Choosing One Finishing Idea: Decision Momentum — Edited
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[00:00:00] I fall in love with starting a new workout plan, a new schedule, a new project, a shiny new idea. I, I don't even realize that I'm falling in love until I'm, like, three-quarters of the way committed into it, and I don't even realize that I'm walking away from something that's nearly done, and it's kinda gotten to the hard point
[00:00:27] So this is nothing new for me. I mean, I've been in this space, if you've listened to my podcast since its inception, you know that I struggle with things like finding my niche, sticking to one thing, following it through And then the weird thing about it though is that I start this new cascade of things, and then I get this new idea, and I realize, "Oh my gosh, I already did that.
[00:00:58] I already had that idea. I did that idea. I followed it through. I just didn't keep running with it."
[00:01:05] So this is for you if you have more ideas than finished things. And it's not all about m- having more productivity or hustle or get long to it or, you know, time blocking or any of those other hacks. This is about choosing the synergistic thing. You already know how to be productive. You already know how to time manage.
[00:01:29] Uh, you, you wouldn't be here if you didn't. You wouldn't have started a bajillion things if you didn't know all those things because, um, it takes time to do it, and you've made the time to do that, right?
[00:01:45] What we're gonna actually do is choose the idea that is the best for right now, the season that we are in, that you are in, that I am in. I'm gonna do this with you. So it might not be the best idea that you have in your cart, but it's the one that you could see yourself as kind of like the low-hanging fruit that you can finish out, gain some confidence, and then move on It's also something that the, um, I'll give you a little trick on how I delete things.
[00:02:14] If I don't see myself, like, still being in love with the idea or talking about it or promoting it or what have you a year from now, then it's not the right one to choose. Because anything that's creative, any type of creative work that you put out, if it's, if it's, um, art, if it's, uh, a piece of work, if it's, if it's an online course, if it's a YouTube channel, if it's a new business, if it's writing a book, it doesn't matter.
[00:02:48] If it falls under that category, if you cannot see yourself still as passionate about it a year from now as you are today when you feel like starting it, then it's probably not the right idea to run with Because things take time. In this creative life in motion that we have If something is happening too fast, it's probably going to be too good to be true, or it's a result of all the work that you've already put in, and the universe and people around you are catching up, and they know exactly what it is that you're talking about because you've been talking about it for a long time.
[00:03:27] That's usually how it works
[00:03:29] There is exceptions So if you are always in love with starting, then it makes it difficult to finish and for people to even know what you finished because you're starting. And that's not a bad thing. It's great to ha- we need starters. We need people that can actually help others start. So that might be leaving you a clue at what the idea that you have, um, is, is the right one right off the bat
[00:04:04] pivots are always exciting too, aren't they? There's the unknown, the excitement of feeling that this is gonna be the thing. Oh my gosh. And then about a month or two months in, it, it's just, it's exactly the same as the last ideas.
[00:04:20] It feels like nobody's listening, and it's not because your idea is bad, it's because people have not had long enough to run with it the way you have. You've been intimate with it in its creation and the starting points and getting going, and then, then it becomes work. And there is this thing called the grown zone in the begi- in the middle, that it's necessary.
[00:04:47] Starting always feels better than finishing. Because once you're finished, there's kinda like this now what moment. You get to the top of the mountain, and then there's another mountain peak, and you know that that's gonna be hard. But starting, there's always lots of gusto.
[00:05:05] I don't know. It's like decluttering instead of editing a book, right?
[00:05:10] Let's talk about why choosing one thing is so incredibly hard in the first place
[00:05:16] So I'm talking to you if you've lived a lot, you've pivoted a lot, you've tried a lot of different things. You've been doing this internet thing for, like, 15 years like I have, and you keep being told that, "Create this thing, do that thing," and you- all you wanna do is you just, you just wanna do something that's bigger than yourself, but nothing has really felt like it's stuck.
[00:05:38] Or has it?
[00:05:39] It's never really a shortage of good ideas or ideas. You're never really staring at a blank page. The problem is too many ideas and which is gonna be the best one? Which is the one that's going to give me the most value in return for my time put out there?
[00:06:00] And everything that you have on your list is probably good. It's probably amazing. It's probably the next best invention, right? That's what makes this so hard. ' Cause you probably have a lot of ideas that are new ideas, and there's no evidence to back it up that it's actually going to make it, right? So instead of asking yourself the question of what's going to be successful, I found more peace this past year, and couple of years actually, in what I- what idea do I want to live with Because when you make a partnership with an idea that you're, you're starting it, and you're, you're enjoying it through the grown zone, and you're bringing it to its birth, and then the whole idea is that you're transferring your knowledge of part of you and whatever else is coming through that's using you as, as a, a- almost like a vehicle.
[00:07:03] I don't know about you, but when I get into the writing zone, it's like I, I don't even know where I am anymore. I do- I don't even know that those words came out of me. And some of it's good, and some of it's throwaway, but there's really no, um, no real cohesive strategy or ... Those thoughts don't come through.
[00:07:22] It's just you're, you're in the zone, if you will So the question starts to be a little bit more pointed on,
[00:07:32] What do I know that will always be a part of me? Not just through a launch or a season or, um, uh, you know, I make s- some extra income for a minute What do I feel I'm incomplete if I don't do it?
[00:07:53] I think asking yourself that question is, is going to help you through the points of where it's not exciting. And, and sometimes we can't even be working on this project all the time, you know? Like, sometimes it can be part of our every day, and sometimes it needs time to breathe and have space and marinate, and, uh, we have to be okay with that.
[00:08:14] And so if there's one thing on the list that speaks that, it's gonna move higher into the list by default because it's one of those things that, uh, I, I feel like your soul maybe came here to do
[00:08:29] Write every idea that you've had in your head, and it's just living there, and it's sitting there, and it's stirring up, all of it. This, this isn't, like, actually brainstorming. This is not that. What we're doing is we're taking a mental inventory of anyth- anything and everything that you feel like has been an idea that you've actually, you've started, want to start, or didn't finish.
[00:08:53] I, I think those all kind of almost fall under the same category. But just write it all down. No judgment, no editing, no ranking. Just get it on paper
[00:09:02] This will allow you choose f- to choose something that, that feels real rather than something that feels urgent or something that maybe you think you should do because someone else thinks that you should do it. I mean, how many ideas have you started because of the advice of someone else, whether that be someone in your life or someone virtually that you watch or follow that gives advice?
[00:09:25] When you're a creative person with lots of ideas, it's really easy for us to get swept up in what other people are, think that we should do that will make us be successful. I mean, define success. What, what does that mean for you? What does it mean?
[00:09:41] That's, that's another critical piece. Like, what, what do you want to see from this? And then you gotta reverse engineer from there. So once you see all of it, we can ask the questions that actually help you choose
[00:09:56] I'm gonna ask you a question at the end of this episode, so be ready for that.
[00:10:00] As you go through your list, I want you to start thinking about what's exciting to imagine or meaningful to make, or you think, "Well, what if I just burned it all down and started from scratch? What would I do?" I asked myself that question this year, if I burned it all down, what would I do?
[00:10:20] If I actually did this my way with no rules, what would that look like? You owe yourself the answer. I mean, you've been putting the work in for years. You owe yourself this answer. What if nobody was telling me what to do? What would I do There's a lot of gold in that answer that you come up with
[00:10:38] Now that you've kind of zoned in on this one idea, I want you to ask yourself if it's a new idea or a distraction. I know, I know, that wasn't very nice of me, right? I'm, I'm actually turning the table on you a little bit.
[00:10:52] But this is where you need to be honest with yourself because new ideas always come at the most convenient times, don't they? Right? Um, usually for me, it's when the current project needs something hard from me, when I need to edit the book or figure out formatting again, which feels like a daunting k- task, but I know that just like a run or a walk or whatever, once I get my shoes on and I'm into it for five minutes, I will get into the zone.
[00:11:25] But for some reason, there's this resistant force and this new idea that decide to take me off track So the tough question is where I, I like to ask myself, like, if I have nothing else going on in the world at all, would I even be thinking about this new thing right now? Like, if I didn't have any other projects that I didn't wanna finish.
[00:11:58] I don't know.
[00:12:00] I'm not gonna share with you all the ideas that I almost, um, did this year because I might still do them. But I'm being disciplined to finish what I started and that's because I know how much passion I had in the beginning because I used this decision-making process last year which got me to where I got to last year.
[00:12:25] But life did a lot of life-ing in, in this past year. There were things that I, I did- I could not even foresee or plan for and that is part of creative life in motion is there are always those parts. So when things got stormy and chaotic for me, that's when I decided, well, this This is gonna be a hard decision, uh, unpublishing my works when I realized that I never actually went back and massaged them the way I need to.
[00:13:01] And once you publish another book, you have what's a backlist, and, and so it's kinda like inviting people over and you didn't clean the house. It's like I just couldn't live with that, so that's how I made the decision to make my mess bigger. It was a tough decision because I know I need to do a lot of hard work and, and planning and, um, you know, it's, it's also a little humbling, uh, to my ego because it's like I was...
[00:13:33] I'm really, really proud of these works. But
[00:13:37] not, um, celebrity coming to my house proud, you know? I almost went ahead and published the third book anyways, which I feel like might have been a, a mistake. So, so I might publish the third book as my first book. Do you know what I'm saying?
[00:13:57] So the next question that you wanna ask yourself is, "Can I see... Can I still see myself working on this a year from now?"
[00:14:04] And so last year when I asked myself that question about, um, the book that I'm writing right now, which is the third book that was... that's now probably gonna be my first book, the answer was yes, and here I am a year later still working on it. So you see how that important that, that question is? Um, can I still see myself working on it a year from now?
[00:14:25] And I'm asking myself the question from the same book. Uh, yeah, but hopefully it's, it's in a, like, a marketing way rather than still writing and formatting. Uh, my goal last year was to publish three books. I unpublished two, um, so my goal for 2027 is still to publish three books because I have Five in draft.
[00:14:52] I It's, don't tell anyone. Okay.
[00:14:56] So the answer is yes. Even a quiet, uncertain, wavering, maybe yes, then that, that's probably the idea that you wanna run with. Like, if it's, if it's hitting all the yeses as we go through this, um
[00:15:13] You gotta give that idea somewhere to land, right? And somewhere to grow. Because i-if, if you know that it's still gonna be with you a year from now, then in my opinion, you're, you're, um, you're not utilizing time well, because it's never gonna quiet. If not, it might get louder, and louder, and louder, and then it could actually turn into regret.
[00:15:41] I wish I would have. And so when, when the idea turns from I want to, to I wish I had, it, it, it has a different energy to it. So, um, you have 10, 15, 20 minutes a day that you could work on this. Uh, you don't have to go away, and you don't have to, you know, work hours, and hours, and hours. Small steps, small pieces, small bite size time blocks with intention moving it forward will get you way further than doing nothing at all And you know, if you downsize from doing, trying to hold on to 20 projects to one project, you'd be amazed at how far you can get even just with 30 days
[00:16:33] So choose one. The idea is chosen, and there's one small finish line after that, right? You gotta anchor into something that you can complete, so that's one chapter, one page, one recording, one small offer, one conversation. Just get one thing from the thing done. Am I making sense? It's not about like writing the whole book, it's writing the next scene.
[00:17:01] That's your next milestone, right? It's not launch the program, it's map the first model, module or whatever. Like just continuously work on it daily in little bites if that's all you have. The finishing muscle comes from a smaller completion than punishing yourself and saying, "I'm gonna get it this weekend done, dang it."
[00:17:28] I mean, you can punish yourself, but that's not really gonna get you that excited energy now, is it? But if you're on the other hand rewarding yourself every day by just allowing yourself to know that you showed up for yourself every day, that completely changes the energy, completely shifts it
[00:17:50] One of the things that I've gotten comfortable with is the fact that there is no finish line. We're always going to want to improve what we've done, improve upon, and actually it is meant to evolve. It's not a one and done world, right? Something new will emerge once, once you get there.
[00:18:09] So if you're building an online course or, or an online platform or writing a book, you might, you might release the book and someone asks you a question. You might release the course and someone asks you a question, then opens up a whole new door or a whole new concept of, or a whole new concept of transferred knowledge that you never even thought of before.
[00:18:32] A, a whole, a gap in what you're trying to communicate, and then you get to polish it.
[00:18:38] Even when it comes down to releasing your thing into the world, the next big task that you need to do is massage how you communicate what you've created. So that's, that's a next task. I mean, the work is not done once you've finished the piece. The work continues, and you might be learning a new task, and it's not that your piece is not of value if people don't know to buy it or to use it.
[00:19:11] It's that now you're learning how to communicate what you've done, and you have to stay with it. Um, if it's not getting any energetic return, it's probably not the thing that you made, it's probably how you're communicating it And, uh, I think that, um, myself included, I think that's where we pivot too fast.
[00:19:35] We're abandoning our work way too soon
[00:19:37] This whole process helps us build trust within ourselves, within our intuition
[00:19:43] The world might take a little bit of time to catch up with what you're making, and that's okay. Be there when they're there
[00:19:50] Put in the comment if you're watching on YouTube, what are you feeling called to finish first? Not start, finish. And do you have a date in by which you're targeting that?
[00:20:01] If you're still not sure which idea to run with, and this has got you doing a lot of thinking, that's literally what my clarity calls are for. And the link is below each one of these episodes if, if you're ready for that as well
[00:20:18] So be gentle on yourself. This whole conversation isn't about what you did right or what you did wrong or that, you know, that you failed at this whole internet thing or you pivoted too much or, y- you know. It, it's not about you doing the wrong things. It's more so opening up the conversation so that you can be found.
[00:20:41] Because if you're doing this and you're continuing to do this years over years over years, pivoting and creating and, and consistently making something that's gonna stick, like throwing spaghetti at the wall, it... There's, there's a greater purpose at play, um, that just won't quiet, right? And you know you are meant for greatness, but people need to find you.
[00:21:13] And so that's what this conversation is about. It's, it's not about what you did wrong. It's about allowing yourself to be visible from the people that need you. And once you were f- you are found by all the people that need you and you can have that energetic exchange, then other things are able to build upon that.
[00:21:36] But the first step is, is choosing the one thing to be found for. And like I said, I've said honestly so many times before, it's not about finding a niche or sticking to one thing for the rest of your life. It's just allowing yourself to be found for something, one small piece of, of, of your being that, um, you know will be something that you're still talking about a year from now.
[00:22:06] I'm hoping this little chat was helpful. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for tuning in to the Creative Life In Motion show, and I will see you next time. Bye.
