Category: Inspiration

Okay, stay with us…

To imply that you can just “follow your passion” is a bit misleading. It’s not like it’s the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and if you just follow the trail you’ll magically find it.

Instead, let’s talk about it this way–we need to find ways to cultivate our passions. To cultivate means to develop, to prepare for. 

So cultivating our passions is an active process, one that doesn’t ever stop. If you found what you were passionate about and felt like you were done–well, that would imply that Amy is still obsessed with Barbie, and believe us, this is not the case 😂

If we see finding our passions as being a process, then we remain open and curious to whatever we discover, and we leave room to evolve and change over time.

And because we like tangible steps here at Next Level Wealth, here’s a process you can use to cultivate YOUR passions 💫

1. Take care of your basic needs.
   You won’t have room to explore what you’re passionate about unless your basic needs are met. Nutrition, water, sleep, movement, safe and loving connections…those basic physical and mental health needs that are the essential foundation for reaching those higher level desires. Your car won’t drive unless it has gas (unless it’s electric, but you know what we mean). So fill up that tank!
   
   
2. Create space.
   Where’s that white space on your calendar, hmmm? If your entire day, every day, is filled with “to do’s”…how can you even figure out what you want to move towards, what lights you up? Passion requires SPACE, and it wants us to be creative and playful. Whether all you can manage is an hour or two at a time, or a solo weekend away, you need space to access passion.
   
   
3. Be curious.
   You never know what might light you up and inspire you. What would happen if you let go of your assumptions, of the stories you’ve always told yourself? We are all (yes, ALL) creative beings. Practice curiosity, explore new activities and ways of being, let go and HAVE FUN, with no other agenda! You’ll be amazed at what you learn about yourself and what you love.
   

Do you know what your passions are, in life and in business? 

♥️, 

Jen and Amy (PASSIONATE Business Coaches)

You used to feel it with your business–that fire, the passion and excitement, the motivation to achieve goals that once felt impossible. You were so pumped up about what you did that you talked to anyone who would listen, not to SELL to them but because you believed in it so deeply. And people were drawn to you like a magnet. 

Now you’re tired, bored and uninspired. You go through the motions, but your heart’s not in it. There are few, if any, deals on the table. You wonder, what’s the point? Maybe you’re in the wrong business. 

Does any of this sound familiar?

Before you get to the point where you throw it all away, let’s talk about burnout.

Burnout is caused by PROLONGED STRESS with LACK OF SELF CARE. 

And we’ve been there. It’s a terrible feeling and it distorts your view of everything. Many amazing profitable businesses have shut their doors due to burnout.

It’s important to catch what’s going on early enough to do something about it. Look for these signs if you’re wondering about burnout:
Unexplainable health issues
Sleep issues
Appetite and weight changes
Extreme exhaustion
Depression symptoms (irritability, apathy, difficulty concentrating, etc)
Feeling stuck and hopeless

Here’s the thing–you won’t get clarity about your business in a place of burnout. The burnout HAS to be addressed first. 

If you’re struggling with burnout, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are there ways to reduce the stressors?
   Often we’re doing more than we need to with tasks that either aren’t that important or that someone else could be doing. Focus your energy on the tasks that produce the highest return on your investment of time and energy, and let go of the rest. 
   
   
2. Can you have healthier boundaries? Do you allow yourself to say “no” even if it makes you uncomfortable and disappoints someone?
   A lack of healthy boundaries is a recipe for burnout. Have you ever seen a lifeguard head out into the ocean to rescue a drowning person? You know what they always, ALWAYS bring? A good flotation device. It doesn’t do any good to attempt to save someone else’s if you’re not well resourced yourself.
   
   
3. Are you spending time doing things you love and are passionate about? Are you prioritizing yourself? Have you told yourself a story about how “I don’t have time,” “I’m too busy,” “Everything will fall apart if I take time off?”
   Hard truth: if your business is set up in such a way that you can’t take time for yourself, then your business needs to fail–or it needs to get a DRAMATIC makeover. A key factor in making a business sustainable over the long term is a culture where self care is encouraged and prioritized.
   
   
4. What support do you need that you don’t currently have in place?
   Examples of support could be therapy, coaching, mentorship, a consultant, hiring the right people (which might mean letting go of others), time off…to name a few!
   And ASK FOR HELP if you need it. Put your ego aside and reach out.
   

Let’s get you back to a place of passion, creativity and inspiration! If you address the burnout and you still aren’t satisfied with your business, then okay–maybe it’s time to let it go. Nine times out of ten, that won’t be the case. 

The vast majority of the time, you can fall back in love with your business! And if we can support you in getting there, let us know ✨

♥️, 
Jen and Amy

Before there was Tina Turner, there was Anna Mae Bullock, a girl born to share-cropper parents in 1939. Her parents abandoned her and her sister at a young age, leaving them with their strict conservative grandmother.

Tina has shared many times that she never felt loved by her parents. It was with this difficult childhood history that she met and fell in love with Ike Turner, a talented and charismatic musician. She married him at the age of 22 and for years endured horrific physical, emotional and financial abuse. Their success in the music world belied the terror behind closed doors. 

When Tina finally left Ike, she did so with just 36 cents to her name. She worked any job she could find and lived in poverty, forced to start her music career all over again.

Tina performed whenever and wherever she could. Music was her passion, the one thing she loved that ever loved her back, the one thing that gave as much as it took. Though she struggled to get anyone to take her seriously without Ike by her side, she never gave up. 

And finally, in 1983, she signed with Capitol Records. 

Tina catapulted to a kind of fame she never had with Ike, had never dreamed of having before.  All those years of never giving up and following her passion had paid off.

In 1985 Tina found real love with a man named Erwin Bach. They’ve been together for over three decades now. It seems no coincidence that finding love with a partner coincided with loving herself enough to save her own life.

Tina is quoted as saying “My legacy is that I stayed on course…from the beginning to the end, because I believed in something inside of me.”   

How beautiful is that?  She didn’t say “my legacy is my music” or “my legacy is my talent.” Her legacy is that she never deviated from what she loved the most, and she was able to do that because she believed in herself against all odds.

People could control her, abuse her, abandon her and manipulate her–but she would not allow them to destroy her belief in herself and her drive to pursue her passion.

This is what ultimately got her out of that horrific marriage and allowed her to become the woman and artist she knew she could be.

Passion is defined as ‘powerful and compelling emotion.’ It’s the kind of strong and sustained feeling that just can’t be ignored.

Passion doesn’t necessarily correlate with money, or fame, or a career. It can involve those things, sure…yet it often doesn’t.

You might be most passionate about raising your children, or volunteering with animals. Maybe you live for horse riding, and your day job–though enjoyable–is more about funding that passion than anything else.

Passion may not directly make you money (or maybe it does)–but what passion DOES give to us is inspiration, meaning and motivation. In that way, passion feeds all the parts of our lives, including our businesses. Passion makes the hard parts more tolerable and the good parts more joyful.

Take a minute and consider what you’re most passionate about. What lights you up? What brings you the most joy and satisfaction in your life? What is the one thing you would continue to do against any odds? 

If you’re here on this earth, with a capacity to think and feel and act, then you’re passionate about something.  Perhaps you’re struggling to know what it is, or how to put it into words.  But trust us, it’s there 🙂

My 5 year old daughter is at an incredible school and we feel so lucky–we literally won the lottery to get her in there. 

One of the things about her class and school that I’m especially loving right now is their focus on perseverance. 

Maybe this is most kids (I have no clue, since I only have the one), but Z has a tendency to give up right away if she doesn’t do it well the first time trying. I mean, where does she get that from?? It’s not like I’m a recovering perfectionist 👀 😬

Anyway, we have been watching this trait shift so much from being in this class: she’s gone from a child who avoids failure to a child who’s willing to try harder and more consistently. We’re watching her develop some frustration tolerance.

Last night I was watching her practice writing her letters on a whiteboard in her room, and I remembered this story from Stephen King’s memoir On Writing…

Before Stephen King made it in the writing world, he and his family had very little money. They lived in a trailer with their young children and worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. King would work all day, come home and help take care of the kids, and then write well into the night.  At this point, he had already racked up numerous rejections–in fact, he received 60 rejections before he ever got his first short story published! 

King was working on a novel but had little hope that it would be published. At one point he threw the pages of the manuscript in the trash–luckily his wife Tabitha fished them out, read the pages and urged King to go on with the story.  She saw something in those pages and knew he needed to see it through.

And so in spite of his serious doubts (and his exhaustion!), King finished the novel and submitted it to Doubleday. 

One month later, Doubleday decided to purchase the novel. They had to send King a telegram because he couldn’t afford to keep up with the phone payment!

The advance amount wasn’t life changing–King kept his job–but it was enough to take a little pressure off financially. He hoped the paperback rights would sell for enough to quit his job and keep the household going for a few years, if they were very, very frugal.

When those paperback rights sold, they sold for $200,000–nearly 2 million dollars in today’s money 🤯

And that, my friends, is the story of Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel. This novel set him up on the path to becoming a successful and wealthy novelist.  And all of this from some discarded pages in the trash can and a supportive partner who saw what he could not 🌟 

When I think about my daughter and this Stephen King story, two things stand out to me:

1. Perseverance is a character trait that can be learned with willingness and practice.
   It’s one of the most crucial traits in long-term, SUSTAINABLE success. It’s not enough to believe in what you’re doing–you have to find a way to persevere when it feels like all you’re doing is running into obstacles.
   
2. We need other people to believe in us when we’re struggling to believe in ourselves.
   We need honest feedback and support from people we trust if we’re going to make it to the next level. We don’t need cheerleaders or “yes” people–we need RADICAL honesty, we need to be challenged, AND we need the right kind of support!  

How do YOU deal with frustration and lack of motivation? How do you keep going when you’re exhausted and ready to quit?  And WHO in your life gives you that radical honesty and support?

Amy Worthy
COO and High Performance Business Coach

Do you know who you are?  Do you know who you want to be?  And the really big question–are you ALREADY who you want to be? 

January is the time to get very, very real with ourselves. Many of us have an idea of who we are, and oftentimes that idea we have of ourselves is part reality and part hopeful fantasy.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about building identity-based habits.  According to Clear, there are three levels where change can happen–changing outcomes (what you get), changing your process (what you do), and the deepest layer–changing your identity (what you believe).  They’re all important, but the recipe for sustained success is starting with identity and working outward.    

First step–decide the type of person you want to be.  What do you want to stand for? What are your values? Who do you want to become?

Clear encourages us to ask ourselves this powerful question: Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?

He names a simple two-step recipe for sustained success:

1.  Decide the type of person you want to be.
   
2.  Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Let’s look at a revenue goal, as an example.  We work with a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, and there’s always a revenue goal. So the outcome you would ultimately want is to make X percentage more in revenue this year.

If you ask yourself, who is the type of person that could get this outcome–you might decide it’s someone who consistently and meaningfully makes contact with colleagues, referral sources and past clients. 

You would focus on proving to yourself that you ARE this person, before you really start focusing on the revenue results. The small wins that reinforce this might be: blocking one hour a day to reach out to people, and having one coffee date per week.

Focusing on identity-based habits means that you can rely LESS on motivation (which is important but fluctuates), and MORE on identity. 

The way you become the person you want to be is to EMBODY that person, right now.  Say to yourself and others–out loud–”I am the type of person who…” Take action today that is EXACTLY what that person would do.

Interested in knowing more about our coaching services?  Reach out to us through the contact form on our website, or email us at info@nextlevelwealthcoach.com.

Recently Next Level Wealth had the honor of being a sponsor for an incredible speaker. Everyone who attended this event walked away in awe of his story and inspired to do more.

Chris Singleton is a former minor league baseball player drafted by the Chicago Cubs. He is now a nationally-renowned speaker with a message of unity, resilience and forgiveness, following the loss of his mother in the 2015 Mother Emanuel Church tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina.

When then-18 year old Chris lost his mother in this racist attack, his mission changed from making it to the big leagues to rooting out racism one person at a time. He went from big brother to father figure overnight. Everything he thought he knew was turned upside down.

Chris talked about privilege through a story a mentor once told him–privilege is like being born on second base without ever picking up the bat. The issue is when you believe you got to second base by hitting a double. 

He also shared what happened when he arrived at his mother’s church after the shooting Chris desperately wanted to go inside and find her (at this point he didn’t know if she was dead or alive). He was stopped by a police officer, who told him he wasn’t allowed in.  Chris was distraught and frantic, and the officer took the time to help Chris get where he needed to be to find out more information. In the midst of the chaos, the officer stepped away from his duties to go above and beyond his job and help Chris.

He never forgot that act of kindness, and the countless other acts of kindness he and his family received during that time.

Chris challenged all of us to acknowledge our privilege and go above and beyond what is expected.

In this season of gratitude and generosity, are you holding this awareness for yourself?  Are you going above and beyond “good enough” in your life and business? Are you sharing generously with others, in whatever ways you’re able?

It’s amazing how much a simple act of generosity can impact someone’s life.  Most of the time, we have no idea just how much.