Missing: #MondayMotivation | Reward Offered

I don’t know about you, but this week my #MondayMotivation was seriously lacking. Sure, going “Back to School” or starting any new chapter is exciting for a while, but then a Monday is a Monday is a Monday, right? It happens to everyone.

I usually have big plans for my Mondays—wake up early, have a great breakfast, put together a super cute outfit, get to work early, accomplish everything on my to-do list, go to the gym, and drink 64 oz. of water while leaping tall buildings in a single bound. And sometimes, it happens, and you have a picture-perfect day and can post a cute pic of your completed to-do list or #OOTD! 

It’s a great feeling.

But real talk, sometimes it really doesn’t happen. Sometimes you wake up late, throw on a go-to outfit*, grab a granola bar, get where you need to be later than you want, and drag yourself through the day until you get to skip the gym and go home. It’s harder to accomplish what you want to, or to feel like you’ve accomplished anything. (For me, those days are usually Mondays.)

Those days happen, and though they don’t feel great, it’s okay to have them.

Most importantly, Monday or not, you just can’t let the bad days define your whole week. Having one bad day doesn’t mean that your whole week, month, year, or life has gone off track, even if it feels that way.

Whether you’re in school, in the working world, at home, or anywhere, this is for you. You can control how the rest of the week goes, and here are some tips to get your days back on the “right” track.

Take it one day at a time. Each day is an individual opportunity, independent of the day before it. If Monday wasn’t the best, it means you had a bad day, not that you’re going to have a bad week. (Apply as needed to any other day of the week.)

Be intentional and decide to have a better day. A new day is a new opportunity to be more positive, to be happier, and to set and accomplish your goals. But those things won’t just happen. You have be intentional about them. Choose to look for the positive, to experience gratitude, to let those little frustrations roll off your back, and to hold yourself to a (realistic) to-do list.

Clothes, lunch, backpack? Plan ahead. Pick out your outfit and make your lunch for the next day before you go to sleep at night (unless you have a uniform and/or a meal plan). Pack up your backpack with all your homework, books, etc. before you go to bed, too. Do as much as you can the night before to make getting out of the door in the morning much easier.

Make a list, then re-evaluate. So many of us have huge, unrealistic expectations of ourselves and what we “should” be able to accomplish. (I have a chronic issue with this.) Go ahead, make that long, long master to-do list, but then be kind to yourself. Make a shorter list of things that absolutely have to be done today, and what you can realistically accomplish without losing your mind. Please hear me: You are not a bad person because you can’t accomplish a hundred pages of tasks (for school, work, home, you, etc.) in a single day.

Get enough sleep. Take care of your body. Trust me, everything will be easier if you do. (Pro-tip: If your mind starts spinning with things that need doing as soon as you lie down, keep a notepad by the bed. Do a brain dump to get it all on paper, and deal with it tomorrow.)

I hope these help! Let me know if these tips work for you, or what tips you have for being intentional about your life and time.

Now, I’m going to try to take my own advice…😉

Love and gratitude, 

Katherine

*always have a go-to outfit, always.

Monday Motivation: Turning Failure to Fuel

Failure (noun): lack of success; the omission of expected or required action; see also: “I’m a…” and “Fear of…”

See that second one, “Fear of failure”? Yep, that’s me. It’s also the majority of the people I know. If it’s you, too, this post is for you. 

We need to reframe failure.

There’s something in our society that has convinced us that failure is a bad thing, and made us roll our eyes at motivational speakers who tell us to “Celebrate our failure!” This mindset has made us believe that failure is something to be feared before it happens, and ashamed of afterward, instead of something that is part of our shared human experience.

Maybe it’s our society’s obsession with perfection and that has created this mentality. Maybe it’s our high expectations, or our obsession with “success,” whatever that means.  Maybe it’s something else. Though that’s certainly an interesting origin story, it doesn’t matter so much where this mindset came from, or, really, where it goes.

It just needs to go. And we can be a part of sending our fear of failure out the door.

I started thinking more about this after I saw a story about a new Gatorade commercial called “The Secret to Victory,” on the TODAY Show about the unexpected key to success: failure. Take a look.

(Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by Gatorade, just inspired by it. 😉)

“You really want to know the secret to victory?” “Defeat.”

The ad features professional athletes like Peyton and Eli Manning, Serena Williams, and Atlanta’s own Matt Ryan confronted by what society has deemed “failures” in their lives and careers, from failing to make the varsity team to losing the Super Bowl, to change the way we think about failure.

For athletes, defeat is literally a part of the game; for all of us, it’s part of the “game of life,” if you will.

It’s normal to let the losses, defeats, and failures get you down. And it’s easy to let them keep you down. The secret is not letting them, and that’s the hard part.

When I was growing up, the movie “A Cinderella Story” came out and, like any die-hard Hilary Duff fan of the early 2000s, I loved it.

The movie is exactly what it sounds like, a modern-day “Cinderella Story,” except this time, she loses her cell phone and, amongst other offenses, the evil stepmother has wallpapered over a quote that Hilary Duff’s baseball-loving father painted on the wall of his diner before he died. Finally, at just the right moment, when things seem most desperate, the wallpaper is torn off the wall, revealing the quote and inspiring Hilary’s character, Sam, to keep going.

The quote, of course, is a classic from baseball all-star Babe Ruth. 

Though I certainly didn’t go on to play baseball, or lose my fear of failure, this quote always gave me something to think about when the fear of failure started to get in my way…and it still does.

In my senior year of college, when I started applying for “real world” jobs, I applied for what I had thought, for years, was my dream job. I was rejected--I failed hard. I then thought I was meant for something similar, but different, so I applied for the next set of “dream jobs” with the same company, fearing that I would fail again. And I did; I was defeated by all of them.

Then I found the job description for my current position at Girl Talk and, though I was afraid that I wouldn’t get the job, the feeling I had when I read the description made me understand why I had be “defeated” by the first few dream jobs. This one felt like the right one for me. And, thankfully, it was. 

I believe that I "failed" because those jobs that I was set on weren't the right ones for me, because there was something that was "more right" out there, waiting for me to discover it. But before I did, it felt like my life had veered off-course.

The perfectionists within us seem to think that if we fail, even just once, our lives will be permanently thrown off-track and we will not be able to accomplish what we want to accomplish, or live the life that we want to live.

I’m happy to tell you that that’s just not true.

Only you have the power to create and control your path. Only you have the power to decide what a "failure" means for you. Your failures don’t have that kind of power.

I’m not telling you that you should never be afraid to fail, or be ashamed when you do, nor am I saying that the fear will suddenly go away or that you should feel “good” about your failures (that would just make you feel like a failure for not feeling good about failing…make sense?).

It’s perfectly okay to fail—it’s normal—as long as you don’t let it define you. Don’t let the fails keep you down or the fears prevent you from "playing the game"--going after your dreams, following your passions, and fighting for what you believe.

Instead, challenge yourself to use defeat as a motivator. It's easier said than done, but take the L, then move on. Keep working and keep trying for future victories, and you’ll start to reclaim and reframe failure and, as Gatorade says, #MakeDefeatYourFuel.

With love and gratitude,

Katherine

p.s. Feel free to share your stories, struggles, and successes in the comments (or email me: katherine@mygirltalk.org), and let me know what you’d like to share or read about—my keyboard is ready and waiting!