Stacy: Welcome, welcome. I am here with just me today, no guest. And because I am in the middle of enrolling for and beginning my next cohort of my six month book writing program Idea to Draft, I thought why don’t we pick some episodes that are favorites to replay. So Rita, the producer and I selected a few episodes that we really love, that we think are super valuable and also that we thought everybody should hear because we have had so many new listeners lately. Surely you have not heard every single episode. We have nearly 200 now, so we have a huge just treasure trove of valuable episodes. So today’s episode is all about discipline. It’s a really short episode and we focus on this Idea of time.

Stacy: I talk about this reason around like time kind of being the reason why we can’t do anything or really get anything done. And offer some ideas for how you can develop discipline no matter your life situation. Now I when I think about discipline, I think about this a little bit differently than some of the other thought leaders out there, other people that talk about habits. Because I am a mom, I’m a business owner and I also support people who lead extraordinarily busy lives. So not only do I have my personal lived experience, but I have contributed directly to more than 100 books.

Stacy: Which means that I have worked with these authors who, you know, they have big corporate careers or they are making great impact in the nonprofit space or they’re consultants, coaches, speakers, they’re traveling all the time and they have been able to cultivate discipline to show up and make their dreams happen. I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you are ready to lean into discipline and you want to write that book that’s been on your mind for maybe years, I would be really honored to support you in Idea to Draft. You can learn more and apply at stacyennis.com/ideatodraft. If you are listening to this in April 2025, you are still in time to enroll in our spring cohort. So without further ado, I will hand this over to Stacy of the past to talk about discipline.

Stacy: Welcome. Welcome to another short and sweet solo episode with me. I’m enjoying these. Just getting to be a little bit more targeted with what I talk with you about, either sharing a thought or sharing really practical stuff, like I did in a recent episode on how to research for a nonfiction book. Today, I want to talk about mindset, because I have had a bunch of conversations with a number of humans who are on the cusp of their dreams. And I would say they’re not, like, right on that turning point, but they’re on the path.

Stacy: And what I have noticed along the way is that the difference between the people who are successful in achieving their dreams and writing their book, in moving abroad, in building their business, in whatever it is they want to do, even completing a goal that they set for themselves, running a marathon or learning to play an instrument, whatever it is, those individuals, they have a mindset of self belief, of worthiness, of abundance of potential. And rather than look for reasons they can’t or make excuses for why things are not working out for them, they see roadblocks as problems to be solved. Whereas the conversations that I have with individuals who are stalled or stopped or dreaming but never doing what I hear from those individuals is a lot of excuses and reasons why.

Stacy: And a lot of the reason comes down to things that they think are outside of their control. The number one thing that I hear is time, time. The amount of conversations that I have had over my 14 years in business, plus, of course, all the years before that as a burgeoning adult, the number of conversations I’ve had where time has been the reason that people don’t achieve their goals. I don’t even know how many countless, endless hundreds, thousands of conversations over that time. And I really get it. I understand that time is a factor. I understand that there are systemic barriers, and there’s other challenges.

Stacy: I understand as a mom who has a child with a lot of medical challenges, I understand as the sole breadwinner of my family, I understand as a woman that there are a lot of things that make it hard to achieve the goal that you’ve set, that I’ve set for myself. But what I. What I also know is that we all have some time. We all have the ability to choose. And with very rare exception, we all have something that we could shift or sacrifice in our life if we are truly on fire to achieve the thing that we say we want to achieve. And a lot of times what I find is that this excuse of time, and I’m going to say that word with no judgment, but it is an excuse for nearly all of us. It absolutely is an excuse.

Stacy: Because typically there is a lifestyle change we could make, There is a shift of some kind. There is a conversation we could have with somebody that would be able to support us to make space. That excuse of time is not going to magically resolve itself. Once you see time as an obstacle, that is a problem to be solved rather than a limit on your life, that’s when you start finding solutions to that problem. So as an example, I had a conversation with a woman who is building a really cool business. It was, I think, one with a lot of potential. And this person had some things that she wanted to accomplish in the business. She had in her mind that it was gonna take months, that she really needed to kind of step away and build this part of her business for months.

Stacy: And yet it’s something that she’s known she’s had to do for a long time, like years. And so my question back to her was, what if you didn’t have to take months? What if you could start with 10 minutes tomorrow? And what if it was 10 minutes the next day and 10 minutes the next day? And the initial response to this question was, well, like, you know, what can I. What can I even do in 10 minutes? It’s. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to get me anywhere, but this is where, you know, I hope she heard me, and I hope you Hear me, friend. 10 minutes is actually quite a lot of time when you really calculate it out. When you think about.

Stacy: I think I did the math on it recently, and I want to say it was like 42 hours a year or something like that. Somebody who’s a math person, you can come send me an email and correct me on this, but it was a lot of time, and it’s also a whole lot more than zero minutes. A lot of times we build this barrier to. It’s like a barrier to start. It’s not even like a barrier to success. We are the first. We’re the first. Our own first obstacle. We are. Before we’re even getting started, we are stopping ourselves before we even sit down at the desk to write the book, before we even reach out, reach our hand up or reach out to somebody for an opportunity. We’re already deciding that we don’t have the time or we don’t have this or that.

Stacy: You know, that book that’s been on your mind for months or years. Or maybe even more than a decade. Well, you’re not alone. I see this all the time. Brilliant people who have these wonderful books inside of them and yet just haven’t taken action or gotten the support they need to make that book a reality. And what happens is leaders and impact makers like you get stuck in talking about writing your book instead of actually writing your book. That’s why I created my book writing program idea to draft. It’s really designed to take you from I want to write a book to I want to. I completed my book draft and I am planning the next steps to get this book out into the world. You could be exactly where you are one year from today, or you could be planning your book launch.

Stacy: How cool would that be? No more getting stuck in perfectionism. No more wondering if you are doing this book thing right. You have instead the accountability, the structure and the system to make your book a reality. In my cohort, you’ll get a clear, structured approach to writing your nonfiction book, coaching accountability and support to keep you moving forward, to keep that momentum moving. And at the end of it, you’ll have a completed first draft, a book you are so deeply proud of, and a book that results from a really profound journey of authorhood. Because here’s the thing. Your book is not helping anyone if it’s stuck in your head. It’s not building your business, expanding your impact, or positioning you as a thought leader in your industry. And waiting another year.

Stacy: That’s just another year that your book is not working for you to help you achieve your vision for impact. If you are serious about making your book happen, I would be honored to guide you along that journey. You can learn more stacyennis.com/ideatodraft that’s stacyennis.com/ideatodraft. I’ll make sure to include the details in the show notes and I would love to hear from you see your name in my inbox as an author that I might get to support in creating a powerful book that is a catalyst for your big vision.

Stacy: Well, if you’re dealing with that, consider whether you could lower your bar for success. So let’s say as an example, you have a business goal that you’re working on, or let’s say you’re writing a book. Okay, we’ll use the book example because I think it’s such a great example. But this would apply to business growth. It would apply to nearly anything. For me, it’s learning Portuguese and learning the piano. Okay, so pretty much any goal that you want to work toward and If I set my bar of success at an hour a day, chances are pretty high that I am just going to throw my hands up most days and say, I don’t have time for that because an hour is really hard for me to find on a day to day basis.

Stacy: I have young children, I have a business to run, I work out almost every day. I need to function in my daily life. And, and so an hour is a lot, but with Portuguese, I set my bar at five minutes. Five minutes. When I sit down to the piano, I usually plan to do it for 10 minutes because I know that’s about how long it takes me to play a song a couple of times and feel like I got some practice in when it comes to writing rather than, you know, in the past when I would write books full time as a ghostwriter, I usually set aside two to three hours at a time.

Stacy: But now that I’m working on my own work and I have other deliverables, I have a team to lead and I have, you know, my own work that I want to do, and I have client work to do and I have this podcast to record, for example. Now that is what I’m working within, I am usually aiming for 20 to 30 minutes on the writing that I’m doing. And you know, what’s cool is that naturally expands. So I often will find that I’m in the flow. I, I’m making good progress. And maybe rather than 20 minutes, I spend 40 minutes or even an hour. And somehow I just, I feel like because I, I have such a mindset of abundance, somehow my day still works. It’s kind of funny how that is, huh? There is time.

Stacy: You have five minutes, you have 10 minutes, you have 20 minutes, you have maybe even an hour if you’re really serious about the thing that you want to do. And I’d also keep in mind that when you’re making space for something, you’re not committing to it for the rest of your life. You can do anything, you can sacrifice nearly anything for a short period of time. So if you have a goal that has a specific time horizon on it, such as writing a book or, you know, learning a skill or really doing a sprint in your business and really leaning in hard and growing it, you can set a specific, measurable, time bound, achievable goal, and you can commit to the habits and behaviors that you need to achieve that goal for a set period of time.

Stacy: And then at the end of that, whatever it is, few months or even few weeks, then you can reorient and you can say, are these behaviors serving me still? Do I want to make this space? Is this valuable for me? How am I showing up in the.

Stacy: Rest of my life?

Stacy: And that mindset of choice, of capacity, of abundance, of believing that when you lean in fully to your passion and you honor your commitments to yourself, that somehow everything ends up working out. It’s like the universe expands and contracts to serve us in the way that we need. Not, not contracts. I would say it contracts when we contract and it expands when we contract. When we expand.

Stacy: Let me just say side note, I am not like a really woo person, but I also have recognized in my life that when I show up with a certain energy, when I am focused, when I am tracking things, when I have that passion to get something done, and when I follow through with my commitments to myself, when I have that discipline and I honor my commitment, I honor how I want to show up in the world. I don’t have cognitive dissonance. So cognitive dissonance is misalignment between how I want to be and how I am being. When I don’t feel that and I feel fully present and alive and aligned, that’s when things work out. That’s when I see the most beautiful things happen in my life.

Stacy: So I hope whoever is listening to this, you, whoever you are right now listening to this, that this is what you needed today. Maybe this spoke to you in a way that made you question why certain goals weren’t being achieved. And if that’s the case, I hope that this is what you need to be successful. Thank you as always for joining me this week. I will look forward to being back with you next week. I appreciate, of course, Rita Domingues for producing this fine podcast. And if you have one minute, will you just take a second to leave me a five star rating and review? It truly means the world to me and helps me grow this podcast. Thank you so much for being with me and I will be back with you before you know it.