7 lessons I learned the hard way in 2024 (so you don’t have to)

One thing that has *really* helped me in my business this year is reminding myself that I *cannot* control everything. I can only focus on what's within my control—everything else is wasted energy. In today's episode, I'm sharing the main lessons that I've had to learn the hard way this year, in the hope that you don't have to learn them as harshly!

– How realising that you can only do so much in your business will help you to focus on what you *can* do, instead of what you can't.
– Why learning to see life (and business!) as an adventure will help to ease the load and the pressure.
– Why trying to solve a problem without all the facts will just lead to overwhelm and overthinking.
– The solution to help you avoid burning out.

 

 

7 lessons I learned the hard way in 2024 (so you don't have to)

Today, I'm reflecting a little bit on 2024. This is the time of the year when I start to take my foot off the pedal a bit, and everyone else does as well. 

I want to share a couple of lessons that I learned this year so that you don't have to. 

 

Lesson 1. Your business operates within an ecosystem and you can't control everything. 

You just need to focus on what is within your control instead. So we recently launched a group strategy intensive, which was going to run through December and a lot of people showed interest, but only one person signed up.

And I obviously reached out. I wanted to know why, why were you interested, but you're not signing up. And the feedback from that was, well, there's just too much else going on right now, I can't come to the live calls. And here's the thing – I can't control what is going on in everyone's lives and in their businesses right now, but I can control where I put my time, my energy, my focus.

And I could focus on freaking out about the fact that nobody bought. And I could think, this means my business is doomed. Everything's going to fail. Or I could accept, okay, great. This is where they are choosing to spend their time right now. Or this is what their other priorities are right now. I can't control that.

So I'm going to instead put my time and energy and attention into the launch of our membership that's happening next year. I have this post-it note on my computer screen that says, what is in my control? And it's a nice little reminder. Whenever you start stressing about something that you can't control, instead, just shift it back to the things that are in your control, because it's a waste of time to focus on things that are out of your control. We can spend so much time and energy trying to control things that were never within our control anyway, especially in our businesses. There is so much that is not within our control.

For example, the Instagram algorithm. Whether somebody buys from us, how much your Facebook ads are costing, because sometimes they go up and they go down, right? There is so much that is outside of our control, and it's just exhausting and demotivating to focus on the things that we can't influence.

 

Lesson 2. The only certainty is uncertainty. 

Learn to embrace the unfolding of your business and your life as an adventure. This one's been a big one for me and realizing you don't always have to know how everything turns out. There's a beautiful quote that I love that I also have stuck on my computer screen and that is,  Water what grows without needing to know what it will bloom into. And we want to know what's going to happen because we are attached to certainty. We're attached to it being a certain way and if it's not that certain way that we want it to be, then we think we're going to be unhappy or we end up making ourselves feel unhappy, make ourselves suffer unnecessarily because it's not what we wanted.

Whereas the concept of non-attachment is being okay with it not going the way that you want it to and just trusting that it's going to unfold as it should. There's never really any certainty anyway, right? We never can be certain about anything. And if we did know exactly how life would turn out, then how boring would everything be?

 

Lesson 3. The reason you are overthinking is because you are trying to solve a problem without the facts. 

Either you need to go and get the facts or you need to shift your focus. Most problems, especially in your business, cannot be solved by overthinking, but yet we try so hard to.

We think that if we can just think about it some more then the answer will come to us. But most of the time we need a little more information before we can get that answer. And thinking more and more and more, probably around the same thought loop, the same spiral, that's not going to give us the information that we are missing.

For example, one that comes up a lot with my students is they'll say, I want to create an online course, but I need to think a little bit more about how best to structure it for my students. But you're missing information in this case, like where your students might get stuck or where they might need extra support or what questions they might have.

You're only going to get this information by teaching it live and then getting feedback from the students, watching what questions they ask and tweaking the content before you then go and spend all of this time recording all of the lessons and the modules.

 

Lesson 4. The solution probably isn't to do more or add more. 

This is a lesson that I keep continually having to learn. I'm not sure if I've completely learned this one yet because it is just so easy to keep piling more things on, adding new things, doing more things in your business.

And then you wonder why there is just so much on your plate and you're feeling exhausted. So instead of always adding more, sometimes we can do a little bit less. Less, but better. And some of the best businesses that I've seen are the ones that do a couple of things or sometimes even just one thing, really, really well.

So less, but better. 

 

Lesson 5. If you keep doing more, you will probably burn out. 

I've been very guilty of doing the same thing that I see many of my students doing, which is, you have this period of motivation where you're just wanting to work on your business day and night, everything's going well, you're doing more, more, more, more, more.

And then you get a little bit exhausted and it's followed by a period of demotivation and you don't want to do anything. And the goal here is to balance those ebbs and flows as much as possible. But this also leads me into lesson 6. 

 

Lesson 6.  Roll with the seasons of your business and your energy.

You're not always going to have those seasons where you have so much energy and you want to work really hard on everything. Likewise, you're going to have seasons when you just don't want to work and those will pass naturally. I used to feel so much guilt and shame when I didn't want to work on my business.

When I didn't feel like working, I felt lazy. I was like, why everyone else around me is working so hard? Why can't I just, do the thing? But I'm learning that in some seasons I will want to work on my business and I'll be super productive. And then other seasons I'm not as productive and I will try and just do the bare minimum.

Both of these are okay, though I am still working towards that end goal of just as much balance as possible. 

 

Lesson 7. There is always a lesson in the things that you want to avoid. 

It's really easy to look for the lesson that confirms the things we already know, because that feels really comfortable.

But it's not quite as easy to look for the lesson in the things that we don't want to face. And I'm starting to learn that the lessons aren't that easy. The things I want to avoid are the things that I need to lean into the most. And even just asking the question, why am I trying to avoid this? What am I really avoiding?

What is this here to teach me? This is a huge, huge question to reflect on because avoiding things doesn't make them go away. And in my experience, the problems just get bigger and bigger and bigger until you can't avoid them anymore. So the sooner that you can learn that lesson, face the thing that you are avoiding, the easier it's going to be and then hopefully it won't show up again. 

 

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