 Are you strict with yourself, or are you lenient with yourself? Well, I want to recommend that you be both strict and lenient, but in the right areas. I recommend that you be strict about showing up, but lenient about the results. Let me explain. Most people, especially maybe a lot of you watching this, tend to be givers. You are very helpful to other people. You tend to more easily show up for other people, but maybe not so much for your own projects that don't have an external deadline, but that you have to set your own deadline, right? You know what I'm talking about? You may be lenient with showing up for your own projects, but then what happens is you get strict about the results. This thing has to be perfect. Oh, it's not good enough to put out there yet. I recommend that you flip that around. Be strict about showing up for your projects, but then be lenient about the results. Why? Because you've got to see excellence and perfection as the entire process. If you show up consistently, work on the thing that you planned, you will inevitably grow your skills. Do you agree? And if you grow your skills over time, you will inevitably get better results. But if you force yourself to get great results in any work session, you will enter into self-doubt, self-judgment, self-punishment, procrastinating on putting that thing out there. Business with the results in any work session is simply not a very productive strategy. So be strict about showing up on time whenever possible for the thing you have planned to work on, especially if it doesn't have an external deadline, but you know it's important. Ask yourself, I'm curious to know what is the thing that you know if you did consistently will probably benefit your business, but it doesn't have an external deadline. You have to do it yourself. Stephen Covey and the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People call this the Quadrant Two activities. Some people call this the Eisenhower time management matrix. It's the stuff that is important, but not urgent. So you have to set a time for that. There's no other boss telling you to do it. You've got to do it. You've got to show up for it. Now the question is, will you show up? And when you do show up, do you do that task? Or do you give in to fear, anxiety, uncertainty? And do you escape and do Facebook or surf, watch Instagram videos, right? Or do you do the thing that you had planned strictly noticing the unpleasant emotions of anxiety, fear, uncertainty, et cetera. And when you notice it, reframe it into something positive, such as adventure, curiosity, openness, experimentation. The future is wide open in a moment of creation, in a project that is uncertain. That means the future is wide open. And so don't expect and be attached to a particular result. Just be open in creating. Be strict about showing up and working on what you had planned. And then be open, be lenient with the results, meaning be open to whatever happens in that work period. Knowing that you have put in your time, and by putting in your time again and again you're going to become excellent over time. It's inevitable and you will get better and better results. Now what happens if you do show up and you want to escape because you are distracted, you are anxious, et cetera, and maybe you, half hour goes by, you've been surfing Instagram. What do you do then? Do you blame yourself? Do you punish yourself? Which is what a lot of us do. Observe, oh, I just escaped for half an hour, I just escaped for 15 minutes, I just escaped for whatever, I just escaped for a couple of days, right? Notice that and be strict about coming back to the focus, but be gentle about the fact that you're coming back. Be gentle about that you had escaped and now you're coming back. Appreciate that, just like in meditation, right? When you're meditating and you're focusing on the breath, do you blame yourself? You go, oh, I missed my breath again, I'm thinking of thoughts and I got lost. No, no, no, you go, oh, I just noticed that I'm lost in thoughts. Come back to the breath, come back to the breath gently, but just come back without any self-blame. Same thing with this productivity method of strict about showing up, lenient with the results, just come back to the thing that you had planned to do and just try, just keep your genuine effort going gently, just knowing that you're going to get better over time, just keep doing it and publish, post, right? Share no matter what, what, if you had planned to publish that blog post today, publish it today. If you had planned to make your live video today, make it right now, right? And let me tell you a secret that a lot of people don't know about, about my, my process, I never feel like doing these videos, I don't. I really, I never also, I never feel like writing my blog posts and yet now I have over a thousand blog posts. I never feel like doing these videos and yet now I have over a thousand. And what happens though, if I'm strict about showing up, no matter how I'm feeling, I already had several client appointments today. I've already done my writing today, I've already done quite a bit today. My energy is already kind of lagging. It's not the most optimal time to be doing this, but you know what, right now, you know, my, my wife is out of the house. So it's, it's good, it's optimal time for me to be expressing myself kind of like just to not, not be worried about, you know, bothering her or anything. This is an optimal time right now for me to be doing this video logistically speaking. So I'm going to show up and I'm just going to bring the best that I can. I show up and I notice that once I show up within a couple minutes, I get into the flow and you may have noticed that too. Have you noticed this? If you show up and with a blank page of your writing, you blank page and you just keep on writing, right, you get into the flow before long. You get into the flow, but how long it takes of that uncertainty before you get into the flow? Who knows? But you have to stay with it until you get to the flow. Okay. So show up no matter what strictly for your projects, be lenient with what happens during that work period, knowing that over time, you're just going to get better and better. Okay. And just keep doing that. And I promise you, you will be on your, you will be on the path. That is the path of mastery. Right. And as you take that path, you inevitably become a master. So until the next video, be strict about showing up working on what you planned and be lenient with the results. I wish you well.