055: Look At Your Breadcrumbs

Welcome to Productivity Paradox from inkWELL Press, a podcast focused on finding  success and happiness through the power of productivity. Each season, Tanya focuses  on specific strategies to help you discover your own priorities and purpose. Season  five is all about investing in you. You can also join Tanya for more interaction support  in her free Facebook group at inkwellpress.com/group. And now, here’s your host,  Tanya Dalton.  

Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to productivity paradox. I’m your host, Tanya  Dalton, owner of inkWELL Press, and this is episode 55. Today’s podcast episode is  brought to you by Audible. And I’ll be sharing later in the show, how I use Audible,  and how you can get a free audiobook download.  

 Today’s show is all about looking at your bread crumbs. And I love this show,  because I think that looking at your bread crumbs is such an important part of our  process, an important part of where we’ve been and where we’re going. And the  reason why is because we all tell ourselves these stories about ourselves that we  believe, that we’re supposed to be a certain way, or we’re supposed to have a certain  job, or we’re supposed to live a certain life. And the question you have to ask yourself  is, are these stories true? Are you really looking at your life through an unfiltered lens  to make these decisions, or are you saying these things that aren’t necessarily true?  

 Over time, we all accumulate beliefs about ourselves, and about life itself,  which becomes the lens that we view the world through. Everyone has different  beliefs, opinions and perspectives, because we have formed these ideas based off of  what we know is true in our own world. So we all have some form of limiting or  negative beliefs that start to set you in a pattern in life that may or may not work.  Finding the beliefs that don’t work and consciously choosing to change them to the  ones that will serve you is what allows you to grow.  

 To do this, your beliefs must align with what you want. For example, if you  want a loving relationship, you need to change the deep belief that you are unlovable.  So this is why I feel like bread crumbs are so important. One of the things you’ve  heard me say before is that if you want to move forward, you have to begin by  looking back. Reflection is such a key part to discovering who you really are, and the  person you want to become. And I call those things bread crumbs, the little things  that have marked the path of where you’ve been. Bread crumbs are so helpful in  understanding yourself, and they can help reveal how and where to invest in yourself.  

 So let’s begin by talking about patterns or cycles. We’ve all heard that concept  that time does repeat itself. It’s called historical recurrence. And it’s true to some  degree that history does repeat itself. But that doesn’t mean it’s destined to happen.  It doesn’t mean that your story is already written. You do have a say in how patterns  are played out, and even how they’re disrupted.  

 As I mentioned a minute ago, we all have stories that we tell ourselves, and  these beliefs usually play out in a pattern. So looking back on areas that did and  

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didn’t work may reveal those patterns for you. Think about events in the three  sections of your life, in your work, your personal space and your home. What worked?  What didn’t? Think backwards to find any recurring patterns and dig deep to find  your beliefs that are creating these patterns and these cycles. Remember, if you’re  looking back through a pattern of great challenges in life, through these challenges  come our greatest breakthroughs.  

 You see, your life is made up of two pattern types, one set of patterns that lead  to continued failure, and one that leads to success. And here’s the best news of all,  you can choose which patterns to feed and which ones to disrupt. Remember back in  episode 45, where we talked about the power of choice? This is yet another choice  for us to make.  

 Let’s talk for just a minute about these two very different patterns that we  experience. Patterns of failure are life habits that aren’t serving you, because they  take you further away from this vision of your ideal future self. Overcoming your  negative patterns is a matter of replacing them with positive ones. But why do we  keep repeating these patterns? I want you to remember that most of our habits are  acted out subconsciously. We don’t even think about it. But they all have a trigger  and a reward that we can pinpoint and change. The failure in our patterns isn’t in the  action, but in the result of the actions.  

 And on the other side of the coin, consistent patterns of success are consistent  actions that result in movement towards your goals. If we can find and change  unsuccessful patterns into positive ones, we can make consistent progress towards  our future self.  

 Patterns that run through your family too, are important to look at. That allows  you to understand yourself and your own patterns. This includes your genes, your  environment and your learned behaviors. These factors all come together to create  who you are. The more you can learn to identify these patterns, the more prepared  you are to disrupt the negative patterns and reinforce those positive ones.  

 I want to share a couple of categories with you, and I want you to think  through each one of them, and the common patterns you can think of between two  or more family members. And then I want you to think about how these patterns  have affected you.  

 Okay, category one, beliefs about the world and personal values. Category  two, relationships and how you socialize with others. Category three, healthy living,  like eating habits and fitness. And category four, career, education, job choices. So in  thinking about those four categories, do you start to see some patterns between  some of your family members? You’ll likely find family influences on yourselves that  are both positive and negative.  

 Patterns are very similar to habits in that they happen without thinking. So if  you start being mindful about the patterns in your life, and you start looking around  to discover them, you become more aware, and you can find ways to start building on  those positive patterns, and change the negative ones.  

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 Remember how I said small wins build up to big victories when we were  talking about your future self? It’s the same with patterns. Little actions and steps can  mean giant leaps towards the life you want to live. And we’ve talked about the  domino effect before, it’s the proven theory in physics that a single domino can  knock down another domino that’s 50% bigger. Each subsequent domino can then  knock down another domino that’s 50% bigger than it, and so on.  

 Now a single two-inch domino doesn’t have the power to knock over a domino  a thousand feet tall. But you can start with that one tiny domino and line up 22 more  dominoes, each one 50% bigger than the last. And then that number 23 domino that  topples over to the ground would be taller than the Eiffel Tower. That loud boom you  would hear when it fell over would be caused by a single standard-sized domino.  

 And I’m telling you this because I want you to remember that if you start with  small steps, that leads to bigger steps, until you’re accomplishing huge goals. There is  momentum in these patterns, both positive and negative. So build upon those  positive patterns and expand the victories and the successes. And then look at the  patterns that are causing the most stress and the negativity, and see if you can find a  key trigger that, when changed, results in a more successful habit, and affects more  than one area of your life.  

 Let me give you an example of this. If you’re not eating and exercising, you  might want to look a little bit deeper than just the routine of eating and exercising.  When you start digging into your patterns, you might find that you need to focus on  your sleeping habits, because sleeping will allow you to wake up with more energy  and better control over your impulses. Then you have enough will power to make  good decisions like grabbing a healthier option instead of a burger. And when it’s  time to go to the gym, you don’t feel tired and weighted down and less likely to go.  

 You see how changing just one element of your life, sleep in this example, that  causes a domino effect of success. And that is why it’s so important to look at these  patterns, these bread crumbs in your life.  

 So start looking around. What are the patterns you notice appearing in your  life again and again, maybe in different iterations, but at their heart, it’s the same  thing happening over and over? And while you’re looking around, I want you to  notice, what are the things you’re already doing in your life that you can build on, that  you can expand upon and use that domino effect with?  

 With me, I didn’t think I was destined for a life as an entrepreneur, and little  projects that seemed like microcosms were never explored or pushed or expanded.  And that’s why I didn’t think I was supposed to be this entrepreneur. And I’m going to  be sharing that story actually in this week’s weekender episode on Friday. So if you’re  interested in hearing about my own bread crumbs, I will be sharing that in that mini episode.  

 But here’s the thing I’ve learned through my own experiences, and through  talking with others. Ideas need room and space to grow. We put them in these little  containers instead of taking them out of their jars and allowing them to spread  around the room. Start looking at these things as being connected, and see if you  

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don’t uncover some patterns for yourself. It took a lot for me to figure out what my  own patterns were, and it was because I was keeping them very contained and  separated.  

 When I start looking for connections, I begin to see the patterns in my life that  help me move towards the life I want to live. And I think that’s why it’s so important.  It allows you to see where it is you want to go, and maybe even where you don’t want  to go.  

 The question I get most often when I’m being interviewed is, what if you don’t  know what you’re passionate about, what if you don’t understand or know your  purpose. And I usually tell these people to look at the patterns, what’s been  happening in your life. And the best place to look, quite honestly, look at the things  that feel painful for you, the things that you regret, the things that you feel remorse  for not doing. Things that you want to do generally get tamped down, and they don’t  get done. Things that don’t feel good need to be explored, because that usually is at  the heart of what it is you’re wanting to do. You’ll see these patterns appearing over  and over again of things trying to emerge in your life that get pushed aside.  

 Jeff Goins has a book called The Art of Work, and he poses some questions  that really distill down what you might be doing that could lead you to your purpose.  He tells you to ask yourself what comes easy to you that’s not obvious to others. Do  you find it easy to build relationships? Maybe you’re great with technology that most  people struggle with, or you’re not afraid to get your hands into a project. What is it  that just comes easy for you?  

 And then he follows up that question with, do you also enjoy talking about this  with others, or teaching others. When something comes easy to us, it’s easy to  dismiss it as, oh that’s no big deal, it’s not that difficult. Not difficult, and not difficult  to you, are two very different things. So I want you to really start to pay attention to  these bread crumbs, to these things that are occurring again and again in your life, so  you can begin to understand what is it that you are passionate about, what is your  purpose tied to. Find these connections, so that you can begin to move forward.  

 So I want to talk about how we can do that, how we can get motivated by our  past and future self. But first, I want to give a shout-out to our sponsor.  

 One of my favorite things to do with great books that I love is to re-read them,  only I don’t often have the time to invest in re-reading. My answer, I listen to them.  And Audible makes it easy, because they have over 180,000 titles to choose from.  Using Audible allows me to remind myself of the concepts of a book in a fraction of  the time. Right now, I’m listening to Simon Sinek. I’m refreshing my brain on the ideas  in his book, Start With Why. It’s one of my favorite books, and I definitely recommend  it. You wanna listen to it? The good news is you can listen to Simon Sinek’s book for  free, thanks to Audible. They’re offering a free audiobook download, and a free 30- day trial for you. Just go to inkwellpress.com/audible to sign up today.  

 Okay, I want to talk about how we can get motivated by our past, how we can  use these bread crumbs to our advantage. Because when you can begin to see these  patterns and acknowledge them, you can really begin to move your life in the  

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direction you want it to go. But it takes some investment in you, it takes time to really  invest in yourself.  

 When Google first opened its headquarters in the early 2000s, the company  was famous for their 20% time policy. Now this was a policy that allowed each  employee to spend 20% of their time on independent, future-thinking projects of  their own interest. And this policy created really well-known products like Gmail and  AdSense, so it was very, very successful. And it was because Google wasn’t just  looking at the short-term benefits, they were looking at the long-term goals. They  were looking at investing in themselves.  

 So try taking a page from Google’s book, and initiate a future-self Friday,  where you set aside time on Fridays and make this a part of your regular routine.  Back in episode 25, I did an entire episode called Taking Back Your Friday, where we  talked all about how you can make the end of your week feel amazingly productive,  and feel like a great close to your week. We talked about batching some of your tasks  and making it work.  

 So I would encourage you to go back and give that another listen, and then  add on this future-self Friday element, and make it a part of the regular routine that  you’re doing again and again. Because part of investing in you is actively carving out  the time to make it happen. To have an effective future-self Friday, don’t start from a  blank page. That makes it tempting to waste time and give in to procrastination. We  have to give it a little bit of structure. So focus in on these things, goal-setting, skill building, learning, working on future projects, things that don’t have short-term  benefits, but really have long-term benefits. In other words, actively carving out time  to invest in you every single week.  

 And it doesn’t have to be a full day Friday, or even a half day. Even taking an  hour, 15 minutes, I’m just asking you to find an amount of time that you can invest in  yourself on a weekly basis. And I want you to block distractions like social media, so  put your phone away, put it on do-not-disturb, put up a sign of some sort, so others  know that you’re doing deep work and don’t want to be distracted, but really focus in  on investing a little bit of your time on Fridays for you.  

 So if you’re doing goal-setting, this is your time to check in, to see how are you  doing, writing down your clear goals, making sure that your goals are still working  towards the person that you want to become. And then assessing how have I done  this week, have I worked actively towards my goals, what are the small steps I’ve  done this week, and what can I do the following week in order to make these goals  happen.  

 I want you to focus on skill-building. I want you to think about the fact that  when you’re spending time honing in your skills and increasing the way that you  work, not only is it a benefit for your job that you’re working at, but it’s a benefit for  you because it allows you more opportunities, and it gives you a way to build up that  confidence in yourself.  

 So try finding something that can teach you new skills you can work on during  this future-self Friday time. Hone these skills over time. A lot of people in my LiveWell  

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method course choose to assign a day or two to course work, and some of them  choose to do this on Friday, completing a few lessons in that day. That allows them to  hone in on those skills that will benefit them in the long term.  

 And that leads me to using your Fridays for learning. Learning, growing,  strategizing are all important for you, and your business, but really for you. And they  should really be listed on your priority list as an important task, but we do tend to  push them off as leisure tasks or things that’ll happen some time. Make time for these  important tasks on Fridays. Save any relevant articles or books or resources  throughout the week, and then set aside a chunk of time to read through them and  really explore, and then use this time for your long-term projects.  

 Really, these are the tasks that should be falling under the important category  on your priority list. But they tend to get pushed aside because just like learning, just  like skill-building, they don’t feel immediate, there’s no urgency to them. But if you’re  doing little things every single week to get you to this long-term project, it’s going to  make a huge difference. And as you get closer to the end of this long-term project, it  no longer becomes an urgent task. So I really want to encourage you to take time on  Fridays to invest in you on a regular basis.  

 We’ve talked throughout this episode about how important it is to understand  your bread crumbs and to look at your patterns and to carve out that time and  investing in you. But where do you start? Well, I actually have a download that I think  will be really helpful to you, and it’s my reflection sheet, that goes along with goal setting, that I’ve given you in the past, but I’m gonna go ahead and link to it again in  this episode. So you’ll be able to find that at inkwellpress.com/55.  

 My reflection sheet goes through six ratings. I ask you to rate some different  areas of your life, and then I ask a series of 15 questions to help you look at the highs  and the lows of your past year. And that will help you to start thinking of possible  patterns that you go through. This download looks at what brought you the most joy,  and the experiences you would love to repeat, as well as those that you would never  want to repeat.  

 Looking at your answers to these, as well as your best and worst decisions, you  can reflect on if you’ve had iterations of these experiences and these choices in the  past. Is this a pattern in your life? Is this something that is happening again and  again? One of the most useful questions, I think, is for goals you didn’t accomplish,  what is holding you back. And I want you to think about the negative patterns, and if  they could be at play here. Because as I mentioned to you earlier, negative patterns  can be disrupted and turned into positive ones.  

 But here’s what I want you to take away. Use your bread crumbs to help you  grow. Knowing and understanding what patterns and cycles you have in your life,  understanding what’s positive and what is negative, and what’s repeating again and  again, is so powerful. Take the time to explore this topic and really think it through.  Your bread crumbs will help you invest in you.  

 And I’m excited to share with you my own bread crumbs in this week’s  weekender episode, where I talk about how I thought of myself as an accidental  

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entrepreneur for a very long time, and it wasn’t even true. So you can look for that  episode to be launching later this week. Next week will be an Ask Tanya episode, so I  do want to encourage you to feel free to submit a question that you’d like me to  answer. Just go to inkwellpress.com/question, and there’ll be a little form for you to  fill out, where you can submit a question, and I’ll choose a few to answer next week.  

 Alright, I hope you’re taking the time to invest in you, and I hope that this  season, you’re really beginning to understand the importance of spending time on  you. Alright, until next time, happy planning.  

Thanks for listening to Productivity Paradox from inkWELL Press. To join Tanya’s free  group, simply go to inkwellpress.com/group.