Now, buckle up sweet buttercup because this is going to be a dose of tough love.

Tough love (n): a bit of information which may be tough or difficult to hear but is said with pure love + compassion.

"I'm just so overwhelmed with everything," she said to me. "There's just so much to do, I feel pressure to make money now and I don't know how to get it all done."

This was a conversation from a dear friend who was trying to launch her new offer while doing all the tasks of mom life and her day-to-day job. She longed to leave the 9-to-5 and focus solely on building her own business, yet she was hit with overwhelm.

Seriously, though. Can you relate at all to this feeling of overwhelm, anxiety, pressure and the unknown?

As an emergency veterinarian with little twins, the Gillies, these feelings were not foreign to me when I was just starting out as a digital entrepreneur.

Here's what I learned... lean in, it's the "tough love" part:  just...

What Does Your Ideal Day Look Like?  

I remember sitting in on a group coaching session where this question popped up.  This question made me wonder something IF you aren't entirely sure what your ideal day would look like than how in the world are you making your decisions?  Are you just putting out fires every single day, always on the defense?  Or are you mapping out strategic goals and action steps to help YOU create the life YOU desire?  

Now. Constantly being on defense sounds like a lot of work AND like you never truly take any steps forward.  It's not how I want to live yet at the time during this call, it felt like my life was 86% on the defense.   

I've since learned through various lessons, masterclasses, coaching sessions and trial/error what my ideal day would look like.  The picture of my ideal day changes with the seasons of our lives, but if you want to take a gander at...

The word “hustle” literally makes me cringe. People tend to think hustle is a good thing, but when I think of hustling, I think my emergency/critical care veterinary residency. I was working five to six days a week with 14- to 16-hour shifts. 

It felt at times I was surviving on a handful of hours of sleep and spending the rest of my time studying when not passed out on the floor. Now, granted, I signed up for my residency voluntarily and was extremely blessed to be a part of it. Plus, my resident mates, mentors, and the crew where I worked were phenomenal. 

But, hustle makes me think of that period of my life because it was a wee bit out of balance, with lack of sleep and poor nutrition. Plus, if one stays out of balance for some time, the destination is most likely going to be burnout. No one needs imbalance and fatigue, especially when you are trying to hustle. 

It's like a toddler on a sugar rush.... going... going... going......

SHARING A SNIPPET FROM MY BOOK, NO BRAINER: 

There is just something completely warped about dressing rooms, am I right? The lighting is set to make a gal look like an extra for the movie Casper, with pasty dry skin and dark blue circles under the eyes. Plus, where do they snag these mirrors that completely distort one’s thighs to resemble bathroom mats. This can’t be me, can it? 

I stared at the reflection in the dim dressing room, holding a pair of jeans that didn’t fit over my bathroom mat thighs. This woman was mimicking my moves but her hair was dry and thin with patchy, colorless skin. Holy Toledo, I thought. This woman is me—or at least the shell of who I was. 

Somehow after our twins, the Gillies, made their arrival early at 27 weeks, and following the months in the NICU as well as multiple hospital stays afterwards, this was me. I was literally being held together by Jesus and a whole lot of dry shampoo and fueled...

*PING* 

*PING* 

*PING* 

The phone on the couch's armrest was blowing up with notifications and as my hand automatically reached to assess the situation, I could feel an intense pair of eyes staring at me.  

"How can you be successful and productive with all those notifications popping up demanding your attention?" she asked. 

Like a deer caught in headlights, I simply stared at my life coach who I was bunking with in an airbnb for a leadership conference. 

Who doesn't have their phone CONSTANTLY on, I thought.  Don't most folks have notifications on?  Wait, you can turn them off?  

It was in that weekend back in 2014, I learned a few things about working from home and utilizing social media.  These hacks I still use today because they help me stay focused, productive + efficient with my time... so, let's break them down for you.  This way you aren't caught like a deer in headlights! 

01//...

One of the books which was recommended to me as I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey was:  Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy.  If you haven't heard of this book, it's all about doing the tasks you know will move the needle in your business... FIRST!  

I'll make sure to link + show the book cover down below so if you are interested in reading it yourself, you snag the right one.  And yes, it's a link where if you purchase, I do make a small commission.  

Yet here's the thing, how do you know which tasks are actually FROG LEGS?  When everything in your business feels important, how do you justify which task is a frog leg and needs action NOW?!?

TIME TO REFRAME 

First off, let's state the obvious... we all have 24 hours in the day.  I am most likely going to butcher this quote and for the life of me cannot remember who said it first.  However,  it had quite an impact on me and how I look at my day-to-day...

Something about the start of a new year folks begin talking about a "word of the year" or setting resolutions... and it just makes me want to go, bleh.  Especially when I learned that most folks who set resolutions, don't follow through with them. Ouch!

Besides, I don't want to make S.M.A.R.T. goals (which sounds a wee bit silly stating this out loud), but I don't want to have one word to resonate on all year.  I long for MORE adventures, more experiences, more memories created so that when I'm eighty or ninety years old, I can say in 2022 this is what we did!  These are the experiences we had!

And this isn't something I just stumbled upon myself but actually learned from a community created by Jesse Itlzer.  So, props to him + his team for opening my eyes to this new way of mapping out my year and creating my life's resume.  

01//  IDENTIFY YOUR YEAR DEFINING EVENT

The first thing to get placed on the yearly calendar was my "year defining...

QUICK BACKSTORY 

We were getting hit with some rather gnarly winter storms up in Northern Idaho, so the trips to the grocery story were quite limited.  This means mama was running low on a lot of ingredients; however, we have a tradition in our house --- PANCAKE SATURDAYS!

Using a smorgasbord of ingredients which we had on hand, this recipe was formed.  And it was approved by our twins, the Gillies who at the time were eight-years old. 

Now, I should tell you that these pancakes are gluten free!  They are not technically "paleo" unless you remove the dairy and substitute with coconut oil.  You do you, boo.  I didn't have coconut oil, but I did have one stick of butter in our fridge so that's what I used. 

RECIPE

Here's the list of the ingredients!  I should have named these "kitchen sink pancakes"... but, alas, we did not.  

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup of grass fed butter (or coconut oil), melted
• 1 banana, mashed
• 1/2 cup of brown...