This week is my birthday week, and I'm so excited to share with you today's episode about fresh starts. We often associate the idea of a fresh start or new beginnings with the beginning of the year. That's the time that we make resolutions and plans and all sorts of intentions to really do something big and start with those fresh ideas that we have. But what if I told you, you can make a fresh start anytime, and that's what we're going to be talking about today?
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I'm Jen Argue, I have been leading masterminds for the past five years for six and seven-figure entrepreneurs, and I would love to help you start your own mastermind as well so that you can create a really big impact with those around you and work a lot less and make a lot more at the same time.
The truth is life doesn't wait for us to start with our growth and our change and our time to take a hold of new opportunities. Life just keeps on going, and so when you get these fresh ideas and these intentions to do something new or big, it's best not to wait for those special days to come along. Every moment is a chance for a fresh start, a new opportunity, or a reason for change. So let's explore some powerful strategies to empower us to make these changes in our lives, no matter what time of year it is.
Step number one, reflection. This is a time for you to carve time out of your schedule, out of your routine, and think about your business or your life. What is it that you would like to change or improve? What would you like more of or less of? But creating that time for reflection is the only way that you're going to take advantage of making a fresh start.
By doing the reflection, you are starting the process of identifying what you want to change and the actions that you want to take. You're envisioning the process and envisioning the process only comes during self-reflection. And self-reflection is a continuous process, so this isn't a one-time thing.
In fact, what I love is when I take my groups on retreats, because on a retreat where we are away from everything and we actually have the time and the space to get out of our normal routine. And to reflect and do deep reflection. Now I have a friend who I've known most of my life, so I remember 30 years ago she was telling me this, that on Saturday mornings she has a date with God.
She is a person of faith and she loves to just carve out a big chunk of time on Saturday mornings to spend time with God, to read her Bible, and pray. And just dive into reflection and meditation time, and I always loved that because it's very intentional and at that point, she had very young children and it was just a really good way to not worry about having time for reflection throughout the busy week, knowing that she had it carved out of her schedule once a week on Saturday mornings.
Now when it comes to your business, it's a really great idea to do the same thing. I often love to do this on Thursday afternoons. I usually take Fridays off and I keep it kind of a flex day. There might be days that I work on a Friday, but usually, I don't schedule things on Fridays and I kind of want to leave as a non-work day.
And so, Thursday is the end of my week, and that's when I'll reflect on my week. So in my calendar, there is a reflection space. At the end of the week, I have the whole week at a glance, and then there's a little box at the end for reflection. And I love to do that. I love to just reflect on the week, what went well, what didn't go well, what would I want to change, and try to envision what the next week will look like.
And then I go into the next week. On my actual online calendar where all the appointments are set and I'll transfer them to my paper calendar. I like to look at my paper calendar because it keeps me off the computer or off my phone. I do always check that online calendar, but I do love to keep things in my paper calendar just to minimize distractions.
But at the end of every week, I do take time to reflect. Now, part of that reflection might be recording stats In your business, how many leads did you generate that week? How many discovery calls did you have? How many of those calls converted to clients? All these things are important, and maybe even your tracking engagement on your social media platform.
I don't always think that having more followers is indication of a good business. I think engagement is a better number. So I always like to look at the engagement that I had throughout the week or the month. However, you're doing when you're tracking those sorts of things. But even tracking is a form of reflection.
And so set aside time for reflection, not just saving it for the big things like retreats, but try to do it regularly at least once a week, if not, every day. I want to add that there are different ways to do reflection as well. Journaling is one of them. It's probably the most common and the one that you think about the most when you think about reflection,
But journaling's not for everybody. I recognize that I have a background as a mental health therapist, so I know these, there are different ways of interacting with this concept of reflection. You might be a talker, a verbal processor, and so reflecting for you might be talking out loud into your phone, voice dictation, and it goes into your notes app.
Or maybe it's talking with a friend or a family member who is really good at listening. Pick somebody who's really good at listening, or you might be more kinesthetic. You might need to be moving your body. When you move your body, you are activating things in your mind that help you to think, and so maybe it's just thinking, or maybe while you're moving your body, you're talking into your phone and recording through voice dictation.
Whatever it is for you, do it in a way that works for you and spend time in reflection. Strategy number two is setting intentions. So now you have done the reflection. You can take what you have learned and processed from that time, and now you can set your intention for what you want to do or think or how you want to be going forward.
One of the most important questions I ask my clients is, what do you want? Because it is so easy to fall into a trap of doing what other people want us to do without even realizing that's what we're doing. We might unconsciously be thinking, Wow! that person over there looks so successful and they are doing these things, running their business in this way, and so, I'm just going to copy that without even realizing that you're copying that, but you just start copying that because that becomes your idea of a vision for success.
But in reality, it is so important to think about what do you want. Because once you know what you want, the path becomes clear and your intention will guide you in what to do. And you don't have to think so hard, and you don't have to have these dissonant experiences of why is what I'm doing not working?
If I'm doing what they're doing and what they're doing seems to be working. But as we know, the difficulty with that concept is that, everybody has their own way of running a business, everybody is different. So what works for one person could fall completely flat for somebody else. And so just because somebody has a low-cost membership doesn't mean that is going to work for you.
Or just because somebody has a high ticket membership doesn't mean that's going to work for you. Or somebody has their course on Evergreen and they're always launching with challenges, or they're always launching with webinars, [laughs] whatever it is, you don't have to do those things. Think about what do you want.
Ask yourself, what do I want? Think about your life, what works with your life? Think about your personality and set your intention because that intention of what you want will guide you. Strategy number three is small steps and consistency. Oh, that word, consistency. That is such a keyword and one of the hardest words ever with running your own business.
But the sooner that you can be consistent in the times that it's hardest to be, whether it’s…Oh, just something you don't enjoy doing, but you know is going to build your business, or it's something that is just so boring. [laughs] Being consistent in that area is going to serve you in the long run. Being consistent, when you're not getting engagement, being consistent, when you feel like no one's listening to you, being consistent, even in those hard times, is going to pay off.
At some point, and that's when all of that history of your consistency is going to pay off and people are going to realize you're not going anywhere and you're here to stay. Now here's the thing, the other part of what I said was small steps. Small steps, plus consistency equals success. At least small steps.
You can take big steps too, but if we're thinking about an area that is new for you. Probably taking big steps is going to be very challenging, and so even small steps count. When I was in grad school, getting my master's in clinical psychology, one of the things, the concepts that we talked about was building an upward spiral for clients, helping them to build their own upward spirals.
We hear about downward spirals all the time, right? One bad thing happens and it leads to the next bad thing. Well, the same is true for upward spirals. We try to identify one small step that works and then we add to it and you keep adding to it. It's kind of that staircase visual where you look at the whole flight of stairs and it's overwhelming and you think, oh my gosh, how can I do this?
And you feel paralyzed and you…you think, I can never get to the top of those stairs. But that whole idea of just knowing what the next step is and just taking that one next step, and if that next step feels too big, then we break it down to an even smaller step and even smaller, however small you need to get that traction and momentum today.
One of the things that I really encourage you to do to shift your mindset around is not to think I'm going to start that tomorrow. I would rather you start to get into the mindset shift of starting today, even if it's eight o'clock at night and you're like, I'm going to start that tomorrow. What is one small thing you can do to start that still today?
So think about this as you're listening to this show, or watching what you've been thinking about as I've been talking about Fresh Starts and how you can do this. You know, you can have your reflection, you can set your intention, and now you're going to identify small steps and incorporate consistency. As part of that, can you start today?
And starting that today is going to shift your energy. It's going to make you feel like even a bigger go-getter than you already are. And so think about what can you do today and not make tomorrow that fresh start day. Instead make it today. Strategy number four is to embrace failure and learn from it. Now we know that failure is just lessons in disguise, right?
There is no shame in failure. In fact, there's celebration in failure. Maybe not the kind of celebration where you're like excited for a big win, but we are showing gratitude for learning these lessons because it means there's a bigger meaning to failure and the bigger meaning is that you took action and got feedback and just it's signifying that you took action means that you are in motion, you're creating momentum.
You're taking action on your dreams. You are in the arena doing the work, and that is what counts. And so we embrace failure because it means we are moving in that direction. And honestly and the person whom wins has failed more than the person who hasn't. And so, gathering up failures along the way, and learning from them means that you are going to be even closer to a win than the person who hasn't even started because they're afraid of failing.
So embracing the failure, knowing there's no shame in that, and there's actually a lot to be proud of. So, I can tell you there are people I know of who are very, very big names. I'm not going to name their names. [laughs] I can tell you if we were in a private conversation, I could tell you their name and the program that they launched.
And these are really big, well-known people with like probably almost maybe even nine-figure businesses, like really big businesses. Who have launched programs and I watched them launch and put in all the effort and it didn't go anywhere. It just didn't go anywhere. And at first when I was watching that, I was kind of surprised, but after I thought about it, I was like, that was amazing.
Like good for them. They are setting the example that they can go for whatever their dream is at the moment. And if it doesn't turn out, that is just feedback that is not failure to cry over. And you know, there probably were some tears because they were excited about it, but also it's good feedback. And those people that I was thinking about mentioning, they moved on and now they are crushing it with their new thing.
And they have really found what works, but I can still see them trying new things within the things that are working for them and they're testing, they're constantly testing, and that's our message to us as well, is to be testing and get that feedback. Strategy number five, surround yourself with support.
Oh, you guys know this is my favorite thing ever, of course, right? Because I lead Masterminds, support is so key to accomplishing your fresh start in whatever your new intention or initiative is. Having support around you is priceless. It is so good…so good…there is something about having the support around you that gives you that accountability because we know when we are being held accountable to a group or somebody else, and especially with a deadline, that magic happens.
You get it done and it works. And so that accountability feature of support is amazing. It's also really important because if you experience roadblocks or you experience failure of any type, there is that other voice outside of you that will drown out your negative overthinking or your inner voice that might be critical or hard on yourself.
There are going to be these outside voices that help you see what you can't see, where they're like, that is amazing. You did that. You started the ball rolling. You took a big swing. You might have missed, but you took a big swing and now you're going to learn from it and we're going to adjust, right? Like having a group of people that you can be real with, that you can take off your mask, they can support you through the thick and the thin, the ups and the downs.
That is what you want in order to get momentum and traction with your fresh start. Now, that support might be a family member, a friend, a coach that you pay for, or a mastermind, a group coaching program that you're in. It could come from so many areas. But get that support. Make sure that you have it, because that will definitely help you get through the finish line.
And the other thing too about support is this shared collective wisdom. If you start to try something, like, I'm just talking about a mastermind here, but if you're in a mastermind and you're sharing on your hot seat about how you want to approach something or you're looking for feedback, becuase you don't even know how to approach it.
The group has this collective wisdom to it, and they can help you see what worked for them or what didn't work for them. And then you can filter it through your own knowledge about yourself of what might work or not work for you. So that in itself is a real fast tracker that helps you to really speed up the process on achieving your goals when you've got that collective wisdom in your circle.
Okay, and I am throwing in a bonus strategy for you here. The bonus strategy number six is to practice self-compassion. Self-compassion along the way is key to your fresh start. Because there are going to be times in the journey where you are going to feel overwhelmed. You're going to get discouraged, you're going to feel imposter syndrome, all of those things, and more, right?
And having self-compassion is such a difference-maker, and it's something that happens through lots of practice. So if you're used to overthinking or beating yourself up or feeling like you're behind, just remember. That self-compassion is a practice, and to be good at it, you got to practice it. And how do you practice it?
Well, first you start off just identifying what are the negative self-talk phrases that you find yourself using, or even just identify the feelings that you tend to revert to. We all just have thoughts or feelings that are kind of like are triggers, right? That the ones that when we feel triggered, we immediately feel those things like, oh, I feel so behind, or, oh, I'm not good enough, or scared, or you beat yourself up because you think it's not good.
Whatever your automatic reaction is we're going to identify what those are so that you'll be faster at identifying them in the future. But then what we're going to do is we're going to link some type of reality check phrase for you. So if your instinctual automatic thought is, I'm not good enough, well, what does reality say?
Reality says, you are good enough because you are actually an expert in this area. You have put time and effort into this. Your clients actually do get results from working with you. You have this wisdom where you're able to see what's not working and how to make it work in people's lives. You have built up the ability to say, I do know what I'm doing.
And knowing that nobody is perfect, that perfect does not exist, really helps with giving yourself grace and compassion that you are good enough and there is no perfect. So we're going to show up as the good enough person that we are and trust that the difference in transformation that you're able to bring into people's lives is still going to happen in this new situation.
And worst case scenario, if you hit a roadblock with anything, you have the ability to figure out how to learn and adjust in it and still bring the person transformation. So, That's what I want you to do with that. I want you to come up with these new beliefs, these new thoughts that actually are based in reality and serve you, and that's how you're going to practice more self-compassion.
You're going to catch those automatic negative thoughts faster and switch them faster to self-compassion thoughts and you're going to practice that, that's going to become a practice of self-love, of self-compassion, and that will help you to keep momentum and to keep your sanity and to accomplish those things that you're going for.
Because I want you to get there. I want you to go for it and not use a special occasion as a reason for a fresh start, but just use the reason because you want a fresh start to make it happen today. Remember, you don't have to wait until January 1st for a fresh start. Life doesn't wait and neither should you. So start today.
Thank you so much for listening today. I hope that if you found value in this that you would subscribe to my podcast and share it with a friend and leave a review.
Thank you so much!
