How to Get Ready For Monday

Jul 1

It happens almost every Monday morning. The alarm rings and my mind flutters to alertness. One of the first thoughts I have to contend with is “You’re never going to make it.“ Yup, I have a negative thought first thing Monday morning. I’m not sure why it happens on Mondays but it has become a pattern and an obstacle. Unfortunately this negative thought, if not squashed early, can take over my morning. It’s gotten so bad that my wife can take a look at me and ask “Is something wrong?” even though I’ve never spoken a word. There is inner turmoil in giving into your negative thoughts and limiting beliefs. The sad fact is those poisonous thoughts are often mislabeled as truth. When that happens I can embrace the victim mentality, believing the lies that there is nothing I can do and my fate is sealed.

Get ready for Monday

So what can you do when you have these crushing internal dialogs with yourself? I have found doing these three things have helped me reframe my negative thoughts into enabling thoughts as well as focus my attention and the goal that I am going for. Then I can start working on building the business.

Embrace empowering and enabling beliefs

First, identify my negative limiting beliefs. This has to be done before the Monday morning alarm clock. I took about 20 minutes to write down all my negative thoughts and beliefs. You might take longer or shorter, but I found I got the biggest ones out of the way in the first 10 minutes. Pick ones that come up over and over again that needles the mind. There is power in identifying these intrusive thoughts and labeling them as negative. Because once there are defined you now have power over them. Instead of calling them truth and written in stone I called them bogus and I call them untrue. I call them dangerous. Changing negative thought patterns is not easy and it take time. But now they do not hold the same space as truth.

The second part of this exercise is to write down enabling beliefs that counteract the negative beliefs. For example if you are struggling with the negative belief of “no one will buy my product“ a enabling belief could be “there are people out there right now who are hungry for my product.“ or another limiting belief might be “I’ve never been to business school so I have no business ha ha running a business.“ The enabling belief would be “Most small business owners have never been to business school, they have made it and I Can too.” Find realistic antidote for your negative thought. Even if there is a real problem like “I am bad at making Instagram videos” the enabling belief might be “I do not need to be the master of everything. I Do not need to do every last thing in my small business.” The idea of capturing your limiting beliefs and counteracting them with enabling beliefs is from the great book by Mike Michalowicz “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.” The total time for identifying your limiting and enabling beliefs might take 20 minutes.

Here is a quick worksheet to help you take control of your limiting beliefs.

Embrace your Eulogy

Second I complete my morning ritual which includes reading my eulogy, my vision statements, and then completing a daily plan. This structure refocuses my attention to my ultimate dreams and goals. I know today I am not the person in my Eulogy. But by focusing my energy and action on the goals of the Eulogy I am becoming the person that will achieve all my dreams and goals. When I look at the enormous task of starting a business and focus on all the things that I don’t have (yet) I do feel like I will never make it. But when I focus on using the lens of what I can do today or what I can do this week the possibility seems almost inevitable. The chunking of work into bite-size goals, objectives, and tasks that makes the impossible possible. On Monday morning when I wake up I have not established my weekly goals or my daily goals. I have not yet read my eulogy. Without the clear plan of action I can get sucked back into my negative limiting beliefs.

Click here for the workbook I created to help you identify your most important goals in life through creating your own Eulogy. See how much you can get done in 20-30 minutes. It is well worth your time.

Embrace Positive Affirmations

My first introduction to positive affirmations came from the Saturday Night Live Skit with Stuart Smally. For years I thought positive affirmations were just comedy and not to be taken seriously. Watch the clip below and you will see why.

Stuart Smalley - Daily Affirmation

Later in life I was reintroduced to positive affirmations by Zig Ziglar. I recommend listening to his audio books. He has a way of making you feel positive and believe in yourself. His statements about body image and self worth still impact me to this day. In one of his books (I can’t remember which one) he recommends keeping a list of positive affirmations that you read in the morning and at night. So I started keeping a list on my phone with the note feature. When I heard a positive affirmation or I had a belief that I struggled to believe about myself I wrote it down. Then I would read these to myself as part of my daily startup routine. It takes about 1 minute to read, but it stops the negative thoughts and strengthens my positive thoughts.

I keep a list of positive affirmations that I want to believe about myself. These are the affirmations I aspire to. I might not believe it when I write it down, but overtime I begin to align my thoughts behaviors and actions towards my positive affirmation thoughts. Everyone will have different positive affirmations. Some of my most powerful affirmations are:

I matter
I am kind
I have great ideas
I am a good father
I am a good husband
I am successful
I fall down and get back up again

I use the phrase “I am” because it is personal. Instead of sayin “You will” or “You are” the personal phrase helps me believe it. And when I believe it I become the person who would be kind or who would be a good father. Some of these positive thoughts I think I have mastered. Some of them are aspirational and saying them reminds me to keep my course going towards that direction. I read my affirmations probably five times a week and it has started making a big difference combating my negative self talk. When you are starting a small business, strengthening your positive thoughts will keep you going when the negative thoughts start to creep back in.

This step takes hardly any time at all. Open up a note on your phone, label it Positive Affirmations and start a list.