Over the last few years of my personal development journey, I’ve seen myself sabotage my goals in just about every way imaginable - some more obvious than others.

In this week’s podcast episode I’m sharing 15 reasons that you’re not achieving your goals, particularly if you’re a perfectionist! This was a fun one for me to record because it really reminded me just how many ways we undermine our own success and I hope you get a lot from it.

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

• Find out more about my coaching program
• Tim Ferriss fear-setting exercise
• Episode 26: The Power of Self-Image
• Episode 22: How Personal Development Helped Me Overcome Self-Doubt

In the last two years, I’ve experienced an incredible amount of growth - both in myself and in my business. And in the last two years, I’ve started investing - both in myself and in my business.

It’s no coincidence. Without investing in myself I would not be where I am today. I believe that you don’t NEED to invest money in yourself to get to where you want to go but it for sure speeds up the process and makes it a million times easier. At least that’s been my experience!

In this podcast episode I’m sharing every investment I’ve made over the last two years so that I can tell you what the process is like from my perspective, including how I make decisions, how I know how much to spend, how I know whether something will be worth it etc. I also chat about the MAGIC that investing in myself has created as well as all the unexpected opportunities and relationships that have flowed from it.

My hope with this episode is to give you an inside look at the things that have made all the difference in my personal and business growth. And by doing so, I hope I inspire you to start investing in yourself so you too can make your dreams a reality.

Everything mentioned in this podcast episode (and there are A LOT of things) can be found in the show notes at smart-twenties.com/episode42.

For years I was completely trapped in an all-or-nothing mindset when it came to exercise. I was either working out everyday of the week or not at all. I couldn’t make it through more than four weeks of a fitness program without abandoning it (and then I had to start back at Week 1 so I could do it ‘properly’). And I always beat myself up for not doing what I’d planned.

I always thought my issue was motivation, but it wasn’t. My issue was that I was so focused on the results and so scared to waste effort that I pulled back whenever it looked like I might not be successful. That way, I could point to my lack of effort, rather than my lack of worth, as the cause of failure. But it also meant that I spent a lot of time struggling with very little to show for it.

About two years ago I began experimenting with the way I  approached fitness and over time, I managed to find a formula that has allowed me to create a growth mindset and stay consistent without the struggle. In this podcast episode, I’m sharing the things I did to get myself out of an all-or-nothing mindset and I hope you find it helpful!

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

Episode 10 - The Fear of Wasting Effort

In the last month I’ve spent a lot of time out of my comfort zone, I’ve started to make big changes in my business and I’ve been settling into a new routine. It’s been messy AF (as always!) but it’s also been a great month - not because of any particular accomplishment I can point to, but because it feels like part of a bigger evolution. And that feels pretty magical.

In this week’s podcast episode I’m chatting through the highs and lows of the month as well as what I’ve been working on, thinking about and struggling with. I hope you enjoy it!

MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST

Erin May Henry

Self-Coaching Scholars

At Home With…

Aisha Tyler’s Interview on The Tim Ferriss Show

The Life Coach School Podcast

My instagram account

A few weeks ago, I was feeling really lost with my blog. Again.  Even though I’d only recently revamped the way that I was producing content, I still felt something was off. I was putting a heaps time into my blog and yet it was stagnating. I knew it was time to reexamine the way I was doing things and when I saw The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss in the book store, I knew it would be the perfect book to help.

I originally read The 4-Hour Work Week a few years ago, as an audiobook, and learned A LOT from it. But because I didn’t do the journaling exercises, those lessons were quickly forgotten and my life stayed about the same. This time around, I went to this book with highlighters and tabs in hand, and it’s completely transformed the way I approach my business and my personal life. And I’m going to be sharing those lessons with you!

The 4-Hour Work Week is a book with a gimmicky title - but please don’t let that put you off. It’s really just a book about how to be effective and actually enjoy your life, rather than working for work’s sake and accumulating stuff. And if you’re anything like me, you have a lot to learn!

If you’re interested in reading the book (which I 100% recommend), I advise getting yourself a physical copy so you can really digest all the wisdom in this book and do the journaling exercise - the magic in this book is in the application!

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

The Tim Ferriss Show Podcast

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss’ Fear-Setting Exercise

The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss

The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

My podcast episode on Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

How I make the most of self-help books

My instagram account

Until recently, I did my best to hide my obsession with self-help from my friends. I was scared people would think there was something wrong with me - why else would I be trying to improve myself?

If you’ve ever felt ashamed for being into self-help, you’re not alone! In this episode, I’m chatting about the stigma around self-help, whether I talk about it with my friends and how I stopped feeling ashamed for being a self-help junkie.

You can find everything I mention in the show notes.

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

• 16personalities.com
• INFJ personality type
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

It’s no secret I’m a BIG fan of morning routines. Since I’ve already written a few blog posts about what to do in the morning, I thought it was time I talk about how to do it.

The reality is that a morning routine doesn’t need to be elaborate to have a huge impact on your productivity and your willpower. There are simple changes you can make to your current morning routine (no matter what it is) that will help you get more out of each day. And I’m sharing them with you in this episode.

To find everything I mention in this podcast episode, make sure you visit the show notes here. And if you’d like to learn more about the Promote Your Blog Workshop, click here to get the details and sign up.

I’m not sure about you, but I always find the middle of the year to be a great time to stop and reflect on how the year’s been going and what’s to come. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

As most of you already know, this year I’m working towards an ‘impossible’ goal - to make $500,000 in my business in 2018. And I’ve found myself wanting to sneakily pull away from this goal so that I don’t have to fail at it. But I’m not letting myself do that and in this episode I’m sharing the process I’ve been going through to recommit to my challenging goal. I hope you enjoy it!

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill is considered by many to be one of the most influential business and personal development books ever written. Being the self-development junkie I am, I of course got myself a copy!

The first time I read it, however, I didn’t really get much from it. It was a few years ago and while I made my way through the book I did so without really engaging with it. While I felt inspired at some level, I didn’t put any of Napoleon Hill’s advice into practice, I quickly forgot everything I’d learned and was left believing that perhaps this book had been overhyped.

But a couple of months ago, I saw this book on my shelf when I was packing for a holiday and decided to take it with me. Mainly because I’d been learning a lot about the law of attraction and this book comes up a lot in that context too.

Long story short, it felt like I was reading a completely different book to the one I was the first time (even though it was the exact same copy) and took so many lessons away from it - many of which I’ve put into practice.

This book is challenging to summarise, as the magic of this book can really only by discovered by reading it cover-to-cover. So instead, I’m sharing the biggest lessons I learned from this book and how I’ve been applying them to my life. I hope you enjoy it!

And to find everything I mention in the episode, make sure you visit the show notes here.

In June I decided to take a step back from everything I’ve been doing in my business and figure out where I should be spending my time. To do it, I asked myself a question that came from The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss - “What are the 20% of activities that are yielding 80% of my results?”.

After having a good look at everything I was doing, I realised that a few months ago I decided to make my content creation process more time intensive. And while I do love spending time making content, I didn’t make this decision for the right reason - although I didn’t know it at the time.

I was self-sabotaging.

By keeping myself busy with the easy stuff, I didn’t have enough time to do the challenging stuff. The put myself out there stuff. The risk rejection stuff. The grow my business stuff. And I’ve realized that if I want to achieve my impossible goal, I need to make more room in my calendar for the activities that will lead to that.

Since I get the most love from you guys about my podcast and my Instagram account, that’s where I’ll be spending most of my time. At least for the next few months while I test out a new way of doing things! But the good news is that I’ve decided to do more podcast episodes. And, because I’m no longer doing my daily vlog, I thought it’d be fun to give you guys a monthly update in podcast form. I hope you enjoy it!

• The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield-Thomas
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees
• Tim Ferriss Fear-Setting Exercise