So you’re going to drink water, you’re going to wake up an hour earlier, you’re going to give up a category of food for thirty days, and you are going to move your body. No, you don’t have to do CrossFit or sign up for a boot camp where they scream at you for an hour. I mean, unless that’s your thing. But you do need to move your body for thirty minutes every single day. And let me say this right now, if you cannot find the time and the energy and the willpower to move your body for thirty minutes a day, seven days a week, we have a problem. We have a really big problem. I’m not asking you to run a marathon; I’m asking you to move.
I know that there are a hundred million distractions that encourage you to lie around and watch television or scroll through your phone, but if that’s the only thing you do in your downtime, you’re depleting yourself of energy. You don’t have to be a certain size or a certain weight, but you do have to have energy. You are a freaking animal. An animal, like a cheetah or an antelope or a wolverine. There are no overweight animals in nature; it’s not a thing. The only overweight animals that exist are the ones that live in our houses with us. Animals are not overweight; pets are overweight. You are not a pet. You are a powerful, beautiful, bold woman, and you will treat yourself as such.
Studies have been done on the highest performers, the people who are the greatest athletes, the greatest businesswomen, the greatest in the world. Out of the highest-performing people, it’s something like 97 percent—I swear, you can look this up—who work out at least five days a week. It’s not because those people were given some special workout genes that you don’t have. It’s because those people know that energy begets energy. You want to achieve your goal? Get moving for those thirty minutes every day, and make sure your body is ready to act on the vision you have for your life.
5. Practice Gratitude Daily
The fifth thing I want you to do is arguably the most important. Every single day I’m going to ask you to write down ten things you are grateful for. Put it in your phone, write it down in a journal, however you want to do it, but take twelve minutes and list these things out. Don’t list big things, like that you’re grateful for your partner or that you’re grateful for the ability to breathe. Write down things that happened today. Things like how good your cup of coffee was. Or how someone let you in on the freeway when there was heavy traffic. Or that you got to see a friend, or that your five-year-old told you a terrible joke and you laughed even though it wasn’t funny. The idea is, if you know that at the end of the day you’re going to have to list out points of gratitude, you will spend your day looking for blessings. If you spend your day looking for blessings—here’s the magic—you’ll find them.
When you live your life in a state of gratitude, it changes everything. From a place of feeling immensely blessed, we see immense possibility; we believe good things are possible and maybe even likely to happen to us. When it comes to setting the foundation to succeed, it helps if you believe that your success is likely. If you don’t do anything else on this list, just do this one thing.
If you don’t feel like you can do all five things, just try that last one about gratitude and do it consistently for a month. I suggest a month because in my own life I’ve found that if I can do anything regularly for thirty days, it sticks. When you practice gratitude consistently for a month, add in the water, then maybe the workout. This is about setting yourself up for success. You can certainly pursue your goals when you’re struggling physically or emotionally, but when you’re taking care of yourself, you have the exponential energy to keep up with your vision.
GET YOUR PERSONAL SPACE IN ORDER
Being a little girl in a house that was at times utter chaos meant that I grew up often feeling unsafe. But the one thing that I could control was my bed. So I made my bed every single day. When I grew up and got my first apartment, it was in a crappy part of town. In fact, it was actually a crappy apartment in a crappy part of town, but that apartment was always clean. This was something I could control.
Your home is something you can control. Of all the things in your life it’s the one you have the easiest access to. Years ago I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show, and she said, “Your home should rise up to meet you.” If your home feels like chaos or it’s dirty or it’s unorganized, you need to wake up. If you keep scrolling through Instagram, looking at other women’s pretty lives so you don’t have to acknowledge that yours is a mess, you need to wake up. Your home is a reflection of what’s going on inside your head and your heart. If life feels out of control, start taking control with your immediate environment.
I know there are people reading this who don’t have a home, who don’t have access to everything, who have one tiny square surrounded by a sea of chaos. To you, I’d say, take care of the spaces that are yours, be that your bed, your car, or your desk at work. Organize your life. Keep your spaces clean. Put some effort into their appearances. These things are about self-respect and about setting a certain standard for yourself, for your life, for your children. That doesn’t cost money. Self-respect doesn’t cost anything other than effort. Clean up.
The other thing to keep in mind about your personal spaces is that they not only need to be organized and clean, but they need to be filled with reminders of the vision you have for your future life. When I open up my closet doors, I have bulletin boards with pictures pinned that reflect my bigger vision for the future, because I want to remind myself every day what I’m working toward. I use images and words; my car and office and even my bathroom mirror are filled with words and quotes that inspire me. This entire chapter is about setting yourself up to reach for success by building a solid foundation. The spaces you inhabit can be the platform that you build a new life on, or they can be the anchor that keeps pulling you back under the waves.
BUILD A GREAT COMMUNITY
You are a combination of the five people you hang out with most. Think about it. Who do you see most often? Whose words are you consuming frequently? Which points of view and perceptions do you take in on the regular? Is there someone amongst those five you interact with regularly who is above you in life? Meaning, is there something about them that you want to aspire to? Do they have skills or characteristics that you’d be proud to adopt? When you hang out with those people, is there an area in your life that they’re going to pull you up toward?
If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. If you’re the most focused on growth in your group of friends, if you’re the highest achiever, if you’re the most compassionate, if you’re doing the best out of everyone, you’re in the wrong room. You should want to surround yourself with people who are better than you in the areas you want to improve in. You should hope that your good stuff rubs off on them and their good stuff rubs off on you. But if everyone in your circle looks to you to motivate them, you’re outnumbered. They’re much more likely to pull you down to their level than you are to pull them up to yours.
It’s worth saying here that I’m not suggesting that you let go of the relationships that you have simply because someone isn’t as advanced as you are or as focused on growth. I am suggesting that you make sure you are regularly interacting with people who are leading the charge in an area you’d like to grow into.