What is holding you back?

So. What is Holding you Back? 

Let’s correct that. What is holding me back?

I woke up in a panic at 4am on Saturday – the Saturday just been. The Saturday before Christmas. The one after the last business day of the year. 

I realised I had made a final admin task of the year ‘fail’. In the space between some final Christmas shopping (with kids in tow), many work calls and emails, and a drive to the city to watch basketball, The Breakers beat Sydney on Friday night, I had failed in my last admin task of the year by not pushing ‘pay’ on a bunch of payments. Why did I fail to do this – even though there was an email reminder.

After manually entering these payments early on Saturday Morning, an unconditional deal came through. 

I am a part of the end of year skeleton staff, and to that end we were organised for handling listings, sales and any marketing and uploads that need to happen while the usual team are off enjoying the summer. 

What we were not fully prepared for was an unconditional deal – there were a few steps on the CRM that we had not catered for to deal with before the 8th of January. 

Why had we not prepared for this success?

My mind is a constant flood of ideas and thoughts. There are always several projects on the go both inside and outside of work. But I still fail to track these ideas and projects with real accuracy. With all the productivity tools available, why I have not settled on something that works for me and with discipline ingrained this into my routine. 

I look at the balance (imbalance) that I have sometimes with figuring out how to manage family, work, and other interests. I spoke last week of how I managed to miss some of my personal goals, but I have not spoken about whether I hit any work goals. Last year work felt like one of those years where you take two steps forward and then one back. Staff ‘churn’ was an issue as we figured out who is suitable for this model and who is not. Overall there was good progress, and I should be happy with that, but it was not quite at the scale that I was hoping for. 

So, on that note what is it that is holding me back?

I still think that it comes back to belief. I am going to quote one of my own songs here (all being well, I will be able to share this with you, music and all by the end of 2024):

If you say you can’t, you know you won’t, but if you say you can, you just might…..    

I think Apple TV’s Ted Lasso sums it up a little better.  

Believe. 

Set your targets big, bigger. We have limited time here so let’s make it count. Yes, it’s a whole lot more than vision boards and affirmations. It’s a whole lot of grind and a whole lot of work. 

But without a regular reminder to think big, progress will be limited by the size of our dreams, which is exactly where I spent a lot of my 2023. 
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Which is exactly what I am turning around in 2024.