Grace Marshall's Blog, page 14

Five Reasons to Celebrate

Need a reason to celebrate? Here are five to get you started:

1. Celebrate what you have achieved, not what you haven’t

What are your proudest achievements this year so far? And what qualities did you need to achieve them?

Often our focus is on what hasn’t been done. When life is busy, it can be tempting to keep pressing on until the adrenaline runs out, forgetting even to pause and savour that moment of ticking it off the to-do list.

When we celebrate our achievements we generate fuel for the next steps. When we recognise the strengths, qualities and resources it took to get there, we discover the gems we can leverage and build on going forwards. As Tom Peters puts it “Celebrate what you want to see more of.” 

So put your achievements on a “Ta-Da!” list and celebrate what you’ve achieved.

2. Celebrate what’s ongoing and what’s coming

Sometimes we feel like we have to wait until something’s completely done before we give ourselves permission to celebrate. On big projects it can feel like we’re working forever and not seeing results, and that’s often when we lose motivation and momentum.

Just like on a construction site, the foundation stages of a big project can involve a lot of work, and not have much to show for it. After the foundations are in place however, and because of those foundations, the building shoots up and things take on a much more rapid pace.

Celebrate what you are learning, what you’re putting in place to equip and enable your growth. Get excited about what you are building and who you are becoming.

3. Celebrate what you have overcome

It takes strength, courage and determination to reach for your goals. It takes a whole lot more to keep reaching in the face of adversity, to keep on getting up when we fall down, and to overcome obstacles.

Even if you’ve survived it by the skin of your teeth – instead of thinking “phew I’m glad that’s over” or worse, “what’s the next disaster going to be?” celebrate the fact that you have, even if it is “I can survive for a year on 365 nights of broken sleep.”

Some of the most inspiring people are those who have turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones, and use their experiences, their stories to help others.

4. Celebrate what you have

Whether it’s good food, a hot shower, or the people you have in your life. Simply being thankful for what you have means you can fully enjoy it for what it is, not what it should be, might be or what it isn’t.

I love how in the UK we celebrate every time the sun comes out, but it’s also funny how it comes with conversations along the lines of “How long will it last?” and “Is this it? Is this our Summer?” almost looking for the cloud to go with the silver lining. Personally I’d prefer to see the good weather as “one of our summers” enjoy it while it’s here and look forward to more to come.

5. Just because

Come on, why do you need a reason to celebrate anyway?

There’s something wonderfully restoring and energising about celebrating for the pure enjoyment of it. My daughter taught me this lesson when she was two, copying me saying “Woohoo!” with the cutest voice. For about ten minutes we just kept copying each other’s Woohoo and giggling like mad!

So if you feel like celebrating, take a look at what you’ve achieved, what you’re building and who you’re becoming, what you’ve overcome, what you have or just celebrate because you want to!

Whether that’s with a cup of tea or a glass of wine, a party or a bubble bath, a Woohoo or a dance, phone a friend, share on Twitter, have a big giveaway – whatever makes you happy, do it in celebration.

Over to you – what are you going to celebrate today?

Starting badly

A friend told me about her frog the other day. Not an actual frog that sits in a pond. The kind that sits on your to-do list.

That unattractive task you keep putting off.

We’d had the conversation about eating a frog for breakfast before, and last time we found that it was actually not her frog. This time it was.

“It’s not that it’s a hard thing to do. In fact I know I could spend 10 minutes and get it done – but it wouldn’t be brilliant. I wouldn’t be happy with it. I know I can do so much better than this.”

Do you ever get that? Where you know you can do so much better, so you end up doing nothing at all? 

“What I need – and what I usually get – with a project like this is a burst of inspiration. A bright idea that’s just perfect, then I can get on and make it happen. But with this one, I’m still waiting for that thing, that idea. And in the meantime, I know I’m letting my client down by not doing anything at all.”

We talked around what’s stopping her, how clear she was about what needed to be done, how she could give her creative muse a boost, but in the end, it boiled down to this:

Sometimes you just have to start badly.

It’s great to be inspired, to have a brilliant vision. But if that’s not happening, sometimes you just have to do something to get the cogs whirring.

It’s what I often do with writing, when my muse is playing hard to get. Start writing anyway, and let my muse catch up with me.

So I challenged her to do the 10 minute job that would get it done to the basic ‘acceptable but not great’ level. Then give herself a deadline until the end of the week to deliver whatever she had to her client.

With any luck, this will give her creative genius the kick it needs to show up. But if not, at least she will have shipped something. The client would have a basic, working version, and she could always come back with a dazzling upgrade later.

I’m looking forward to seeing how she gets on. In the meantime, what about you?

What are you stuck on – or not even started – because your high standards of perfection are getting in the way?

What if you decided to start that ‘badly’ this week? What would that look like?

Leave me a comment and let me know – I’d love to hear from you!

Competitors: are you leading, following or competing?

Last week I was talking with someone about competition and creativity in his 20+ years in business. 

Along the way he had an opportunity to copy an idea from another supplier. Legally, he could have done it. Ethically, it didn’t feel right. So he took the first batch that he’d produced and threw it away. And went back to the drawing board to design his own.

Years later, he’s now the leading innovator in his industry. His company won best supplier in his industry for two years running and this year the product itself won an industry award.

His competitors are catching up with him now, there are many more varieties of this type of product on the market.

How is he viewing it?

As a sign that it’s time to innovate again. 

As he told me this story it was clear to me that he is a leader. He is leading the innovation in his industry. His competitors are not a threat because they are his followers. When they’ve finally caught up with him, that simply means it’s time to take the next step and create something new.

I don’t know about you, but that encouraged me.

And challenged me to think differently about what makes me feel threatened or under pressure, and ask myself:

Is there another way of looking at this? A way that will change how I feel – and crucially, how I respond? 

Do you get challenged, encouraged or threatened by competition?

Are you competitors a threat or a peer? Are they leading you or a following you? Do they block or stimulate your creativity?

What if you could serve others – your customers, your industry, your competitors even – as well as yourself, by leading the way and being encouraged rather than threatened when others follow you?

And what about other challenges or threats?

The irate customer who’s making personal snipes.
The new kid on the block who wants to ‘pick your brains’.
The demanding colleague, boss, partner or supplier who seems permanently stuck in rant mode.

How would you respond differently if you were to lead rather than react to them?

What if instead of threatening you they actually brought out the best in you?

Love to read your thoughts on this. Feel free to share a comment below…

5 time wasters that are actually highly productive

I’ve been running a lot of How to Get Things Done workshops lately, and one of the lightbulb moments we often have, is that what feels productive isn’t always the case, and what feels like time wasting, can actually be highly productive.

Here are five examples:

1. Thinking time – As one delegate put it recently: “I always feel like I’m wasting time when I stop and think. I feel like I should just get on with it.” But thinking is where we define the work, decide the what, when, why and how of work, and often makes the difference between us doing the work and the work doing us.

2. Recharge time - Whether it’s time to rest, have fun, indulge, or let your mind freewheel - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If it recharges you, it restores your capacity to do your best work, it could be the most productive thing you can make time for.

3. Asking silly questions – I used to hate asking questions, for fear of making a fool of myself and wasting someone else’s time. Now I’ve learnt to start with “can I ask a silly question?” and the answer is always yes. More often than not, it’s not a silly question at all. If nothing else, it gives me clarity instead of confusion. And once in a while, the blindingly obvious turns out to be brilliantly helpful.

4. Letting someone else do it slower… or even badly – My daughter is insisting on doing her own seatbelt at the moment and I have to admit there are times when we’re running late, I can’t bring myself to sit patiently for the longest 5 minutes and I have to take over. But the more I can give her time to do it for herself, the more she learns and the more independent she becomes.

The same goes for delegating. The early days of letting someone else learn the ropes are painful. It’s great when others can do what they can do, so you can do what only you can do, but getting there takes time.

5. Blank space in the diary – When time is limited, it’s tempting to cram something into every nook and cranny, the way a budget airline pack people in like sardines. It feels inefficient to leave gaps.

But gaps give us room to manoeuvre, and margin to adapt to the unexpected. Building margin into our day is precisely the thing that helps us to stay productive in a fast changing, unpredictable world. And if you’ve had the budget airline experience, you’ll know that breathing space itself adds massively to the quality of our day.

Over to you. What have you been denying yourself because it feels like a waste of time? What one thing could you choose to give yourself time and permission for this week? Let me know in the comments below.

The Opposite of Resistance

“You don’t need more genius. You need less resistance.” – Seth Godin

I love this quote. It’s one we use in our How to Get Things Done workshop.

It tells us that our genius is already there. We don’t need to find it, we just need to free it from the resistance that’s got it shackled.

But what’s the opposite of resistance?

Is it flow and ease? That’s one way of looking at it for sure, and there are definitely ways of making things smaller, easier, and less scary to reduce resistance.

What about irresistibility?

I was chatting to a friend of mine recently, Jennie HK, who’s business is all about Irresistible Living or as she describes it, “living a life that excites the pants off you!”

One of her favourite questions is: “What would be an irresistible way of doing this?”

She asked herself this recently when she was resisting running some webinars. The answer led her to create The Irresistible Roadshow – Google Hangouts from 5 different locations in 2 months. First stop Morocco, then Lanzarote, and next in Chamonix, The French Alps.

How’s that for irresistibility huh?

What makes this solution perfect for Jennie is that she is a total travel fanatic. She has shaped her own life and business around travelling, and she had reason to be in all those places anyway. It wasn’t a pipe dream. Suddenly something that she knew she ‘should’ do became something she couldn’t wait to do.

Irresistibility overrides resistance. It might still be hard work or scary stuff, but when you turn up the irresistibility, that stuff stops stopping you.

You power through the tough parts, put up with the mundane and find ways round the challenges because quite frankly, you can’t wait to do it.

So here’s my question to you, for whatever you’re resisting this week:

What would be an irresistible way of doing this?

I’d love to see what you come up with as you play with this. Feel free to share in the comments below!

Life: are you riding or drowning?

We all go through ups and downs in life. Everyone has good days and bad days, highs and lows.

My question to you is, are you riding the waves, or are you drowning in them?

Watch this 5 minute video to see what I mean.

Over to you

Where are you at right now? Are you riding life’s ups and downs, or are you drowning in them? Drop me a line in the comments below – and let me know what you’re going to do about it.

What don’t you have time for?

What do you find yourself saying “I don’t have time for…”?

Watch this 4 minute video for this week’s Monday Momentum message, plus details of three upcoming events to give your business a boost:

If an injection of clarity or a boost of energy is just what you need, here are three upcoming events to inspire and equip you:

7th March – Headzup International Women’s Day

14th March – How to Get Things Done, Stafford

(30% discount code: GM30M)

21st March – How to Get Things Done, Leeds

(30% discount code: LeedsM30)

See you there!

Working Lightly

As the dancer twirls, as the tinker taps,

As the torch guides, as truth reveals

As the sun warms, brightens and awakens

As the stars sparkle and the sparks ignite

As a child skips, rolls and tumbles.

Let me live my work like that.

Let me learn to work lightly.

Working lightly is not a burden. Nor is it working little, small or barely. It is full immersion in that which brings life and brings you to life. Playful. Nimble. Agile. Not half-heartedly, perhaps light-heartedly. In a rhythm that sustains, renews, refreshes and satisfies.

These are some thoughts I’ve been pondering lately. Very much a work in progress, but I’d love to know what you think.

What’s on Your Pick Me Up Playlist?

What do you do when you’re feeling fed up? When you look at your to-do list and feel a bit ‘meh’?

Do you find yourself stuck in limbo land, trudging away halfheartedly, not really working but not not working either? Do you drag yourself to your seat, only to stare at the screen for an hour?

As I said to a client the other day,

If you’re going to procrastinate, you might as well procrastinate well.

Do something that picks you up and gets YOU back on track.

Something I’ve been encouraging my clients to do is to put together a Pick Me Up Playlist – a list of energisers that boost your mood, kickstarts your motivation, and gets you inspired and moving again.

They could be big things or little things. In fact, I find tiny things work exceptionally well. They could include, but is definitely not limited to:

Music – I have an actual ‘Pick Me Up’ playlist on Spotify of all the tunes that get me smiling and dancing. You know, the ones that come on in the car that get you belting away (and possibly driving that little bit faster…)

Fresh Food – instead of reaching for the nearest comfort junk. When I was feeling sorry for myself with half a voice last week, I stopped by the supermarket on the way back from the school run and practically stalked the staff with the reduced ticket machine down the fruit & veg aisle. Came back with loads of fresh fruit and about four punnets of cherry tomatoes to make fresh tomato soup. Even the act of putting it into my basket made me feel better, let alone eating it. Likewise, as much as I love my coffee, it’s water that gets my brain cells working properly.

Getting outside – for a walk, a run, or just a breath of fresh air. Last week, in between the ice storms, floods and tornados, there was a rare moment when the sun was streaming across the fence of my garden. I literally stuck my head outside, faced the sun, closed my eyes and basked – like the Disney character Wall-E – for a couple of minutes. Who knew you could sunbathe in the middle of February in England?

Activities – for me it’s conversations. Being a ‘people person’, inspiring conversation to me is like rocket fuel. Which is why ‘phone a friend’ is on my list of pick me ups. As well as connecting with people I’ve not even met – bloggers, writers and TED talkers – who inspire me. Taking a break to read or listen to something that inspires me can do far more for my muse than staring at a blank screen.

What about you? What would be on your Pick Me Up Playlist? 

Try starting with 10 minutes this week and let your mind play with the idea of a playlist. See what comes to mind. Start capturing your ideas, then add to it every time you notice something that makes your hear soar, wakes up your body or feeds your soul.

Because when you’re feeling fed up, that’s the worst time to try and come up with something inspiring. Start compiling your play list now, then when you need to, you can simply pick something and press play.

I’d love to know what you come up with. Feel free to share in the comments below.

Ever get that “who am I to?” feeling?

That feeling of not being good enough, strong enough, smart enough, important enough, experienced enough, old/young enough, ____ [insert your own] enough to do something?

Imposter syndrome. That feeling that you’re pretending, playing a game that’s too big for you, hoping no one will notice, and any minute now you’re going to get found out.

I get that. All the time.

I had it when I started delving into productivity (who am I, a naturally disorganised, time-challenged person, to talk about time?!!). I had it in bucketfuls when I released my book. I get it regularly still before doing talks, coaching clients, delivering workshops and sending out articles.

When you get that feeling, you have a choice.

You can listen to it, bury your dreams, and distract yourself with something safer.


You can try and ignore it, and have it follow you around, chipping away at your sanity and confidence.


You can reason with it – argue your case, work out all the reasons why you absolutely can do this, and indeed, “who are you not to?” (I get so much delight doing this with my clients) 


You can bolster yourself up with more training, more qualifications, more research, more preparation to get yourself feeling more ready…

But sometimes it’s just a case of doing it.

Doing it for no other reason than “Because I choose to”.

Sometimes it’s saying: “Gah! I don’t feel ready but I’m going to show up anyway. And until someone asks me to leave, I’ll stay.”

Much of my business journey has been on the principle of “If it helps. I’ll keep doing it. If it doesn’t I’ll do something else.”

Last week I had one of those surreal starstruck moments, when I saw my name alongside Brian Tracy and Michael Hyatt in Productive! Magazine.

I felt like I had gatecrashed a party and no-one was asking me to leave.

It felt bizarre. Exciting. Terrifying. And good! Good to know I can be myself, play at this level, and bring something valuable to the party.

What about you? What are you stretching into, that feels terrifying? Where are you finding your imposter syndrome in full voice, practically shouting “who are you to…?”

Go on, dive in. Show up. See what happens.

You never know, you might find yourself really welcome.

And if you want to see my article in Productive! Magazine here it is: What having kids has taught me about productivity.

Care to share your thoughts and stories on this? I’d love to continue the conversation in the comments below.