I have some super important announcements for you at the bottom of this email, but first, hiiiiii!

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written, and that’s because I have been working hard creating some new stuff, repurposing some older content to give away and generally just enjoying some down-time.

I am going to be revealing a lot over the next few weeks—both professionally and personally—and taking time to reflect, recharge and spend QT with my family and friends has been front and center since Thanksgiving.

In the Best of You Coaching Club, my 11-month business mentorship for female fitness pros, one thing that comes up a lot is creativity and inspiration. My women are constantly creating content, writing, filming videos, posting on social media, writing emails, creating products and services for their clients—and it can be tough to keep up that kind of creative grind.

The creative grind is a totally different kind of grind than the fitness hustle (you can read about that HERE).

The creative grind isn’t about knocking things off a to-do list. It’s about using your mind to come up with shit off the top of your head ALL THE TIME. It’s thinking harder about things than you ever have, it’s creating solutions that people can actually use to change their lives, it’s having the ladyballs to stick your neck out constantly and then letting the chips fall in terms of how your creation is received.

When one of the gals says, “I want to create a 12-week fat loss program for women,” we don’t say, “Great, go do it!” We say, “Awesome, who exactly is it for? Why do they need it? What are they currently struggling with? Why are you the one to help them? How are they going to feel after they work with you? Why does this program need to exist? How is it different?” and so on.  

Being creative isn’t just about making stuff. It’s about strategically making things that add value to people’s lives and serve. And then doing it day after day after day.

That takes a lot of brain power!

And while thinking creatively does get easier, but it’s also not a never-ending well of inspiration 24/7. You need downtime in order to create, and here’s the biggest insight:

Whether that’s your motivation to exercise, to create stuff, to want to go hiking instead of watching television, to want to swing through the drive-thru instead of making healthy food at home, to want to shower and blow dry your hair instead of throwing on a ball cap, WHATEVER.

There’s no “right” or “wrong” about any of it, and the more we judge it: “I feel so unmotivated, what’s wrong with me?!” and “No one else has this problem, why do I suck so bad?” etc., the worse it becomes.

Neutralizing means taking the good/bad, right/wrong out of it. There’s no judgment, it’s just what’s happening right now, and it’s fine.

Judging yourself on top of the thing that is happening only compounds the problem. And it’s a huge distraction from getting back in your power.

So when I feel myself judging myself for not doing something well enough, I try to catch it and turn it around: “It’s fine, it’s transient, it’s not going to be forever, I need this time to relax/recharge, it doesn’t mean I’m not good enough, it just is what it is for right now.”

And those mental prompts actually help me get back to a more motivated state more quickly.

And THAT belief system alone—that things are transient—is, in and of itself, the reason why they will be transient. Your beliefs about life create your life.

And normalizing means acknowledging that this happens to everyone and we are all the same.

In the book, ‘The Charisma Myth’ author Olivia Fox Cabane calls this tool Destigmatizing Discomfort. It helps reduce the power that an experience has over you simply by acknowledging that it’s normal, common and there’s zero need to feel ashamed. Feeling internal discomfort and negativity is a normal part of life. We are all the same.

This helps take the urgency and anxiety out of a situation that makes us feel uncomfortable or uncertain. Because anxiety and urgency don’t actually help us to be more productive.

I consider you my family and I want to connect with you here (I also share way more here than I do on social media), so just a quick THANK YOU for being here and for being open! It truly means so much to me. With that, I would love if you’d tell me a little bit about your 2016:

What was your #1 insight from this past year? What did you learn about yourself or about life in general that you want to share with me? Click Reply right now and tell me! I’m always interested in elevating, growing and learning from you. Let it rip!

Talk tomorrow!

Xo,

Jill