February 3, 2021, by Patience Phillips
Business Learner Series. Volume 1: Article 1 of series
Welcome to Simple One Step Success Your Value Expands Your Personal Brand blog. With empowering happiness through literacy expert, Patience Phillips @AskMissPatience, on knowledge to understand for the wisdom of insight in choices guidance. Inviting you to participate in this year's series. Where Patience and top-level experts share how to value and expand your personal brand elevation. Taking life and business to the next level forecasting dreams to reality.
In the infamous words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her relationship with the very different Antonin Scalia,
“We are different, we are one."
A sole proprietor to a brick and mortal mogul wants the same thing, success.
This series will provide many tools and connections to gain momentum. Based on feedback the follow-up series will provide strategies and demonstrations for building with tools necessary in business today.
No matter if an influencer with a million followers or a youth living on the streets with a dream. We all begin somewhere. In this blog, the focus is ‘When do I have time’ successfully?
This series answers many questions I’ve had personally, clients repeat and listened to publishing buddies struggle with over the years. The purpose is transformative.
Each blog this year will vary in distance and tools depending on the featured question.
Simple One-Step Success, Your Value Expands Your Personal Brand blog will include the feedback. Readers and listeners like yourself who apply choices to assist progress. Provide branding tips and tools to help with acheivement.
What I know for sure, every step fills a journey over time by asking oneself, “When do I have time?”
1. The most important branding choice made every single moment begins with self-care
Whether influencer, student, or ____________________________________ (fill in your identity). How we show up in the world creates branding. Starts with self-care.
There are a bunch of definitions of self-care. For our purpose have created a clear focus for our intention. Self-care is the ritual act of attention to one’s physical, mental, intellectual, social, financial, and spiritual well-being.
Turning fifty got playful writing an unofficial blog called, Fifty Fabulous and Other F Words Not Grey. A memoir of balance with pace using: Faith, Food and Fitness, Financial, Fun, Friends and Family describing targets for my self-care that year.
Among a few hundred followers comprised of friends, family, and acquaintances the details were well received and we all got a good laugh of my high jinx and adventures. From climbing Mount Tammany to riding a motorcycle 8,000 miles along the northeast in all kinda weather.
What words you use to describe your self-care is subjective. The most important idea is knowing relationships begin within your branding through love and caring for yourself.
For decades have used the first day of the year to springboard four months of planning that began in September. A ritual following the F word year does this one thing to reboot me every January first. Especially after 2020 could use a kick in the pants upgrade, reminder, do over to build on. This year is the fifth of the newest ceremonial start to 365 days and counting.
Make my bed. I am guessing you were expecting some ginormous crazy weird action. I have bought a bunch of duvets to switch up the topper regularly during linen changes. Otherwise, no earth-shattering revelatory execution.
What is your one thing the first day of a year? _____________________ (fill in)
While tidying the linens my brain reboots each year listening to, Make Your Bed: Little Things that Can Change Your Life, and Maybe the World, by Admiral William H. McRaven. My military days swing back. My renewed motivation for why I’m doing things like writing this blog opens up the year once again.
Every New Year’s Day begins with listening to this book while cleaning and taking care of myself. Since training myself to listen to books at 2x’s the normal speed this is a quick read. Every January first prioritizes resetting self-care rituals followed by the year's strategic planning beginning back in September.
The difference between habits and rituals is simple. A habit is singular in focus. Rote behavior. Addictions are habits that become chemical imbalances, for example. Habits can create anxiety and often create a hostile environment against oneself.
Rituals include multiple habits and mindfulness with a purpose. Using ‘infinite variability’ – experiences that maintain interest with sustaining variability with use.
While studying with Stephen Covey remember him speaking of his God-centric mindset in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings have a human experience," (Covey 377). Knowing your center or creating this can begin with the simple act of self-care.
How to create or enhance what matters most?
Showing oneself the most important person is you bleed into sharing one’s value with others. Resulting in the ability to be of service at a higher level. This attitude transforms into a higher service to ourselves. The cycle makes for a better receipt of happiness.
In essence, finite variability is to habit as infinite possibilities are to ritual. Ritual does not require we are perfect in our daily choices. We can shake things up a little. Skip perfection for lots of reasons.
For example, people who choose to beat themselves up because they ate the cheesecake rather than stick to their die-t … die meaning you are going to the ‘t’ (cross) if you keep doing the same harmful crap to oneself. Stop this immediately if this is you. Skipping our habitual mandate for losing weight is not a referendum on our success.
Begin choosing self-care for the purpose of, let’s say, feeling physically better. In combination with rituals, many habits guide toward successful outcomes desired. Valuing yourself expands how you show up in the world. Translating into a brand.
Your value expands your personal brand
Branding is not about clothes and the car driven or the amount in a bank account. Branding your vibe invites your tribe. The inner circle that helps grow us into successful self-starting humans we are here to be. The clothes, car, and money follow.
Rituals including infinite possibilities are better for the brain. Countless studies show small changes to daily decisions can keep our brain supple and engaged while growing new neuron connections.
"Habits may be essential, but how we do them is more important for sustainability", (Nir Eyal 125-130)
The ritual of self-care includes many aspects of wellness. From brushing teeth to making one’s bed. Building trust with self is where branding begins. Leading us to who we are in the world. This shines through for those we serve who depend on us to demonstrate vulnerably and humility to connect with us in empathy and vice versa.
Truth be told, I do not like making my bed anymore. The simple act of ritualizing this choice does make me feel like I can change the world. The admiral gets me all souped up for the year along with my military training. Then, David Goggins voice on Audible from Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds shouts in motivational moments.
#SOSS tip: audiobooks are literary salvation. Hearing the voices of the authors when they narrate their books helps defeat negative self-talk learned by experience or from someone like a parent or doubter of dreams.
Do you ever feel this way? Check out an audio version of the books listed.
For a free book listen click here available for 30 days for none members, or claim the first book free for signing up for Audible. Monthly try Gold membership for one book per month. If you are tight on a budget ask for a six-book a year club or Silver membership call customer service. Be billed every other month. Get the best savings with 24 books annually or Audible Premium Plus Annual Membership. The audible customer service number is (888)-283-5051.
Your library card will get free books to borrow. The Overdrive app can suggest a certain number of books for purchase per month. They may not buy them all, but it helps when you read as often as I do. Delivered to the phone app. Click here to download Overdrive app.
For older books search engine the title. Often out of print books can be found in PDF form. To create an audio version, download to Speechify. Search Youtube for books, too.
A few books for self-care start ideas that help create #SOSS are:
Hijacked by Your Brain: How to Free Yourself When Stress Takes Over, by Julian Ford and Jon Wortmann
The Speed of Trust, by Stephen M. R. Covey
Make Your Bed: Little Things that Can Change Your life, and Maybe the World, by Admiral William H. McRaven
____________________________________________ (your book)
____________________________________________ (your book)
____________________________________________ (your book)
The resonating difference between just a habit and a ritual habit is a higher power connection. Our why we do what we do. Definitely look forward to more on this in a future blog.
What is one new or improving self-care action you can take today to build your own ritual of success? ___________________________________________________________________(fill in)
What resource will be explored to assist with this _______________________________ (fill in)
What is one self-care action annually to build your self-care trust branding? ___________________________________________________________________________ (fill in)
2. Building self-care rituals that last begin with principles
While studying Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a business course for a year in 2000 I intended to learn more about what my leadership was going through on the job to help myself relate and be a better subordinate. The result helped me become a better employee and eventually a leader.
The list of seven habits became ritual reminders from creating a family mission statement to building professional aspirations. These tenet’s developing over time with practice gave me core principles to base any ritual.
Be Proactive
Begin with the end in mind
Put first things first
Think win/win
Seek to understand first, before making yourself understood
Learn to synergize
Sharpen the saw
When beginning with a single simple ritual action know you are why. This does not require a year of study and decades to attempt to master. Maintaining a "beginner’s mind" keeps life humble. The meaning practice is a daily endeavor to greatness.
The fluidity of ritual habits knowing the why is key to the deepest happiness found.
Boxing oneself into 'failure happens when habits do not stick' does not mean the end. What this journey teaches is keeping to a simple single action, like making the bed, encourages another.
Describing for all the geeks like me, Newton’s fourth law or superposition principle. In layman’s terms believe this to associate with a single action becomes a stimulus for response and the next produces another response. Together these create another and so on, or A + B produces X +Y.
Being God-centric similar to Covey base the association with the creator of the universe on outcomes. Action toward success as defined by the creator lines up with the superposition principle. My choice A put to action arrive at X and my creator has B in play producing Y. Together we make a whole success.
“Pygmalion effect … realization of how deeply embedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.” (Covey 17)
Using this effect taught me the ritual of making the bed bleeds into other areas most of the time. At the end of the day like Admiral McRaven suggests the day does end better crawling into a well-made bed. Even if the day went horribly wrong. Knowing this action connects to something greater than oneself drives the why. From here connecting with faith grounding and boost being ready to start all over the next day together.
#SOSS Tip: Develop success gradually with practice.
Contrary to what social media shows on rare occasions of one-hit wonders truly finding the happiness we crave arrives daily over the long term. To ensure this arrival to your destination never stop learning. The easiest way to do this may not be a school for some. Educators deciding what is consumed is a very different investment than we decide.
Taking responsibility is key
How to own decisions?
Pick a topic like success. Define what this means in terms of purpose. What outcome empowers you with happiness?
Developing self-care principles provide literacy of knowledge to understand inviting wisdom transforming insight for choices which leads to finding a tribe's inner circle to help further.
Like, attract like
Sometimes an author is the tribe’s person.
Their voice resides inside boosting truth rather than ‘the story I’m telling myself’ bringing oneself down. Revolves around ideas adapted based on information created to help find meaning and make decisions. One of my favorite authors for this is Brene’ Brown.
In Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, Brene’ Brown has this one point that I’ve never forgotten. I’m paraphrasing what I remember that helps me, ‘If you walk into a room looking for reasons not to matter, stop it’.
Making oneself invisible is not a superpower.
Four years later I’m better at this form of self-care. Mending the heart to see my worth got me to this blog. Where I’m super petrified because it’s the first of a long journey. My hope is if you are like I was today you’ll hear me in your tribe saying, “You are not alone”.
What one principle would you like to employ to move the needle of happiness toward practicing success?
____________________________________________________________________ (fill in)
3. Principles maintained host two core truths: ritual choices and inner circle
Ritual choices
Inner circle
The science of habit formation sucks, to me. Who influences these choices is a larger issue. Do not wait until you have a perfect eight weeks and a tribe with similar behaviors to accept a habit is formed.
Decide today to create your first ritual, self-care is the priority. Like a holiday every day. Who doesn’t like the idea of celebrating every day as though it is a holiday?
The gift you give yourself is to start new each day. Make a choice today and tomorrow do the same.
Are you still feeling stuck at the start? Making the bed is not the answer for you. The truth is there is no one answer. We all find our own answer for where to start.
There are options to get the proverbial needle moving in the direction of your dreams. The point is to start, right? For me, keeping the success simple is key. For you, maybe going all-in on a bigger undertaking is the desire.
If making your bed is out of the question, another option is finding a book, mentor, someone impartial to provide ideas to employ. Work on your self-esteem. Basically, self-care for the mind. Eventually, you will find what works for you.
No one way works all ways always for everyone
Stuck at starting, try Jon Acuff’s Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, and Do Work That Matters. This book is jam-packed with ways to start and encouragement toward success.
Need help figuring out how to write a novel? Take this free course, Writing a Killer Novel with Chad Ryan. What I like about this study are the tactics that apply to any type of writing. A blog to book. Chad accepts monetary tips, shares on social media, and if you like scary stories visit his books on Amazon.
There are no easy peasy answers in life with starting. What I know for sure is keeping the first ‘start’ of the day simple sets the tone for the next simple one step and the next throughout the day.
Have you heard of Eat That Frog is the key? Doing the hardest task first. For this blog's purpose focusing on a simple step to build on leads to the hardest step. Sometimes the simple step is the hardest. Or, everyone wouldn’t need a blog like this or the books or the support groups, or … you get the idea.
If you wanna be successful in a specific field like speaking, writing a song, leadership, comedy, happiness, more. Check out the reference section below. Click a book or course to find out more. Borrow from the library or buy. One step closer to what success is for you.
Beginning with self-care is ideal. If this is a struggle bus zone ask for help. Heck, if you have extra money hire a maid to come in and make your bed daily. Then, pick a new simple step to self-care. For me, sometimes wearing clean pajama bottoms to my home office is a cause for celebration. If you are a writer during #NaNoWriMo I know you can relate.
The five people we include in our inner circle the most are the biggest reflection of ourselves.
Have you ever heard this? Me either, I just made it up based on, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn. I do not agree with the saying because it is missing a key element. Our inner circle is our ritual community.
Open access to your social media or other social influences like email, phone, text from the last 30 days, six months, and year will tell me more about you than the actual physical bodies around most of the time. Especially the secret world created no one else knows about.
Those digital rabbit holes that replicate include:
64% of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there. Internal Facebook report, 2018
"Algorithms promote content that sparks outrage, hate, and amplifies biases within the data that we feed them." ~ The Social Dilemma
In this time of digital options from Zoom to social media. The mantras ate online influence the most. These secret worlds we invisibly adorn tap into our subconscious. Research on the subliminal to the overt is easily understood in the documentary.
Look around. Political to social issues divides are growing us farther apart because we drink the Kool-Aid of division and find the inner circle to feed us in this direction becoming lost to our own truth.
What messages are currently influencing about starting?
I can’t start because ______________________________ (fill in).
A popular reason, “I can’t start because I don’t have enough time, resources, or support.” Our tribe influences our outcomes.
Deciding where to eat messages over and over like nutrition to help us have healthy bodies, food for the mind and heart is important. Binge brilliance over rabbit holes that infect the soul of the journey to success is one key to unlocking the door to door. First, begin at starting.
By joining an incredible course click here including seven core lessons by David Meltzer. Whether you're a student, seasoned executive, or struggling entrepreneur you'll find a lesson of value that will help you enjoy the consistent, persistent, pursuit of your potential. The only cost is your time and commitment to the implementation of the lessons learned.
#SOSS tip: Create an Origination Story to inspires the journey.
A backstory, or established background narrative, that informs the identity and motivations.
Sample storytelling for fun to demonstrate with practice becomes a possibility titled,
One-handed backhanded with my eyes closed on the eight balls, by Patience Phillips
At the age of ten, while learning to play pool decide to shoot backward as often as possible. Believing if I want to be good at shooting those occasional shots behind my back the only way to succeed is to practice over time. (Wise beyond my years:)
At twenty in the military, only three people beat me in the dayroom during AIT or advanced individual training. I was encouraged to try one-handed, too. By my late thirties began closing my eyes.
Out with a friend, one evening had the opportunity to play doubles. I was discouraged from shooting one-handed backhanded with my eyes closed against seasoned tournament players because this "isn’t polite". Rather than listening to the advice asked permission if these men minded. They snickered and encouraged me to go ahead.
I’m not certain if their alcohol consumption or anger were their demises. Either way, my friend and me won seven games. The harder they tried the worst it must have felt for them.
The eight ball into the pocket with this unique shooting style the onlookers never witnessed prior made for a fun evening.
For a super cool visual, meet my first and longest best friend Zach Selch who recently shared his How Did I Get into Global Sales? origination story click here. Details to where he began, why, and how he became one of the top global influencers in sales.
Please watch, follow, and share on LinkedIn to help more people with their own sales.
Creating your own Origination Story begins with now choices. Never too old or too late. Greatness begins today toward success. Right here right now.
Bringing the three points together:
“Where do I start?” begins with three simple steps: self-care, ritual, and choosing an inner circle.
The most important branding choice made every single moment begins with self-care
Building self-care rituals that last begin with principles
Principles maintained host two core truths: ritual choices and inner circle
Taking quality care of the f words by building rituals that sustain multiple habits with a purpose. Whether you read a book recommended here for help or find what works for you differently, the important choices we make to take simple steps to build value expand into the world.
Make a conscientious decision on how these steps play out now toward your origination story.
For a list of a few favorite authors alive and here in spirit who share their origination story through content check out these links and books from the reference section.
______________________________ (add recommend)
Risking success means we may flourish or not. Either way, new problems arrive. My hope is the ten-part series encourages there are many roads to "the way". What is necessary? Practice.
What makes high achievers different?
Check out Malcolm Gladwell's, Outliers: The Story of Success.
Each Blog this year will vary in distance and tools depending on the featured question. Find one tool, one author, on an idea from each blog. If the first selection does not fit. Pick another.
In the words of Nike, #JustDoIt.
Find what does not work. Focus on what does work.
If you want to be successful in a specific field like speaking, writing a song, leadership, comedy, happiness, more. Check out the reference section. Click on the books and find out more. Borrow from the library or buy.
What are your thoughts on where to start? Did you find any of the insights in this post especially useful? What books not on the list would you recommend, and why?
Have a question for me? Connect on LinkedIn and Goodreads. If I am is not able to assist am happy to refer you to someone who may be able to. If you know anyone else who may benefit from this post, please be sure to pass this blog on.
Thank you for reading
In next month’s blog we dig deep into, “When do I have time?”
References: Click here for books, articles, free courses, videos, more
Heads up: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, you will not pay a penny more, but Peace Road Publishing will get a small commission, which helps keep the lights on and support us promote and donate to programs "Empowering Happiness Through Literacy". Thank you