My Personal Mantra

After returning to my full-time personal assistant role, I had a lot less time on my hands.

I had to do some serious thinking about how I spent my time. 

More importantly, I had to examine where I was making the wrong choices and what behaviors were holding me back.

I basically had to shine a spotlight on my flaws.

I was letting fear dominate my actions, I was being lazy and I could, without a large dose of self-discipline, waste a lot of time.

Which lead me to adopt a personal mantra.

Don’t be scared
Don’t be lazy
Don’t waste time

To make the most of this mantra, I realized I had to dig a little deeper into each statement.

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Don’t be scared   

Often when I am procrastinating, putting something off or generally not doing something I know I want to do, I generally realize there is some (often well hidden) element of fear percolating under the surface.

Don’t get caught up on the fear itself, get addicted to the euphoria that comes with completing the action and moving through the fear.

Related post – Are You Making Fear Based Decisions? It’s time to Choose Love over Fear 

Don’t be lazy

I hate to admit this but before I started coaching many years ago, I was quite lazy. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t moving forward, yet I failed to do much about it.

Now it’s a different story.

I do still have my occasional bout of laziness. The good part now is that I can easily motivate myself back into work mode.

Books that can help boost your motivation – 

• The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard
• High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way by Brendon Burchard
• You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero

Don’t waste time

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been trying to become an early riser. My specific reason for this was to get some writing/blogging done before heading off to work.

When I first started getting up early, I had a clear picture of what I wanted to achieve.  Then one week I found myself completely unorganized and instead of getting up early and working through a to-do list that would have a positive effect on my workload, I started surfing the Internet.

Before I knew it, I had spent well over an hour doing nothing of any significance.

Getting up at 5.30 every morning and working for an hour wasn’t the problem. I quickly realized it was doing something that mattered in that time that was the outcome I was after.

Related post – How to Stop Wasting Your Precious Time

While I was using my new mantra to my benefit,  it dawned on me that I wasn’t particularly keen on the use of the word don’t in each statement.

After all, sometimes when we focus on what we don’t want, it tends to shift us further in that direction.

I realized I needed a positive plan of action to counterbalance each statement.

Here’s what I came up with.

Don’t be scared         Be Fearless

Don’t be lazy              Take Action

Don’t waste time      Be Productive

When it comes to personal mantras, Brendon Burchard has an excellent one. His mantra is brilliant and you can see it center stage on his website.

It’s Live. Love. Matter.

At the end of each day, he asks himself – Did I live today? Did I love? Did I matter?

I think this is incredibly powerful. 

It also got me thinking about having a more powerful mantra for myself, particularly now that I am back working for myself full-time. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I already had one, in the name of this blog.

While my earlier mantra was great from a getting things done point of view, I felt like I needed something more holistic as well, which lead me back to the name of my blog.

Write. Change. Grow.

Like Brendon’s statement, I took each of these words and made them into something powerful.

Now I ask myself did I write today? Did I change? Did I grow as a person?

For me, it’s all about growing. It’s about making myself better today than I was yesterday.

The beauty of personal mantras is that they can change and evolve over time, just as we are changing and growing.

If you had to dig deep and think of three statements to be your personal mantra (that could help you move forward) – what would your personal mantra be?

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