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In part 1 of this series, I share the first step in The Balanced Business Methodology Values and Priorities and how I used it to buy a house this year.
Mentioned in this episode:
Watch the Get You Sh!t Together Training Series and get the workbook.
Episode Transcript
You’re listening to Creatives Crushing Anxiety, the podcast for online business creators looking to minimize their anxiety and maximize productivity through systems, organization and time management. I’m your host Dia Darling. Let’s do this.
Hey everyone, welcome back to Creatives Crushing Anxiety. I can’t believe it’s been so many months, I am not going to apologize, because life happens, and part of the reason that I have not published a new episode is that June and July have been the busiest months that I can remember. (Note: I recorded this episode prior to recording episode 111)
First of all, I’m sure most of you know this if you follow me on social media, I built a house. Well I didn’t build it myself but I paid for it and other people built it. And that is actually kind of going to be the theme of the next few episodes and no I’m not going to talk to you about mortgages or home decor even though I know a lot about it now.
We’re gonna take a step back, for those of you who follow on Instagram. You may remember that I did a seven-part series called Get Your Sh!t Together. And we go through my methodology that I work through with my one on one clients, and I was recording that series when I was actually going through the methodology myself on this goal of buying a house. I didn’t want to share, then what I was actually working on, but now that it’s happened and now that I’m here, I decided to go ahead and kind of do a little backtrack to show you the methodology kind of as a case study.
Now, if we were to squeeze all seven methodologies into one episode, it would be the length of the movie Titanic so we’re going to break this up over a few episodes and go through the steps.
I’m going to share the link in the show notes for this episode to that series if you would like to register to watch those videos because they’re very very help helpful and they take you step by step on my methodology, as well as if you go ahead and sign up to watch the series, you can get the download.
And as always you can work with me directly on this which would just take it a step even further and make it even more awesome to work with someone one on one who’s been through this methodology, who created this methodology, and just really take your goal from step one to complete.
Step 1: Values and Priorities
So the first step of the methodology is Values and Priorities. Now the focus here is on getting super clear on what’s important to you and what you want. Now, I know that for a lot of people it may feel like, “Well I know what I want,” but a lot of times, we know what feeling we want to have or what experience we want to have but we aren’t really clear on what that looks like. And in the series, I share with you a couple of questions that I think are important for you to just sit down and focus on when you’re about to start this new goal or this new path.
So the first question is what is important to you. I’m not going to share every single thing that I put for each item, but when it came to what was important to me, it was feeling safe, both financially and physically. I wanted to buy a house, but I also wanted to make sure that it was a house that I wasn’t going to feel like, “How am I going to make the mortgage every month?” I got really clear on a number that felt good to me and that I felt like I would be okay with and I actually am $200, a month, under the number that I said, would be the max I would want to pay for all the stuff, you know the house, mortgage and insurance.
And then physically safe, it was really important to me to feel like I was somewhere where I would be okay, especially being a woman who lives by herself like you want to feel safe. And you also want to feel like you’re in a community where you’re safe. I could go into some very heavy race politics stuff but that is not the point of this episode but I just wanted to feel like I was somewhere safe.
The next question is, what do I want? I was very, very clear that I wanted a house that was three bedrooms. I even had some kickbacks from people in my life who were saying things like, “You’re only one person, why do you need three bedrooms?” Because I want a designated office space, because before I was working in this little corner by my dining room table I constantly ran into the wall and hit my elbow. You know what it’s like when you hit your funny bone, it’s not funny. It always felt like it was distracting behind me because there was like my bookshelf. I wanted a space that was definitely that just for that. Another part of the reason I wanted a designated office was because it was right there in the dining room, it was across the way from the couch in the living room, the TV and all that. So it was like I was never leaving work. I could always see my whiteboard I can always see the things that were waiting to be done by me or the things that were on queue for the next day.
Because I’ve worked online for so long, I felt like I had built a pretty good boundary. When it comes to certain aspects of working from home and being done with the day when you’re done with the day. I turned off a alot I don’t get slack notifications on my phone, I have the app, but only if I can check in if choose to. Like this past Friday, I had to run to the store for tampons, and I like was having a slack conversation with someone but it was like I need to go to the store, so I could message to this person while I was at Walmart, and it was available to me. I don’t check my inbox or on the weekends, so I have those boundaries set in place but when it’s literally in the physical space. It’s hard to even maintain those boundaries because even if you’re not actively doing anything that encroaches on them it’s in your energy, it’s in your mind, it’s right there. So like here, I can leave this room I can close the door. Actually, I don’t even have to close the door because this is, it’s separate from the area that’s my bedroom, and the living room like it’s its own room, and I can just work and focus on that and that is so delicious and something I’m so grateful for. I also wanted a guest room, because I have family, I have friends who have moved in, if they want to come to visit me, I want them to have their own space. I wanted two bathrooms, don’t want to share my bathroom with guests.
It was really important for me to have dark cabinets because I’ve had white cabinets. For the at least the last two years and I see how easily they get dirty, and they’re hard to clean so that was important to me. I wanted a big kitchen. It didn’t have to be huge but it needed to have lots of space. I’m an appliance junkie. I love to juice. I love to make my own coffee. I love to air fry, InstantPot… all of that. I’m really, really big on appliances and I wanted space for that, which is also why I wanted to pantry. My sister’s house that I absolutely love, she had built about six years ago. She doesn’t have a pantry and we always kind of talk about how that’s such an inconvenience and so frustrating. So I wanted to make sure I had a pantry.
These were some of the things and I did have probably a longer handwritten list. But these were like things that I knew I wanted. And then, I tell you guys to go into the “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” list. A Wouldn’t It Be Nice Iis this magical thing that I actually discovered because of Marie Forleo who you guys know I’m a longtime fan of. It’s the list of things that would be nice to have. And it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get them it’s not something that you’re maybe even actively pursuing, but you think it’d be nice.
- Glass door shower – Didn’t get
- Hardwood or dark carpet – Got both
- Gated Community – No
- New Build – Yep!
The next thing is what I won’t do. So I want to touch on this a little bit deeper probably than I did in the original series. So this is often something that coaches tell you not to do, they tell you not to focus on the things that you don’t want. Where energy goes, energy flows and all that. I agree that you shouldn’t focus all of your energy on what you don’t want to make sure you don’t get any more of that because you’re just going to attract more of it. Taking some time to decide what the things are you don’t want and are no longer available for will help you capture them, and then move on. It’s a lot easier to see what you want when it’s not cluttered by what you don’t. So I would say even after you do this stuff to go back to the what you want and you may think that you may see things that are fear or you may see things that you can reverse engineer to add to this list. For example, if you said, “I don’t want a two-story,” then you know, on the what “I want list” you can say, “I want a one-story.” I don’t want to house without a garage, then I know I want to garage.
So you’ll see what the steps I actually did this myself and just allowed myself to sit down and think about what was important to me what I wanted, what I didn’t want, what would be nice to have, and it really helped me start the process very very very clear.
Step 2: Current Reality Work
Okay, so step two is going to be reality work. Now, the questions here you may be thinking about how to use them in a situation like buying a house. And don’t worry, I’m going to give you an example. The reason that I wanted to the reality work after we get super clear on your values and priorities is so that we can actually stop and say, “Okay, how much is my current reality matching up to the things that I say I want and that I say are important to me.” So that’s why we start with the values before going into the reality work.
The first thing is to describe a day in your life in as much detail as possible. As I said, this allows you to see how your values and priorities show up, how you may be practicing the things that you say you want, and how what you’re doing that is getting you closer to your goal. So let’s say for me, I talked about the day in my life when I still lived at my apartment and I talked about, go into the store and having to come back and look for parking, or having to climb up to the third floor. I look at those things and you’re not just like focusing on the bad, you look for things that you like to do that might get you even clearer on your own. For example, “At six o’clock I go sit on the patio and have a glass of wine and I love looking over at the city views,” whatever it may be. You just write out as many details as possible, and you get super clear. So then as you’re just writing these things out unbiasedly, you want to stop and you want to read, review it, review it. Wow, you want to review it, and then say what do I love about my current reality. For me, it was I loved that I had friends nearby. I loved that there was a Whataburger literally within walking distance. I loved how close I was to the highway without being right on the highway. Those were things that I loved.
The next question is what do I wish could change? Noisy neighbors…. I had a next-door neighbor that I shared a wall with who was very noisy, loved to play music love to have guests and it drove me crazy. The three flights of stairs… did not like walking up those that have a knee and a back injury so I was not a fan of that. Looking for parking, as a women, I would hate coming home and having to park half a mile away, and walk around clenching my taser like “Don’t come at me.”
So a few of the things that make you “miserable” and they don’t have to, you know obviously make you miserable. But the things that you don’t enjoy about the experience and that you don’t want to replicate. So that would to me was obvious like, “Okay well I don’t like walking up three flights stairs, maybe I should go with the one-story,” [Which honestly, sidebar, I was so set on getting a two-story house because I’d never lived one, and then after going through this I was like, “No, I don’t want a two-story house.” It’s funny because even now I do so much moving around in the house that I’m like, “Oh, this would be so inconvenient if this was this two floors.”]
When you say, “What do I wish would change,” and what actions you’re taking to actually change these things that you can change now. Is it something like, looking for parking. Are there your garages that you can rent out that are there that you know you’ll always have a parking space while you’re still in this current situation. What are your options and what is it that you have available to you. I think getting super happy with your current reality while you create this new reality is so beneficial.
The next thing is to think about three issues you face on a daily basis. Now, this is a very broad question as you’re going through your day not everything is going to align or have to do with your goal. So let’s say your goal is to buy a house and you notice, “Every day I get too tired so I don’t make dinner, and I just like heat up a Lean Cuisen.” Okay, that obviously has nothing to do with your goal of busing a house or does it. Are you spending more money buying Lean Cuisens [which is probably a horrible example because Lean Cuisines are like $2] every day that you could be putting toward your down payment, or putting towards a debt payoff? This was also something that was really important to me when I was looking through my current reality and I always invite you to take it a step further. These first questions are literally just the tip of the iceberg of what you would go through if we were to work together, one on one. This is just to kind of give you a broad overview of the process, For me, part of my reality work was looking at the debts that I had, how much I had in savings and the credit score that to me was so important whenever I was looking through what’s going on, so that I can know where I was at, financially, in order to achieve this goal, that requires a lot financially.
Those are the very first two steps again I invite you to watch the video series and stay tuned because in the next episode we will be going into even more of the process and my process and my own personal case study of this. Thanks so much for listening and I’m so glad to be back by.
This has been Creatives Crushing Anxiety. For more podcast episodes, visit diadarling.com. Did you enjoyed this episode, please go ahead and leave a review on iTunes. You can also subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. Catch you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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