And I find that’s a little difficult to do if I don’t have a bit of a track to run on. So the suggestion is to go back through your pictures and you can go slowly or quickly. I spent maybe 15 minutes doing this, flipped back through the pictures and

[01:39] basically just went month by month to identify the amazing things that happened in my life in those past 12 months. And it was a great way to pull the good out of it. It was a great way to pull the learnings out of it as well. So I really looked for two things in each month. One very specific thing that I can be grateful for because we must remember, we get more good out of our gratitude practice if it is specific. And then one thing that I could learn from or that I did learn from, and those are sometimes good things, sometimes not appearing to be good things. In other words, they might appear bad. So this reminds me of the, I think it’s a Sufi story where some kid breaks his leg and the town council says to the father, oh, that’s so sad.

[02:31] And the father says, maybe. And then like the army comes through, right? And the kid can’t go and be in the army and oh my gosh, that’s so great. And the father says, maybe. And then there’s like three other iterations to the story. And it’s just evident that maybe is the answer. So your choice, right? Look at your pictures, pull the good, pull the gratitude. Get it as specific as you can. Maybe even up level it one and we can talk about that a little more if you’d like, and then also pull the learnings. Wonderful. Let’s talk about the up leveling. What does that look like to you? Well, I think the easiest example is Emma dog. So our great Dane is gorgeous. I mean, she’s just one of those head turner kind of dogs and that’s a very

[03:23] physical aspect of her, right? So yeah, I can look at her and be super grateful for her physical beauty, like literal physical self up leveling. It says, well, I can also be grateful for how sweet she is. Like she’s a dog, right? She loves to be pet and I love the softness of her. So there’s still a little physicalness there, but there’s kind of an extra element to how sweet she is and how loving she is and how we all know that dogs love all the time. Well, that’s up leveling at once, but I can up level it even more. She’s obedient most of the time. I do have a dog clicker. Nevertheless, for the most part, she comes when she’s called, right? So she’s obedient. So I can be grateful like that.

[04:12] Now I’m starting to get into the inspirational elements of her, not the physical elements of her anymore. And then I can even take that another level. Okay. Well, what does obedience means? It means that she’s paying attention, that she’s aware of the landscape, that she responds to my voice, that she’s always happy to do what it is that I’m asking her to do. So I’ve gone from a very physical dog to maybe an inspirational level, to you could even call it a spiritual level of what she represents. And so that’s up leveling it and you can take that as many steps as you’d like. There was something that you mentioned that I want to kind of rewind just a little bit and then extract something. So let’s try this.

[04:57] Now, as you did your reflection from the past year, there were many things that were positive and, you know, worked maybe as you set out to do with your intention and they may have gone the way you wanted or better. And then there were probably things that you looked at this year where you said, whoa, I am in the trenches. This, I cannot believe this. And what the beauty of reflecting does is it allows us to have that space and time. So would you mind sharing something that was either really positive that you were reflected on, or maybe something that was difficult that you have a new perspective on? Yeah, I will happily share the learnings because I think we share so much of the good on this podcast, which is wonderful, but I do live a real life.

[05:48] And so I want our community to be very clear that we run into challenges just like every person does and like every business owner does. So in the earlier part of 2021, we decided to do a database transition. And we did a little research, we were already using two databases. And so we decided to combine everything into one. It was a fairly logical direction in our eyes and it was a disaster. I mean, we worked for probably six months to try to make the decision work. And it just wasn’t, there was missed data, there was lack of systems. There was promises that had been made to us from the people that controlled the cloud-based database that were not even close to coming true. There were hassles.

[06:39] Our team was struggling. I mean, it’s literally the kind of thing that could have killed the business. Our entire business runs on our CRM, our customer relationship management slash database, our marketing is on it. I mean, our processes are on it. Everything is on it and we just couldn’t make it work. And so we finally decided to bail and switched again. So here we are in the space of 12 months, switching databases twice. This is something that a good business should do maybe once every 10 years. In fact, literally the original database was well over 20 years old. I mean, we’d upgraded it and whatnot, but it’s not the kind of thing that you should be doing twice in six months. And nevertheless, it was, we could not stay where we were.

[07:27] And so we switched again and we’re still a little bit in the mired muck space of that last switch, but we can already see the stars, right? We got our head up out of the muck and we can see by looking long-term the potential it is operating so much better. We’re all so much happier. The natural transition that must occur went fairly smoothly. We absolutely still have some issues worked out. In fact, one job that I get to do today is call a client and say, I know you referred us to somebody and they’re not linked in the database the way they can be. And I cannot find them. Will you please tell me the name? I mean, how embarrassing is that yet? I will do it. I will not ask my team to do it. I will do it myself and it will happen.

[08:15] And of course they will not really care that I’ll apologize. They’ll either remember the person or not. Sometimes the latter happens and we will all go forward. And something that my sister, Tammy Brannon, who runs Blueprint process, such a helpful tool, has reminded me of repeatedly is that you just keep doing your good in the world and the people that need to find you will find you. And so as an example, with this potentially lost referral, well, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear that I love to teach. And that student will appear when they’re ready and we will be able to link them up properly in the database and never lose them again. Ooh, that’s interesting. So there’s actually a couple of things to unpack within there.

[09:01] So what happens to us is people, when we take the time to reflect, we can actually, we can change the past, even though we don’t have a time machine, we can change the relationship with it because we can add in additional gratitude or we have that perspective where it’s like, Oh, I’m not in the thick of it anymore. So let’s go back to your database and the problems you have and what have been the blessings or say the gratitude that has come from that. Absolutely. Well, I want to pull out from your statement. I mean, even actual history that is supposedly very factual is being rewritten these days, left, right and center, right? So if supposed actual history that tons of people report on is being

[09:46] rewritten with a different lens, we can absolutely rewrite our own history and pull good out of something that we thought was bad. One of the most amazing things is I got to work with my son-in-law who is new to the family and is a partner in this last database and it’s HubSpot for those that are interested that we now get to work with Ronald, his abilities, so cool to have a family member to help us with this database and in the other ones. And I will not mention what they were. We were not able to do that. So that’s something super specific. Again, trying to follow my own guidance to be specific about the gratitude. The other thing about HubSpot that I really like is it’s literal layout on my screen, I can change.

[10:37] And so what’s important to me as the owner of the business is different than what’s important to Teresa, who’s handling all the new paperwork is different, that’s important to Rayann, which is handling all the service work. Well, each of us can have our own view of the data in our database and it can be sliced and diced a hundred different ways. That’s amazing. And it’s indicative of where our world is heading with all of the cool technology that is coming down the road, being able to personalize the perspective, the view, the results that you get out of whatever the technology is that you’re tackling is crazy valuable. So those are just two specific things that I’m uber grateful. I want to tie in some action here.

[11:20] So what happens, and I think all of us may be guilty of this. There may be some superhero character that’s listening to the podcast. That’s not, but when business is going well, or when it’s stressful, we tend to be all in and it’s difficult to take the time and space to reflect. I would imagine that Emma Dogg helps you take that time to reflect because she wants to be pet. And so it’s, Hey, Kim, you need to be quiet and you need to just pet me and reflect. So let’s talk just a moment about what does that reflection look like? How can you help someone ramp on to have the prosperity? I love that. And it is something that I’ve worked on diligently in the last couple of years and will need to continue to really work on.

[12:07] And that is adding moments of reflection in my daily life. And the easiest way to do it is to set a reminder on your phone. And, you know, our cell phones, they can be for positive and they can be for negative. You’re right. Emma Dogg does. And thankfully Great Danes have a lot of energy used up just living because their bodies are so big. So Emma Dogg’s not super needy, but every now and then she will literally right here, bring a toy. And as you said, like, hello, I’m here. I need to play. I want to pet, whatever. And so that’s an awesome reminder, but as we can all know, it’s not always a great timing. So I do block an hour every day for what I call lunch. Sometimes I’m eating. Sometimes I’m not.

[12:51] I’m always playing with Emma Dogg. I try to go outside. I try to chat with Todd for a little bit. And I try to take, sometimes it’s literally five or 10 minutes. Sometimes it’s more like a half an hour to just sit and be. So I might be sitting in my swing outside. I might be sitting in the couch in my office. I might be standing on my shaker machine, but I’m physically doing one thing that’s still, if not literally still like the shaker machine clearly is not literally still, but it’s occupying my body and then I’m letting my mind be with that thing. So maybe I’m focusing on my breathing. Maybe I’m focusing on my gratitude list. Maybe I’m focusing on just enjoying the sun and the out of doors.

[13:36] And again, it’s sometimes just five or 10 minutes, but I think it’s a super important thing to do. Absolutely doable. You just have to remind yourself again. It’s a habit, right? Now, occasionally I will also try to build in an extra hour once a week. So for example, I have my Sunday morning spiritual time, obviously, but then maybe on a Thursday at one o’clock for a period of time, I’ll block out an extra hour to just be grateful, to just focus on gratitude, to amp up my spiritual life or whatever it is that I’m focused on for that period of time and that ability comes and goes, and I don’t always have that extra hour in the week. And if a week doesn’t work, then add an extra hour in the month or

[14:19] every other week or whatever it is. But calendar control and using technology to help support that is the most important skill that we can learn to add to our abilities. And there isn’t one person anywhere. You know, we’ve all got busy lives. We’re all juggling many balls, but there isn’t one person anywhere that can’t make that happen and get amazing good from it. Oh, that’s so true. As you were saying that, it had me think about something. If we just rewound the clock a little bit, and we were in the 20th century, so the 1990s even, we wouldn’t have had access to what we do now. Every person that is around us has access to an assistant. Her name might be called Siri or it might be called Alexa or it might

[15:11] be something else, but we all have access to an assistant and doing simple things like setting an alarm on your phone just to remember. And as you mentioned that, it’s kind of funny because I have alarm on my phone every single evening that says time to reflect. And that’s what I do. We’ve never talked about that. But baking and habits like that make a big difference. Yeah. Love it. Such a cool thing. Cool habit has immense benefits, some of which we’ll never know about. Yes, absolutely. So for listeners, if you found this episode to be hopeful, to be valuable, something that’s going to help you have stronger habits and to reflect, to maybe even take the time to change the past, the things that are lessons that you want to use as strengths moving forward, then

[16:05] this is one of those episodes you may want to re-listen to and make sure that you are following the podcast on your favorite podcast player. New episodes come out every single week. And we want to thank you for being a listener, regardless of where you are in the world and where you are, you’re part of this community and we want to thank you for that. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.