Have you ever had a great idea for a business, a product, or a way of teaching people to do something, but you just didn’t know where to get started?  Rest assured, you are not alone.  Getting out of the gate or off the ground with your specific endeavor is no easy feat.  This feeling or sensation of moving about in quicksand as you set forth to do the thing you must do, is a common struggle among many creators.

Brian Tracy, the author of Eat That Frog!: 21 Great ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time says “The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place.  Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue.”  If procratination is your biggest obstacle, Tracy recommends handling it in the following manner: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. And if you have two frogs to eat, consume the ugliest one first.”  There are certainly other forces that keep us locked up.  For example, you might find yourself battling self-doubt, a lack of confidence in regards to your technical skills to get the job done, or even your own fear of success!!  We’ll delve into a deeper discussion of the sinister ways that fear and resistance might hold us back in a future post.  Today, I thought we’d focus on 3 ways that you can help yourself get unstuck and off to your blazing start.

When I share strategies, tactics, and tools on this blog, I’m going to do it from a perspective that I’ve recently designed called the “MAP” formula.  This is really important because I don’t want this blog to be a series of posts about me just giving advice and attempting to continually pontificate about how to live a more effective and meaningful life.  Rather, my intent is to share research and information, inspire, and add value by offering readers/clients clear frameworks and proven tools that help you move forward.  I’m sure that you love the feeling that comes from moving forward and growing in your business, relationships, health, etc…

So here is how MAP works.  The M represents our mindset, so tips/strategies related to M help us consider how our thought patterns and mental frameworks impact our feelings, emotional state, and the actions that we take. The saying that you are what you eat may be true, but I would argue that you are what you think. Great power lies within our minds. 

The A refers to application.  In other words, how can we integrate and apply what we’ve learned and allow it to begin to take root in our everyday habits.  What will it look like?

Finally, the P represents the Production.  Once we get our mind wrapped around the concept (the M), better understand how we adopt & apply the principle (the A), then we’re ready to take action and produce (the P), the results and outcomes that we seek to achieve.

Now that we’ve sorted that out, let’s apply what we’ve digested to todays topic.  Drumroll please!!