2. What You Started in January, Then Stopped

You know that thing you were really going to stick to this year? 

The emails. The posts. The showing up properly. 

And then one week didn’t happen… and somehow that turned into not doing it at all. 

In this episode, I’m talking about why that happens (and it’s not what you think), why January plans so often fall apart, and how to start again in a way that actually works in real life. 

No big reset. No waiting until Monday. No overthinking. 

Just a simple way to pick it back up today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to the Girls Mean Business Podcast, where we share business and marketing tips, advice and trade secrets to help you raise your game and build your brilliant business. Get more clarity, more customers, and more sales. Here to show you how. Your host, Claire Mitchell.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hello, it's Claire from the Girls New Business, and today I want to talk to you about the thing that you started in January and stopped. Because yesterday I was talking to my hairdresser, we were chatting about where the year had gone, but she said something else that really stuck with me. She said that in January she decided to get better at drinking more water. So she has a home studio, she's very busy, and she doesn't often get lunch, let alone drink enough water, so she knew she was dehydrated. She's got two little girls, just a really busy life. So in January, she was really committed. She bought one of those huge bottles with the measurements on. She was tracking it for three weeks. And then she had a really busy weekend with a hen do and some family stuff, and she forgot. And then she forgot again. And by the time she thought about it, she hadn't done it for about three weeks. And she said, Well, I failed at that. It didn't work, I couldn't do it. And I said, You haven't failed, you've just stopped for a bit. You can start again today. It's just another day. Nobody cares, it's not January. And she laughed like I was just being nice. But I meant it because I see this all the time. And not just with things like drinking water. I see it with the email that you were going to send every week or the podcast you were going to record every day. The Instagram that you were finally going to be consistent with, or you sitting there in January saying, I'm going to show up every day, I'm going to be really visible, I'm going to actually talk about what I sell. That so you started it and you were doing it, and then life happened and it got knocked off track. And then that was enough. You didn't bother going back. And I've done this myself so many times. I've had whole phases where I was going to do something every week without fail and I had it all planned out. I felt really on top of it. And then one week it didn't happen because something happened with my daughter or my mum or the drains or whatever. Life happened and my thing didn't happen. And the annoying bit is it's not even the missed week that causes a problem, it's what happens afterwards because it's the restarting. Because suddenly it feels bigger and harder than it is, like you've broken your winning streak. It's even worse if it's something you were tracking on your phone. It's like, oh, you've you've stopped, you've broken the streak. So you feel like you've let yourself down, and instead of just picking it back up, you don't. You sort of think, oh, you know, I've missed it already. I don't want. And that hesitation turns one missed week into three or six, or just never going back to it at all. So I don't think the issue is that you stopped. I think the issue is what you've made it mean. Because most people think it's just that they've got no discipline or no motivation or they didn't want it enough. But that's not usually what's happening. Because when you started in January, you were starting from a really specific place. That January feeling, you'd had a bit of rest, you'd had some thinking time, you had energy, it was a new year, everything felt fresh and doable. Posting every day, yeah, I can do that. Weekly emails, oh that's easy. Recording videos every Friday, absolutely. And then life happened. So a client might have needed more from you than you expected, or in my case, you know, the drains flooded, or the school run took longer than it should, or something unexpected happens, or you just hit one of those days where your brain's not working and everything just feels more difficult than it should. So then sitting down to create something at nine o'clock at night just isn't happening. So you skip it, and then you feel a bit guilty, and then that makes the next time you try and do it feel a bit worse. So you skip that one too, and that's where it starts unraveling. But here's the bit that I really want you to take from this. The thing you set up in January was designed for your January self. The one with energy and space and a clean slate who'd had a rest and was ready to go, but your March self or your April self is running a business while dealing with everything that's happened since. Expecting your March or April self to keep up with something designed for January you isn't fair. So when it doesn't work, it's not your fault. It's just that life's happened in between. So instead of going back and thinking, right, I've got to catch up with all of these things or I've got to restart exactly how I was doing it in January. Don't do that. Make it smaller. Do the real version that you could actually manage on a tired Wednesday evening. Make that the standard thing that you do. Not the version of you with loads of time and ideas, the version of you that's a bit knackered and still has emails to get through. So maybe your idea of daily posting might become twice a week, and maybe your weekly email becomes fortnightly, and maybe your podcast becomes once a month. Or even simpler than that, just scale it right back, keep it really simple, just enough to keep that habit going. And the important bit here is this you don't need to make a big thing of starting again, like I'm gonna start again tomorrow. You don't need that, you don't need a plan or a new system, you don't need to wait till Monday, you don't need to catch up on everything that you didn't do, you just pick it back up now. Because a smaller, simpler thing that you stick to is a million times better than the bigger thing that keeps stopping and starting. So if you've got something like that that you gave up on because your January self is a dim and distant memory, and you'll know what it is, then just pick the smallest, simplest version of it and start today. Start now. You know, today works. And just so you know, my hairdresser texted me later that day to say she'd had a big glass of water with a big like champagne emoji. And I thought that was brilliant. So next time I want to talk about something that I think a lot of people feel, but they don't always say out loud. And that is, why does everybody else's business look so much easier than mine feels? What's actually going on there? I'll see you then. That's it from the Girls Mean Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

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