Moving from Procrastination to Taking Action - insights from High Performance Coach, Sarah Arnold-Hall
Episode 012
0:06 - Productivity & Goal Achievement With Sarah
11:23 - Finding Result Producing Actions for Productivity
23:17 - Developing Discipline and Keeping Promises
32:48 - The Importance of Daily Actions
38:20 - Balancing Personal Time With Pursuing Dreams
42:37 - Persistence and Overcoming Challenges
51:18 - Manifestation and Productivity
58:43 - Manifestation and Listener Appreciation
In a compelling conversation with High Performance Coach, Sarah Arnold-Hall, we explore how to amplify productivity to manifest your dreams. Sarah shares her journey from struggling with productivity to achieving her dreams, providing us with insights into how we too can hack our ability to take action.
One of the main highlights of our conversation was Sarah's personal achievement of blogging every day for 730 days straight. This act of consistency not only helped her build discipline, but also enabled her to stay committed to her goals.
Sarah shares the significance of making promises to oneself and keeping them. This simple act helps build self-trust, an essential component for productivity and goal achievement. Furthermore, she stresses the importance of setting goals that resonate with us. Instead of setting goals based on societal expectations or external pressures, it's crucial to choose goals that align with our values and aspirations.
Balancing personal time with the pursuit of dreams is a common challenge. We explore the concept of 'The Four Tendencies' by Gretchen Rubin. This concept helps us understand how we respond to expectations, which can guide us in channeling our resistance towards certain tasks into productivity.
Sarah shares her unique “best friend calendaring system” which she finds useful in managing her time and tasks. More importantly, she shares how being her own ally is key to her productivity and goal achievement. In a world where we often seek external validation, learning to be our own ally can be a game-changer.
The episode concludes with a discussion on the reconciliation of productivity and goal setting with spirituality and manifestation. We delve into the concept of the reticular activating system, which is how our brains filter information. Setting intentions and beliefs that align with our goals and dreams can guide our reticular activating system to manifest those goals into reality. This powerful conversation provides a refreshing perspective on productivity, discipline, and the art of dream fulfillment.
Remember, the journey to productivity and goal achievement is unique to each individual. What works for one may not work for another. However, the insights and strategies shared by Sarah Arnold-Hall can provide a starting point for anyone looking to enhance their productivity and manifest their dreams.
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Transcription
I'd like you to imagine your dream life, See the version of you who has what you want to have, feels how you want to feel and is who you want to be. I'm Brittany Hoops, your hypnotherapist and manifestation coach, and this is the show where I'll teach you to master the full power of your mind to guide you on your journey towards destination manifestation.
That's right.
This is Destination Manifestation, a podcast for you, the ambitious dreamer, who wants to blast through your conscious and subconscious blocks and manifest the life of your dreams. I'm Brittany Hoops. How are y'all doing today? I hope good. Now I'm in Austin, texas, here in the US, and so, where I'm located, we are in full fall mode, y'all, and I am loving it. Now, if you're in New Zealand, where I know our guest for today's show is Miss Sarah Arnold, it's my understanding that it's like spring, summer summer's around the corner right now, which I'm jealous of that too but for right now it's fall.
I have a candle lit on my desk. It's actually an intention candle and I've been utilizing it a lot here lately. So whenever I'm in this room, which is my home office, I just love to look over at this candle that I have here on my desk and it just feels all cozy and I know that as it burns, it's just sort of a constant reminder of my goals, of my manifestations, of my intentions that I've set. It's just kind of always there. It flickers right, but it never goes away. It's a continual, and I just feel like there's something really beautiful and symbolic about that. It just sort of feels like my connection to all that is. You know, my higher power is there. When I look at that candle you know, maybe it's the ex-Catholic in me right, I was raised Catholic but it just sort of feels like when you have this intention candle. When I first lit it, I set my intentions for my manifestations. I held them in my mind, I gave thanks for them, I trusted the universe that I'll have them, and it's just kind of like. When I look over at the candle, it's just kind of like the universe conversing with me. It's like the universe saying yep, we're on it, brittany, we got you. Here's your reminder, your visual reminder, that these things are in motion.
And I also love fall, because I look out the window on the other side and it's raining and it's just, I don't know. It's just a beautiful time of year. There's beginnings, there's endings, there's fall, there's spring, there's fire, there's water. It just feels like everything is just right. You know, everything's just balanced and I just love tuning into that feeling.
How about you? Let me say this if you're already subscribed to the show thank you so much. I'm so glad you were finding value with this. And so today, like I mentioned, we have another Manifestee Bestie joining us and what do you know? It is my first of many non-Big Brother guests on the show.
I know I've been bringing in a lot of inspirational Big Brother people, but this is a show about manifestation and achieving your dreams and achieving your goals, and there's so many fantastic people who are not in the Big Brother world that will contribute to that too.
And so today it's high performance coach, sarah Arnold. We are going to be tackling and dismantling all the obstacles that contribute to procrastination, to low productivity, because Sarah specializes in helping folks take action and follow through on their goals. That's what she focuses on in her coaching practice, and so I wanted to bring her onto the show because I feel like traditional goal setting and manifestation sort of have this sort of yin and yang relationship right, and we dive into in this episode how you can utilize both and how they can actually both really compliment each other. And we talk about that in today's episode. How can you achieve your goals and yet stay in that state of alignment? What do you do when you just don't feel like taking action? What if you don't know the how right? The universe creates the how? What if you feel separate from that how or can't receive that message and you don't know what to do to take action towards your goals. Don't worry, we dive into all of this and more, so let's jump to it, sarah.
Thank, you so much for joining us today. How are you doing I'm so good? Thank you so much for having me, Brittany. Oh, of course.
So let's just kind of I just want to kind of start at the beginning. So you're a productivity coach. Now we know I'm a coach, you're a coach. We know that there's so many different areas one could focus on being a coach. What drew you to productivity? Why is productivity so important for you?
So I spent two and a half years trying to make my business work and before that, even longer trying to make other businesses work, and when it came down to it, the biggest challenge that I had was I just wasn't doing the work myself. I would read and I would consume and I would learn all of the things and I would start taking action, and then I would just lose the momentum and try and find something else. So, for me, once I figured out how to overcome that and I ended up blogging every day for two years, every single day for 730 days, and then I meditated every day for 365 days. I had like hacked my ability to take action and then my business really took off and I was like wow, and that ended up becoming the niche in my coaching was really, how do you get yourself to take action and show up? Because I really believe it's the only thing standing between what you want and where you are now is you have to take the action to get it.
Take the action to get there. So that's so interesting and I'm so glad that you've touched on those things because I wanted to ask you more about those. So you were in this place where it was hard to get that momentum. You, something happened there and I want to talk about what was that? Something that happened right, and then you were on the other side of that. What did it look like before? Like how did you know that you had a problem? Like how does one know that they got a productivity problem?
Yes, 100%. You know, because you're in one of five different emotions. This is something I've identified after coaching a lot of different people. This is where I was. I had all five right Confusion. It's like I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing or like what to do next. Overwhelmed, there's just too much to do. Self-doubt, like am I really someone to do this? I started when I was like 21 years old. I started as a coach, like I was like who am I? Had such imposter syndrome.
Fear.
Like what if this doesn't work? Or what if it does? And then lethargy, like even once you've overcome all of those, like I just don't feel like putting in all of this work today, what if they're, you know, might not even get a result. So I was stuck in all of those five emotions confusion, overwhelm, self-doubt, fear and lethargy. And so that's how you know, yeah.
So you're feeling all those things, those five emotions. What? Now there's feeling those, and then there's recognizing like we got to do something about it, like the middle part. So like, what did you do? You're feeling all that, or your clients are feeling all that. How does one get themselves from that place to gaining the momentum where they can start taking that action? What's next?
Yes, absolutely. You have to identify which one of those things is the strongest for you. So usually I'll start with confusion. Almost everybody has some level of confusion about what they're supposed to do next, and it's like really creating the simplest, most doable plan for your brain. So, like I always give the example of an astronaut, because becoming an astronaut feels like a very big goal, but when you break it down, it's just four things you have to make sure you have a citizenship in the country where there's an astronaut program, then you have to get a degree in a STEM subject. You have to apply for a job, say at NASA, for example, and then you have to apply for the actual astronaut application. So when you break it down like that, you're like oh well, the first thing I have to do is I have to make sure I become a citizen of a country, so, like that's where you focus your energy instead of on all of the other things you could be doing.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. You know you do this series and I love it. I bet you know what I'm going to say. You do the series where sometimes on Instagram, you'll ask people like give me your goal and I'll give you some ideas of what you could do from it. And I mean, it's kind of it's fun. So if you don't follow Sarah, of course I'll have her link to her Instagram and my show notes, but it's kind of fun to see other people's goals and to see some ideas. But it all comes back to this like the how, right, and I think it's easy for us to sometimes get caught up in the how. And, of course, in the example of this astronaut, like there's just four hows, right? So what do you do if you have a goal and you're in that confusion, right? You don't know the how steps you need to take. Like, what do you do? What do you do in that case where you don't know exactly what you should be doing for that goal?
Well, what most people try to do and what I spend a lot of time doing is right. I'm just going to research a ton, right?
So it's like I'm going to learn everything I need to know.
I'm going to find the perfect mentor, I'm going to do everything, and while that can be helpful to a degree, you can ask almost anybody okay, what would have to happen? Like, let's just look at, like, what are the key things that are going to have to happen? I've never had somebody not be able to answer me what the first thing that has to happen for them to achieve their goal. Most people like, well, I have to have a product, or I have to like contact somewhere I can host the event that I'm doing. Like you know, the first key thing it's, like all of the other questions that you have. That will then create more confusion, and so I always tell my clients don't try to solve problems that don't exist yet. Just focus on the one that is in front of you right now. The very first thing that you have to do take that action.
I was literally doing that to myself earlier today. I was like, oh, brittany, you're on step 20. And like, you just need to know step two. Like, like you're at one, you need to know two. At two, you'll know what three is like. Stop looking all the way ahead to step 20 when you don't need to create problems for yourself that you know may not exist. So if we're thinking about being productive and I know that this is kind of like maybe a silly question, but like, how do you define being productive? Like, how does one know that they're on track, that they're, you know that they're in that middle part, they've gotten out of those five emotions you identified and now they're beginning to pick up some momentum. How do you know you're there?
Yeah, well, actually I love switching the concept of productivity to progression, so it's so much more important to be progressive than it is to be productive itself, because you can be productive putting out five loads of laundry, doing the dishes, like are you, like, crushed it today but really didn't move forward at all. So you really want to look at. You know, I encourage my clients to find out what the result producing action is, and so if you're a professional basketball player, the result producing action is shooting the ball into the basket. You can do a whole bunch of other things that make you a great player, like you could run up and down the court, you could pump weights in the gym, you could defend really well, but if you don't shoot that ball into the basket, there is no result.
And so everybody needs to find out what their version of shooting the ball into the basket is, and the way you do that is by asking yourself what is the action that comes directly before the result that I want? So and we're talking about, like, the result you want currently, not necessarily even the final result, but what's the thing you need to do that comes right before that. So, for example, in business, I coach a lot of entrepreneurs that the result they want is for somebody to buy from them. Then the thing they need to do is ask someone to buy from them, like that's the action where they need to be focusing their energy.
Okay.
Okay.
And so what do you do when you have and I've experienced this a lot, you know with my clients and whatnot that there's a lot of like, shoulds, right, like, oh, I should be doing this or I should be doing that. What should you do in the case if you have a good case of the shoulds and I don't know if those should actions could be things that are the thing that's right directly before the result that you want, or they might be this miscellaneous things. How do you kind of weed through that judgment that might be placed on those actions that you come up with?
I would really consider if you do this action, is it going to move you forward to where you want to be, or are you going to have done something you think you should do but not be any closer, Because that's really just the distinction right. Are you actually going to progress with the should, because a lot of people feel like they should have a website or they should I don't know be dating on apps, you know?
using Bumble or Tinder.
And it's like well, is that actually what you want? Is it going to get you closer to where you want to go? Like I have a friend who's always dating on the apps and he's like I never find anyone. I'm like that's because you hate being on the apps and the person that you're going to find is never going to be on an app Because they would hate being on an app too. You have to look at, like what are the things you think you should do, and is that really what's going to get you the result?
And so in that case he wants the result of this kind of person right Partner and that kind of person or partner wouldn't be on the apps, and so that all of a sudden becomes a should like a societal or whatever, wherever we pick up that idea that we should be doing this action. So really it just comes back to what do I want? What's the end result? I want and does this action that I think I should be doing? Is that a direct line there or not even a direct line, but like? Will that get me to that result? And if it isn't, cross it off, cross it off the list. That's not your route, huh.
And do you want to do that right? Like there's a million different ways that you could get to where you're going? All roads lead to Rome. What road do you want to take? Because if you're someone who doesn't like being on an app, you're not going to enjoy getting the result that way. Like you don't necessarily want that to be the solution. Just decide what you want the solution to be and make that the solution.
That's interesting. I want to talk more about that because I think a lot of times we think that, oh well, this is how somebody else became successful doing this or this. Is that? Do you have to want to do all the actions that it will take to get to your goal, or will there be times where you're doing actions that you might not immediately enjoy but you still recognize is the way there? And of course, I'm thinking through this through a spiritual and aligned perspective. We always talk about having aligned, inspired action. Will you want to do everything that's required of your goal, or is that a bad sign? If you don't want to do something, should you not be doing that?
Yeah, I think it's like the path that needs to be aligned, but the actions along it might take a little effort that you don't want to do. You want the pathway that you take to be something that actually feels like. For example, for my friend who's dating. He really wants to find the love of his life, so he should go to or he could go to. I think he's going to really find someone at an event because he loves going to events, he loves connecting with people in person, but he might also during that he might have to fly to that event. He might really dislike flying right, but he knows that at the event he's going to love it.
So it's really about yes, there's going to be steps along the way. You're not going to want to do them, and that's what I coach on. A lot is how do you get yourself to do stuff? Maybe you don't really feel like doing, but overall you do still want the outcome, because it's actually really easy to get yourself to do something you don't want to do If you want what it is overall that you're doing, if you want the process.
If you want that and really getting in tune with that, why, why do you want that? Really living into that result, you know, embodying who you'll be like, letting all those things kind of spice you up right with this, so that that can kind of power through those. You know markers along the way of those actions that you may not like quite as much. By the way, your friend, what kind of person are they looking for? I mean, we could put feelers out here. I mean, we got an audience, I'm just kidding. So here we're talking about productivity, right, or progress, as I love how you said it. If we want to boost our productivity, boost our progress, kind of break down this process for me, Like, what's the process like for you? What do you think about? What are you doing? You've gotten through those five emotions. You're building that momentum. What comes next?
Yeah, you really want to make sure, after you've got that clear plan, that you have got times to do these things. And I know this can especially for people who are a little bit more like into the like letting life take them and like going with the flow and like seeing where the universe is going to take them can be a little resistant and I know I was initially to scheduling things. But the beauty of scheduling means that you invite the opportunity for that creativity or the things you want to manifest right to come into your life because you're actually being like I'm here, here, I am sitting down. It's two o'clock on Tuesday and I said I was here, like I'm ready for it.
You're still looking up for it right For those opportunities to come.
So there's really a beauty in deciding you're going to do something at a particular time. I think it's like a specific action for a specific time, really mad.
And you put that on your calendar. You got all those actions that you want to do. We've identified what are the actions that you want that's going to be aligned on that path and you just slot them into your calendar. Is that you make the time for them?
Yes, but I teach something called best friend calendaring, which is essentially a concept. I have a whole set of kind of processes to go with it, but essentially the idea behind it is that you calendar as if it's not you that's going to execute the goal, but it's your best friend that's going to execute it.
So you have to make a calendar that you would be like, excited to hand off to your friend. And so you're actually kind to yourself in advance, because what a lot of us do is we don't want to schedule stuff, because then we let ourselves off the hook because we don't foresee what might happen. But what you do is you're just compassionate and kind in advance and you schedule at 11 am. I watched legally blonde the other day, like on a Tuesday. It was like because I knew that, like I might be a spring, wanted to have something fun and I would schedule it on the floor.
Oh my gosh, sarah, I love that is so in tune with what I teach about manifested me. I used to call it future you, but then I'm like if it's always future you, it's always going to be in the future and we're not, like, you know, a little cat with a toy, right? We're not perpetually chasing this future. So I've shifted it to be manifested me, the version of me who has what I want to have, is who I want to be. Right, I feel like that almost is like the like you're talking about, like your best friend, like that version of you that has all these things that you want and who you want to be. What kind of calendar would they have? Like what with her day look like? And, of course, I love that best friend aspect of that, because it's like you're going to be compassionate, like someone you love, like it reminds you that you're doing this is not out of punishment. We're not creating these calendars that are meant to to punish us our ways to our dreams, right?
So most of us have an arch nemesis calendar Right. If we were to create the evilest, most horrible calendar that you could, where it's like working all day and then no breaks. That's what we think we want ourselves to do, but actually we don't want that.
No, and that, and talking about that aligned path, sure, you might not like some of the actions along the way, but an aligned path. But if every day is an arch nemesis calendar, how in the world can that path be aligned for you? I mean, this is podcast, called destination manifestation. It's all about the journey to that destination. If that calendar is just miserable to look at, no wonder you're not going to stick with it. If it's kind of days that you don't want to live, that makes a lot of sense. So what about those days? You got everything in the calendar, you have everything there. What about the days when taking action are? Following through on those goals just feels hard. Like what do you do then when you're just, when you still notice a little bit of resistance there to wanting to move forward?
This is every single day for me, me too. Me too, I'm on everything all the time. Okay, I'm glad you're with me, and the biggest thing for me has been expecting to feel that resistance. When I used to feel that resistance, I'd be like surprised by it and I'd be like that's so weird, like maybe I shouldn't take action. This is like a sign that I like I shouldn't do it. Now, you know, and it's like no, like this is exactly what it feels like to take action, and you're always going to feel that resistance. Usually it's a resistance to starting or changing activities for me. So I actually enjoy the activities I'm doing because I've scheduled nice things on my calendar, but, yeah, I resist, like starting that new one or not wanting to do it, so expecting that it's going to be there and not letting that mean anything like okay, yes, yes, I feel resistant. Now what? Now, what do I want to think about? Doing this and not letting that be some kind of good reason for why you shouldn't follow through on?
what the plan is. I love that you mentioned that, that, like sometimes we think it's a sign like, oh, the universe doesn't want me to do this because I'm feeling bad. No, I mean the feeling bad part, right, the resistance part of that means that you aren't connected to that bigger part of you. That's a line that's centered, that's like totally infused, because I mean you wouldn't have this goal, you wouldn't have this calling on your heart if it, you know, if it wasn't something you deeply wanted and where you wanted to be. So when we feel that resistance, it's actually an indication not that we're receiving signs. We'd be receiving signs if we were in a state of allowance, in a state of alignment, and so I totally love that, that it's like okay, like how can I actually just like anticipate it, let it run through me whatever it needs, whatever it needs to happen, and then get myself to a place where I can kind of move forward with that and not let it shock me or stop me in any sort of way, like it's a natural part of Taking action. So you you touched upon this a little bit, but I want to circle back around you personally have taken some action on some amazing goals. I want to ask you about a few of these.
You mentioned about blogging 730 days in a row. That is two years y'all. Like. You never missed a day. Are we talking consecutive days in a row here, sarah? Yes, explain to me. Like, how did this come about? Like, did you set out to do two years? Like? Explain how that came about.
Mm-hmm. Yes, I set out to do two years. I there was something about that goal like a year felt like okay, that would be cool, but two years, it felt like who? Who does that? Who decides? I hear a time they're gonna be two years and Really came from this blog post that I read by a guy named Sean Wyss and he says Show up every day for two years.
That's the answer. You know you're gonna get what you want. You're gonna create the results because you're gonna be consistent. But no one wants to take this advice because it's not microwavable. And it hit me so hard reading that like that's what it was. Like I was spending all this time not taking action because I was hoping that around the corner there would be a microwavable version that I could just quickly Create and get what I wanted. And so I was like I'm just gonna have to prove to myself that you know, I'm willing to put in this the effort I I sit out the challenge to do to blog every day for two years and buy about the seventh day. I was like I super regretted it, but I already told everyone, like I'd announced it on Instagram. I told everyone. I like I had like three people reading my blog, I think, but like and you know, and then I never even built up a blog following like. I didn't like grow my blog.
What transformed me was the ability to take action and show up for what I said I was gonna do. I also definitely honed my writing voice and and how I wanted to be, but the way that I made it something I could do every single day is I Just made the rule something had to be published. That was my standard for whether or not I had published a blog post. Something got published. One of my blog posts is three words long, like some days I would write big long thing and other days it would be really short. In fact, a lot of them are really short because, yeah, I was what.
It wasn't about the blogging itself. It was about me developing the discipline to do something every day that I said I was gonna do and that just I was like really fueling the identity of the person I wanted to be. I Was like I want to be someone who, when she says she's gonna do something, she does it. So even if it's a live in a clock at night and I would be in bed oh my gosh, I told myself I forgot to write it and I would be like, oh, what can I say? Like did this today? Like sometimes I would just share what I'm doing, sometimes I'd share an idea. But yeah, I just, I just made it the tiniest little thing and that's how I kept the momentum going that.
I love that you say that and because I experienced that a lot with I mean, I've experienced it myself. I've got clients who've experienced it this like needing to build up integrity back with yourself, like becoming the person who, like, has your own back, who does what you say you're going to do, like for yourself. Because I think when we make these goals or we say we're gonna do these actions and then we don't do it, we're like eroding our own integrity with ourselves. So what advice do you give somebody who's been really struggling with this, who sets these goals for what they'll do and then they don't fall, they don't follow through with it and then they're beating themselves up for not, you know, having that integrity with themselves. What do you suggest that they do to to get started, to really get on that path? Where they're, they're keeping their promises to themselves?
Okay. So the first thing I would suggest is pick something you actually want. So if I could go back, I probably wouldn't do blogging. I would have done something that would have created something more specific towards my goal, because then you also have more skin in the game. There's a reason why you want to do it. So pick something that you want to be doing every day. Don't necessarily recommend two years. Maybe try a week, try 30 days. That would have been great.
How come? Why not? Why not the two years from from the get-go? Why? Why not recommending that?
Because I think if I had known back then what, who, I was gonna be two years later, by the time I got to the end of the two years, I was relieved it was over because I just I didn't want to be a blogger anymore, so I would have picked something that you could pick something for two years, if you're sure you're gonna want to do it still in Interesting yeah.
I mean two years. Gosh, trends change, you know.
Oh, I'm I doing this now.
Yeah, this thing moves so fast, so I get that, I get that yeah, exactly.
So you absolutely can decide two years, but make it something that you know you're gonna want to do in two years. Pick an end date. There must be an end. You, your brain, can't think I'm gonna exercise every day forever, like it. Just it knows that's not gonna happen. So pick an end date that you're gonna stop it at.
And then you want to make like the lowest Minimum energy version of what you need to do. So, like on the days when I have absolutely no energy, I'm sick, I'm tired, you know everything's gone wrong. There's been some emergency like what could I still do, and that's what you want your standard for it to be. And Then you want to start thinking about, like planning ahead, what to believe, what to think when you don't want to do it. You have to have a list of thoughts prepared. I had this, constantly had this list of thoughts, like anytime my brain didn't want to do it. I look at these thoughts that I had pre written out and be like oh yeah, this is why, because in the moment, your brain will not remember any of the reasons why and then you can't come up with that.
Yeah, like you said, like you cannot come up with that in the moment You're not in the resource state or the alignment state to be able to come up with those thoughts. I always call it a break here in case of emergency list with my clients like, like it, it really needs to be something. You take that axe and you like break the glass and you're like great, I have this here because you're not gonna have the faculties to be able to create it. Right then you talking about what is like kind of the minimum thing you can do. It reminds me of the is it James? Clear atomic habits? Or like your two-minute habit, like what could be something you could do in Two minutes, distilling this down into two minutes, if that's all you have that day because that might be, that might be it Destination manifestation will be right back. So let me ask you this when do you plan on living your dream life Seriously? Because here's the thing the past is done, the future is never promised. So when, honestly, now is the only time you have to live a life of your dreams, because the now is all you are ever guaranteed. It's all you ever really truly have.
Now, I'm sure you guys see this all the time, right? These days, we have such amazing people doing such amazing things. We have international superstars like Taylor Swift and Beyonce taking the music world by storm. We have entrepreneurs that are literally funding their way to space. We have Nobel winning scientists developing life saving vaccines and cures to diseases. I mean, it's literally mind blowing. And hey, don't get me wrong, I love these big, huge life changing manifestations. I see them every day.
But just yesterday I was traveling on home and I was thinking to myself what if you just want to enjoy your life a little bit more fully? A manifest, a life that brings you joy, contentment, maybe a little bit extra fun, freedom, time. Or maybe it's manifesting a new job or a move to a new city, or even meeting your soulmate, your dream partner. Maybe it's manifesting a business that affords you a life to focus on your passions and what you love most. Hey, I manifested that I understand. Well, it turns out that's exactly what one-on-one hypnotherapy and coaching is designed to help you do For manifesting more abundance, whether that be money, time, freedom, love to creating a life that you're actually excited to live. One-on-one hypnotherapy and coaching can help you create the mindset that will fuel a better, more joyful life for you, and through my one-on-one hypnotherapy and coaching programs, I'll take your hand and I'll guide you through the tools that you need to align your thoughts, your beliefs and your actions to create a life of your wildest dreams.
Trust me, right now, the world just feels downright chaotic. There's so many different things that are competing for our attention. You got the news, you got social media, obligations, chores, responsibilities. There's so many demands placed on us that it just feels like there's nothing left for you. But with my programs that use the power of hypnotherapy specifically for manifestation, my one-on-one hypnotherapy and coaching programs are like having that personal trainer, but for your mind, that's kind of what I am, because together we build those mental muscles that are required to believe in your success, to map out a plan and to support you every step of the way so that you can begin to live life on your own terms. Trust me, now is the time to live your life and start manifesting your success.
Today, go to britneyhoopscom to learn more. How imperative do you think it is to do something every day? Does it need to be an every day action, or is it just as valuable if you're like I'm going to do this a couple times a week or once a week, or I'm just curious your thoughts there. Does it depend, I guess?
No, I don't think it depends.
Interesting. I want to hear it. What do you think?
I think if it really matters to you, do it daily. Not everything in your life needs to be done daily, but that thing that you're like. I really want to see a result with this. The reason why daily matters is because then you don't even have to question is today one of the days? Should I do it today? Should I do it tomorrow? Maybe I'll just do it tomorrow. How many times have I told myself I'm going to exercise four times this week? When am I suddenly realizing, oh now I have to do it Thursday, friday, Saturday, sunday, because it's like I'm not sure what days it is.
There's also something magical that happens when you do something every day. I really don't think it becomes a habit in this thing. It's like you don't wake up and your hands hit the keyboard and you start typing, but you do make it just this non-negotiable thing. It's so much when you don't give yourself days off from something that's simple, it's two minutes. You just build such a sense of self-trust of like I'm someone who does this thing every single day. No questions, I'm just going to do it.
This is who I am. It's who I am.
And I think that's how you create the identity. I think it's way harder. I blogged before. I didn't just start a blog for two years, I had been blogging for like maybe two or three years before that and I had posted like one blog post every couple of months. And it was so much harder to do that because you have activation. Energy is required. So I think of it like a train right, Do you think of the wheel of a train makes like that's one revolution. It takes so much effort from a train at the station to turn that wheel around Like it's like. Oh, and most of us are doing that like once. So we go on some months and it's like oh, yes, it feels so hard.
But then, once you do it a few times, the momentum starts to take on itself and it just kind of keeps going. It's actually really hard to stop the train once you, once you've got it going, because it just sort of happens on its own, and it's not to say that you won't feel the resistance. You still will, but you're not even really thinking about it. It's like oh yeah, I write my blog post Great.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And I love how you also called out that, like if this is the thing you really want to see results on, like if this is who you want to be, this is your main goal, because that's the thing, and I fall into that trap. Before that, I'm like I have a million goals and so here are all the things I need to do, wasn't there? I can't remember the name. It was some AI, something or another. Maybe it's motion app or something like that. I can't remember.
It was going to take I'm sure you've seen this. It was going to take all your to-dos and it was going to like AI, put them in your calendar. I'm like that sounds great. It literally I told it all that I wanted to do in a day and it was like yeah, there's not enough hours in the day here. I thought this thing I like paid like $24.99 for it. I got this thing. I was like it's going to tell me what to do and it literally spit out like negatory, like cannot work, and I was like, oh, great. And what I mean by that is like you got to some things you might not be able to take action on every day because you have 24 hours in a day, so getting clear about, like, what's most important, what's going to move the needle, who do? I want to be making sure that action is just the highest priority. I guess you just have to. If it's that important, you will find time for it.
Yes, and clients will come to me and be like, I've got all these goals, which one? You're saying I have to do one. But like, how do I decide which one I want to do? Because I always have my clients pick one goal and I'm always like, you know, you're not throwing away the other goals and just, instead of doing them all at once, we're just going to do them in a sequence. You're just going to do that one after you've done this one. So you're still going to get to it.
But the faster you create momentum with one goal which you can create a lot of momentum if you're just focusing on one thing, then you have the resources to go and actually put energy into the next one. But for sure you can't do that if you're trying to do 20 different goals at once, and so I really believe, like you want to pick one goal at a time per area of your life. So I allow myself to have, like, a health goal and a business goal, because I don't think that they conflict. They're going to use different hours in a day, but I don't have three different business goals at once. It's too much.
Yeah, and you can even begin to think like, okay, what are these domino goals, like what might be a goal that, if I were to complete that one first, might actually help and make it easier for these other goals down the road. I always think of that with my hypnotherapy clients, you know. Oftentimes I'm like, okay, same sort of thing. I'm like we want to pour. I always think of it like a pitcher of water, like I want to pour it into one cup because I'm going to fill that 100% up way quicker than if I did a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there, a little bit there across many different things. And oftentimes what we can do is like, okay, if we were focusing on one area and we really just worked to unblock that one area, it's almost like a within the subconscious mind, it's like a spider web, like it impacts positively other areas so that when we turn our attention there there's not as much work to be done because we conquered that first area first, you know, and really gave it all the attention.
You mentioned something that I thought was really interesting and maybe this applies to kind of the two minute version of this but like, okay, so 730 days of blogging? What about vacations? What about times you were sick? What about times of rest? Like how can somebody balance these times that are supposed to be like off times but still, I think sometimes we got like this, like little rebellious, like oh, this is when rules don't apply, or this is like non-normal routine time, Sarah. Like do I have to do it this day? Like what do you say in response to that?
Okay, I have two things. The first one is you want to really make a distinction between work and your dream. Like, I absolutely take time off work. I don't take time off my dream. My dream matters to me more than a vacation, more than my birthday, more than you know whatever holiday it is at the time. Like, even if I'm sick, my dream still matters Absolutely. Work can wait, right. So, like, I'm not going to do a client call, I'm not going to, you know, do some kind of I don't know admin work, because it's like, well, I've got to do it every day, right. Like that doesn't matter to me. What mattered was blogging, because it propelled my career. I knew it would. You want to really think about, like, does your dream matter enough that you're willing to do something? Or remember we're doing a tiny thing, we're not doing a huge thing, something that you can do even if you do have a headache, even if you do feel sick.
Well, let me ask you about this. So, like, what do you say to somebody who kind of has that like self proclaimed, like rebellious streak? You know they don't like being told what to do, even if it's themselves telling themselves what to do. Like how that sounds like such a conundrum, but I know I've had clients that experience this. I've experienced this in the past. What would you say in that case if you notice like rebellion coming up to, like yourself imposed actions?
This is I don't know. Do you know the four tendencies by Greg Gritch and Ruben?
I've read it. Oh, not the four agreements, not four. I don't know four agreements, I know four tendencies. I haven't heard of no you just nailed one of the types.
So there's four different kinds of people. That she states. Yeah, the way that she distinguishes it is that there's internal expectations we have for ourselves and there's external expectations others have for us, and therefore there's four types of people. There are the kind of people called upholders, who respond to both internal and external expectations, from both themselves and others. Some people question us. They only respond to their internal expectations, don't really care what other people think and there's obliges, only respond to what other people want them to do, have a really hard time getting themselves to do what they want.
And then you've got rebels literally what you said who don't respond to what they want to do and they don't respond to what others want them to do. And so the way to approach things, if you're a rebel or if you know a rebel and you want to motivate a rebel, a rebel likes a challenge. I don't really know if you could do that. I would show you. So if you're a rebel for yourself, see if you can challenge yourself to kind of, to show people that you can do this, or show yourself what are people expecting of you and how can you do the opposite in the face way.
Use the fact that you don't want to do something to your advantage.
Yeah, oh, I love that. And you know what, actually, when you mentioned your best friend calendaring system to, that almost kind of reminds me of, like, how I got past this kind of rebellious I mean, when entrepreneur I think every entrepreneur has a streak of rebellion in them in some sort of way and when I kind of came up against this, I was like it was learning to be on my own team. It was recognizing that I'm not battling myself Like I am on my own team. It seems like if you're being rebellious to yourself, it's you haven't gotten tapped in enough to want the want part of those things. It's it's like falling in, like what we were talking about before the shoulds. You know, oh, society says I should do these things. Like really getting on my own team, realizing I'm working with myself, like I got my own back. Here are the things I want to do. And then, yeah, finding that challenge sort of aspect of it as well.
What was day 731? Like Sarah, you did it, it's done. Like, how was that? I just curious, what was that like?
do you remember? Yes, it's so funny. It was like the day after my birthday, because I had started like right around my birthday and so we got to it at the end of my birthday and you know, I want to be like it was so weird, but, honestly, just like a couple of minutes out of my day not being done, like I didn't even notice it was, and that's what I'm always trying to tell my clients. Like habits are. You know, the way that a lot of people talk about habits is like they're this thing that once you've got it's done and you don't like that's 21 days in and then she's just going to blog every day for the rest of it and it'll be fine. Like.
I think a habit is like something you do subconsciously, like flicking on a light switch or chewing gum or something. The habit of blogging was never a thing. What was the habit, though, was the discipline, was the way I was thinking, and so now I could take that with me. I didn't have this. I didn't feel compelled to blog, but I felt compelled to do what I said I was going to do.
And that I mean that's the best habit of all. Like that is the best habit of all, you could apply that to literally anything and you have, which speaks of another goal I want to ask you about. So I saw on your website that you have hit over 200k yearly revenue for your own company. I'm sure that number is even higher by now for any entrepreneurs that are, you know, out there looking to build their businesses hit that six figure or multiple six figure mark. What did taking action on that goal, what was that process like for you? What advice do you give there?
Yeah, again it's the same stuff, but to particularly apply to business.
Yeah.
I got so specific on what actually needed to happen and what didn't. And so one piece of advice that, like somebody gave me, which I almost missed, it was just at the bottom of an email. It said make offers daily. And I was good at stuff daily and I was like you know what? I could make an offer every single day. And when I tell people this, they're like, yeah, yeah, like I could do that. I'm like no, you don't understand. Like when I spent two and a half years not creating the business I want, I then made an offer every day for 14 days, heard nothing, and on the 15th day I had three people sign up and stay with me for a whole year. So I booked like 150 something coaching sessions in that moment. What that means is that the previous two and a half years, I just didn't take 14 days of 15 days of action in a row. That was the only difference. Whoa.
I never thought of it like that.
And even now, I still make offers every day somewhere, like you might see it sometimes on Instagram, might be sometimes through my email list or somewhere, or maybe it's to an individual, but I'm always like, did I make an offer today? And you know? Sometimes another way to think about is, like you know, what about? Like the weekends, sarah? So like this is work for me, so I do schedule it right, like that actually still happens on Saturdays and Sundays, but I'm not doing it on a Saturday and Sunday.
And you said something. When you're like, okay, for those 14 days you didn't hear anything. Day 15 is when all these clients came in. How do you know, like, how do you know when it's time to change what you're doing? Like, what I am doing, the offer I'm making, is not working versus I just need to give this more time? How do you balance those two?
So you want to continually be improving what you're doing. So throughout those 14 days, I didn't just put up the same offer every day. I'm like, how can I make it better today? How could I change? So I'm constantly changing it, but I'm not changing. Oh well, it's not working to make offers, so I'm going to do something else.
I'm not going to make offers anymore. Yeah, right.
But I might be like okay, I'm finding it really effective to. I'm noticing like more people are engaging when I'm posting at this time, so I'm going to do it at that time, like you can. I mean, I don't really think the time matters, but that's right. Or you might discover that actually you much prefer to do it on Facebook than LinkedIn or whatever. So you get to kind of make those iterations, but you're still doing it and you're still showing up for it all the time.
Okay, so still doing the core, in this case making offers. It's just tweaking the various, because I mean there's like a million variables to making an offer. Where you're placing it, you're messaging what the offer is, you know, I mean there's so many things that you could tweak there. It's continually testing what works here, what works there, as you go through. Okay, tell me about a time you fall through on your goals, but it felt like the absolute hardest thing in the world, but you did it anyways. Is there anything that you have you ever encountered that where it's just like oh my gosh, this is so hard. But I'm going to continue to follow through. I'm curious if you've encountered that.
Yeah, absolutely. The time that comes to mind is actually I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which is the highest mountain in Africa.
Oh, okay, sounds hard enough.
I wasn't expecting the schedule to be the way it was. So, technically, the actual walking it's walking Like there's only a tiny bit of like climbing itself, like tiny little bit of scrambling, but mostly it's just walking. But you're walking like uphill on a super intense angle, like it's very high and like very steep and the challenge is the altitude. So what I wasn't expecting was that on the final day before we reached the summit, we were going to not go to bed, like when we went to sleep for like an hour, and then they were like waking us up like we're going to get there by sunrise, we want to be at the top of sunrise. So we didn't sleep that night.
Oh, my God.
So not only are you at altitude which, like we're at, like almost 6,000 meters high which I don't know what that is in fact, but it's high.
Yeah.
And you don't have the same amount of oxygen. You've got like a much smaller amount of oxygen than you normally have, but now you're also going to have to do it after a full day of climbing. Already and you've done like six days previous to this and now you're going to do it in the middle of the night.
How do your feet hold up? Like I could barely walk around New York City without feeling like I'm hobbling along Like I don't even know.
Yeah, that's interesting. I don't even remember if it was my feet that hurt. I feel like the hurt was an exhaustion, like my eyes wanted to close my. It was like this physical, just like I want to be asleep right now. Like, yeah, it's like a sleep deprivation and that is. I just said I want to turn around, like I don't want to do this anymore, I'm not interested. This wasn't my goal in the first. Like I was doing it with some other people who went. I was like I don't even want to do this, like I'm in so much pain.
And the higher we climbed on that last day, the worse and worse. My headache got to the point where I had a migraine on the summit which was like honestly miserable, oh Sarah. But pushing through came from a mentor. Somebody said no, like you're not, you're going to regret it. Like you're so close, you're in so much pain.
And what it must have been like to tell somebody who's got a headache, who feels that you know we're so used to being like, babe, it's all good, just go back down, it doesn't matter. Like for somebody to say I think you're going to regret it. I think you and I mean I could have absolutely refused and turned around, but I didn't and, and, um, like, just for them to to believe in me that much for someone else to believe in me, it was like, okay, I can do this, even though it's excruciating, even though I'm in a ton of pain. Ultimately, I've been tired before. Ultimately, I've had headaches before.
It sucks that it's not going away, but a little bit of pain right now for for ever, having climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, like that's worth it. So, um, the beautiful thing about that is that when you go down, because it's such a steep hill, you go down so fast. It's like, um, it's like sand, like being on a sand dune. So you just like step and slip and step and slip like you ski down it. And so my headache was gone in like an hour because we just seemed it as much in an hour that we'd climbed in seven hours out. Are you serious? I didn't know that.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Sarah before we kind of started. You know, I always like to ask my clients, just so you guys know or not my clients, but my, my interviewees. I always like to say, like okay, how woo woo are you Like, how woo woo, can we talk here? This is destination manifestation. And so we were, we were talking a little bit about, like your thoughts on manifestation. I thought was really interesting. Tell me, tell me your thoughts on manifestation. Like how do you, how does one reconcile productivity and kind of traditional goal setting with the idea of kind of spirituality and manifestation? Yeah, absolutely.
Well, my kind of philosophy around what manifestation is is that we often talk about like putting a goal out to the universe and like letting you know, letting go and letting the universe kind of create something for you.
And I really believe, like we are the universe, like we are the universe observing itself, I think that's such a beautiful idea and concept and so really for me, I think when I say to go or an intention, I'm not putting it out into the universe for some magical thing out there, it's for this magical thing in here. It's in my own brain. Like when I show my brain what I want, it's like just putting that on file, like okay, we got this, we know what you're looking for. And it's like scanning for me all the time with this thing called the reticular activating system, where your brain is just like, okay, reticular activating system, where your brain is just always looking out for things that you are like it's filtering the world and it's going to start filtering the world through the lens of achieving that goal. So you then start to create opportunities that you couldn't see before.
Yeah, yeah, oh, and I just love that you say the universe is like inside of you, because that's how I always feel when I work with clients. Hypnotherapy we get them in touch with their subconscious mind you know 90% of their mind power and that is also like the getting in touch with the energy of all. That is Like I feel like that is like hook it up to the universe, the universe inside of you. And so when we're able to reprogram our subconscious mind to think thoughts that are in alignment with our goals and dreams, that activates the rest. The reticulating, activating, you know system that activates so that we start filtering in our 3D reality starts filtering based on the beliefs we start having that are in alignment with who we want to be. You know that manifest a version of us.
So I just love your philosophy on that too, and and I love also too, how it's like these things don't have to be separate, like it's like. Okay, there's a spiritual aspect to it, there's a neuroscientific aspect to it. Traditional goal setting still has a place at this table, like at all. It's all the same thing, you know, it's all the same thing. It's all just creating kind of that next version of life that we want to live. Oh, sarah, this is so good. It's good for my soul. Thank you so much for joining and sharing your expertise.
This was such a joy and I just know that there's so much that everyone's going to be able to get out of today. I mean, literally go back through if you want to and if you're serious about it. Go back through, take notes, people, on what we said here, because this is literally a roadmap. Everything she said could literally be a roadmap to get you to where you want to go. So thank you so much, sarah.
Thank you so much for having me, brittany, it's been so fun.
You know what I really love about this conversation. Sarah brings up the RAS, that's the Reticulating Activating System within the brain. It's the critical factor of the mind that, literally, is designed to filter out incoming information. So I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but our brains process 11 million bits of information per second. Yeah, per second. Okay, another 11 million, another 11 million, another 11 million, like so much is coming at you every single second. Only our conscious minds can only handle 40 to 50 bits per second out of 11 million. I don't know what kind of percentage that is. You got a calculator. You can figure it out, but that is a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit, right.
And so what happens to all the rest of that information that we encounter? It's perceived by the subconscious mind. It has to go somewhere, right. Our subconscious minds store our emotions, our memories, our beliefs, our imagination, our intuition and our automatic bodily functions right. We don't have to think to breathe our own lungs or beat our own heart. This is all taken over by the subconscious mind. You might even be listening to this while you're driving, and you're not consciously thinking about driving. You're thinking about what I'm saying, right? And yet you're still driving safely, I hope, right.
And so, whether or not we're conscious of these processes or not, where we decide to deliberately place our focus gives instructions to our brain on what should be filtered out and ignored and what we should pay more attention to and interpret as our reality, it decides okay, yep, this is going to be one of the 40 to 50 bits that goes into the conscious awareness. This is going to go to the subconscious, right, and so the trick here is, the more you deliberately focus on the positive, the more positive things your brain will continue to seek out and process. Those 40 to 50 bits there are going to be mostly positive then, and thus the more positive things you manifest, the more positive things that you see in your 3D world around you. But it goes the other way too. At the same time, the more you focus on the negative, you're sending your brain the instructions to notice more of the negative in your life, and so those 40 to 50 bits of your conscious awareness will be mostly negative. And so that's why it's so important to be aware of our thinking, especially because those thoughts then, like we talked about here with Sarah today, those thoughts create our emotions, which determine our actions, or lack thereof, right, it might stop our actions in their tracks and make it very hard to move forward, depending on what thoughts we're thinking. So let me say this if you enjoyed today's episode and learned something interesting about how to take action on your goals, you can learn even more about Sarah, more about our programs, more about the resources that we mentioned today by visiting britneyhoopscom slash podcast, slash zero one, two, that's zero 12, which is Sarah's episode here today, and all the links will be there in the show notes.
And there's one last thing I'd love to highlight. Okay, this I want to highlight a message from you. Yes, you. Well, maybe it's not you, exactly One of you it will actually be a message from but I want to say thank you to all of you and especially those of you who have left reviews for the show. Seriously, it's just so nice to know I'm not just talking out here into the ether that you guys are listening and you're finding value from it, and so I want to highlight one of those messages here today.
So this one is from Dylan R.
Let me see what he says.
He says I followed Brittany during her BP journey and was a static to see that she released this podcast. I would recommend this to anyone who's interested or looking into building their confidence and learning how to properly manifest the things that you want out of life. Take control of your thoughts and create your future. Perfect for listening on my drives to work. Oh, dylan, I love that. Thank you so much, and I'm glad I get to be your work drive buddy.
Picture me sitting there in the passenger seat and we're just geeking out on manifestation. That's what I hope this is like. So thank you so much for listening, and if you out there would like a chance to have your review and your message featured here on the show, you can leave a review too. All you got to do is just screenshot it before you submit it here on Apple podcasts and then just send it my way, and if you do that and you live within the United States, I'll send you a free destination manifestation baseball cap as a thank you for supporting the show. It's literally the law of reciprocity in action here. Right, I still have some of those baseball caps left that are looking for some good homes, so be sure to send that my way and let me spoil you. Okay, all music for this podcast is by a cubed and I'll catch you next time.
