Hi everybody. Cheryl Knowlton with Dynamite Productions here to tell you about how I recently outsmarted myself. As you probably know by now, I recently published my first book. I’m so excited. Burn the Hamster Wheel: Stress Management Strategies for Today’s Real Estate Professionals–try saying that 10 times fast.
I thought I was done after the first edit
I had been working on this book for about a year, just shy of a year, and I thought at the four or five-month mark that I was done. After I gave the first version to my editor I thought, “Yay! This is cause for celebration.” Which it was, but I did not realize how very much more work there was to do. We worked and worked and worked. I was speaking all over the country, going crazy with all of the things that I had going on in my professional life. Things were great and I just did not have time to get back and concentrate and focus on getting this book done. So I had to outsmart myself.
We got to a really, really tough spot where my editor had made all the recommendations she could for what I had given her. I really got to the point where I knew that I needed to create more content in a few specific areas. “Okay, everything is just a mess right now.” So here is what I had to do. I found a purse that I desperately wanted. It’s a red Kate Spade bag. I fell in love with it in New York City and I didn’t buy it because I had just bought a new Disney Dooney & Bourke literally a week before. I could not justify buying this red purse, but I loved it.
“Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give myself $1, $1 for every minute that I spend grinding through the end of the edits of this book and creating new content. And every dollar that I earn goes toward the purchase of this new purse.”
I put it on the bathroom mirror to remind me every day.
So I found it online, printed it out in big, bold, bright red. I pasted it onto my bathroom mirror where I see it multiple times every day that I’m home. And guess what? I did the work. I sat down and at first, I tracked every single second that I was working because I knew that every minute was getting me through. And guess what? I passed through that slog phase where I was back in the right mode and the right mindset, and then I got really excited about my book again. And guess what? I did it. I crossed the finish line. I haven’t even bought the purse yet. It became about getting it done.
So I’m just going to ask you a question. Are there things that you could do to outsmart yourself, to trick your brain into thinking, “I am going to get this amazing reward if I do this thing.” What is that one thing that if you did it, it would move the needle so significantly for you in your personal or professional life? Think about what you could do. Think about what you could reward yourself with. I’d love to hear about it. Until then, be dynamite.