In this episode, I talk about the idea of finding flow in our work instead of being in a constant state of frenetic energy. Multitasking feels productiive, but in reality we're just bouncing around like a ping-pong ball, eventually exhausting ourselves.
On the podcast this week we talk about the work to slow down & do one thing well
Let's connect.
I am cheering for you!
In this episode, I talk about the idea of finding flow in our work instead of being in a constant state of frenetic energy. Multitasking feels productiive, but in reality we're just bouncing around like a ping-pong ball, eventually exhausting ourselves.
On the podcast this week we talk about the work to slow down & do one thing well
Let's connect.
I am cheering for you!
Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm Life Coach Kelly Tibbetts, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Hey friends, this week we're going to be talking about the idea of finding flow in our work instead of finding that constant state of frenetic energy where we try to multitask but in reality we're just bouncing around like a ping-pong ball. Has that ever happened to you? I know, with my sort of ADHD brain, I tend to start one project, get distracted by something, move to the next thing and before I know it, when I try to clean one closet, the whole house can become a mess. So if that feels like something that can be true for you as well, it's often because we are balancing so many plates at the same time. We're taking care of a home, we have work for pay, we do nonprofit work, we have relationships that are important to us, and we're trying to give our energy to everything without stopping first and starting from a place of love for ourselves. So before we go any further today, let's do that. Let's close our eyes, take one of those deep, cleansing breaths, connect to the truth of who we are 100% loved, 100% valuable and decide that there are things in life that are so important they deserve our best energy. We call that a priority, one thing we're focusing on at a time, and so a friend of mine named Eileen, when she was helping me do some accounting work back when I was an executive pastor, gave me this phrase do one thing, do it well and then move on. She used to help me take care of QuickBooks and balancing our company checkbook and making sure I was writing out the bills. And it was so easy for me to get distracted from A to B to C and if I did that and made a financial mistake, that would take 10 times the work to go back and figure it out instead of doing one thing, doing it well and then moving on. So having that one bill in front of us, taking care of it from the beginning to the end, putting it into QuickBooks, writing the check, putting the stamp on the envelope, the whole thing. So what would that look like today for the priority that's important to you?
Speaker 1:We've been talking a little bit in this season about noticing what our dreams are, writing them down, then choosing one dream and creating some goals for that dream, and then picking one goal and, for that goal, really deciding on one to three small action steps that could move us closer to creating the result that we want for that goal. And we know that the goal and the action steps are aligned with our energy. When it feels easy, it feels like something we can do. So if we start off today and say you know what? I want to be able to run one mile on the treadmill without stopping and we don't currently run that is setting us up for failure. But I just got a text from my daughter before I recorded this podcast, that said Mom, I just did that, I ran one mile without stopping. Now, that was not her starting place. That took a lot of months of going low and slow and creating peaceful productivity. But now that goal has been achieved and it's time to move on to the next one.
Speaker 1:So what's your goal? What's your dream? Maybe that would be the work of this week going somewhere that you enjoy going, taking a notebook with you and just letting your brain notice all the things that are important. It could be creating a closet that feels like your friend, and letting go of the things that no longer serve you. It might be finding that time every single week to have the intentional relationships that are important to you. Maybe you've let that slide in the last few months and it's time for you to just give your best energy to the relationships that are important to you. Maybe it's time for you for something like a physical goal. Maybe it's running, maybe it's more yoga, maybe it's creating some healthy food habits. Whatever it is, take the time to notice all your dreams and then decide for today, for this week, for this month, what's the one priority where your brain is going to focus its best attention. And then, when you've decided on the goal, let's create some small action steps. And while we're doing those action steps, do one thing, do it well and then move on.
Speaker 1:When I decided that this podcast was going to be something that rose to the level of priority, I had to decide a time and a place and a space. If you could watch me recording this, you might laugh, because my space is actually my closet. It's quiet in here. It's easy for me to just focus on this one thing, but the podcast would come out so differently if I was trying to record this while I was washing dishes or while I was putting the laundry in the laundry machine. But how many times do I do that? While I'm listening to something that I think is worth learning from, I'll try to multitask, and so none of us are alone in this. It's something that we are all trying to discern.
Speaker 1:But if there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be, the first step might be noticing what your dreams are, writing them all down, choosing one to focus on and decide what the goals that could move you closer to that dream are, and then, of all of those goals, choose one, find the three or four small action steps and then, when you pick that one first action step, do one thing, do it well and then move on. So that's our goal today, and when we are able to do that, we end up in what energy people call flow right the ability to just be so connected to the actions that we're taking that time both stands still and moves quickly. When I was a kindergarten teacher, I would see it all the time Children would design a story in their head, they'd start playing, and it was like time was not something for them. It could have been 10 minutes, it could have been two hours. They were so engaged. I know that happens a lot to artists when they start painting and then all of a sudden it could be days later and the art has just sort of consumed them.
Speaker 1:So when you have in your heart a dream, a purpose that is important to you, when are you giving it the energy that it deserves? We've seen all kinds of statistics that if we can give one important goal, 90 minutes a day for 90 days, we can see results. Well, the reason I created a group coaching program is most women like me don't currently have 90 minutes a day for the next 90 days. We are living lives either at, or a little bit past capacity. So what would it look like to take that goal and achieve it in a lower and slower but peacefully productive manner? Maybe we're going to do 10 minutes a day, three days a week, but we're still going to achieve the goal. I've still recorded 75 podcasts. I just couldn't do it in 75 days because that time and energy match wasn't currently aligned with my life when I began working on this podcast, and if you're anything like me, you're going to take two or three steps forward and then one, two, three, four steps backwards.
Speaker 1:Life is a dance like that. Then you get up, you reset, you pause, you pivot and you choose one thing to decide, to do it well, and then move on. So, again, from a place of love, what are you noticing? What would you like to decide for today? What one, two, three small goals are important enough to you that you want to write them down, you want to share them with somebody, and you want to create the time, the space, the energy match to achieve them. Once you begin to notice that these goals are important and we create that time, space, energy match, okay, I'm gonna work in my kitchen, at creating a kitchen that I love coming in and cooking.
Speaker 1:Okay, currently, all the cabinets are over full. The refrigerator needs to be cleaned out. I don't have a menu plan. That's a lot of things to start at once, but if you could put on some music that aligns with your soul and take everything off one shelf, clean it and put it back, you might notice that you're keeping the energy and it might even be increasing, and you might move on to shelf number two. What doesn't serve us is when we take everything out of every cabinet, put it onto the counters, run out of energy, everything gets squished back and we might even be in a worse place than when we started. So choose one thing, make it so small that it feels doable and then move on. Do the one thing well and then move on.
Speaker 1:I know when I first read Atomic Habits by James Clear, it really spoke to me the idea of becoming somebody who, rather than just having action steps. So if I want to be somebody who is strong when she's 75, that involves in some way exercising and making my body stronger today so that at 75 I can still be flexible and move and carry things. So what it began with for me was what he suggested wear your sneakers, be somebody who wears sneakers, then be somebody who goes outside and walks almost every single day, then become somebody who does step two, step three and eventually we will get to a place where there's just flow Time, just sort of moves and stands. Still, you're not checking your watch every three seconds, you're in the zone, your energy isn't quickly becoming depleted and when we can find a way there, we're going to create that peaceful productivity that we talk about a lot.
Speaker 1:So what have you decided for today? If you're driving, sure, wait till you get home. But if it's possible, take out your notes app and write down today's date and the fact that you have two, three, four, ten dreams inside of your body, inside of your soul, that you want to remember. Write them all down Now. Decide on one to give your best attention to this season. This season could be just today, it could be the next few weeks, it could be a month or two.
Speaker 1:Once you've written that down, what are some of the goals? So, if my dream was to write a book, get it published and be a speaker, my goal might be write a chapter of a book every single week for the next 10 weeks. Well then, what would the small steps be? Put my computer someplace, make sure I know that I'm going to go sit at the computer from 7.30 in the morning to 8 o'clock in the morning. I'm going to stretch before I even start typing and I'm going to decide what I'm doing. Am I, you know, thinking for five minutes and then writing some words? Am I just writing for five minutes and then editing tomorrow? Those small decisions are what are going to move us forward.
Speaker 1:And on the 10th day, the 20th day, the 30th day, we might start noticing ourselves going to flow. We sit down, it feels correct, we start typing, the words are coming. Nothing really starts the way it ends. It takes the work to begin doing something that we don't know how to do. And the second time, the third time, the third time is often a charm, right? The third time things start to make sense. I've noticed, in creating this company of having to learn how to do email and podcasting and set up a website and do conference calls and set up a calendaring system, none of the things made any sense the first time I did them, and somewhere along the line somewhere around 10, 20, 30 times, things became easier and eventually some of the things felt like flow. I could just sit and do them and it didn't drain my energy. It in fact, sometimes energized me. So that's what we want to talk about today.
Speaker 1:What is it that's important to you? How can you set yourself up for success? There are the same 24 hours a day for all of us, but very rarely is two o'clock in the morning a productive time for most people. And yet, if we do not pay attention to ourselves, we can set ourselves up for failure just by deciding to focus on a goal at the wrong time of day with the wrong energy. If you want to make a healthy meal for your family every night and your family wants to eat at 5.30 and you are at the baseball field with your children at 4.45 and you don't have the groceries in your house, you're not setting yourself up for success. So deciding on the weekend what the menu plan is going to be, deciding from a place of love that leftovers are on any night where you're at the baseball field after 4.45, is so kind and loving, and we should be incredibly kind and loving to ourselves.
Speaker 1:I think an important Bible verse that talks about this is love your neighbor as yourself. If we don't love ourselves, we cannot love anybody else. And so, in order to get to that place of flow, the time-energy match has to happen. It has to be the right time of day, you have to have the right energy. If you are exhausted, depleted, overwhelmed, confused, the right thing to do would make your priority be how can I rest, how can I recover, how can I heal, so that I can then take the energy that currently is not in my body and use it for what it is that's important to me. And so always rest and then work, and from that place of rest, from that place of love, from that place of knowing you are enough, decide to focus your best energy on the priority that's important to you.
Speaker 1:If you're anything like me, it's so easy to give our energy to the urgency of life, to the people in life who come in and say I need you to do this thing for me. But when we're constantly doing that at the expense of ourselves, I think some of us are leaving this earth and we've never done the purpose we were created for. What would the world be like if we didn't have Martin Luther King Jr, if we didn't have Mother Teresa, if we didn't have Gandhi, if we didn't have Jesus who came and did the work that was theirs to do, even though sometimes people were very frustrated and very aggravated and very annoyed, because Sometimes you and I are gonna decide to put our best energy to something that's important to us and somebody we love and care about would wish we would give our energy to something else, and they're allowed to keep all their thoughts, all their feelings and all their actions, and you and I have been empowered with the ability, with courage, to decide any thought which creates the feelings in our body that moves us forward or away from the goals that are important to us. Step one what's important to you? Begin to notice that. Step two decide to focus your best energy on one priority that could move your goals forward. And step three make those action steps small enough that they're achievable, that they're energizing and that, as you repeat these small steps, you can find yourself in a place of flow, where you're painting, with the music playing and, all of a sudden, three hours have gone by, where you're writing that book, where you're having people into your home and hosting an event and the event feels like ease. That's the goal to find those moments of flow. It's not gonna be 24-7, but it is possible that we can get back to the place where we're doing the purpose-filled actions we were created to do and, instead of becoming emotionally, physically, mentally exhausted, we're filled with energy, we're moving through life and using our gifts. That makes me so excited to think about you doing that.
Speaker 1:If you have found that action that fills you with energy, that moves you to flow, I would love to hear about it. I have a group on Facebook. My name there, kelly Tibbets Life Coach. I'm on Instagram as well, or you can go to kellytibbetscom and, if you're looking for a community that could help you hold on to the goals that are important for you, could help cheer you on as you take those brave, creative, purpose-filled steps, maybe for the first time in a long time. Why don't you join us?
Speaker 1:I've created a coaching community that's affordable and that is here for you to help you remember what's important and give it your best energy. You can find out more at kellytibbetscom and I look forward to connecting again next week to talk a little bit more about helping all of us live a vibrant life. Have a great week. Thank you for joining the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encouraged you and will equip you with the tools you need to move your life into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative, purpose-filled life, and if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, kelly Tibbets Life Coach, or visit my website, kellytibbetscom. I look forward to connecting again soon.