Full Transcript

Sari 0:04
I'm Sari Kimbell and I've done just about everything in the food industry. I have helped hundreds of packaged food business entrepreneurs. And now I want to help you make your delicious dream a reality. Whether you want to be successful at farmer's markets, online, or wholesale on the store shelves, Food Business Success is your secret ingredient. I will show you how to avoid an expensive hobby, and instead run a profitable food business. Now let's jump in.

Sari 0:38
Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Before I get started on our topic, I want to give you one last reminder that today if you're listening in real time, March 29th, today is the live workshop for Sales Tax. And if you can't make it today Live, then you can always pick up the replay and get the recording. And you can just head over to foodbizsuccess.com/salestax2022. I'll put the link in the show notes as well.

Sari 1:10
Alright, so today I'm going to talk about inspiration and motivation. And I'm talking about it this week because I've had a couple of clients, you guys know I start to see themes emerge through the week as I do my coaching with my one-on-one clients. And there was definitely a theme this week where multiple clients were coming on to our calls and saying, I'm just not inspired. I just don't feel inspired to do this. I don't want to do social media. I don't want to do my numbers, right. I don't want to do my cashflow. I would ask them about their tasks, right, the things that we had assigned from the previous week. And they're just like, I'm not motivated. I'm not inspired. I just want to feel inspired. I noticed with one client every week I asked her about how it's going and she almost always say, I just want to feel motivated. I'm just not motivated. I'm just waiting to feel motivated. And I ironically have caught myself saying it about a completely different topic, not around business, but around dating, where I'm like, I am just not feeling inspired to go on to apps and start trying to have conversations right now. So I was getting my own coaching on the same topic. What do we do about it? Well, let's just talk really quickly first about I think it's easy for us to throw those words around, right? I'm just not inspired, or I am inspired, right? Or I'm not motivated, or I am motivated. And I just want to break those down first. So the definition of inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something. And motivation is a strong desire to do well or succeed in a pursuit. So of course, these are positive things when we're feeling them. It's not a bad thing in any way to feel motivated, to feel inspired. But the problem is, is that, inspiration and motivation, they're fleeting. They are never going to last forever. There are going to be short, short bursts, right? That happen when they happen, and we can't schedule them very well. We feel good. And being motivated, right? Like maybe after this podcast, you're going to feel more motivated. You're like yes, I feel motivated, or I feel inspired. But it is fleeting. It's not going to last. And if you think about this as if your business is a car, what fuel are you putting into that car? And if it's only inspiration and motivation when it decides to show up, right? Then we're not going to get very far. We're going to go in fits and starts if that's the only fuel we're going to be like, I'm a racecar off the line for about, you know, an hour. And then it's all gonna putter out when the inspiration fades, when the motivation declines, right? When we wake up and we're just not feeling it.

Sari 4:46
Think about like ancient Rome. I mean the word "muse", right? That's where the inspiration the muse is, that creates the inspiration and people would like, long for the muse and they'd always be searching for the muse, right? It's something outside of you, it feels like it's out of your control, which really takes away your power. I told one of my clients, imagine that you are waiting on the inspiration bus, you're waiting on the motivation bus, like how does that feel? It feels terrible. It feels like you have zero control over it. So we need to take back our power and really own the results that we want in our business. And I'm going to share with you on this podcast some ways, tools, that will help you to do that. But it's just really interesting to notice that, are you waiting for outside circumstances to inspire you? To make you feel motivated? Or are you taking control of those, and really fueling it from within? So much of the time, I think we're relying, we think that our business should inspire us. We sit around, we say, come on business, inspire me today, motivate me today, it's your job to do that. And I want to give you a couple of short examples that I think will illustrate why we need to get out of that framework and how that's really not serving us very well.

Sari 6:20
So if you're a parent, you have a kid, let's say he or she is in school, and you need to pick this kid up from school every day. Are you going to sit around and say, I'm just waiting to be inspired to pick my kid up from school? I don't know, maybe I will, maybe I won't. No, of course not, you have made a commitment. You're not expecting inspiration from your child to go pick them up. Same thing, if you have a pet. Let's say you have a dog that you need to go walk, right? You need to take him or her out to go to the bathroom in the morning. Which is the reason why I do not have a dog because I live on the eighth floor and I'm not doing that, I have a cat instead. And I don't have to do that. But let's say you do, right, you're not waiting around for your pet to inspire you to take him or her out for a walk, to go to the bathroom. Like you're just like, yeah, that's what we do. I'm a pet owner, right? And so maybe we need to give a little, like release a little bit of pressure on our business to offer us this magical inspiration and motivation. And I'm going to talk next about some great tools. But I think that's a really good examples to kind of help you be like, wait a second, am I expecting my business to inspire me? And is that really serving me? Is that really what's going to help me to show up and do my social media? So instead of expecting our business or social media, or finances, right? Doing our numbers to inspire us, we're just gonna do it because that's what we do as business owners.

Sari 8:06
I want to introduce you to a concept that I've sort of danced around. And if you listen to some other podcasts, it's there. It's just I haven't been explicit about it. It's called the Think, Feel, Act Cycle. And this is a tool that the Life Coach School where I was certified at uses, and they use something called the model. But this is even a simpler version of it. And I tell you, when I learned this, it blew my mind. It helped me get so much more ownership and take so much of my power back over the experience that I was having in the world. So it's been a long time coming. And I am excited to share that with you here now to talk about this model, the Think, Feel, Act Cycle. So when you are thinking a certain thought, you are actually generating an emotion. And from that emotion, you are going to have actions that you take or you don't take. So if we think about inspired, if you are feeling inspired, you are going to take certain actions, you're going to like, oh, I'm going to make this post on social media. And I'm going to take these photos and write this email, I'm going to work on my website, I'm going to work on the recipe, right? You're like, you're taking a lot of action from inspiration. And so I want you to question what is it that a person who is feeling inspired is thinking? What are the thoughts behind it? And that can be a little tricky sometimes because you're so in it, you're like, I don't know. I don't know. I just feel good, right? But the reality is, if we can sort of try to watch our brain as an observer, and step back, try to notice what are the thoughts? Now I actually did this exercise with one of my clients because she was saying, I'm just not inspired to do social media, right, which is also what I was saying to my coach about dating. I'm just not inspired to get on Bumble right now.

Sari 10:24
I went through this process, this cycle with her and I said, okay, what is it? When you're saying I don't feel inspired? What is it that you're thinking? And so we went through, and we talked about, what are those thoughts, right? It's like, what we actually realize is that there was a lot of perfectionism hiding behind there, that I won't be able to do it right. It'll be hard. This, you know, it's like, I don't know what to do. I've totally run out of things to say, which is really interesting, right? Yeah, when you were thinking thoughts like, everybody said the things to say, and I have no ideas. And I don't know what to do. And I can't do it as well as somebody else can, I should be doing it like them. Those thoughts are going to generate a feeling of uninspired, which we don't take very much action when we're feeling uninspired. And so it was interesting to also kind of going back to that perfectionism is where I find, even in myself like, is that I think, if I'm going to do it, it needs to be perfect, right? And so if we're not feeling 100% aligned with everything in the world, then things aren't going to be perfect. And case in point. Yesterday, I put on my Power Five list, that these are the five things that I do every single day, or that I do that day, right? I've assigned them in the morning. And it was one of those things was to write out the outline for this podcast on inspiration and motivation. Well, the day was going along and until I had plugged it in on my calendar for the afternoon. Well, I started to get a headache and I was feeling really low energy. And I was like, I am not feeling inspired to do this right now, right? And because I noticed that there was some perfectionism, like, I just want it to be perfect. And now I have this headache, and I'm feeling low energy, and I'm feeling great. I noticed that that was there. But you can see that the thought like, I don't feel like doing it, or I have nothing to say, or it needs to be perfect, is going to lead to uninspired. And if I stayed and kept in the uninspired feeling, what actions would actually happen? Well, in this case, probably not very much. I would probably try to rationalize that I have a headache. And I'll do it another time, right? And then will it ever get done? And so you can do that as well with motivation, right? I'm not, if your feeling is unmotivated, what are your thoughts behind that? That it has to be perfect? That I have to know what I'm doing? That other people are doing it better? And I can never figure it out? That I'm not enough? I'll never get this? Who am I? Who am I to be starting this business? Who am I to think I can do this? If those are the thoughts, then yes, of course your feelings are more on the negative side, they're on the inaction, those feelings are not going to create great energy for taking action.

Sari 14:14
And I want to offer that motivation and an inspiration are really just bonuses. And so I want to give you next how we can actually, some tools that we can actually use to create better results in our life and our business, whatever goal you're going after, and not rely on inspiration and motivation. What I want to have you get out of this podcast ultimately is, sure I can maybe create inspiration or motivation through my thoughts. That is one option. But sometimes we're just not going to want to go there. And so rather than relying on inspiration and motivation as fuel for your vehicle to get you to where you want to go, the result, I want to actually offer you some different emotions and some different tools to fuel your car. To get you there whether you're feeling inspiration or motivation, and I just look at them as like bonuses, right? Those are just the cherry on top, but like really make things magical. And you have like that amazing day. But we're still creating results whether you're feeling it or not. Alright, so there's two things that I want to offer here. First of all, and I've done podcasts on this, there's been lots of conversation, I talk about it a lot. This is not the first time you're hearing it. But you need to have the why. The why is what is going to help fuel your car, that is the like, souped up long term fuel that needs to be in your vehicle. So have you done that exercise? And do you need to refresh it? You know, maybe just because you did it once, maybe you need to keep doing it to really solidify the why. Because when you don't want to get out of bed to go on that run, to run that marathon eventually. Yeah, if you don't have a strong why, you're not gonna get out of bed on time to go for that run. You just won't. And same, you know, same with my thing, right? Like, if I don't have a strong why, I'm never gonna get on those dang dating apps? Because, like, why would, in the short term, it's not fun, right? And I'm not feeling inspired. I'm not feeling motivated. So what is your why? Why are you doing this business? And I've talked about an exercise where you go seven layers deep, right? So ask yourself why. Write it down. If you can write it, even better. Why am I doing this business? Answer the question. Take it another step. Why is that important, right? Refer to your answer. Why is that important? Go deeper, keep going deeper until you really get to that emotional resonance.

Sari 17:21
I used to watch The Biggest Loser a lot. I mean, that was years ago when that show was on, when Jillian was on there. But I remember her talking a lot about trying to get to people's why. And she's like, I don't care if your why is just the I want to be able to wear, rock out those skinny jeans at a nightclub or something like that. She's like, is the emotional resonance there? Is it deep enough? Is it going to fuel you when you don't feel inspired and motivated? So what is your why, right? We have to have that emotional resonance. It's going to create attachment. And it's going to create a willingness to do it anyways, whether we feel like it or not. And like I said, yesterday when I was not feeling inspired to write out the outline for this podcast, I had to dig into my why. Well, for one, it's really important to me, it is part of who I am that I complete my power five, right? That has a really deep emotional resonance for me that I do those five things, no matter what, because that is what a badass CEO does in her business. So there was that like, it was on my list, right? If it wasn't on my list, it probably would not have gotten done yesterday. But I had put it on there and so it was getting done. So I took an Advil, laid on the couch, and I literally wrote it laying on the couch with a headache. So I had a deep why. The other why is that I committed to doing a podcast a week, every week. And I did it because I think about you and that you need to hear this clearly.

Sari 19:15
If I'm having multiple clients coming to me this week saying I'm just not feeling inspired. I'm just not feeling motivated, then I know that this is a trend that other people are feeling this too and so you need to hear this. I need to show up for you. Because that's what I, you know, that's why I'm doing this. I'm not doing this work this specific business just for money. I'm doing it because I really want you to succeed. That I get a certain amount of significance and a high of reward of contribution when you succeed. So you are out there, you need to hear this. That is a deep why. So you have to identify your why, first. Get that. So I think about some of my clients are like, I'm not motivated to do this business right now. And I have to ask them, okay, why do you want to do this? Like, you have a lot going on. You have a full time job. You have family at home that you need to take care of. You have, you know, your body and your health, and other things happening. So why are you doing this? Who cares, right? Nobody's making you do this business. So if we take away the shoulds, why are you doing this? And then we need to ritualize it. We need to add in ritual and daily committed activities. That is how we fuel our car.

Sari 20:53
As I was preparing for this podcast, I thought about a great quote by James Clear, he's the author of Atomic Habits, which is such a great book highly recommended on why it's so important to create small, meaningful, manageable, achievable, doable tasks and actions every single day, to achieve a goal versus trying to do it in big spurts, and then stopping and starting. So he says, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. So what he's saying here is that even when inspiration does not show up on demand, right on time, we don't feel it, that we actually can rely on our systems, on our habits to continue to fuel us, rather than hoping that that one magical moment of inspiration will help us achieve our results.

Sari 21:57
This is not the fun sexy part. This is not the inspiration, the motivation, the rah rah, like, feeling so great, and it's just flowing easily, right? No, every day, I have five things that I get done that day, no matter what. That is part of my daily routine. That's part of my daily ritual. And so those are the things when it's on the list, I show up and do it no matter what. We actually need to schedule these things on our calendar. So if you're feeling uninspired about social media, you just have to say, on these three days, I am doing a post and I'm going to follow through and honor my word no matter what. And it can be a terrible post but it's getting posted, right? That's where the 80% rule, the B Minus Work to get over our perfectionism really comes in handy. But we need to schedule it in. I was actually reading, I was kind of googling about like, how to feel more inspired or you know, what to do when you're feeling uninspired. And I love this, this like sums up exactly what I'm talking about here. So there was this quote in this article from a renowned English playwright, novelist and short story writer Somerset Maugham, if I said that well, he was reportedly the highest paid author in the 1930s. And I love this quote. So someone asked him if he wrote on schedule, or only when inspiration strikes. And he said, I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. And I've listened to other writers talk about this that the best writers schedule it in and they write every day, whether they feel it or not. They just write and it could be terrible. But the act of training your brain, and your, you know, that you are going to sit down at 9am and you're going to write every single day. First of all, you reinforce your identity that you are a writer, and you get over your perfectionism that it has to be amazing every single day. And you're just in the routine, you're now following a practice that you do every single day and your brain stops giving so much resistance to doing it. It's just like, oh yeah, at 9am I sit down and I write or at 10am, I do a social media post, right? And then on the days when there is magically inspiration, then it's your writing, or your social media post, or your accounting, your cash flow, whatever is going to be that much better. But we still have to just do it. So by creating ritual, by creating routines that serve us, that serve our work, that serve us to create the result that we want. That is where the magic is. By you showing up every day to do something for your business, for me with dating, because it's kind of fun to just talk about something other than food and get to know me better. People always side note, I get text, sometimes from clients that are like, I really like that you include personal stories, it's really nice to learn more about you. So I'm open, I'm vulnerable, it's fine.

Sari 25:40
But I think about, you know, so think about the dating, right? Like, I have a really strong why. And then the ritual is, I just have to plan in that every day, even if it's just 10 minutes, that I am going to get on the dating apps and spend a little time on there and make forward progress. Because over time, it's all gonna start adding up, right? If you're not getting results, it's because you're not taking enough action. And the better actions that we take are going to come from our feelings. And so I want to offer that instead of relying on motivation and inspiration. What if you actually relied on other feelings to get you through this? To show up every day and be taking the actions that you need to take? So committed. How does that feel in your body? I love that feeling that when I say I'm committed. I'm committed to my business and doing whatever it takes to taking the next action, to doing the work, I'm determined. Determine's a great feeling. And you'll notice that it's not necessarily like a super positive emotion. It's not like, I'm amazing. I'm so excited for this. It's like, it's a little gritty. It's a little like, like I'm rooted in my body. It's a little fierce. But I am determined. That is a really strong fuel that you can use to get you to taking actions that you need to take even when you don't feel inspired and motivated, right. That's the beauty. That's the magical fuel that you want. It could be curiosity. I'm curious. I'm not. I'm uninspired but I'm curious what I'm going to put on social media tomorrow. I'm curious to like, go out and see what interests me. Like, what else is out there, right? You start asking questions and opening yourself up. Let's use the Think, Feel, Act Cycle for good. So much of the time, it's just running in the background, and we don't even notice it. But what if we plugged in, committed or determined or curious? What if we plug those emotions in? And then we said, okay, what does a person who is feeling committed think? They're thinking, I can figure this out. I can do this. I'm never giving up. I want this. I deserve this. I'm all in, right. What is a determined person thinking? What is a curious person thinking, right? They're thinking kind of open ended, right? It's a lot lighter. So play with this Think, Feel, Act Cycle. And just, I wanted to introduce it here and help you really notice. If you can be a step back and be that observer of like, if I'm feeling unmotivated, what am I thinking? But also, what is a motivated person thinking, right? We can use it both ways. All right, so to wrap it up. First of all, we need to recognize that waiting around for inspiration and motivation is like waiting around for a bus that may or may not ever come and that we need to take back our own power in this and really understand like, grasp the concept that we can own our feelings through the Think, Feel, Act cycle. And I know I've just barely touched the surface of it. It's definitely something I will talk more about in future podcasts. But we do get to control our feelings. They are we are not at the mercy of our feelings that we actually create them with our thoughts, which is super mind blowing to me. I don't know about you, but it changed my life. Alright, and then we need to hone into our why, really dig into that. This is the most important thing. And then when we're really clear on that we feel that emotional resonance of the why, then we look and we say, okay, what would somebody who is motivated, who is inspired, who is determined, who is committed. What would they be doing? What actions would they be taking? What would they be thinking? What would they be feeling? And then we need to create systems and ritualize that. We need to create habits from that. Because remember, we will fall to the level of our systems if we have not baked this in to our core. If we have not embodied. What does a CEO do in his or her business? What does a boss do? What does a successful profitable business owner do? And you can use this for any goal, right? It's just we're talking about your packaged food business. So what do they do? They show up X number of times on social media, whether they feel like it or not, right? They do their cash flow, whether they feel like it or not. They work every day on something in their business, every day, whether they feel like it or not. Inspiration is not the magic sauce. It is the bonus. It's the cherry on top, right. So start showing up that way. Start showing up as the entrepreneur you are and who you need to become. I do hope I have inspired you and motivated you in some way today, to start taking action, and to start embodying the entrepreneur who you really are within. Until next time, have an amazing week.

Sari 32:06
Are you ready to start that delicious idea that you make in your home kitchen, or grow your existing packaged food business, and take it to the next level? The most successful food business entrepreneurs have support, guidance, focus and accountability to help them make it happen quickly without wasting time or money. Plus, I think starting your packaged food business should actually be fun. Food Business Success is your secret ingredient to creating your food business dream. Please don't go this alone. Check out the private free Food Business Success Facebook Group to connect with other foodpreneurs. Get your questions answered quickly. Share your wins and receive special training and tools I only share inside the private community. Just search for Food Business Success on Facebook, or get the link in the show notes. Curious about how Food Business Success can help you? Head over to foodbizsuccess.com and fill out the application to see if you're a great fit for the program. Together let's make your food business dream a reality.