Sometimes your Monday Motivation comes on a Monday night when you’re boned tired after having worked 16 hours on Sunday and 17 hours today starting at 5 a.m. today.
Sometimes your Monday Motivation comes because you’re desperate to write something of your own, in your own voice, about your own life, instead of channeling others like you do all day.
Sometimes your Monday Motivation is hard to find when your Monday has looked like this:
Dog barfed on the office rug at 6 a.m., 7:45 a.m., and 9:30 a.m.
You broke your glass coffee carafe and, even though you drink decaf, you didn’t get to have the morning ritual you love so much.
You were on back to back to back to back phone calls for 6 hours. Sitting and taking notes for most of them. And when you tried to stand up, your right hip muscle got all wonky and wobbly and so you googled “hip muscle cancer” because that is the solution to everything.
Because you are a gun for hire, you completed everyone else’s to-do list but your own. Again.
You got pulled into two client emergencies on a day with little to no margin for emergencies, one of which required driving somewhere to pick something up, witnessing a very elderly man tumbling to the ground on the sidewalk so you stopped to help him and called an ambulance because he cut his head and was bleeding profusely and was disoriented, and then worried the rest of the morning if he had family nearby or insurance or would be stuck with a huge hospital bill. And you’re still thinking about it now and hoping he’s okay.
Your client’s order at the copy shop took 10 hours longer than it should have.
You forgot to eat breakfast and barely ate lunch and really didn’t drink much water during the day so, by 5:30 this evening, you were dizzy and your nerve endings were crinkly and you felt like you had the flu (in addition to the hip cancer you diagnosed yourself with earlier in the day).
Your event venue for the following night was broken into and all their audio gear stolen so you had to spend precious hours finding and booking a sound crew.
Friends shared photos of the gorgeous DC skies on social media all day long, but damn if you got to see it from anywhere but your window.
You have 17 voicemails you have to listen to tonight before bed and figure out how to respond to in the morning, and your email inbox has 342 unread emails you have to get to.
Sometimes your Monday Motivation is that little voice that says, “You love your work; your work changes behaviors and helps people in the long run. It may not feel like it today, but some of the things you’re working on have real importance and contribute to meaningful change.”
Sometimes your Monday Motivation comes from whatever it is in your DNA that makes you stronger as a business owner than an employee somewhere else. Sometimes it comes from knowing your value and knowing that everything you’re doing is helping you achieve some big financial and career goals.
And sometimes your Monday Motivation comes from not knowing how to be any other way, so you thank your lucky DNA stars that you’re made of grit and ambition and a little dash of badassery, and you prepare for another day.
Here’s a little look at some things I’m reading, listening to, or otherwise consuming this week:
What I’m listening to: Silence. In the car, and at home. When a week is as busy as this one is going to be, I can’t watch TV, catch up on podcasts, or listen to music. My brain requires quiet.
What I’m reading: The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You by Lydia Fenet. I’m about 15 pages in and, while I know I won’t get to it this week until probably Friday night, I’m looking forward to picking it back up. It’s very voice-y, well constructed, and the writing is clear and direct. No woo-woo or dumb #bossbabe crap in this book. Seems to be solid well thought-out advice and storytelling.
What I’m watching: Hopefully, soon, the insides of my eyelids.
What’s canceled: So many things. I’ll elaborate more next week when my head is clearer.
What I’m learning: What my limits are, professionally. I am very good with boundaries (client, timing, workload capacity), and every now and again I like to push those boundaries to see how far I can stretch. It’s certainly changed over time. But I’m spending time this year with tighter boundaries and being verrrrrry choosy about when and how I expand or, more importantly, contract them.
What’s making me think: Why it takes me forever to make the smallest, dumbest decisions. Like canceling cable. Or switching my Amex card to a different type of account. Big decisions are easy for me. These little, meaningless ones? TAKE FOREVER. Are there studies on this? Send them to me, please, so I can figure out why my brain is the way it is.
Let’s go make this week an awesome one. Do some cool shit. Do something that helps set you apart from others and makes you memorable. Be remarkable.