Last week, I shared how choosing just one single word to embody for these next 12 months is a simple and powerful way to guide how you show up, the choices you make, and the life you create.

And today, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the power of ‘one’, because here’s the thing that tends to happen over the first four weeks of a brand-new year. The daunting reality of what it is you want to achieve starts to kick in, and with it, the overwhelm, the hesitation, the confusion of what to do first because it feels like there’s just so much, the second-guessing, the indecision, the stories about doing it and achieving it.

But what if your success came down to just one thing? Well, stick around and let’s take a look at the Power of One.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Today, I wanted to continue the conversation from last week, where we looked at the power of embodying one single word over the next 12 months, and bring this back to simply the Power of One.

And what exactly do I mean? Well, the Power of One is really about stripping everything back to this one moment in time and intentionally deciding the one thing you can do, think, feel, embody, and so on, that will help you say YES! to the life you want. It’s about bringing the end goal into the now and breaking it down into tiny moments of YES! that keep the needle moving forward.

Like I said a moment ago, it’s all too easy to get caught up in overwhelm, confusion, indecision and inaction when you’re staring down the barrel of a brand-new year at your dreams and goals that maybe feel a little bold or brazen to you right now. You’re probably not sure how you will make them possible, and there is almost certainly a voice inside your head whispering that it isn’t possible for you. You can’t do this, you won’t make it happen, it’s not for you. It might be just a whisper right now, but I’m pretty sure come January 31 it’s probably going to become a whole lot louder.

And also, like I said in last week’s conversation, often we go about our goals with this New Year energy that is all about taking massive action and hitting the ground running to take advantage of that fresh New Year start. Am I right? And that is a very flawed approach because it focuses on the DO-HAVE-BE approach, which is a very hard way to go about creating the results you want.

It’s also why come January 31, you are starting to find it difficult to stay on track and difficult to stay committed to the things you said you would when you made all those New Year resolutions. And when you start to fall off track, that voice telling you to give up gets louder and louder.

The easier and far more effective approach is the BE-DO-HAVE approach. It’s about embodying who you need to be to do the things you need to do to have the life you want. If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I highly encourage you to go back and take a listen to understand more about this concept. It is very powerful.

The thing I want to say about this in today’s conversation is that embodying this version of you doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach or some kind of magical overnight change. Long-lasting transformation builds on each and every small step you take. It builds on changing one thought at a time, one belief at a time, one habit at a time, one standard at a time, one boundary at a time, and so on.

The thing is, we all want that magic bullet. We want our tomorrow yesterday. So we resist bringing this back into the now and focusing on simply taking the next step. We want the view from the staircase without so much as climbing a single stair. One thing at a time sounds like you’ll never get there, right? But what I’ve found is that the opposite is actually quite true.

If you try to do all the things and create massive overnight change, you will end up changing nothing and doing nothing. Chances are all you will do is spin your wheels month after month in overwhelm, burnout and exhaustion. And you’ll get to the end of the year once again without having really achieved what you wanted to achieve.

I really don’t want that for you because then when you don’t make it happen again, you simply add that as more evidence to your beliefs that you cannot have the life you want. And that couldn’t be further from the truth, and it just doesn’t have to be your experience this year.

The thing about bringing this back to one moment in time, and the one thing you can do, think, feel or embody, is that you tend to get so much more done because you strip away the distraction of the bigger picture. It’s not that you’re losing sight of the bigger picture, but rather you understand that to go from destination A to destination B, you need to cover ground just one step in front of the next. To climb the staircase is to put one foot after another on each step, yes?

And often what happens when you strip away the distraction of the end goal and bring it back to the step you can take right now in this moment, a step that feels doable, even if it challenges you a little, you also remove your storyteller’s resistance to taking this step. Remember that voice that tells you it’s not possible, it’s all too much. Anything you can do to get your storyteller on side is going to help you move forward so much more easily and with far less resistance.

What you will find by focusing on one thing in this one moment is that your one moments really do start to add up and all of a sudden you will have this powerful momentum that will take you by surprise. You’ll have a moment in time where it feels like it’s finally all happening for you. And you’ll be wondering what it is you did that made all the difference, and what you did was simply place one step in front of the next, and the next, and the next. This is the kind of moment I want for you this year.

Now, you can choose to be the version of you who intentionally decides how to make each one moment count, or not. But either way, whoever you decide to be, and not choosing by the way is still choosing, whoever you decide to be will exist one moment in time, at a time, and that version of you will determine the reality you create over time. My friend, it’s going to happen whether you choose intentionally or not. I invite you this year to start choosing your one moments intentionally.

There’s a book called “The One Thing” by Gary Keller. If you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend that you do. But essentially the book revolves around this one question. What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? It’s a question that has the power to strip away all the distractions and make your one moment count.

I personally like to think of ‘do’ in this question as a little bit of a placeholder. So for instance, what’s the one thing you could think such that by thinking it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? What’s the one feeling you could feel? What’s the one decision you could decide? The one trait you could embody?

Here’s an example to demonstrate why this can be so very powerful. Let’s say your goal is to become a confident, engaging and powerful public speaker this year. But every time you sit down and work on your speaking skills, your storyteller pops in to remind you that you are rubbish at speaking in public. You mess up your words, you make a fool of yourself, and this whole public speaking thing, yeah, it’s not for you. I mean, no one really wants to hear what you have to say anyway, right?

So, what usually happens in a situation like this, if you let your story run on autopilot, is you will take action in that moment of time from a place of not being a woman who is an engaging and powerful public speaker. Your storyteller just reminded you of that. So you’ll get distracted doing other things to avoid taking meaningful action that would in fact improve your skills.

But what if when you notice this resistance, when you notice your storyteller showing up telling you not to do the thing you said you would do in this moment of time, to not waste time working on your speaking skills, what if you asked yourself this, “What’s the one thought I can think such that by thinking it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary?”

Then you could intentionally choose a thought that supports you in going ahead and practicing your speaking skills with more ease and confidence in this moment. A thought like, “Every confident, engaging and powerful public speaker starts somewhere, and I can learn how to deliver better speeches, one skill at a time, one speech at a time”. That one story is going to dramatically change how you are willing to show up for your dreams in that moment.

Let’s take a weight loss goal. Maybe your goal is to lose 50 pounds this year. It’s a big goal, and when you think about it all at once, it probably is going to feel pretty overwhelming. You might even feel discouraged before you even start, because the path to achieving it just feels so monumental.

But what if you asked yourself, “What’s the one decision I can decide right now, such that by deciding it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” This decision might be to choose to drink a glass of water instead of reaching for a sugary snack. Or deciding to take a short 10-minute walk.

This decision not only makes losing the weight easier, but it will also help make willpower unnecessary. You see how this can work? And one glass of water at a time instead of those sugary snacks, one 10-minute walk at a time, those pounds will start dropping away.

The thing about this approach is that drinking a glass of water instead of reaching for a snack will become a habit that you no longer intentionally need to decide. Just like that walk. And that leaves room for the next decision, like taking one less bite every night until you’ve reduced the portion on your plate to that of a woman who is 50 pounds lighter.

My friend, over time these little one things, they add up. They create habits. They create new ways of being and doing. And one thing at a time you reshape your self-image into someone who consistently makes choices aligned with her goals.

This is the power of bringing your approach back to one moment in time and the one thing you can do, think, feel, embody, decide and so on. Because your self-image, who it is you believe yourself to be, that’s what determines the action you do and don’t take. And when you show up and take meaningful action that is in line with the future you, your goals have no choice but to become your reality.

The beautiful thing is that this approach is not about trying to do it all at once. It’s about honoring the power and simplicity of one moment and one action. And by action, we are not just talking about the doing, remember, but the thinking, feeling and being first and foremost.

Let’s bring this back to the BE-DO-HAVE approach. Intentionally deciding how you think in every moment is to intentionally decide how you feel. How you feel is going to impact who you be and how you show up to do all the things.

Now, this same principle applies to any area of your life and any goal you want to achieve, be it in your career, your relationships, your health, finances, your personal growth.

Maybe you need to show yourself a little love and compassion in this one moment of time, so that you feel less guilty about taking some time out to rest after the busy holiday season before you get going for the year.

Maybe you can embody the future you who is fit and healthy by laying out your gym clothes and your water bottle so that when you wake up in the morning, there’s less friction in deciding to go for that workout. This is one thing you can do so that your morning becomes easier and fishing around for your gym wear at 5 a.m. is unnecessary.

Now, I want to share with you how you can take this one step deeper.

If you’ve been listening in for a while, you’ll know I’m a very big fan of using my calendar to help me become the future you. And you guessed it, just one day at a time, one time block at a time. It’s no coincidence that since I’ve been scheduling my dream life onto my calendar in this way and fine tuning my schedule to reflect my future self over time, I have created remarkably fulfilling results in my life.

I didn’t keep a schedule or a diary for years and for those same years my life ran on autopilot with no destination in mind. My days would go from one moment to the next like a leaf floating in the wind being pulled here and there at the whim of everything and everyone. You know what this is like, right?

Now being a perfectionist is actually kind of unusual not to want to plan out every minute. But then again if I did and I didn’t stick with it perfectly, well that just wouldn’t work either. So I avoided making any plans that I potentially couldn’t stick to. I also hated the idea of planning out every moment of my day because I told myself this is not what freedom looked like.

I’ve since learned that I have so much more time, seriously so much more time and freedom to enjoy my dream life by scheduling everything onto my calendar. And with the grace I decided to show myself years ago when I started on this journey to create a life I truly love waking up to, I have been able to let go of the need to show up perfectly for my schedule. I allowed myself to not get it right and keep on showing up one time block at a time anyway. And over time it became easier and easier to show up for my dream life.

I wanted to share this approach with you because it really does support the Power of One concept. Of bringing your goal back to the now and scheduling the moments of your day intentionally so that they move you forward meaningfully.

I don’t have time to go into my complete process for how to schedule your dreams onto your calendar. I actually do cover the nuts and bolts of this back in episode 16 of the podcast called “How to Show Up for Yourself and Your Dreams”. So definitely take a listen in on that.

But essentially what I like to do, and actually Gary Keller has a similar approach in his book I mentioned earlier, The One Thing, I like to work backwards from the end goal to the now. So, what will I achieve this year? Then I break that into 12 monthly goals that step me towards achieving that. Then I take each monthly goal, and I break it down into weekly goals and daily goals. All of that goes onto my calendar into outcome-based time blocks.

That is the secret sauce my friend. You want to schedule your calendar in outcome-based time blocks. Remember we are being intentional about how we spend all of our one moments this year to create meaningful results that lead us towards our December 31 life.

An outcome-based time block is one where you know exactly what you will achieve in the time you have allocated. So for every moment you schedule, ask yourself, what is the outcome of this time? And that helps to ensure that it is an outcome that will move you forward to your daily goal, your weekly goal, your monthly goal, and eventually your yearly goal.

Then add this outcome in as much detail as possible to your time block. And I do mean detail out all the steps you might need to take to achieve this outcome in this time block. That way, you’ll know very specifically when you open your calendar to see what’s next, you’ll know exactly what it is you need to do.

I actually have a planning schedule at the end of every month for my following month where I go through and I brainstorm all the things I think I’ll need to do to achieve my next month’s goal. Then I set that out into weekly and daily goals, and I simply put it all onto my calendar.

Let me give you a quick example to demonstrate this. Let’s say you are launching a podcast this month. One of your weekly goals might be to have the first six episodes recorded and ready for publishing. You might spread that over three days and two, two-hour time blocks per day, where you record for the first 30 minutes, edit for the next 45 minutes, and then transcribe and create show notes over the next 30 minutes. Then your final 15 minutes, you upload everything to your podcast host and schedule the episode.

You might realize in mapping that out that you also need time to outline and prep these episodes. So that would go into a detailed time block as well and then you shift it all around to make it fit. You see how this works? Then you rinse and repeat for all the things you think you’ll need to get done.

Now what this does is it allows you to dive into the task at hand without wasting time trying to think about what it is you intended to do in this two hour block you scheduled. You know exactly what you need to do. That also leaves a whole lot less time for your storyteller to pop in and fill your head with limiting stories.

Sometimes, actually, I will take a moment at the start of a time block and ask my storyteller if she has anything to say about what we’re doing. If she does, I deal with it and I remind her that we’re just doing this one step at a time and there’s no need to be afraid. If she doesn’t, then great. But if I know I’m tackling things that I have a lot of self-doubt around, then I know I’m going to need to remove the distraction of my storyteller before diving into the task I’ve scheduled. That’s a little bonus tip I hadn’t planned on sharing, but it really does work for me.

But listen, scheduling your outcomes in this way also means you can see ahead of time if maybe you’re trying to do too much, or where you might be missing some steps that need to happen before the things you’ve scheduled, like I just mentioned before on that podcast example. This means you can refine things ahead of time and set yourself up in the best possible way for achieving your weekly, monthly and yearly goal.

It is important though that you stay open and flexible because you don’t know what you don’t know. So along the way you might discover other things that need to happen. A big mistake that people make when they create a schedule is they treat it as being rigid. Well, actually there’s two mistakes.

One is they treat it as optional, and they don’t show up for what they schedule like they would for any other appointment. They allow too much leeway. And the second is they treat it as rigid, and they don’t allow any room to move. You need to strike the balance of holding yourself accountable whilst also allowing yourself some room to move. And it’s going to look different month by month depending on what it is you’re working towards.

It’s also important to understand that you will not get this right. It’s not about creating a perfect plan. It’s about creating an intentional plan that you do your best to show up for just one moment at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time, and so on. A plan that sometimes will not go to plan.

But if you have a solid goal set for your day, for your week and your month, when things don’t go to plan, you can simply ask yourself, what’s the one thing I can do to get this back on track? What’s the one thing that will have the most impact on reaching my goal in this moment? You get the idea.

I’m always refining my calendar. I actually learn so much about myself through my calendar. I learn about the stories I have, the things I might be procrastinating on, the areas I’m stuck. And this is all really good information to know, because even if I don’t reach the goal I set, I know if I do the work to clean these things up, I will eventually make it happen.

So, give this a try, if you’re not already using some kind of approach like this. It really is the easiest way to create your dream life and reach your goals. It’s the Power of One at work. And listen, you’ll be surprised at just how much of your dream life you can actually put onto your calendar right now. Imagine how empowered you’ll feel if you’re already living out parts of your dream life today, not December 31, but today.

It is totally doable, and it is doable by scheduling it onto your calendar and simply showing up for the things you schedule. Go back and listen to episode 16 for more on this if you haven’t already heard me speak about it. And stay tuned because I may just offer a workshop on this one topic very soon.

My friend, here’s my challenge for you this week. Start each day with asking yourself, what’s the one thing I can do, think, feel, or embody today that will have the most impact on helping me create a life I love this year? Then say YES! to making that happen.

Happy New Year once again, I’m excited to have your company this year, and I can’t wait to share all the things I have planned to help you say YES! to a life you love. I’ll be here next Wednesday, same time, same place. Be sure to follow the podcast so that episode is queued and ready for listening right inside your library.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

Last week, I shared how choosing just one single word to embody for these next 12 months is a simple and powerful way to guide how you show up, the choices you make, and the life you create.

And today, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the power of ‘one’, because here’s the thing that tends to happen over the first four weeks of a brand-new year. The daunting reality of what it is you want to achieve starts to kick in, and with it, the overwhelm, the hesitation, the confusion of what to do first because it feels like there’s just so much, the second-guessing, the indecision, the stories about doing it and achieving it.

But what if your success came down to just one thing? Well, stick around and let’s take a look at the Power of One.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Today, I wanted to continue the conversation from last week, where we looked at the power of embodying one single word over the next 12 months, and bring this back to simply the Power of One.

And what exactly do I mean? Well, the Power of One is really about stripping everything back to this one moment in time and intentionally deciding the one thing you can do, think, feel, embody, and so on, that will help you say YES! to the life you want. It’s about bringing the end goal into the now and breaking it down into tiny moments of YES! that keep the needle moving forward.

Like I said a moment ago, it’s all too easy to get caught up in overwhelm, confusion, indecision and inaction when you’re staring down the barrel of a brand-new year at your dreams and goals that maybe feel a little bold or brazen to you right now. You’re probably not sure how you will make them possible, and there is almost certainly a voice inside your head whispering that it isn’t possible for you. You can’t do this, you won’t make it happen, it’s not for you. It might be just a whisper right now, but I’m pretty sure come January 31 it’s probably going to become a whole lot louder.

And also, like I said in last week’s conversation, often we go about our goals with this New Year energy that is all about taking massive action and hitting the ground running to take advantage of that fresh New Year start. Am I right? And that is a very flawed approach because it focuses on the DO-HAVE-BE approach, which is a very hard way to go about creating the results you want.

It’s also why come January 31, you are starting to find it difficult to stay on track and difficult to stay committed to the things you said you would when you made all those New Year resolutions. And when you start to fall off track, that voice telling you to give up gets louder and louder.

The easier and far more effective approach is the BE-DO-HAVE approach. It’s about embodying who you need to be to do the things you need to do to have the life you want. If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I highly encourage you to go back and take a listen to understand more about this concept. It is very powerful.

The thing I want to say about this in today’s conversation is that embodying this version of you doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach or some kind of magical overnight change. Long-lasting transformation builds on each and every small step you take. It builds on changing one thought at a time, one belief at a time, one habit at a time, one standard at a time, one boundary at a time, and so on.

The thing is, we all want that magic bullet. We want our tomorrow yesterday. So we resist bringing this back into the now and focusing on simply taking the next step. We want the view from the staircase without so much as climbing a single stair. One thing at a time sounds like you’ll never get there, right? But what I’ve found is that the opposite is actually quite true.

If you try to do all the things and create massive overnight change, you will end up changing nothing and doing nothing. Chances are all you will do is spin your wheels month after month in overwhelm, burnout and exhaustion. And you’ll get to the end of the year once again without having really achieved what you wanted to achieve.

I really don’t want that for you because then when you don’t make it happen again, you simply add that as more evidence to your beliefs that you cannot have the life you want. And that couldn’t be further from the truth, and it just doesn’t have to be your experience this year.

The thing about bringing this back to one moment in time, and the one thing you can do, think, feel or embody, is that you tend to get so much more done because you strip away the distraction of the bigger picture. It’s not that you’re losing sight of the bigger picture, but rather you understand that to go from destination A to destination B, you need to cover ground just one step in front of the next. To climb the staircase is to put one foot after another on each step, yes?

And often what happens when you strip away the distraction of the end goal and bring it back to the step you can take right now in this moment, a step that feels doable, even if it challenges you a little, you also remove your storyteller’s resistance to taking this step. Remember that voice that tells you it’s not possible, it’s all too much. Anything you can do to get your storyteller on side is going to help you move forward so much more easily and with far less resistance.

What you will find by focusing on one thing in this one moment is that your one moments really do start to add up and all of a sudden you will have this powerful momentum that will take you by surprise. You’ll have a moment in time where it feels like it’s finally all happening for you. And you’ll be wondering what it is you did that made all the difference, and what you did was simply place one step in front of the next, and the next, and the next. This is the kind of moment I want for you this year.

Now, you can choose to be the version of you who intentionally decides how to make each one moment count, or not. But either way, whoever you decide to be, and not choosing by the way is still choosing, whoever you decide to be will exist one moment in time, at a time, and that version of you will determine the reality you create over time. My friend, it’s going to happen whether you choose intentionally or not. I invite you this year to start choosing your one moments intentionally.

There’s a book called “The One Thing” by Gary Keller. If you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend that you do. But essentially the book revolves around this one question. What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? It’s a question that has the power to strip away all the distractions and make your one moment count.

I personally like to think of ‘do’ in this question as a little bit of a placeholder. So for instance, what’s the one thing you could think such that by thinking it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary? What’s the one feeling you could feel? What’s the one decision you could decide? The one trait you could embody?

Here’s an example to demonstrate why this can be so very powerful. Let’s say your goal is to become a confident, engaging and powerful public speaker this year. But every time you sit down and work on your speaking skills, your storyteller pops in to remind you that you are rubbish at speaking in public. You mess up your words, you make a fool of yourself, and this whole public speaking thing, yeah, it’s not for you. I mean, no one really wants to hear what you have to say anyway, right?

So, what usually happens in a situation like this, if you let your story run on autopilot, is you will take action in that moment of time from a place of not being a woman who is an engaging and powerful public speaker. Your storyteller just reminded you of that. So you’ll get distracted doing other things to avoid taking meaningful action that would in fact improve your skills.

But what if when you notice this resistance, when you notice your storyteller showing up telling you not to do the thing you said you would do in this moment of time, to not waste time working on your speaking skills, what if you asked yourself this, “What’s the one thought I can think such that by thinking it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary?”

Then you could intentionally choose a thought that supports you in going ahead and practicing your speaking skills with more ease and confidence in this moment. A thought like, “Every confident, engaging and powerful public speaker starts somewhere, and I can learn how to deliver better speeches, one skill at a time, one speech at a time”. That one story is going to dramatically change how you are willing to show up for your dreams in that moment.

Let’s take a weight loss goal. Maybe your goal is to lose 50 pounds this year. It’s a big goal, and when you think about it all at once, it probably is going to feel pretty overwhelming. You might even feel discouraged before you even start, because the path to achieving it just feels so monumental.

But what if you asked yourself, “What’s the one decision I can decide right now, such that by deciding it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” This decision might be to choose to drink a glass of water instead of reaching for a sugary snack. Or deciding to take a short 10-minute walk.

This decision not only makes losing the weight easier, but it will also help make willpower unnecessary. You see how this can work? And one glass of water at a time instead of those sugary snacks, one 10-minute walk at a time, those pounds will start dropping away.

The thing about this approach is that drinking a glass of water instead of reaching for a snack will become a habit that you no longer intentionally need to decide. Just like that walk. And that leaves room for the next decision, like taking one less bite every night until you’ve reduced the portion on your plate to that of a woman who is 50 pounds lighter.

My friend, over time these little one things, they add up. They create habits. They create new ways of being and doing. And one thing at a time you reshape your self-image into someone who consistently makes choices aligned with her goals.

This is the power of bringing your approach back to one moment in time and the one thing you can do, think, feel, embody, decide and so on. Because your self-image, who it is you believe yourself to be, that’s what determines the action you do and don’t take. And when you show up and take meaningful action that is in line with the future you, your goals have no choice but to become your reality.

The beautiful thing is that this approach is not about trying to do it all at once. It’s about honoring the power and simplicity of one moment and one action. And by action, we are not just talking about the doing, remember, but the thinking, feeling and being first and foremost.

Let’s bring this back to the BE-DO-HAVE approach. Intentionally deciding how you think in every moment is to intentionally decide how you feel. How you feel is going to impact who you be and how you show up to do all the things.

Now, this same principle applies to any area of your life and any goal you want to achieve, be it in your career, your relationships, your health, finances, your personal growth.

Maybe you need to show yourself a little love and compassion in this one moment of time, so that you feel less guilty about taking some time out to rest after the busy holiday season before you get going for the year.

Maybe you can embody the future you who is fit and healthy by laying out your gym clothes and your water bottle so that when you wake up in the morning, there’s less friction in deciding to go for that workout. This is one thing you can do so that your morning becomes easier and fishing around for your gym wear at 5 a.m. is unnecessary.

Now, I want to share with you how you can take this one step deeper.

If you’ve been listening in for a while, you’ll know I’m a very big fan of using my calendar to help me become the future you. And you guessed it, just one day at a time, one time block at a time. It’s no coincidence that since I’ve been scheduling my dream life onto my calendar in this way and fine tuning my schedule to reflect my future self over time, I have created remarkably fulfilling results in my life.

I didn’t keep a schedule or a diary for years and for those same years my life ran on autopilot with no destination in mind. My days would go from one moment to the next like a leaf floating in the wind being pulled here and there at the whim of everything and everyone. You know what this is like, right?

Now being a perfectionist is actually kind of unusual not to want to plan out every minute. But then again if I did and I didn’t stick with it perfectly, well that just wouldn’t work either. So I avoided making any plans that I potentially couldn’t stick to. I also hated the idea of planning out every moment of my day because I told myself this is not what freedom looked like.

I’ve since learned that I have so much more time, seriously so much more time and freedom to enjoy my dream life by scheduling everything onto my calendar. And with the grace I decided to show myself years ago when I started on this journey to create a life I truly love waking up to, I have been able to let go of the need to show up perfectly for my schedule. I allowed myself to not get it right and keep on showing up one time block at a time anyway. And over time it became easier and easier to show up for my dream life.

I wanted to share this approach with you because it really does support the Power of One concept. Of bringing your goal back to the now and scheduling the moments of your day intentionally so that they move you forward meaningfully.

I don’t have time to go into my complete process for how to schedule your dreams onto your calendar. I actually do cover the nuts and bolts of this back in episode 16 of the podcast called “How to Show Up for Yourself and Your Dreams”. So definitely take a listen in on that.

But essentially what I like to do, and actually Gary Keller has a similar approach in his book I mentioned earlier, The One Thing, I like to work backwards from the end goal to the now. So, what will I achieve this year? Then I break that into 12 monthly goals that step me towards achieving that. Then I take each monthly goal, and I break it down into weekly goals and daily goals. All of that goes onto my calendar into outcome-based time blocks.

That is the secret sauce my friend. You want to schedule your calendar in outcome-based time blocks. Remember we are being intentional about how we spend all of our one moments this year to create meaningful results that lead us towards our December 31 life.

An outcome-based time block is one where you know exactly what you will achieve in the time you have allocated. So for every moment you schedule, ask yourself, what is the outcome of this time? And that helps to ensure that it is an outcome that will move you forward to your daily goal, your weekly goal, your monthly goal, and eventually your yearly goal.

Then add this outcome in as much detail as possible to your time block. And I do mean detail out all the steps you might need to take to achieve this outcome in this time block. That way, you’ll know very specifically when you open your calendar to see what’s next, you’ll know exactly what it is you need to do.

I actually have a planning schedule at the end of every month for my following month where I go through and I brainstorm all the things I think I’ll need to do to achieve my next month’s goal. Then I set that out into weekly and daily goals, and I simply put it all onto my calendar.

Let me give you a quick example to demonstrate this. Let’s say you are launching a podcast this month. One of your weekly goals might be to have the first six episodes recorded and ready for publishing. You might spread that over three days and two, two-hour time blocks per day, where you record for the first 30 minutes, edit for the next 45 minutes, and then transcribe and create show notes over the next 30 minutes. Then your final 15 minutes, you upload everything to your podcast host and schedule the episode.

You might realize in mapping that out that you also need time to outline and prep these episodes. So that would go into a detailed time block as well and then you shift it all around to make it fit. You see how this works? Then you rinse and repeat for all the things you think you’ll need to get done.

Now what this does is it allows you to dive into the task at hand without wasting time trying to think about what it is you intended to do in this two hour block you scheduled. You know exactly what you need to do. That also leaves a whole lot less time for your storyteller to pop in and fill your head with limiting stories.

Sometimes, actually, I will take a moment at the start of a time block and ask my storyteller if she has anything to say about what we’re doing. If she does, I deal with it and I remind her that we’re just doing this one step at a time and there’s no need to be afraid. If she doesn’t, then great. But if I know I’m tackling things that I have a lot of self-doubt around, then I know I’m going to need to remove the distraction of my storyteller before diving into the task I’ve scheduled. That’s a little bonus tip I hadn’t planned on sharing, but it really does work for me.

But listen, scheduling your outcomes in this way also means you can see ahead of time if maybe you’re trying to do too much, or where you might be missing some steps that need to happen before the things you’ve scheduled, like I just mentioned before on that podcast example. This means you can refine things ahead of time and set yourself up in the best possible way for achieving your weekly, monthly and yearly goal.

It is important though that you stay open and flexible because you don’t know what you don’t know. So along the way you might discover other things that need to happen. A big mistake that people make when they create a schedule is they treat it as being rigid. Well, actually there’s two mistakes.

One is they treat it as optional, and they don’t show up for what they schedule like they would for any other appointment. They allow too much leeway. And the second is they treat it as rigid, and they don’t allow any room to move. You need to strike the balance of holding yourself accountable whilst also allowing yourself some room to move. And it’s going to look different month by month depending on what it is you’re working towards.

It’s also important to understand that you will not get this right. It’s not about creating a perfect plan. It’s about creating an intentional plan that you do your best to show up for just one moment at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time, and so on. A plan that sometimes will not go to plan.

But if you have a solid goal set for your day, for your week and your month, when things don’t go to plan, you can simply ask yourself, what’s the one thing I can do to get this back on track? What’s the one thing that will have the most impact on reaching my goal in this moment? You get the idea.

I’m always refining my calendar. I actually learn so much about myself through my calendar. I learn about the stories I have, the things I might be procrastinating on, the areas I’m stuck. And this is all really good information to know, because even if I don’t reach the goal I set, I know if I do the work to clean these things up, I will eventually make it happen.

So, give this a try, if you’re not already using some kind of approach like this. It really is the easiest way to create your dream life and reach your goals. It’s the Power of One at work. And listen, you’ll be surprised at just how much of your dream life you can actually put onto your calendar right now. Imagine how empowered you’ll feel if you’re already living out parts of your dream life today, not December 31, but today.

It is totally doable, and it is doable by scheduling it onto your calendar and simply showing up for the things you schedule. Go back and listen to episode 16 for more on this if you haven’t already heard me speak about it. And stay tuned because I may just offer a workshop on this one topic very soon.

My friend, here’s my challenge for you this week. Start each day with asking yourself, what’s the one thing I can do, think, feel, or embody today that will have the most impact on helping me create a life I love this year? Then say YES! to making that happen.

Happy New Year once again, I’m excited to have your company this year, and I can’t wait to share all the things I have planned to help you say YES! to a life you love. I’ll be here next Wednesday, same time, same place. Be sure to follow the podcast so that episode is queued and ready for listening right inside your library.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.