#115 - How to BOUNCE BACK from a SHITTY Month

September 1, 2020 Ellyn | Burnout Coach & Speaker

Summary

AUGUST WAS CRAP. Was it just me?

I didn’t feel productive. I didn’t feel motivated. I didn’t feel focused. I didn’t feel…any of the things I usually feel as a high-achieving person. And it sucked to look back at the month of August and realize.

So, as I was doing my monthly review last night, I found myself wondering - how can I bounce back? How can I find my motivation again? How can I get myself back on track?

In today’s podcast, I’m going to share with you 3 tips for bouncing back from a shit month. They’re tips I’ve used in the past and tips I’m using right now to help get me back to my high-achieving self and make September ONE FOR THE BOOKS! Enjoy!

For show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast and, of course, if you have any questions or want to connect, head on over to @coachellyn on Instagram.

ACTION STEPS:

Tip #1 - Give yourself some quick wins! Each month in my monthly review, which is built into my Take Back Your Time planner, I ask myself to jot down some memories and successes of the month. In doing so, this month, I realized that August wasn’t quite the shit month I thought it was. In fact, there was a LOT that I could celebrate.
Tip #2 - Get Self-Aware. If you think last month was shit, why? The only way we can make changes is to get aware of why we felt that. What about it was so shitty? What went wrong? We can’t fix it if we don’t know what it is, so now is the time to get non-judgmental, objective and collect some data about what went wrong.
Tip #3 - Set goals that YOU have control over achieving - To give yourself momentum in this next month, make sure that the goals you set are goals that you have complete control over achieving. No one else has to buy anything. No one else has to give you permission or do you a favor to get there. You can just do it through your own actions. That will give you the momentum you need to take this next month by storm.

RESOURCES IN THIS EPISODE:

Check out the Take Back Your Time planner for some of the built-in reviews that I mentioned in this episode
The Science of Life Design - my philosophy for achieving your goals and learning from your missteps like a scientist
Previous Episodes:
- #109 - How to do a QUARTERLY (or Mid-Year!) Review - click here

Transcript…

(00:00):

Hey there. And welcome back to take back your life podcast. Today's episode is inspired by the fact that, well, we are in September now, which firstly, what the hell? How are we in September? Like what happened to this year and like 2020? Oh my God. All the memes that have come out of this year are so freaking accurate because it has just been batshit crazy. And I don't know about you, but from a goal-getting, achieving, productivity standpoint, August just kind of felt like crap.

(01:43):

So, in a sense, I'm really happy it's behind me. But I also was thinking about this as I was doing my monthly review yesterday, which I'm going to talk about in just a second. I was thinking about this notion of how do we bounce back when it's just been a shitty month? You know, how do we get back on track when it's been really, really crappy and how do we refocus ourselves? That's really what I wanted to talk about today because in doing my monthly review, I definitely felt that I definitely felt that sort of, I want to bounce back from this. I want to recover from this month and I want to come back stronger. I want to learn from it.

(02:28):

I want to grow from it, but I really just want to level up. I don't know if this is something you feel probably we're high achievers. We're always looking to be better to grow, to take things to the next level in our lives. And that's really what I wanted to do this month. There were a lot of goals I didn't hit. In fact, looking through my monthly goals, I'll be completely transparent. I didn't hit one of them. I got sidetracked. I got demotivated again. It was just like a month. So how do we bounce back from that? And as I was doing my monthly review, I came up with some really, really tangible things that I really think are going to benefit you in terms of bouncing back as well. If you've had a month, if your August was crap, I want to give you a couple of really tangible tips to help you bounce back, to help you recover and to recover strongly and to learn from whatever missteps you might've made in the month of August or in any month.

(03:25):

Whenever you're listening to this...and actually this is something that's going to apply. If you've had a crap month, if you've had a crap week, you can use this same type of thing to recover, to bounce back and to come back even stronger. So I'm going to try to keep this short and punchy today. Um, but I've got three tips for you for how to bounce back from a month. So let's get into it. I don't have any announcements today. We are just going to dive right into things. So let's do this.

(03:53):

The first tip I have for you to bounce back from a really shitty month is to give yourself some small wins to look back on your month and actually ask yourself, "did I have, firstly, any great memories from this month that I can look back on fondly?"

(04:09):

And secondly, "do I have any successes I can really celebrate for myself this month?" I was really surprised when I sat down to do the both of these things. In fact, this is something that is built into my monthly review, which is at the end of each month in my take back your time planner, which you can grab at coachellyn.com/planner again, coachellyn.com/planner. This is at the end of every single month and I love this and I really grew to appreciate it this month because I did truly feel like this month was just so. So to sit down and think back on what were some of the amazing memories from this month? What were some of the successes I can celebrate? It automatically shifted my perspective on August and made me feel a lot better about the month itself.

(05:00):

Yeah, cool. Maybe it wasn't the most productive goal getting achiever driven month, which can sometimes obviously be really hard for us to stomach as people who pride themselves on achievement, but there was still a lot of good in this month. There was still a lot to celebrate a lot of wins that I can give myself and, you know, they don't have to be huge things like some of mine were just getting out and hiking. I actually did a lot of hiking this month, a lot more than in July hell. I went on two hikes this past weekend. So that was something I could really celebrate for myself. I also set a really, really good boundary, a really good professional boundary that I was really proud of myself for not only having the awareness to realize I needed, but to then communicate in a way that was really tangible and really productive.

(05:48):

So that was another success I could celebrate for myself this month. You know, I also had, um, something that I wrote down as a success was facing my shortcomings. I had a lot of aha moments this month when it came to my business, when it came to my goals, a lot of moments when I really had to real talk myself and I leaned into those moments and I'm really, really proud of that. So again, the successes don't have to be things that are incredibly monumental. You didn't have to have your best income month ever. You didn't have to get a promotion this month. You didn't have to crush it in any of your metrics at work to still find successes. And I think sometimes us achievers, because we are so validated by our own achievement, sometimes it's really important, especially when we felt like we've had a really month to search a little bit harder for those successes because they are there.

(06:37):

They might look a little bit different than they've looked in previous months, but they are still there. So I found this to be a really, really reassuring thing to do in my monthly review was to look back, to jot down some amazing memories. Like I have some memories about some of the hikes. They went on. Some of, I got a brand new standup paddleboard this month that I got to take that out. So that was a fun memory. And then just some of the birthdays that happens this month, those little things just made me feel so much better about where it was at this month. Um, and I'm sure they would make you feel the same. So that's tip number one is to give yourself some small wins, jot down some of those successes and those memories from your month so that you can automatically start feeling a little bit better. Even if the month was a little from a productivity and achievement perspective.

(07:23):

Tip number two is to get really self-aware. And this is where some of my favorite favorite questions from my reviews. And again, I asked myself these questions in my monthly reviews and in my weekly reviews, this is where they really come in handy. So when I say get self-aware, if it feels like a month, why what about this month felt? Did you spend too much money? Did you work too much? Did you not work enough? And you really fell short in a lot of goals. What was it? What aspects of your work did you do poorly this month? And this is a great, great opportunity where I'm going to really emphasize what I call the science of life design. And basically what that refers to is treating this process of self-evaluation like a scientist, be objective, put your lab coat on and put your scientist hat on, and don't judge yourself in making any of these observations.

(08:20):

One thing that scientists are really, really good at when they're evaluating their data or at least good scientists are some of us get a little to it, to hatch to our data. But one of the things they're really good at is that they can evaluate the data non-judgmentally and very objectively does the data say what they want it to say? And if it does it, okay, what is it saying? There's no judgment there. They're just looking to interpret the data and see what the data is telling them. And you can do the same thing with a really, really month. You can look back at your month and say, okay, what did I do wrong? What went wrong this month? What didn't work and evaluate it very objectively. Very non-judgmentally some of the things that I evaluated myself on were things like I had a lot of inconsistency in my work and in showing up and sharing coaching, that's something I have been very consistent with in previous months, but August just was not that way.

(09:17):

So I had to call myself out on that. I also had a lot of realizations about some of the collaborations and workshops that I were doing that frankly, just weren't working for me, that weren't lighting me up. Okay. Noted. Like instead of judging myself for being, "oh, Ellen, why did you pour a month of your business into this?" I was just able to say, okay, noted that didn't work for me. I also had to get very real with myself about the fact that I've been oversleeping staying up too late and therefore sleeping in too much in the morning and not really getting that quality morning time that I usually really value had to call myself out on that. And this is going to involve again, a lot of awareness, a lot of objectivity. I also had to call myself out on overspending. There was literally a couple of weeks in the month of August.

(10:04):

I think I was just doing a lot of retail therapy. I'll be honest, but I had to keep track of orders on sticky notes because I was losing track of what I was expecting. Overspending was a thing in August. I kind of had to call myself on that. So get self-aware. What about your month? Are you not feeling good? About what about your month is making you feel? And I would actually encourage, I'm not necessarily getting into specifics for this podcast of some of the realization I made, but I would encourage you to get even more specific than some of the examples that I gave inconsistency in your work or not hitting your goals. Okay. Why did that feel to you? Why do you not like that? Is there another way that you would have wanted to show up and what does that look like?

(10:46):

So this is all about getting very, very self-aware because the only way you can make changes for the better is to know what it is that went wrong. That's why this is such a crucial tip here. So tip number one is to give yourself some small wins to just put yourself into that better mindset. And tip number two is to get self-aware. If you feel like you have a month, why what went wrong? Because the only way you can make positive changes is to know what those things are.

(11:13):

So those are our first two tips, and then last but not least tip number three, I jotted this down for myself and it was just like a huge aha tip. Number three is to set goals that you can actually control. Now, this is something that I'll admit I struggle with. And a lot of high achievers probably struggle with this as well.

(11:36):

But when I looked back through my August goals, I realized that I didn't hit any of them. I didn't hit any goal that I had set out for August. And arguably, some of them were goals that I could control that I absolutely had control over achieving. But if I'm being honest, a lot of them were not goals that I could control. A lot of them were goals that I wasn't even invested in. So I really approach setting goals very differently for the month of September than I did for the month of August. And actually, before I go into that, let me give you a really good example of what I mean by goal that you can control. We can set goals where ... I'm going to use a business example. For those of you that have a side hustle, maybe have any sort of entrepreneurial bone in your body, maybe you have your own business.

(12:26):

I want to use this as an example, maybe your goal is to sign two one-on-one clients or maybe your goal is to have a certain level of income that you've earned in a month. Now there are some business coaches who might disagree with this, but I actually feel like this is a really, really important way to bounce back from a month. So I'm sharing it anyway. You can set a goal of signing X number of clients or hitting X amount of income in your business, but ultimately whether or not people buy or sign up is out of your control. I want to say that again, whether or not people buy or sign up is out of your control. What is in your control is how much you market, how many people you share your offer with and how frequently those are things that are actually goals that are in your control, behaviors and actions that are controllable by you.

(13:19):

You don't have to bank on somebody signing up. You just have to bank on yourself to show up and share the thing. That's the difference? So I set a lot of goals that were ultimately things I couldn't control in the month of August. So when I sat down to do my goals for September, I have goals like, okay, I want to connect with this many people. Each week, I set a goal about what I wanted to launch. I set a goal to read four books, absolutely. Within my control. I set a goal to take one day off a week, which is, you know, side hustle as well as day jobs, sometimes a little difficult, but those are all goals that are very tangible. That point me in the direction of the kind of life I want and are ultimately under my control. Am I saying don't set goals - especially if you're an entrepreneur around how much income you want to make - or how many clients you want to have? Absolutely not. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that shouldn't be your primary goal, especially if you're trying to bounce back from a month, you want to give yourself goals that are very controllable, that are very tangible. That are something that all you have to do is show up and do the thing.

(14:32):

That is a very, very simple way to bounce back from a really, really month because having goals that are ultimately outside of your control is going to do nothing but frustrate. You is going to do nothing but demotivate you. But if you give yourself a goal that's within your control, momentum is I love the notion of that snowball rolling down a hill. That's ultimately what you give yourself. When you give yourself momentum and momentum is something that we can give ourselves. When we give ourselves very straightforward, very tangible goals that are absolutely realistic.

(15:10):

And within the realm of possibility for us to achieve, we don't have to depend on anybody else. We don't have to depend on anybody else to click by. We just have to do our part and the goal is complete. So that is it for you today. That's all.

(15:25):

I've got those three tips. Tip number one, give yourself some small wins, jot down some successes and some memories so that you can feel a little bit better about the month you just had. It was a game changer for me. Tip number two, get self-aware. And if you did have a month, ask yourself why be very nonjudgmental, very objective, get very, very clear on what it was about the month that felt because that's the only way you're going to be able to rectify it. And then tip number three, set yourself some goals that you have control over, not goals that you have to rely on. Anybody else for. You just have to rely on your yourself to show up and to do the thing.

(16:03):

Those are my three tips for you to bounce back from a shitty month in case you just like me happened to have a really, really August. I wanted to make it very, very tangible, very, very straightforward. And these are all things that you can literally, after fitting the, finishing this podcast, sit down and hash out for yourself. It's going to make your September so much better. It's going to put you in a better state and it's going to give you that momentum. You need to continue driving forward to give yourself that momentum so that you can pick things back up and be the motivated human that you and I know you are. So with that, that's all I've got for you this time. I hope you really got a lot out of this. I hope that if you were in this mindset that I am, that you've had a August and you really want to pick things back up. I really hope that these three tips, hell, I know that these three tips are going to help set you in the right direction to do that. So with that, my friend, I will talk to you next time. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a great rest of your week. Bye.