At this point in the year, so many people are giving up on the goals and resolutions that they set for themselves for 2023. Why? Because when you don’t see progress for your hard work, it is hard to stay motivated. In today’s episode, my intention is to give you more than the advice you’ve already heard about setting and sticking to habits. Instead, I’m sharing five questions to ask yourself in order to discover what is holding you back from seeing progress on your goals this year.
The Shoot It Straight Podcast is brought to you by Sabrina Gebhardt, photographer and educator. Join us each week as we discuss what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, Shoot It Straight Podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
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This episode is brought to you by The Round Table, a community build for female photographers who want to continue growing their business wile forging industry friendships along the way! Every month, you get access to three new pieces of content covering a vast variety of topics from myself and guest speakers. Come join us and get access to the content and private Facebook community!
Review the Show Notes:
Are you measuring too soon? (2:41)
Have you carved out the time to do the work? (4:47)
Do you need to reevaluate your why? (7:20)
Are your action steps too big? (8:13)
Do you need habits to help support your goal? (9:27)
When you’re still not seeing progress (10:44)
Mentioned In This Episode:
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gephardt. Here I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur. while balancing business, motherhood and life, myself along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff to to shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
Welcome back to another episode of the shoot it straight podcast. Here we are about eight weeks into the new year. And I wonder how you’re doing with your goals. You see, this is about the time when people stop and give up on any goals or resolutions or habits that they had for themselves. Why? Because they’re not seeing progress. If you set your goals on January 1, and we’re nearing the end of February at this point, you’re probably hoping to see some big changes. Maybe you had hoped to have lost a bunch of weight by now, or have stopped wasting time on social media every day. Or you had hoped to be reaching a new income goal at this point. Or that every single client coming through your inbox would be booking at your higher rates, or that your new website would be finished at this point. Whatever your goals are, if you’re not seeing the results that you want, at this point, I definitely understand how frustrating it can feel. The lack of progress is the number one reason that people give up on goals. Everything feels too hard. You feel like you’re working your tail off and you’re not seeing anything happen. Maybe all you ate yesterday was salad and water. And yet the scale says exactly the same thing today, so why bother? I could go into the whole psychology of goal setting and motivation. But here’s the deal. There are tons of books and blog posts, and YouTube videos and podcast episodes and Instagram lives all about this stuff. I don’t want to repeat everything you’ve already heard. If you need a real talking to and some more motivation to keep going. Go check out one of the zillions of motivational authors out there like Mel Robbins, James clear Tony Robbins, Gabby Bernstein, Michael Hyatt or a million others. Today, I just want to leave you with five questions to ask yourself in order to do a little bit of troubleshooting, and see if you can figure out why you aren’t seeing progress on your goals. So number one, are you measuring too soon. So the first thing I like to tell my students is not to measure their goals and their progress too soon. And the reason I say that is because when you measure your progress too soon, you may not see any progress. And when you don’t see progress, you lose momentum, and then you give up. And guess what when you give up, you’re in exactly the same place you were when you started. However, if you wait a decent amount of time before you even look at measuring your goals, it gives you time to be more consistent and to show up and to do the work. And so that when you do check in and measure your progress for the first time, you actually see change. And even if it’s the tiniest little amount of change, that leads to momentum. And that’s the motivation, you need to keep going and working towards your goal. As much as I hate to use weight loss as an example, I’m going to because it’s really easy. If you decide that you want to lose 20 pounds, by doing all the traditional things, eating well drinking water and moving your body every day. And you do those things for three days. And then you hop on the scale, you’re not going to see much progress, if any. And if you’re a woman, like I imagine you are because you’re listening to this podcast, you might even weigh more than the original day you took your measurements and got on the scale. Talk about a bubble Buster, right. However, if you wait 30 days to measure your progress, and you commit to eating well, and drinking water and moving your body every day for 30 days, and you stay off the scale and you don’t take any progress photos and you don’t take your measurements. At the 30 day mark, you will hop on the scale and see massive results. And that my friend is the easiest piece of motivation. You need to keep going. All of a sudden you’re fired up all over again, just like you were at the very beginning of the year. And now you’re motivated to keep going full speed ahead because dang it this is actually working right. Number two, have you carved out the time to do the work. So the second thing I want you to ask yourself when you’re not seeing progress towards your goals is have you actually carved out the time to do this work.
If you can have the best intentions, the most specific goals, very clear action steps, but if you haven’t carved out the time, every single week to actually work on your goals and only your goals, you are not going to get anywhere. We have busy lives and full schedules. And if you think that you’re going to be able to fit this work into tiny little pockets of free time available every day. Yeah, newsflash, that doesn’t exist. The tiny pockets of time we do see become available every day gets sucked up by our family and more immediate needs right in front of us. The dogs need to be fed, the laundry needs to be done, your child is crying. You have to pick up a child from school because they have a fever. You will not have time to work on your goals if you’ve not carved out time specifically for them, period. End of story.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the roundtable a community built for female photographers who want to continue growing their business while forging industry friendships along the way. learn practical ways to move your business forward while finding community and accountability with like minded photographers. Every month, you get access to three new pieces of content over a broad variety of topics. In the past, we have covered topics like pricing, editing, goal setting, website reviews, social media and videos from me behind the scenes at real sessions. Members have also had the opportunity to learn from incredible guest speakers and industry leaders on a huge variety of topics. I pride myself in giving you just enough education every month to keep you growing and moving forward while not overwhelming you with content. Oh, and the private Facebook community is absolutely incredible. Consider it your space to ask all the things, get all the support and make real life business besties. If you’re ready to join us, you can head over to Sabrina gebhardt.com backslash membership and enroll today. And now back to the episode.
Number three, do you need to reevaluate your why? The third thing I would encourage you to do when you’re not seeing progress is to re evaluate your why this is not your actual goal. But the passion behind it the driving force. Okay, so you want to lose 20 pounds? Why? Is it because you want to have more energy? Is it because you want to feel more confident in your clothing? Is it because you want to get off your heart medication. Whatever the reason, there’s a why behind the goal. And if you’re not deeply attached to that, why you will stop being consistent when things get hard and you don’t see progress. So spend some time reevaluating your why it’s super important. Maybe your why’s not strong enough. Maybe it’s not the real Why do a little digging here and see if you can get to the heart of the problem. Number four are the action steps you mapped out for your goals too big. The fourth thing to consider when you aren’t making any progress towards your goals is asking yourself if the action step toward your goal that you have laid out if those action steps are actually too big. Maybe every single step in your plan towards reaching your annual goal feels massive. If that’s the case, you’re probably spinning your wheels all the time, you can’t seem to get traction on the very first step, let alone the entire goal. I want you to consider how you can break down your action steps into tiny little pieces, like ridiculously small pieces. Things like make a phone call, send an email pitch so and so on that project google how to start doing something really tiny, small steps that will give you momentum. Of course not everything can be that small. But oftentimes this is a huge reason why progress is not made. If you’re feeling stuck on the very first step of your goal, then it’s time to break that step down into a bunch of smaller steps that feel attainable. Number five, do you need habits to help support your goal? The last thing I want you to consider when you’re not making progress towards your goal is the possibility that maybe you need some habits to help you support this work. For example, if you’ve decided that you want to wake up one hour early to exercise and do a meditation every morning, before you take your kids to school. Are you actually doing that? If you find yourself hitting the alarm or snoozing in or never getting up earlier and getting those things done, you
Maybe you need some habits to support you. Do you need to have a bedtime routine so that you can settle down easier? Do you need to just physically get into bed earlier and the night before so that you’re getting more rest? Do you have something to help support you while you sleep so that you can feel rested and wake up an hour earlier? Do you need to set your alarm on the other side of the room? Do you need to put a notepad by your bed so that you can jot down all those thoughts that keep racing through your mind at night? Do you need to ask your partner to deal with the kids in the middle of the night if anybody wakes up? What habits or support systems do you need that can help help you make progress towards your goal of waking up early every morning to work out and meditate? So at the end of the day, if you feel like you’re doing everything you should be, you still feel aligned to your why you have time set aside in your schedule to actually do the work. The steps you’ve laid out for yourself are small enough to actually take action, and you have habits that support your success. If you’re doing all those things, and you’re still not seeing the progress you had hoped. Unfortunately, the answer I have for you is not a sexy one. It’s consistency. This is the number one thing you need to reach your goals. It’s the number one thing you need to build the healthy habits that you have your heart set on. Consistency is the number one thing you need to make the changes you desire. And consistency is something that comes over time. Lots and lots of time. I’m not telling you this to frustrate you. I’m telling you this to be honest. Sometimes the answer is that you just need to keep going that you are actually doing all the right things. And that you just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other and stay on track. Stay focused, continue to show up every day until you see the progress you’re hoping for. I hope this episode has inspired you to keep moving forward or reinspired you to take another look at your goals for this year. And that’s it for today, my friends. We’ll see you next time.
Before you leave today, I have to tell you about the round table. This is a community I built for female photographers who want to continue growing their business while forging industry friendships along the way. If you enjoy my teaching style on the podcast, then I know you will absolutely love the roundtable. In this group, you will learn practical ways to move your business forward while finding community and accountability with like minded photographers. Every month you will get access to three pieces of content over a broad variety of topics. In the past, we have covered things like pricing, editing, goal setting, website reviews, social media, and even videos for me behind the scenes at real sessions. Members have also had the opportunity to learn from incredible guest speakers and industry leaders on a huge variety of topics. I pride myself in giving you just enough education every month to keep you growing and moving forward. While not overwhelming you with content. Oh and the private Facebook community is absolutely incredible. Consider it your space to ask all the things get all the support and make real life business besties. If you’re ready to join us and take this podcast relationship a bit deeper, you can head over to Sabrina gephardt.com backslash membership and enroll today.
