EP 347 How to Stay Focused When the World is Falling Apart

1:44AM Apr 5, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

business

growing

people

news

create

day

feel

tip

support

consuming

designed

focus

focused

spend

daily basis

minutes

recommend

world

community

planning

If you want to thrive in any economic climate, you have to focus on what you can do and what you can control. So my first little teaching point for today is to just focus on what you can control. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious, independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show, I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you can spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? Alright, let's do this.

Welcome to the Thrive By Design Podcast. This is Tracy Matthews, your host and the author of the Desire Brand Effect stand out in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand. I am also the Chief Visionary Officer of Flourish and Thrive Academy for those of you don't know. And I'm here to talk to all of you about once again about uncertainty and what to do when things feel out of control in the world and your life and you're trying to focus on growing a business. And you probably feel a little bit distracted, and maybe sad or suffering or confused or not sure what's next or just plain uncertain and what happens when you get in a place like that, or when anyone gets in a place like that, at least for me, I can only speak from personal experience. And what I observe from our community members is that people have a tendency to go off the rails and their business suffers. And I want to just give you a little pep talk today and get you back on track. If you're feeling like your business is out of control, and you're not sure what to do next, here are a couple of tips to stay focused when it feels like everything is kind of chaotic in your life. So if it's helpful for you, you might want to take some notes or just write down anything that resonates with you, because this might help support you in kind of overcoming some of this stuff. Now, I just want to mention this because we live in a social media world. And it's really easy to get consumed with content that's out there. And news scrolling through our feeds, and maybe influencers or people that we want to listen to, that we may be aligned with their opinions on things. But we notice that it's causing us stress, it's causing us anxiety anytime we consume that content. So I just want to call out the obvious and state the obvious. Social media is an amazing tool to grow your business and your audience. But if you're using it, or consuming it in a way that is not going to support what you're trying to create in your life and your business, and is keeping you scared and afraid and operating out of fear. Because there's a difference between being informed and being afraid, I just want to be clear there. There's a difference between being informed and being afraid. And we know that every 10 years, we hit some sort of economic cycle where we have a downturn and we're experiencing massive inflation right now and other things that affect our businesses, right, you might notice that your supplies are increasing, you might notice that it's a little bit more expensive to buy gas these days, which definitely affects fuel charges, plane flights, it affects shipping costs, all those things. So there's is a trickle-down effect.

I'm not saying that some of these things are not real. And I know that many members of our community, including myself have been really distressed over this war between Russia and Ukraine and not having the certainty to know what is going to happen in the world. And these are things that are out of our control, we can't do anything about it, except for maybe support causes that move in the favor of what we believe in, or whatever it might be. So my goal here today is to help you get focused on the things that you can control in your life in your business, instead of getting overwhelmed by all the other stuff, because really, all that stuff is going to correct itself. At a certain point we don't know when. But if you want to thrive in any economic climate, you have to focus on what you can do and what you can control. So my first little teaching point for today is to just focus on what you can control. We all have the same amount of time in a day as Beyonce or any successful person in the world. So we might as well focus it on things that are actually going to move us forward. It's how you really spend your time. And so one of the things that I talked about in our programs in particular, Laying The Foundation and our Momentum Program. And one of the things that we work on, like diligently with members of our community is to focus on the right actions. And this includes how you're planning your week, how you're planning your month, how you're planning your 90 days, quarters, how you're planning your year, etc. But I just actually want to kind of dial in like to what you're doing on a daily basis, like if you want your business to continue growing, I'd like for you to really spend your time focused on what we call revenue-generating activities. And the same, the actions that you take every day can be focused at least 75% of the time, on the things that are actually going to grow your business. So that would be having sales conversations, direct messaging people, creating content that's going to connect on social and build your email list, email marketing strategy, digital marketing strategy, you know, getting ready for your next event that's in person or whatever is happening. And so part of this is really just on your daily actions, focusing on the things that are actually going to move your business forward. Because when you move into action, you move out of overwhelm. When you move into action, you move out of overwhelm. So what I want you to do is to not make a massive to do list, but I want you to come up with three priorities every single day that are moving you closer to your goals, and focus on those things first, and then get your the rest of your checklist done after that. And then another thing I want you to do is to take a look at what you're consuming on a daily basis and make a list of when you get distracted. So if you open up Instagram to make a post or create a reel, and then you you realize it's an hour later and you've just watched a couple of news videos, and or, you know, wasted time because you're trying to distract yourself, stop scrolling, and get to doing. You definitely want to be on your Instagram a little bit or your tick tock or whatever you're using whatever platforms you're using, to engage with your audience. But please don't go down a rabbit hole, please. And then I would like to advise you to really limit the amount of time that you're spending on social media that's not actually moving you closer to your goals. And I say that because sometimes, you know, we have members of our community who are in like, for instance, our diamond insiders group, which is our mentorship community that we support our Laying The Foundation students in. And we have ongoing support for graduates of Laying The Foundation. There are people sometimes in that community who are in there all day long. And I wonder like, how are you getting any work done for your business, if you're always in here?

So what I always recommend is set a time that you're going to engage in the groups that you're a part of, or whatever platforms you're in, and set a time limit on how much time you're going to spend in there. And the reason I recommend this is because there is a fine balance between getting the support that you need, and wasting time, just because you feel like you're being productive because you're doing something. So lean in and spend your time doing the things that are actually going to grow your business.

Now, when you're in fight or flight, one of the things that often gets blown to the wayside, is self-care. So I want you to ask yourself right now, do you have a regular self care practice? Do you have a daily routine or ritual where you're focusing on at least one thing, even if it's just for five minutes that helps get you grounded, or focused, or makes you feel better in your body like whatever it is, because as resonant beings, we need to do things to calm down our nervous system, to keep us in alignment with what it is that we're trying to create. So if we're scattered and all over the place, because we're feeling anxious and overwhelmed, then it's going to be hard to ground enough to actually do the things and dig into the work that you need to do. Instead, you'll be scattered, you'll be unfocused, you'll be overwhelmed by everything that's happening. And it's going to be hard to actually move forward. So let's talk about here's some ideas, you can swipe these for self-care if you don't have a regular self-care routine. If you do have a regular self-care routine and you blown it off, then I want you to kind of really consider why. And if you have a regular self-care routine, I would love for you to evaluate, like, how is it serving you? And what are you doing to make sure that you're committed to keeping it going. So self-care, really, it can be very simple. It could be spending five minutes to meditate in the morning, spending five minutes to journal having a gratitude practice at night. Being mindful, you know, for a moment of the day, maybe mindfully drinking a cup of tea and just reminiscing or understanding where your emotions and your feelings are coming from and how to basically dig deep into you know, what is the cause or the root cause of those things. And I say that because a lot of our anxieties, a lot of our overwhelming feelings, a lot of the stress and the tension and the out of balance energy that we have, has a lot to do with our beliefs about ourselves with our beliefs about our current situation with our beliefs about our beliefs from childhood, maybe that we're kind of inherited from our parents or whatever. So there's a lot going on there. And I think mindfulness and understanding like, what is it that is getting you off balance, and identifying when those things happen, so that it can pull you back. Now spending time for more creativity. Now just mentioned that focus on what you can control, we talked about daily actions and all those things. But something that can get you in the flow and get you thinking outside the box and get you back into alignment with what it is that you're trying to create is by being creative. So I always recommend having at least a creative day a month or creative time, every single week, that you can just not have anything really scheduled where you can focus your energy on something that is going to help you get back to center.

Make sure that you're getting enough sleep, this is very important when your body is stressed. So I'd recommend doing some sort of ritual or something that calms you down at the end of the night, to help get you tired, before you go to sleep, I'd recommend being a bed at least eight hours a night. I know it's hard for some of us who are very busy. And you know, I remember when I was living in New York, I would sometimes go to bed at 11 and get up at five. And if you think about how much time I was actually sleeping, it was maybe five hours a lot of the time. So I want to make sure that you're getting enough sleep because that helps you helps refresh your creativity helps refresh your mind, it reduces stress and anxiety, and just makes you all around feel better. So do whatever you need to do to sleep enough. And you know, I have an aura ring, which I actually love looking at because it helps me see how well I'm sleeping. And even though sometimes I get frustrated with it, because I think I had a better night's sleep than it tells me. It's just a baseline of understanding, okay, maybe tomorrow, I need to get to bed earlier, I need to be winding down more, I need to be relaxing a little bit more before I go to bed, so I get a good night's sleep. The next thing that I recommend is that you hydrate and eat healthy. And by eating healthy, I mean non-processed foods, things that are clean a lot of plants and vegetables. I do eat meat, so I'm not a vegetarian anymore. But I really highly recommend eating a diet that's really high in plant-based food. Because that is going to give you the vitamins and the minerals and the energy that you need to just all around feel better about yourself and your situation, it will do life-changing things for you if you stick to it.

Now the next thing you know I'm a big advocate of moving your body exercise is an important part of my daily practice. And I know as I've gotten busier, and now I have a commute, which I didn't have before, if I want to work out I need to get to my apartment building. So I can work out with my trainer who's here. And all of that is really important. So if even if you only have like 20 or 30 minutes, make sure that you're exercising on a daily basis. There are a lot of online classes, and streaming services where you can do like amazing top notch workouts for a very limited or small amount a month. And you know, for instance, there's this one membership that I am part of called The Class. And it was a class that I used to take in New York City by Taryn Toomey and they have a bunch of instructors that are amazing. But it's a great practice, because it's a combination of like dance, HIIT exercises, heavy breathing, screaming, yelling, yoga, like all these things that help give your body a release, and let things go and they have anything from 20-minute sessions all the way to an hour and 15 minute workouts. And I know that when I'm doing the longer format workouts, I am exhausted sometimes, especially when I play full out. So find a mode of moving your body every single day, even if it's just a short walk, yoga practice, you know, taking your dog for a walk, whatever it is, that's the best thing to do.

Now, my next tip for you tip number three is to be strategic. Now I see a lot of people out there who aren't focused on a 90-day planning cycle. And so what they end up doing is they haphazardly just put a bunch of stuff up, they don't hit deadlines, and they're trying to make sales and they don't understand why they aren't moving forward fast enough in business. And this all comes down to being strategic. So you need a vision for your year that you break down into 90-day sprints. And then you need to create a strategy of how you're going to accomplish that vision or those goals or targets within that 90 days. And the more you can get dial it in and execute your 90-day strategic plan every single quarter, the better results you will get and this leads me back into our first tip, focus on what you can control because if you're solid at planning, and your focus on the things that you're going to do every single day to execute your plan, then it becomes a lot easier to stay like aligned with what matters most to you, your business will grow, you're not going to be as affected by all this other chaos and stuff that's going out in the world. So get back to center, focus on the plan and just do your best. And this is a great segue to give you a little bit of support. So if you're someone who likes more hand-holding, and you would like help creating, executing, and implementing a strategic plan, and growing your business online and off, then I would love to invite you to apply for a Free Strategy Audit. So that we can help you dive into what's going on in your business help you create a big vision of what you're trying to create over the next one to three years and help you dial that into next steps for your business. So the strategy audit is designed for people who actually really want support with their business right now.

They want a little extra hand-holding, and they're ready to invest in resources and tools, programs, coaching, all that stuff that is going to work to get them from point A to point B, and help them reach their goals a lot faster. It's an amazing opportunity for you to talk to someone on my team, so that you can see how we might be able to help you reach your goals a lot faster. And if it seems like a good fit, at the end of the call, we'll invite you to join one of our programs, if it's resonant, if it's not, we'll send you on your way, and give you some tips and tools that you can implement in your business moving forward. So if that sounds good, head on over to flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy, I'll also have a link in the show notes for you to check it out.

Alright, let's dive in to my next tip here, which is to stock up. Now one of the things that Jason and I have been doing over the past two years is just stocking up on food stocking up on necessities that we need, so that we have like, basically like an emergency stash in case of an emergency. Not that there will be an emergency. But it's a great way to just feel prepared. And it's actually calmed down my nervous system so much. And I think a lot of that was because I was like over consuming news even though I didn't want to I was like addicted to it for a minute. And it's helped a lot. But you could do the same thing with your supplies. So if you're worried about running out of things, you can stock up on supplies that you use on a regular basis. So get your raw materials and get your foodstuffs and anything else that makes you feel comfortable and prepared, ready to go so that you feel so that you can literally calm your nervous system. In the case that something does happen. You're you know, you're set. And I know it's helped me, and maybe that will help you. You know, one of the things that we did also is buy a bunch of glass water jugs to store water in in case of an emergency. So we filter the water, put it in the glass jugs, close them up, and have them for an emergency stash, just in case. So there's a lot of things you can do. One other thing that we did, and this is not for everyone, but you know this might be for you is we started growing our own food. This is not something that we're you know, we don't have a big garden, we live in Arizona because it's it because it's hot here, I should say it's not conducive to growing everything, but we have a little garden system that we set up. So we have some fresh vegetables growing at any given time. And that makes me feel really grounded. Because if for some reason, you know, there, we couldn't get produce that I know that I have my vegetables in our little garden that I can eat. And it's been amazing. We're growing like beautiful lettuce, amazing herbs, Jason's growing some chilies. He likes the hot chili peppers. And we're gonna start growing tomatoes, and berries and all those things. And we have an indoor and outdoor setup that works for us in Arizona. So consider doing that. I mean, it might it's a little bit of a project, but it might give you something kind of fun to play around with. It's not super challenging. If you get the right setup. There's a lot of hydroponic setups that you can use to grow garden vegetables. And it's also healthy and a great way to make sure that you have healthy food at any time, which is great, right? Now I just have a couple more tips. And I hope that all of this is useful and you're finding some things that are helping you ground a little bit better.

Now, this tip I already sort of mentioned but I'm going to mention it again is to stop watching the news. Try to limit your news sources. If you must listen to the news. Please do your research and find an unbiased news source. All of the mainstream media, all of them, I don't care who you listen to anything on regular TV, even cable news, it is all extremely biased. And the reason why it's biased is it's designed to incite fear and it's designed to polarize the populations. It's designed to make you feel afraid, and hopeless and helpless and desperate. And like the world's falling apart. So this whole episode is a what do you do when you feel like the world is out of control? Like how do you get back to grounding, stop watching the news, if you're following any news sources on social media unfollow triple, double-check. If you see a friend or someone else, posting a news story, check the source. A lot of the fact-checking agencies even are not like really legit, they're like they're biased to one side or the other. So you have to really be careful in what you're consuming. So I've done some research, I am very weary to give anyone a recommendation. But there are some amazing independent journalists out there. If you must watch the news on a very limited basis, who can share with you what's really going on? They tell you facts. Everything's based in fact, not in a slogan. And you can tell the people who are legit, because they will actually back their reporting up with factual information. If there is no real factual information that can be verified, confirming the story, then it's probably highly questionable, and I wouldn't trust it. And it's designed, as I mentioned before, to make you feel afraid, and fearful. So we want to be focused on things that are unbiased and factual. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm gonna end this here. There are a lot of other things that you can do to get grounded when you feel a little bit out of control with whatever it is and when you're getting distracted about what's going on in the world. I just wanted to pop in and do a really quick and dirty episode about a couple of tangible things that you can do to get to the next step. And of course, if you have any questions about anything that I talked about today, feel free to reach out to me personally @tracymatthewsny on Instagram, or at flourish_thrive on Instagram and make sure that you're following us there. And I'm also if you are on Tik Tok, I would love to be Tik Tok friends, you can find me over @tracymatthewsny, that's @tracymatthewsny stands for New York. And I'm posting a ton of content over there on a daily basis. I'm trying to reinvigorate my Tik Tok account and hang out over there because I think it's a really fun platform, which I was kind of against for a while but are not necessarily against it just seemed like a lot so, and all dancing, teenagers, teenagers, because that's where my nieces hang out. Anyway, thank you so much for listening today. If you have other tips that you would like to share about how you're staying grounded, please share them with us in our community. Once again, reach out to me on Instagram. I'll repost it, regram it, I'd love to support you. Thanks again for listening to the podcast today. This is Tracy Matthews, signing off. Until next time, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. It's my mission to help thousands of creative businesses inside and outside the jewelry space use their creativity to make money. Make sure that you're subscribed to Thrive By Design on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are played. And we'd love to hear what you think. Please rate and review the show and if you're inspired, please share this with your friends. Cheers to seeing you flourish and thrive!