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What are you planning for 2018? Any potential resolutions floating around in your head? Any new goals you want to tackle? Between Thanksgiving and New Years’, I plan out my next year. I look at my mentoring questions, my 2017 goals, review all the things I’ve learned and the ways I’ve grown. Then I look at my old 3, 5, and 10-year goals. I put everything on the table, reshuffle the deck, and I get prepared…… to quit.

This week is quitting time. Every year I quit old dreams, old habits, old thoughts, old routines, old projects, or hobbies. I quit relationships that no longer fit. Savings rates that aren’t meeting my goals. I quit a few things I love. Good things.

If you have done my mentoring questions (on the blog or those in my course), you probably have a shortlist of what really matters. What you really want life to look like. Things closely tied to your values, passion, and purpose.

But here’s the rub:

100% of your time is allotted.

100% of your money spent or invested.

100% of your energy spoken for.

What do you want to see in 2018?

Deeper, more meaningful friendships? A stronger marriage? A healthier body? A thriving creative outlet? A new source of income? A significant raise? A full night’s sleep? More impact in the areas you serve?

Every single one of those will take 1.Time 2. Money, and 3. Energy.

Ever wonder why your goals fail? How can new things thrive if we give them no time, money, or energy? I get asked a LOT how I do all that I do.

Here is a shortlist of what I don’t do (so that I have time, money, and energy for what I do prioritize)

  • Drive a decent second car
  • Pick up toys (minimalism, baby!)
  • Own many outfits or wear much color
  • Water my front yard
  • Throw over the top birthday parties
  • Wipe down my counters/stove every day
  • Organize a bunch of stuff (minimalism, again)
  • Let my kids do a ton of activities while they are young.
  • Bath my kids every day (Yup, weird, right?)
  • Wear make up and do my hair every day
  • Can my garden harvest
  • Let my kids stay up late at night.
  • Own a phone capable of texting, taking pictures, or anything other than making a call

So that I can…

  • Grow my friendships (call, visit)
  • Weekly coffee dates with my husband
  • Write
  • Attend conferences/retreats, hire mentors, be part of masterminds
  • Buy and read books
  • Work with a personal trainer, gym membership, eat real food.
  • Visit family and friends.
  • Travel with my kids
  • Take classes
  • Weekly adventures
  • Give money away

Maybe it’s quitting time. Maybe it’s time to take some things off your plate that require time/money/energy.

Then maybe it’s time to add.

I find that people fall into two camps—those great at subtracting and those who excel at adding.

The most successful, happy, thriving people I know have mastered the balancing act. They don’t fear giving things up, and they aren’t fearful of investing their time/money/energy into high leverage activities in areas that matter.

I get the fear. I grew up in a situation where “self-development doesn’t pay the bills,” and the goal of life wasn’t thriving, leverage, abundance, and compounding effect. It was: keep food on the table, pay the bills, keep the water on.

But friends, once we master: keep food on the table, pay the bills, keep the water on. Then we need to switch gears. We need to start building a life we are thrilled to be living. Not because it’s fancy or wasteful, but it’s on point. It’s exactly what matters to us. It’s a place where we are growing, flourishing, and doing exactly what we feel we were created to do. It’s important, meaningful, delightful, and exciting.

Let’s loop back around to quitting.

I considered quitting THIS. Writing, speaking, mentoring, and all the other things I was mulling over for 2018. Because come quitting time, nothing is safe. Everything is weighed again. (I still would have run the Mini-Retirements Mastered course because others had committed, so I was committed to that.)

I applied for a job I would love. Something right in my skill set. Something fun, challenging, and meaningful.

I asked a few of my email subscribers about all the things that were on the table: all the messy, honest, perhaps too vulnerable truth of what I was weighing. (Mentoring isn’t easy, and I deeply appreciate those who did the work of speaking into my life on this.)

Oh, did I mention the job had great pay, benefits, and was work remote?

Here is what one of my subscribers said in perhaps the most counterintuitive and yet “absolutely resonated true with me” comment.

“It was incredibly perceptive of you to recognize the job could be a way to protect yourself from the scariness of some of the other wonderful and fulfilling but HARD and SCARY other options. You have so much to give the world. A job is for retirement. ;)”

Say WHAT?!? A job is for retirement. I almost fell out of my seat. Can I just unpack that for a hot second? Here’s what I think she meant by that. The translation reads: The boring, safe, predictable route is for when you’re about ready to die anyway. While you have blood pumping through your veins and passion in your heart, run the race—Chase down the “wonderful, fulfilling, hard, scary” things. Because you have more to give, it’s not quitting time yet! 

So can I encourage you in this? It’s time to quit something. Free up a bit of time, energy, and money. Steal it back from stuff that isn’t your most important. And invest it. Pour it into the “wonderful, fulfilling, hard and scary” things.

I don’t care if you can only steal back one hour a week and $100 or if you have 10 hours a week and $1500.

It’s quitting time.

Because 2018 is going to be our year. The year we take ground on what matters. We might take it inch by inch, but we’ll take it.

Review the mentoring questions:

Be, Have, Do

Ideal Day, Week, Year

Feel Rich

Reshuffle the deck and get ready to quit a few things.

 

PS As a New Years’ gift to my subscribers, I’m going to be sending out my “Conversation Life Planning Sheets.” These are a simple one-page list of conversation questions you can take out to dinner or on a long walk with a spouse, friend, or sister. They will help you talk through three different mentoring questions.