Focus and Flow: Cultivating a Productive Mindset with Dr. Christine Li

Christine Li  0:01  
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 140. 

Are you ready to break free from limitations and your limiting beliefs and move into a success packed future? If so, let's go listen to this episode together because I'm going to break down a step by step plan a five step plan for defining your next moves and making them happen in a timely, reliable and powerful way. We're calling this focus and flow. Let's go listen to the episode now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn about powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important, and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. 

Hi, again, everyone. It's Christine here. And today, I've titled The episode Focus and Flow: Cultivating a Productive Mindset. And, you know, I'm always thinking about productivity and habits and getting things done well, today is no different. It's just a regular day for me over here. I've been thinking lately about how complex it really can be to get anything done. You need, I think, two things. To get things done. One, you need the ability to hone in and really sharpen your focus. And keep your mind set on one particular thing during one particular timeframe. That's the first thing you need. The second thing that you need is almost the exact opposite, you need to be able to keep your mind expanded and open to all the possibilities and the potential outcomes that you can achieve or that you might face while you're trying to get things done. So you need to really hone in and sharpen your focus. But you also need to stay really open, broadly open to all the world, all the universe has to offer us. So it's no wonder that we get stuck. It's no wonder that we get confused. It's no wonder, we sometimes fall into overwhelm and procrastination because we oftentimes have to do both of these tricks at the same time. So I decided to share with you today, a roadmap for getting through this complicated web of things that we have to do in order to be productive. This list of five steps is pretty simple. And I hope you use it to wonderful benefit. So these are the five steps for moving towards both focus and flow in your life. Let's go the first step is to decide what your priority is. That's of course, should be obvious, a very important task is to decide where you want to go. Where do you want to get to and what you want to focus on. Visualize what you know, you already want. You already know, you maybe have been mired in fear or anxiety or stress about the whole thing, but you actually know in your heart of hearts, what you want to get what you want to build where you want to get to. So decide and make that decision. Strong and real. Add even more in if you can make it an even bigger outcome for yourself. If you feel inclined. If you feel like you have the space and the time. I want to let you know it's all okay, you can dream as big as you like, I am here to encourage you to dream even bigger than you thought you were able, even bigger than you thought you were capable of because it really is all okay, all we're doing all day long is dreaming what we want for the future, actually, so dream away. I think oftentimes, we're trained by formal schooling by our parents by society, about how to keep ourselves small, how to keep ourselves safe, how to keep ourselves within the norm, having just stepped out of the Barbie movie theater a couple of days ago. If you've seen that movie, you know what I'm talking about. It's time to really break out Have the stereotype of you. And try to decide what you want for your future just freely, openly and in a very big way. So step one, decide what your priority is. Step two, is to determine or anticipate or figure out what your biggest obstacle is, and what obstacles you might face as you move forward in pursuing your priority goal. What might be your biggest source of distraction? Is it YouTube? Is it tick tock? Is it the movie theater? Is it eating? Is it multitasking? Is it complaining about your lack of energy? Is it having a lack of energy? Is it being afraid of somebody that you know criticizing you for not doing it the right way, or for doing it too slowly or for stopping? Before you reach the finish line, perhaps it's maybe even your own voice that you're afraid of, you're afraid of another failure, you're afraid of falling flat on your face, or you're actually afraid of making it happen and succeeding, we can be afraid of all of these obstacles, we can hold ourselves back because of all of these obstacles. That is why I'm creating that as step two here, because we want to know what we're going to face ahead of time. But we're also going to know that we could survive and surpass and bypass and overcome any obstacle that can come into our path, we really, really can, you know, you can, I know you can. So let's not fool ourselves into thinking that as soon as there's an obstacle, I'm out of here, I'm quitting. Let's not do that anymore. Let's change our habits so that we face the obstacles overcome them. And we might even have a pre plan of how to face the obstacle once we encounter it. Step three, is to decide on your time frame. This ladies and gentlemen is oftentimes the missing piece. It's the part that we fail to articulate. It's the part that we fail to define for ourselves when we start out on our journey towards our goal. And then guess what happens, we leave ourselves really vulnerable to all sorts of distraction, all sorts of procrastination. And we can always wait to get down to business, there's always Thursday, there's always next Friday, time is always going to be passing and we all have a lot of time. But if we don't have a timeframe and a set, expected deadline, we're going to proceed I think a lot more chaotically and a lot more slowly than we might otherwise be able to. It's amazing how one small set deadline can move us into action and keep us there. When years of unscheduled time can produce next to nothing really think about the times you've had to really produce something big and on schedule and how you felt when you had to face the deadline. It's very different than when you're on your own. Nobody's watching nobody's supervising nobody's keeping you on schedule. You're not keeping yourself on schedule. It's a whole different ballgame when we don't have a timeframe. So give yourself a timeframe. Do it lovingly, but definitely lovingly give yourself a deadline. In addition to knowing your timeframe and your time deadline, I would suggest that you practice good time management habits in general, set your environment up for success. Make sure there's little to no clutter getting in your way, set your mood up for success psych yourself up for getting things done making progress. Make sure you have the right materials on hand. And of course, set your mindset at the start to say I've already succeeded, I can visualize my goal. I know I'm going to get there. The only matter that I have to see is how much time is going to take me and with your set time deadline. I will bet that you're going to take a lot less time to get to your goal. So definitely do step number three of deciding on your set timeframe. Now we're up already to step number four, I would love for you to develop a detailed action plan. 

We're not just going to say you know what, I want to lose 20 pounds or you know what I want to gain 20 pounds. We're going to make it really specific and detailed. I've already covered some items in this category like setting up your environment and your mindset for success. But I want to add one piece that we also always tend to forget and that is include rest and relaxation in your plan. If you want to train for A 5k race. Yes, the running and yes, the muscle building. And yes, the reading up on what to eat and how to make your schedule before a race. That's all important. But so important to our success in anything I believe is knowing when we're going to be able to rest, relax, reflect, let our bodies prepare. He'll rev up. Imagine the future, detoxify from exertion. All of that is handled when we allow ourselves specific times to rest, recover, and to relax. That also includes vacation days, by the way. So this is very good news. For those of you who like vacation days, like I do, you can have a long term goal but make sure it's not this slog it's not this dreaded, day after day after day that you need to put in things that you like, like those rest days, like those celebration days, and those celebration moments. Always remember to keep it positive to keep it uplifting, so that you can stay the course until you reach the goal. So also remember that just because we're committed to our goal does not mean we have to turn into workaholics, or robots or people who don't ever sleep or socialize, you want to make sure you have the rest of your life flowing as well, because we want to make sure that our goals fit in reasonably with our actual lives, and that we don't lose steam, we don't become sad or bedraggled. When we're chasing our goals. And when we're floating towards our goals or gliding to our goals, we want to make it success positive. We want to predict success. And we also want to make it like it's as if we're gliding down a slide. Instead of climbing up a mountain, we want to make things easy and positive for ourselves. One last thing in this category of developing an action plan is that we want to make sure we have a plan for when we screw up, forget, slip up anything like that when we're forgetting to do our plan when we're forgetting that we have our goals on those days when things get so busy or so fun, that we forget that we have a path that we're on towards an end goal, I would love for you to already have in hand an emergency plan for just those days or just those moments. So in your emergency plan, you want to decide if you slip into procrastination or forgetfulness. What are you going to happen? What are you going to do? What are you going to put in place? What are you going to think and feel when you decide oh, you know what, I've had that slip of a moment and set a strategy up for your recovery. For me, I know that I'm not going to slip for more than one calendar day. I know that any habit that I can start, I know that I can recover from a slip. If I forget that habit, I can recover within the space of 24 hours. And that's the most I'm going to allow myself to slip up that way. I don't leave any room for forgetting the habits for not going for my goals. And I leave no room for procrastination, which you know, if you know me at all, has been my old bugaboo, the thing that brought me to becoming a procrastination coach. It's the habit of procrastination that really sucked away all my spirit all my time. And all my energy and I do not want to return to that place ever again. And I know I'm not going to it's not possible, given how far I've come. Now, I have in my notes, a side note for you. And I have my dog wheezing in the background. So sorry for that background noise. A side note is that I don't want you to expect enormous breakthroughs all that time. If they happen. That's wonderful. Congratulations, celebrate, remember to celebrate everything. But I wouldn't want you waiting around for yourself to create massive breakthroughs all the time. Because I believe and I have seen in my own life and the lives of those that I work with that oftentimes our biggest movement occurs when we move in small, conscious, meaningful steps. We're carrying out the small steps on the way towards a massive goal. But it doesn't really quite feel like this massive sudden transformation. It's actually a gradual breakthrough. rather than this humongous leap. So give yourself the patience, and the understanding that all of this does take some time and patience too. So keep your goals in focus, keep them clear. Make sure you have an emergency plan, make sure you keep yourself positive. And make sure you carry out your daily action steps with intention. And with discipline and with joy. Remember always to rest, breathe, relax, avoid that self criticism and negativity. And you will get there, you will definitely definitely get there if you use this plan. Now the fifth step in the plan towards focus and flow is to always remind yourself what the cost of in action is for you. So we call that COI cost of inaction. What is the cost, if you don't go towards your goals, oftentimes we forget to process that cost that heavy costs of not moving towards your goal or not improving your life, maybe it means you're stuck in procrastination and you lose another few months. Maybe it's that you don't get to feel lighter or heavier in your body, according to your wishes. Maybe you have to defer that raise in your salary because you decided I'm going to stay stuck instead of taking that action and sending out that resume and cover letter to five more places. So remember to do step number five in your action plan. And that is to think to yourself, What am I losing, if I decide to just keep things the status quo, I think it's a very important lesson that we can give ourselves. So start to think of yourself as someone who acts in focus and in flow towards your goal on a daily basis with ease. And with Dr. Li's full backing and support and encouragement and love and go for it. What goal are you going to go for? Let me know by sending me a DM on Instagram. I'm procrastination coach on Instagram, I would love to hear what this episode has inspired you to go for. And to further support you. I've developed a focus and flow worksheet for you. It's a free download, just because you're a supporter and listener of the Make Time for Success podcast and I would love to share that with you now all you need to do to get the focus and flow worksheet with my specific tips for how to get things done is to go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/focus again, go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/focus ask for the free download and you're gonna get into focus and flow right away. Thanks so much for being here today. I look forward to talking with you again next week. Take care. Bye bye. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. We'll talk to you soon!

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