 It's really important to understand how your mind works when it comes to getting into the flow of your work. So when it comes to growing our authentic business, we have to admit to this fact. And I think too many of us don't admit or accept this fact that it's not supposed to be easy. Sorry, I know you think, George, authentic business, it's supposed to just slow. It's supposed to just do what I'm passionate about and then and then this succeeds, right? You know, there are a few people for whom that really does work. If you are one of those lucky few and congratulations and you are already successful, right? Because you just follow your passion, you just do what you love and then people love it and people buy all your stuff. For the rest of us, myself included, it requires stretching. In other words, it requires building muscles that previously were not strong. Muscles of getting down to work with joyful productivity, resting more frequently than we like so that we don't burn out and doing things during work that are, they don't come naturally to us yet. For example, making videos was something that certainly was not natural for me for years. Did you know this? I started my business in 2009. I didn't start making videos consistently until 2014, five years into my business when why is that? Because the first time I got on video was in the beginning of my business 2009 and I was like, I can't believe how I look, I don't look good, I don't like how I sound and just all these judgments about myself and I therefore swore off of being on video for five years because I said, oh, video is not going to be a big deal. No one's going to watch videos back in 2009. I didn't have the perspective and it wasn't until my friend, Tad Hargrave, Marketing for Hippies, great guy encouraged me to go on video that I did and he really helped me to have the confidence, et cetera. Anyway, that's an example of muscle that I had to build. Another muscle is writing. Did you know that writing doesn't come naturally for me? I have resisted and really hated writing most of my life. I have a degree in English literature from UC Berkeley and I will tell you it was traumatic. Everything is traumatic these days. It was very painful for me to write because I was always doing it at last minute. I really always judged my own writing and I just didn't, I never loved it. After college, I said, I'm never going to write again and here I am in my career where writing is a big part of it, but I had to really build that muscle up again. I had to experience the pain of writing again, but practice not suffering even though it felt painful. Same thing with video, same thing with doing marketing. Marketing wasn't natural for me to do and I had to, so much of our authentic business is about growing the muscles that we have the potential to be strong in. I always had the potential to be on video, but I judge myself too much, inner critic stuff. I always had the potential to write consistently. I still don't think I'm a great writer, but I write consistently and I'm probably average of a writer, maybe not even average, but because I do it so consistently, I'm successful at it, you see. So much of our authentic business is about growing muscles that we have the potential to be strong in, but we aren't born strong in those muscles and our daily life, as we go about our daily life, those muscles don't naturally get strong because of whatever else we're doing. Like in my daily life, I wasn't making videos. In my daily life, I wasn't writing blog posts that just wasn't a natural part of how I lived without being in, you know, how I lived. So I had to lean in and specifically practice certain skills and grow strong in those muscles that I had the potential to, but never developed it until my business asked of it. The same thing with you. You have so much potential that isn't being developed just in your normal hot, your normal daily life and doing your hobbies, those skills of whatever it is of marketing. You have that potential within you. Making videos is marketing, writing is marketing, you know, reaching out with care, net caring to others is marketing. All those things are marketing. You have the potential within you. You just don't naturally develop them and you're regular. So this is why we have to consciously work, consciously work on developing those, those muscles that, that have the potential. So as I began to saying in this video, the way that most of us work, the way that most of us work consciously to develop things that don't come naturally for us, but have the potential to become great, the way that most of us work is very haphazard. You have not probably been trained on how to work. Like it's funny for me to say this, but all your life, and I don't know, I think this is true for many of my students and clients. We work in very haphazard ways or rather, okay, maybe you had a job and the job requires you to show up at certain times and do certain tasks and you got used to doing those tasks. You got used to showing up at those times and leaving at times, but now that you are your own boss, you think that this is a hobby, right? You think that, oh, I get to just show up whenever I feel like showing up and I get to do the work that I love. You don't realize, and this is something that you, like I hope this shifts your perspective and really changes the trajectory of your business. You don't realize that you signed up to be an athlete. You signed up for a marathon that you have to train for. You didn't sign up for a hobby because hobbies, you would have already done that. You're already doing your hobbies or maybe you're taking classes for certain hobbies and you really enjoy it, but there's nothing at stake in your hobbies. It doesn't matter if you practice regularly or not. I mean, it's for fun you practice and maybe you have a particular goal for your hobby and you commit it to practicing and because it's a hobby, it doesn't really matter. Yeah. I mean, unless you're going for some kind of like award or doing some kind of competition, it doesn't matter, whereas in your business, there is a lot at stake. I mean, your livelihood is at stake. I mean, if you want to make a livelihood, make money and make a living doing it, then that's a big thing at stake. And so therefore, stop treating your business like a hobby. Like, oh, I get to just do what I love and then people will love what I do. Yeah, not really. The people who said that to you are lying to you. I'm sorry. It's true. They're lying to you. They're lying to most of us. I get like I said, like if there's a few people for whom it's just it's even a few people who make it work, I'll tell you how they make it work. They probably had really good training growing up or they just have or be less with really good DNA where their work ethic is just excellent. And they don't even see it as work because their work ethic is just so excellent. My work ethic has not been excellent most of my life. I mean, most of you don't realize this. I was lazy for most of my life. I mean, really into my 30s. I just always felt like my potential was always far away. And I was always too lazy to work on my potential. Like my grades were average and I was always doing things that were too. I always felt like I got in my way a lot just throughout my whole life. And I always saw myself as lazy and I was, but that's no longer true. I mean, I have transformed myself thanks to my business, seeing it as training, seeing it as like a marathon that I'm seriously training for that I paid big bucks for. Let's say I paid $10,000 for a marathon. I think, you know, if you pay $10,000 to run a marathon, for example, like you have to fly somewhere, you have to like really like pay a coach or whatever, probably more than 10,000. You bet you're going to take it seriously and train for it. That's your business. You paid, some of us, myself included, paid way more than 10,000 to get trained in our business. And yet, are you taking it seriously? I hope you are. OK, so let me explain what the point of this video is. Besides maybe this mindset shift that might just change your life, you can't just show up whenever you want to show up. OK, think about it. I've never trained for a marathon. OK, so I don't know. Some of you may have trained for long runs or big sporting events. And please comment below if you have any insight into this. I really do think people who have trained as athletes or as musicians, you know, like serious athletes or serious musicians, have an advantage in business because they understand the practicing mindset. The rest of us don't. The rest of us are like, ah, whatever. I mean, I was actually trained as a musician early on, but I never practiced. I was always so embarrassed when I went to my piano lessons and I literally practiced half hour that week and I was supposed to practice five hours or seven hours. And I was like, always so embarrassed because I'm practicing in front of my teacher and she was always so mad for 13 years. I did this. It took I mean, my parents were blessed, blessed me with 13 years of piano lessons for which I wasted tens of thousands of dollars. I didn't know how to take it seriously back then. I hope that now as an adult, you know how to take things seriously and you know to see your business as if you are now introduced this term, a joyful productivity athlete, a joyful productivity athlete. Now, I haven't yet gotten to the punchline of this video, which I will. I promise you the video is going a little bit long, but I promise you it's coming. I hope this is all helpful. Let me know below if it is and what you do find helpful. OK, so I really, really, really encourage you from from this day onward to see yourself as a joyful productivity athlete. I call a joyful pro, a joyful pro or a joy pro athlete. Whatever, you know, tell me which term resonates more with you. You have to see yourself as an athlete if you're going to build a business that's sustainable and that's thriving and that's successful and where you have excellent balance of work, rest, play, you know, all the above. OK, so why is this important? Because many of you, I know, because I work with you and I you just show up whenever you want to, you just do whatever you want to. You there's so much, so much like wishy-washiness and so little seriousness about how your day is spent, right? So so so it takes you so long to get into work, right? It takes you like because you're like procrastinating, you're anxious, recklessly so because there's a lot at stake. So you're anxious about what you're going to be doing. You're not even you I would say that you make the excuse of saying, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not clear on what I'm doing. I think that's an excuse. I think you know what you've got to do. I mean, OK, if you've taken any of my courses or any or anybody else's courses on business, you know what you've got to do, you do. I mean, sure, things can always be clear, obviously, but we work ourselves into clarity. We'd like you've taken you've taken business courses. You know what to do. You know what to do, OK? You just have to take those steps and realize that clarity comes as you do certain things and realize, oh, then let me do a little bit more research on that. It's fine to do research on that. Maybe that's the next step is you got to do a little bit more research on this X, Y, Z thing. OK, fine. Don't do too much research, though, because that is easily. I know a lot of you. OK, worked with a lot of you. That's easily also a procrastination method. Oh, I got to do more research. So I'm going to do more research and do more research. No, do as little research as you can so that you could take more action. You look at your day and go, am I doing a bunch of research and education of myself or am I taking action? If I'm doing a bunch of education to myself, I'm procrastinating. I am using that as an excuse because there's a lot at stake when I take action and I'm afraid I'm anxious. I get it. So it takes you a long time to get into action because you like your whole day, you're just like worrying and anxious and your ADHD and you just take a long time to get into it. And then here's what happens once you get into action because it's the whole day has gone by or the whole week has gone by or the year is going by. You're like, oh, my God, I got to do something now. Once you anxiously get into action and then you like take action. What happens is this you get into momentum, you get into flow. Eventually it takes you a while to get into flow. First, it takes you a while to get into start acting. And then once you start acting and taking, by the way, start acting is literally a good way of saying it. You have to fake it till you make it. I hate that term, by the way. But there are certain certain parts of that certain places where that term really doesn't make sense. You fake it till you make it when in terms of I don't feel like doing the work. You know, it's 9 a.m. I don't feel like doing the work. It's 12 p.m. I don't feel like doing the work. It's 3 p.m. I don't feel like doing the work. When is when do you feel like doing the work? Never until it's like, oh, my God, the whole day has gone by. Then it's like based on the deadline of having to go to sleep. You finally get to work, right? It's like you have to fake it till you make it at 9 a.m. Whenever you wake up or like I got a fake feeling like I'm going to get to work. It's called practicing your mindset. That's your source. You're sourcing divine love, for example. That's faking it, too, because I don't see divine love anywhere right now. So I got to pray and imagine divine love. That's faking it till I make it. You see, we're always faking it till we make it in terms of like working with our mind till I get into action. And so you fake it till you make it. It's like, OK, now I'm into action. And then it takes you a bunch of time to get into flow. Did you know this? Like when you get into work and you when you finally start working, it's not supposed to suddenly be easy. Like that's also something you have to accept as reality. Now, again, some of you may be really blessed where when you start working, it just starts flowing and blessings to you. You should wonderful. You should do more of that. For me, that's not the case. For many of you watching this, that's not the case. When we start working, it takes us a while to get into the flow. You know, whether we're tempted to check social media, we're tempted to check our email, we're tempted to do more research. Right. But but but then you have to press. So this is also part of the training and practice is, OK, I've gotten. I've made a commitment now to start working. And I'm going, I'm not going to take 45 minutes to get into flow. I'm going to try to take 10 minutes to get into the flow, whatever I need to do. OK, maybe put on some music, put on a candle, whatever it will do. So do an energy reboot, whatever I need to do to fake it till I make it. To fake starting the flow instead of waiting for it to somehow magically easily happen to how when's the passion going to make me suddenly get into flow easily? It doesn't work like that. You have to work yourself into the flow. You have to end that. That's and it doesn't. You have low stamina right now. Before you train these muscles, they're all very flabby. The muscle of fake it, faking it till you make it. So you start the work, you begin the work that you have flabby muscles there to even begin the work when you say you want to work. When you follow your calendar, most of you have very, very flabby muscles to follow your calendar. You just never trained for it. You never took it seriously. Right. I had to take it seriously because a lot was at stake for me. And so I had to crack this fall in my calendar, which is getting into starting work, right? Whatever I need to fake to my mindset to like, OK, I'm going to get working. I'm going to pretend it's going to go OK. Even though I'm afraid it's not going to go OK at all. I'm going to pretend it's going to go OK. I'm faking that. And then once I get into work, I had to train some kind of flow process where I'm like, OK, I'm going to do my energy reboot. I'm going to start my focus mate session so that someone else is watching me work. That is all part of the flow process that you have to train for. It doesn't come naturally. So I start my focus mate session. I do my energy reboot. I write down very specific steps of what I'm going to do, even if I'm kind of vague about it. I try to write down some specific steps that sound doable for me. That sound that feel doable for me. That's training. This is not natural. And once I write down those steps and then I start following the first step in the first step is hard. I write down even smaller steps. This is all not natural. And once you start doing it and doing it, doing it again and again, then it becomes more natural. Now you're in training as a joyful pro athlete. And now your business has a chance to thrive. But unless you train and take on this mindset of an athlete. I if I were an investor, I would not invest in your business because I don't see how you're going to make it. If you don't take your business that seriously, I don't see how you're a solopreneurs. It's too easy to go. Oh, I do. I get to be my own boss to do whatever I want. It's too much of that mindset going on. And you got to stop it. And you got to say, no, no, I'm an athlete. And if I were training for a marathon, I would have a schedule for training. If I pay ten thousand dollars to train for a marathon and I have a coach, you bet I'm going to be accountable to my coaching and get going. I'm not going to let things distract me. I know what I need to do enough. And I know I'll get more clarity as I do it. So and then last thing I'll say, the punchline, I got to get going on this here. Once after you get into work, after you've trained yourself to have a flow process, to get into flow, very just as importantly, you've got to train yourself to take breaks regularly. Do not be a victim of your momentum. I tell this to my clients, my students all the time, and I have what's called a work retreat. If you if you end up signing up for any of my courses or any of my programs, you get access to work retreats that I do at least two times a week. I facilitate these two hour work retreats at least two times a week. And you come to those retreats and you get trained by me to work in two hour setting with plenty of breaks in between. We that's by that's my training for you. So I hope you'll come to my work retreats again, sign up for any of my courses, you get access to the work retreats or anyway, or do it yourself, do it with a friend. OK, so I hope this is helpful. Take your business seriously, but with joy. Joyful productivity, athlete. I have several things.