171 Find clarity and focus for your goals with Carol Clegg

In this episode Carol Clegg, accountability and mindset business coach, shares actionable strategies for turning obstacles into growth opportunities. Here’s a quick breakdown of the key takeaways to help you thrive in your entrepreneurial journey:

1. Focus and Clarity
   - Use an *idea book* to capture thoughts and reduce mental clutter.  
   - Create a *mind map* to break big goals into manageable steps.

2. Time Management
   - Set dedicated time blocks for tasks to maintain balance and momentum.  
   - Identify and plan around potential obstacles to stay productive.

3. Transform Saboteurs into Allies
   - Apply positive intelligence techniques to leverage strengths hidden within self-doubt.  
   - Shift your mindset to fuel commitment and build resilience.

4. Celebrate Achievements 
   - Recognize every milestone, no matter how small.  
   - Celebrate with physical actions, like raising your arms or dancing, to boost motivation.

5. Mindful Practices for Stress Management 
   - Incorporate self-empathy exercises to counter negative self-talk.  
   - Cultivate a resilient mindset to face challenges with clarity and confidence.

6. Develop Authentic Marketing Strategies
   - Align your marketing efforts with your unique voice and values.  
   - Focus on engagement and consistency to build genuine connections with your audience.

Remember to approach business goals with curiosity and purpose. By organizing thoughts, identifying priorities, and celebrating each step, you can transform challenges into opportunities while staying grounded in your joy and motivation.  

Take one step today toward simplifying your journey and enjoying the process!

Which of these ideas will you explore first? Share your thoughts with me!

Hello from your host, Carol Clegg. A coach for coaches! I work with women coaches to find balance with ease and flow, manage stress, cultivate self-empathy, and set meaningful goals that resonate with their individual coaching practices.

My clients often have too many ideas and struggle to decide which one to focus on first, leading to a HUGE BLOCK in just getting started. I love to help simplify the process, explore what is getting in the way and guide you to choose the next project, enjoy the journey, and celebrate progress while taking small, meaningful steps.

If you would like to take the complimentary Saboteur assessment to discover what gets in your way and then follow up with a complimentary coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here or visit carolclegg.com

BOOK your ✅ 30 minute complimentary exploration call HERE

Connect on LinkedIn and Instagram or join my LinkedIn Group Creative Ideas for Women Business Owners

Chapters

• 0:00 Business Accountability
• 5:18 Creating Weekly Business Accountability
• 11:11 Celebrating Achievements in Business

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello and welcome to Connect, inspire, create. I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together. Well, welcome to the next episode of Mindful Moments, just a short in between my other podcasts with guests, where I just pop in to talk to you about what's top of mind for me at the moment, and I thought I would share with you some thoughts about helping you with accountability, on one project at a time, as you work on various different things, and we have so many different things that call for our attention in our business, and we just cannot do them all at the same time, and so what often happens is that we allow that to overwhelm us and get us stuck. So I just wanted to share some areas that I think are important and just where to start that I think are important and just where to start. So, if you're listening to this episode and you're going, I wonder what I can focus on this week for my business. I first invite you to settle yourself wherever you might be, have a pen and paper, a journal. I have a journal called my idea book and I love to put everything down in my idea book so that I don't have to hold on to it in my head at the same time and it can allow me to separate and work on what I want to focus on. So, as you just ground yourself, give yourself some space and pause, I then invite you to explore with some curiosity the options that are available to you for this week, and that would include writing down, as I mentioned, in your idea book, spending time just processing the thoughts and the feelings that come around this project and I'll tell you why, about that in a moment and then decide, after reflecting, writing, journaling, allowing this to just feel through your body and be grounded. What goal would bring you joy and motivation this week for your business?

Speaker 1: 3:06

I'll say that again what goal would bring you joy and motivation this week for your business? Because that's important. It's important to bring that motivation in so that you can celebrate and just be enjoying the journey, being present in the moment. So, once you have decided with this reflection, what goal is important for you this week, what's going to bring you joy and motivation, then take some time to clarify and when I say clarify, I want you to work on identifying your priorities and your values, and I like to do that with something I call the mind map, but it could also be called a vision map. And then, while you are looking for this clarity, you are going to be breaking that goal down into some actionable tasks that you can accomplish and what is going to help you stay committed to this goal. That's important also to reflect, and I guess this will come back to what's motivating you but what's going to help you stay committed. Because within our toolbox that we use with the positive intelligence coaching method, we talk about how our saboteurs can get in the way and they absolutely have a field time derailing us from staying committed to our goals, and that will be for another whole episode. I'd love to just dive into not only what these saboteurs rob us of, take away from us, slow things down, get in our way, but that saboteurs actually do have strengths and if we can get back in touch with those strengths that can help propel us forward and allow us to stay committed to our goal. But always coming back to getting yourself grounded and in touch with yourself to say what is going to help me stay committed to this goal. And now, while you have looked at what's going to help you stay committed, let's work forward to commit.

Speaker 1: 5:18

So what time blocks can you put aside this week to allocate to the actionable steps, the actionable tasks in your project that you have taken this goal? You've broken it down into actionable tasks. That could be reverse engineering or it could be moving forward and going. What is the first tiny step that I can take that will give me momentum that will put me into action, and then the next one will follow. But it really is important to block some time aside and don't overwhelm yourself. Once again. I always want to come with the attitude of ease and flow because you want to move forward into this again with joy. So commit to some time blocks during this upcoming week. So commit to some time blocks during this upcoming week or when you listen to this episode, whatever lies ahead of you, and just block out some time on your calendar that you are going to take these actions, appreciate there are going to be obstacles that can get in your way, so perhaps you can think about that. Are there some commitments that you've made this coming week? Are there some appointments that you are going to be away from an area where you can work on your goal? So just consider the obstacles that could get in your way and then weave your way around these and continue to block time aside so that you can take the small step. So clarity and focus is really an important area to look on, because once you can simplify your task, once you're clear about what you need to do to get them completed, this is gonna help you avoid overwhelm and let you move forward with making those decisions.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Now the other step that comes in is wanting to feel confident on the strategy that you're taking with your business, and so that is an area that I do love to work with my clients. Once we have explored what can get in our way, mindset-wise and looking at building these powerful habits that we do with the foundational program from positive intelligence, we can then move into. Let's look at designing positive, a marketing strategy that's going to work for you, and we bring in our sage powers and often those are around innovate, throwing down some ideas. What could this look like? Just going to town and just exploring a whole bunch of ideas and then to be able to pick out the ones that work? But I feel it's really important to develop a marketing approach that just feels natural to you, because, in the same sense, once it feels natural to you, you're going to want to step into it. You're going to want to carry out the consistency that you need to do for your marketing, and then you're going to be appealing to your audience without it feeling forced or overwhelming.

Speaker 1: 8:17

And so making consistent progress comes down with some accountability, and, as an accountability coach, this is where I help with the weekly accountability check-ins. We track your progress. I love to use Google. It makes it so easy to have a Google sheet that we can share and take notes, along with putting down what you plan to work on, keeping track of it, and we can always come back to that. So weekly accountability check-ins whether that be with a coach, whether that be with yourself, that you are checking things off on a checklist, whether you have a whiteboard, whether you use Trello Trello is a great tool to help keep yourself accountable because within Trello you can check in, you can have check dates. So there certainly are tools that are available to help you keep yourself accountable.

Speaker 1: 9:12

But there's also the side of mindful practices and stress management techniques and self-empathy exercises to just bring a sense of calm and clarity. You can make so much more progress when we have those practices in place, that we are allowing ourselves to ground down, that we're allowing ourselves to approach things from a sense of calm and clarity to help us manage the negative self-talk, because we all know we get those numbers thrown at us from so many different places. I hear time and time and time again how much of our day is spent in negative processing of negative self-talk, negative thoughts et cetera, that you kind of sometimes think, oh my goodness, am I ever going to get away from this? But yes, you can, and part of that I like to do is really getting grounded and feeling into your body and then using that to build a calm, resilient mindset that helps you tackle the stress of your business and keep a balanced perspective. To tackle the stress of your business and keep a balanced perspective.

Speaker 1: 10:18

So with that, this was a short episode just to help you look at what you can focus on this week for your business. So, as a reminder, just to pause, give yourself some space while you contemplate and then allow curiosity to come into that, and you are just going to observe no judgment, but write down the ideas. As I said, perhaps grab a small notebook and call that your idea book and pop down all the ideas that you have and then, with a little bit of reflection, what goal would bring you joy and motivation this week for your business? So organize those thoughts, think about what it's going to take to stay committed to your goal. Then go ahead and commit by blocking out some time on your calendar and being aware that obstacles are going to get in your way, and that's ease and flow.

Speaker 1: 11:11

That is life. Come back, move it around, but let's get that first step rolling, take action and then the big important thing celebrate. Celebrate yourself and celebrate that with movement. Maybe that's just, you know, getting up and dancing, throwing your arms up in the air, but let it feel through your body that you are celebrating and have accomplished something that's moving you closer towards getting things taken care of in your business. And remember that your business is providing a beautiful service to somebody out there who needs you. So thanks again for listening this week and we'll be back on Connect, inspire Create with another episode.