Lately, I’ve been noticing that when I get anxious or down it’s usually due to judging myself. I tend to beat myself up about every single thing! “I should have done ___ differently”, “why did I say ____”, “now this person is going to think of me like ____”.
I think the biggest thing I’m trying to really learn is that I am trying my best with what I know. To be honest, we are ALL trying our best with what we know.
Internalizing this is easier said than done. I guess throughout my whole childhood, I was expected to do well in school, extracurricular activities, and just life in general. There were high expectations placed on me, and because of this I expect the most from myself at the same time. This can simultaneously be good and bad, as high achievers tend to place attention on “gap focus” when we have high expectations. Gap focus is the emphasis on the difference between your current self and your ideal self. High achievers tend to constantly focus on that gap which makes them feel bad and forget to appreciate their accomplishments.
Today, instead of focusing on the gap, I’m going to reflect on my achievements and smile about them! Upon recapping, I realize I’ve made huge strides in building my business. But more importantly, I’ve made huge strides in myself. I’ve been taking on challenges despite my fear, which has been helping me with my confidence. I’ve also been learning a lot through these challenges, especially in marketing and building a business.
Here is a post on my progress. I believe it will help you in that you can pull out elements in my journey that you might want to accomplish for your own. Enjoy!
Tracking My Progress: Recapping On My Milestones
- September 21, 2018 – Purchased my Sony A6500 camera (I recommend this camera for music video quality videos, like course modules but not vlogging)
- September 30, 2018 – I did my first podcast interview!
- October 3, 2018 – I did a 100-day Instagram challenge which entailed posting every single day for 100 days. It helped me break out of my shell when it comes to speaking on camera and appreciating my talking voice.
- October 8, 2018 – I uploaded my first Instagram video content, teaching topics around passive income, building a business, and life in general.
- November 3, 2018 – I took my first Spanish lesson. I was learning Spanish for a few months and I appreciate that I wasn’t really looking to get to a specific goal. I was just enjoying the process of learning a new language, which made me a lot more present and less anxious.
- October 14, 2018 – November 9, 2018 – I redesigned my website. Wow, I checked out the Wayback Machine to see what my site used to look like.
Here’s a snapshot of the site in 2015 (what an angry face in the banner, am I right) :
And here’s a snapshot of the site in early 2016.
Now the site looks like this, and I’m pretty happy with where it’s at for now:
- November 10, 2018 – I started working on the blogging for money course. My friend Jason from Frugal For Less and I hustled and worked on the course each day.
- December 12, 2018 – I did some goal setting based on Mark Manson’s course. It honestly changed my life. I created action plans and wrote down my 5-year, 1-year, monthly, weekly, and daily milestones.
- January 10, 2019 – I Marie Kondo’ed my place! I found that discarding items that didn’t matter while keeping only those that sparked joy was analogous my life. It taught me how to make decisions quickly and remove things in my life that didn’t serve me.
- February 16, 2019 – I went to the Real Estate SF Bay Summit. I started immersing myself more into the real estate investment world, though I’m still focused on online business. I think it’s important to open yourself to all income stream opportunities.
- February 21, 2019 – I decided to really take on the idea of leveling up my brand. I knew YouTube, Instagram, and courses were going to be my next initiatives with my business.
- March 25, 2019 – I did my first video interview! I started interviewing people and getting interviewed, which is a fear of mine to have to do on-the-spot thinking.
- April 3, 2019 – I purchased a Canon G7x Mark II (this camera is very good for vlogging). I have been using this to create my YouTube videos.
- April 8, 2019 – I worked on my first sales pages. I link to this in one of my email funnels. I use Thrive Architect to create my sales pages and it makes it SO easy.
- April 10, 2019 – I purchased a ConvertKit plan. ConvertKit has made it easy for me to make my e-mail funnels.
- April 18, 2019 – I purchased a Teachable plan. Both the ConvertKit and Teachable purchases were big steps for me because I was investing a lot more money into my business.
- April 23, 2019 – I interviewed Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income! This was very nerve-racking for me as Pat is someone I’ve learned from and respected for a while. He’s a huge name so I didn’t want to mess up. It was great that he was nice enough to speak with me!
- April 24, 2019 – I posted my first serious YouTube video for my channel. I had a bunch of videos I recorded but I finally edited one and posted it. Now I’m keeping a regular schedule of posting weekly!
- May 14, 2019 – I established my first email sequence. I created an email sequence for new subscribers. It was something I had put off doing for a while. There are still more I need to create but I’m glad I took this first step.
- May 23, 2019 – I created and announced my Facebook group. I decided to really build out this Facebook group because I wanted a community of people to discuss and share advice with.
- May 26, 2019 – Started hiring video editors – I have finally started hiring video editors (which would have been great if I did this for my music YouTube channel back in the day). Oh well. I have to say, it’s pretty awesome realizing the potential of handing over my videos to someone else to edit.
Conclusion
Tracking my progress and recapping on my milestones has helped me realize how much I’ve accomplished in about 8 months. I believe documenting my progress will help you as well to see what milestones I’ve accomplished that you could do for yourself. As you can see my wins I discussed aren’t numbers like sales or subscriber counts. I am proud of how much I’ve done and I’m excited for what is yet to come!
