What is actually stopping you from success? That’s the question that I want to pose to you today, and I’ve got three solutions.

I think there’s one major thing that’s possibly stopping you from success. I’m going to talk really personal for just a minute because there’s something that’s been stopping me from being at the level of success that I want to be at in my life. I don’t know. It just held me back for a really long time, and I wanted to talk about it quite openly and quite bluntly because you know what, maybe you’re facing very similar things.

Here’s a scenario. I sit down on a Monday and I set a list of all the things that I want to get done for that week. It might include things like producing videos like this, writing content, reaching out to clients, following up, spending family time, doing my church activities, and all these long lists of stuff that I need to do and different activities that I need to get done.

I put it all down. I put it in some kind of a notebook. I put it in my planner. Well, some things went in a notebook, and some things went in a planner, and some things went here and there. It was a scatterbrain system. Monday would keep rolling forward and then a few more things, and emails would come in, and I have other assignments and projects coming in from different clients.

Other things would go on and some things I would follow up, some things I wouldn’t follow up on. It was just kind of a hit-or-miss experience through the whole thing.

Then, Tuesday would come along and I would add more things on my list, and then Wednesday would come along and more things on my list, and then I wouldn’t get them done.

Then, Thursday would come along and then another. There’s a huge pile of stuff. Now, I’m starting to feel super bad because I’ve got all these things that I’ve been working on and all these things that I’ve been doing but I haven’t gotten them all done yet.

I’m starting to beat up on myself like, “Man, you’re really behind. You’re not accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish. You’re not doing the things that you want to do.”

I’m now in this sense of guilt, and frustration, and sadness, and my productivity and my ability to create success keeps dropping lower and lower and lower and lower.

Then, Saturday comes. I scrap the whole list. I spent a bunch of time with my family. I feel rejuvenated. Sunday comes along. I have a great Sabbath day where I rest, recuperate, do some church things, do some spiritual things, recuperate some more. Monday comes along and I’m excited and ready to go again and so off I go.

It starts and it just repeats all over the place.

Now, what was the problem here? The challenge with what’s going on there is that every single time I set a task or set a goal to do something and didn’t do it, I was breaking a promise to myself.

Now, I want you to think about that for just a moment. I was breaking a promise to myself. Every single time I did that, I lowered my confidence in myself in my ability to get things done and to accomplish more things.

When I thought about growing and I thought about doing more things, and I thought about reaching for bigger goals and dreams, I would think I can’t even get the stuff. Everything that I’ve got right now is overwhelming. I’m dropping the ball on a bunch of different stuff. I’m not getting the things done.

From one day to the next, my to-do list is 20 billion things long. The thought of growing at significant levels and achieving major stuff made me kind of sad, and kind of frustrated, and kind of worried, and concerned that I was always behind, never good enough, never achieving.

I wonder if you’ve ever felt like that. If you haven’t, then that’s fine. It’s just my thing and I’m having a therapy session here with you today. If you’ve ever felt that way, so you’ve ever felt like you’re not good enough and you’re behind because you’re not keeping your commitments to yourself, in short, you don’t trust yourself. You don’t trust yourself that you can follow on tasks.

Another thing that I do; see if this pattern holds true for you.

I was working on a project the other day, right in the middle of it, and I got an email followed up by a phone call of someone who had an urgent thing for me to do, and it was really important. I deal with families and people who struggle.

I get this call and they want me to do something right away. Now, at that point, I have a choice. I either stop what I’m doing and respond to their emergency and do what they’re asking me to do, and so I comply with their schedule, or the other option is that I say I’d love to do that but I can’t do it right now, and I postpone doing it.

The problem is that I don’t trust myself enough, and if I postpone doing that, will I have the discipline, and the system, and the time management program to go back later and follow up on that thing and actually get it done?

Inside my brain, I’m thinking, “Well, I might not follow up on it. I might not get to it. I’d better just get it done right now and then at least I know that it’s done.”

The problem is in doing that right now, I displaced other activities that I should have been doing to advance my goals forward and thus that thing didn’t get done on my list and then the cycle just repeats.

Does this sound familiar at all? Does this make sense to you at all?

The cycle just keeps repeating where I’m never feeling like I’m caught up. I’m never feeling like I’m achieving the things that I need to achieve, and so I’m always feeling bad about myself like I’m not doing what I should be doing.

If this sounds familiar to you, then I can tell you that there’s probably an issue that you have got in creating higher levels of success in trusting yourself.

If that’s the case, I’ve got three simple things that I want to recommend that you do that I think will be super useful for you.

Number one, the first thing is to set aside time (two to three hours) once a week to block out your schedule and maybe before that. You have to make a commitment that you actually want to change this.

Block out two to three hours to block out your schedule. You look at every single day for a week and you say, “Okay. What do I need to do?” You’re going to think about three different significant projects and that’s step number two.

When you block out your schedule, so first of all, schedule time to do this. Number two, block out your time frames.

When you block out your time frames, you’re going to look at three things. First of all, you’re going to look at self-care, or self-preservation, or self-strengthening.

If I don’t work out, then I know my muscles eventually get weaker, and my ability, my energy, my strength, my ability to accomplish stuff will lessen and my ability to succeed will lessen, so I know for a fact that the most selfless thing that I can do is to do the selfish thing, purportedly the selfish thing, and take care of myself.

I’m not talking about being selfish and only focusing on myself, but I am talking about when I look at my schedule, schedule in time for me to eat healthy, to exercise, to have strength and energy, to get enough sleep, and to take care of my mental and emotional well-being, and put things in my life that are going to help me stay at my peak performance and my very, very best. That’s the first thing that goes into my schedule.

Second thing that goes into my schedule are any commitments that I have made that I need to honor. Do I already have appointments? Have I already agreed to be somewhere, do something, have something? For example, I know here in a couple weeks, I have an appointment to go give blood. Well, that needs to go on my schedule. I’ve made that commitment and I should honor that commitment.

Years ago, I had such an interesting conversation with a guy who is a mentor of mine. An incredibly successful business person and just an all-around fabulous person, a guy named Rick Sapio.

Rick said to me, “I have an accountability group. We meet once a week and we’ve been doing this for 15 years. We just schedule this in. It’s a commitment that we have. We just do it repetitively.”

There’s a commitment there that he’s made to himself that he keeps and he keeps with the other people, and so that’s the second thing. What commitments have you already made to your family, to your friends, to your neighbors? Things that are helping you to move forward. What have you already done that you’re committed to and you need to stay committed to? Put those in your calendar. That’s the second thing.

The third thing then is to look at the number one project that you’re working on to achieve your goals and your dreams and then you need to schedule yourself time for that.

For example, right now, I’m working on building out a brand new course for freelance writers. I’m working on this course and so I’ve got to look at my schedule and say, “Okay. I’ve got deadlines and requirements.” I’m scheduling myself in time to do the videos, write the emails, put the resources together, build out the tools, do all those kinds of things, and I’m focusing on that priority.

Step number one to have more trust in yourself and honor those commitments is to set aside time to book at your calendar, to schedule your calendar.

Number two, when you sit down to do your calendar, look at three important things: taking care of yourself, taking care of current commitments that you’ve already made, and scheduling time to build out your number one project, the thing that you’re working on, whatever your major number one goal is or project is right now. You build that out.

Number three, the third thing, and this is really, really important, and that is daily review and revise sessions. At the end of each day, you’re going to have a list of things that you blocked out in your day, and everything goes on your calendar in a day, and you can figure out the systems to use for this but everything goes on your calendar for the day.

You’re not going to do this perfectly. You’re going to be bad at it at first. You’re going to mess up. You’re going to make mistakes. A real emergency is going to come up, a fake emergency is going to come up, and you’re going to get sidetracked.

The other day, I was sitting right here in that chair right there, and I was working on a project and I got a phone call. I should have ignored the phone call. I should have postponed it for 20 minutes but I didn’t. I took the call.

Three hours later, I got off the call and had derailed my entire day. I should not have done that but I did do it, and so at the end of the day, I had the opportunity to review and revise.

I looked at my calendar and I said, “Okay. What did I do? What did I plan on doing? What actually happened?”

Now, I have to revise. Do I need to take away some free time that I had to fill in the blank to do that project that I should have been doing while sitting in that chair and instead took the phone call? How am I going to adjust? How am I going to evaluate?

Then, I get to learn in my review and revise. I also get to learn. That’s fascinating. Why did I take that call? Could I have handled that better?

I get to review in my mind what I could learn from that, how I can adjust, and how I could be more efficient, and keep my promise to myself, and trust and honor my commitment to myself more effectively in the future. That’s really what this is all about.

It’s not about time management. It’s about trusting yourself saying, “Look, if I say that I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it.”

Again, you might not have this problem, but for years, this was a major issue for me. It took a lot of work, and I’m still working on it. I just told you about it in this very chair. I violated that, then I had to regroup. We’re not going to be perfect at all this time but you can get so much better than you are right now.

This is my suggestion to you. Number one is if you’re struggling to reach higher levels and have the real successes you want to have, it could be, I’m not saying that it is but it could be that you have a trust issue with yourself.

One way to solve that is a three-part formula. One, schedule out two to three hours every week to block out your time.

Number two, when you’re blocking out your time, do personal care first. Take care of yourself, then take care of commitments you’ve made to others, and then focus on what you need to do to move your major project, your major goals, forward in your life, and then all the other stuff is going to kind of fall in between there.

Number three, every day, take 10, 20 minutes and review and revise. You might have things that have come up and you need to put in your schedule. You might have lessons that you’ve learned from dropping the ball. You might have experiences that you need to add on, whatever it is, review and revise every single day.

If you’re anything like me, if you follow that pattern, then in a relatively short period of time, you’ll see, “Oh my goodness. I can trust myself.” I can say, “Oh, I’ll do that.” Put it on a calendar, follow up on it, and make it happen.

You’ll have more commitment to yourself. You’ll have more integrity. You’ll have more sense of “Oh, I can do that.” You’ll have greater confidence in yourself. Other people will sense that and have greater confidence in you as well. You’ll have more flexibility to reach for higher goals because you’re like, “Oh, I totally can put that in my calendar and trust that I can get it done.

Last word that I have for you, and that is avoid overwhelm.

This is a big thing when I started scheduling my timeout. I was overwhelmed with all the stuff that I felt like I should do, needed to do, had to get caught up on, et cetera.

Finally, I realized a lot of that stuff I didn’t need to do, some of the stuff I wanted to do, and I started buffering and putting a lot more transition time, meditation time, re-evaluation time, logistical time, like you’re just moving from one place to another, one project to another.

Things always tend to take a little bit longer than you think that they’ll take, and so I just put in a lot of flex time. Man, that made a world of difference in feeling like I was overwhelmed and stressed. Hopefully, this helps you out.

If you’re like me and you’re working on trusting yourself more, then I think this will be super beneficial for you. I know it has been for me. Okay, guys. Talk to you soon. Bye now.