What Will Make the Difference?

(00:00)
Hello! Hello! … and welcome. It is New Year’s Day here in Scotland. Well, I guess it’s New Year’s everywhere, isn’t it. But, um, it’s actually new year’s evening here and, um, yay to 2021 goodbye to 2020. And, and, um, this is the perfect time – New Year’s Day – to talk about setting new intentions and, uh, new goals and new habits. And to ask ourselves what will be different this year? What will we decide to make different?

So join me if you would like to take a moment to think about that. What will make the difference this year?

And I’m going to talk a little bit about what I’ve noticed for myself in terms of my own habits and what I intend to do to make the difference in my own life this year. In case we haven’t met, my name is Sarah from Free Your English. 

(01:00)
I am a business English Coach, and I help female international entrepreneurs and professionals master their business English skills so that they can show up for their business with greater clarity, confidence, and authenticity.

And really I have this big dream of helping people go from hiding and hesitant to visibly confident in the way that they speak.

And the world has changed quite a lot recently. And public speaking is no longer preparing a presentation and putting together a beautiful slide deck and then standing on a stage and delivering it.

Public speaking has really become being confident on video.

So having been in love with public speaking for many, many years, and having worked in that realm for a long time, it is about time that I myself got confident in appearing on video. And I figured it’s better to start and follow through on the adage that, do you know what, done is better than perfect.!

(02:12)
And I have to start where I am with what I have and do what I can. Uh, there’s a really famous quote that I love. I’ll have to look it up to remember it, but it’s basically that: start where you are use what you have and do what you can. I think it’s Arthur Ashe. I’ll have to look. 

So yeah, that’s my goal here is to, um, start showing up on video, but I’ll talk a little bit about that in a moment.

What I really wanted to talk about today in this live is the idea of what can you choose to have be different because there’s so many things that kind of come along and knock you for six as in, um, you know, change your plans.

(03:05)
I looked back on all of the things that I had written about what I wanted to do for 2020. And it’s just laughable because I mean, 2020, what a year!

And a lot of the things that I had planned just got kind of swept away. Um, I had a really good think about that and I decided, do you know what? There’s some things you can’t plan for. There’s some things that just happen and you have to adapt, adapt and react to them. And perhaps there are some goals that you might have to be really flexible with in life. Um, but there are certainly always somethings that you can control.

And so this year, even if I make these great big goals and plans, which I will, uh, I may have to be flexible with them and that’s okay, but I’m going to really put my focus on the things that I do have control over, and I want to start small and build. And so I’m focusing on two things.

(04:11)
Number one: I want to regain the level of health and vitality that was normal for me up until a few years ago. It’s not about losing weight or looking a certain way. I want that energy back. I want that passion back when I used to do a spin class every day and I was hiking and doing yoga and all that kind of good stuff.

And, um, it’s difficult not going to lie with, you know, so much work and a little one it’s it’s tricky. But I started today with a walk with my dog, where I went to our village and then I went to the next village along and then I came home and it was beautiful and it was actually a lot longer walk than I thought. So a walk day is a definitely achievable goal, and I’m excited to see where that will take me over the long run.


(05:04)
So that’s number one. And then number two is showing up on video and, um, being visible. Now, what I realized about myself is that at this time of year, it’s really easy to set goals and certain tensions, um, because the energy of this time of year, the first day of the year is about, okay, what do I want? And we have this kind of new level of honesty about our habits, and we are able to really with great clarity, look at what do I need to pick up and what do I need to put down in terms of our habits? The issue comes with commitment and freedom to me, commitment is doing what you said you would do, even when the feeling in which you said it has gone. And so I’m thinking about not just my goals of one walking every day and two showing up on video. 


(06:01)
Well, but I’m thinking about how will I make a difference in my levels of commitment. And I think real honesty about my habits is a big starting point. So I’ve noticed for me and tell me in the comments, if you’ve noticed this yourself, I noticed that I’m doing what I call procrastinate learning. And I procrastinate learning is not a real word. It’s a made up word. It’s two words, combined procrastination, which means to delay doing something you have to do by getting distracted with something not connected. So maybe, you know, you need to, I dunno, file a report. You find yourself watching a television program you’ve never watched before. So you have procrastinated, you have put off what you need to do. It’s a combination of procrastination I’m learning, which normally is a really wonderful, valuable, uh, life-giving thing to do. Um, but I have noticed that I use learning absorbing information, the next blog or video, the next kind of piece of information that I can, um, dive into. 

(07:15)
I use that to procrastinate in actually creating the content that I need to create so that I can be doing the work that I know that my soul wants me to be doing in this world who have a big stuff. So for me, what will make the difference in terms of my commitment is being aware of that procrastinate learning and any other kind of procrastination. I kind of think about it. Like it’s like going to go and climb a mountain and I go to the mountain and I’m at the foot of the mountain. And instead of starting up a path, I kind of sit down and say, well, let me just read this book about hiking, or let me read this blog post about how to climb a mountain. I’m sure it will help me find a specific, better path up this specific mountain. No, it won’t. 

(08:12)
What will help is actually choosing a path knowing that it is marked on the mountain or knowing that I’ve got, you know, a map in front of me. I just starting to walk taking the action. So this year for me, what is going to make the difference is that I am focusing on deaths being a year of action, small steps that add up over a big time, whether other over a long amount of time, rather whether it is taking a daily walk every day or showing up on video consistently. So I’d love to hear from you. What have you noticed about your habits? Which habits are you picking up, which are you putting down and then what do you think will make the difference in terms of your levels of commitment? And if you would love to join us in the, uh, breakthrough business, English, Facebook group, that is a great place to come. If you would like help in showing up in terms of learning more business, English, and actually using it, it’s a free Facebook group. I would love to see you in there. Okay. Happy new year. Thanks, bye. For now.