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Foreign welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello. Hello, my courageous listeners. Welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to be here with you today. We are talking about one of my top favorite subjects, of course, but we're putting a special twist on it. We're talking about planning. And in particular, I'm diving into something I have been thinking a lot about lately, which is the idea of calm planning and how you can feel ahead without the panic. Okay? So if you've been around here for any amount of time, you know that I love to talk about planning. I love to teach you planning, right? We talk about year on the wall planning your whole year, the 15 Minute Planner Meth to help you plan your week. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of intentionally planning, figuring out what actually matters, and then figuring out how to wrangle the time that we have to accomplish those things, right? And over the years, I've taught planning in so many different contexts, and I want to share today what I think is a different twist or a different lens through which we should examine the topic of planning. Okay? And maybe this is partly because I have done so many, so many different kinds of trainings and had so many coaching conversations in my mastermind with my clients about planning. And I this, I think that's part of it. And another part of it is just how I personally want to show up in my planning this year, how I want to show up in my day to day life in general, and how I think my planning has to shift in order to not just give me a plan that works at any cost, but a plan that feels like you can breathe while you're executing it, right? And I know for sure in talking to many of you and my clients, that we deal with a lot of feelings of panic and feeling frantic and feeling like life is just one giant hourglass where the sand is just like slipping, slipping, slipping, slipping. And everything's going so fast and it's never enough time. And yeah, you just feel like you're running around with your hair on fire. And I have spent many years feeling like that. So if you identify with that and you're like, shoot, she's really got my number there. That's totally okay. It's totally okay. But I personally have really felt some excitement and some relief and like a fresh, I don't know, feel like I'm in a fresh chapter of my planning journey as I think about the idea of calm planning. So I'm going to share quite a bit for you to think about here today. And a lot of you are going to love a lot of it. Some of you are going to want to fight me on some of it. And I think that's totally okay. If you fall into the category, if you feel yourself listening to this today and you're like, yeah, Steph, but like the yeah buts are coming up for you. Just notice that, okay? Just notice it. You can always choose to, to keep what you have on your plate. You know what I mean? Sometimes I feel like we have these stories about anything in life, right? We have these stories about our time and these stories about, you name it, right? It's just, it can be a story. And you get. The beautiful thing is you get to pick. You get to pick if you want to keep it. So that is part of what we're going to get into is really starting to ask ourselves, can we be open minded enough to even have that thought that our relationship to pretty much everything in this world, including time, is often a story. Okay? And like I said, you might be perfectly happy with the story that you're telling yourself or you might be like me. And like the, this really started for me, I would say like two years ago. And I'm gonna share more about that where I really was. Like, you know what? I'm kind of tired of thinking about time in the same way that, like, let me, let me see if I can think something else. Let me see if, like that, we've done that for a while. That's the other thing is you can always go back, okay? You can always go back to having your hair on fire. You can always go back to being the person who never has enough time. You can always go back to busy as a personality. Okay, but wait, maybe we could try something else just like, just to see, just to see how that feels. Okay. A bunch of you are already like, you don't have to sell me. I love the idea of calm. We're gonna get into, like, where wherever you are on the spectrum, what you're gonna find, I think, is we need a little bit of balance in order to really make this work. So let's get into it. Okay? Let's get into what it really means to have a calm plan and how you can feel like. A lot of people will tell me, I just want to feel ahead. I want to get ahead. I don't want to feel so behind. I want to feel on top of stuff. Like, feeling ahead is like the next iteration, right? Even just feeling on top of it, not feeling like you're constantly chasing your tail trying to play catch up, right? But a lot of times, even just the idea of playing catch up, there's so much, like, panic and distress. That's part of that picture. So how can we feel ahead in a way that is kind of chill, right? Like, kind of relaxed, kind of confident? Let's talk about it. So why calm? Why am I thinking so much about calm this year? Because let me tell you, I really am. Well, one thing that's really interesting is I want to share with you all every single time I journal and write about the future. If you've worked with me inside of you're on the wall. If you're one of my year on the wall students, you know that we always do this exercise where you really picture your future self, and you even write from the perspective of that person. Every single time I do this, especially in the last couple of years, I keep seeing the same themes coming up. For me, it's themes of slowness. The word slow, space, and, yes, calm just come up every time. Honestly, if I could even take it this far, it actually is, like, spiritual for me, you know, depending on what you believe, God, universe, whatever you resonate with. For me, when I think about God, God is, like, synonymous with a slowness. There's, like, this slow. Just, like, there's no rush. Like, you think God is rushing. Like, God is just slow. Like this, like, slow spaciousness. Okay? So I will always see my future stuff. Future stuff, future self moving with slowness. Now, she's not lazy. Let me tell you, that girl, she gets more done than anybody. Okay? But that's, like. That's part. Part I want to talk. What I want to talk about as well is. What I'm not talking about is, like, laziness or, like, doing less or just, like, chilling out and, like, kicking back on the couch. Okay? I just mean unrushed, unhurried not freaking out. And honestly, I've really been contemplating this. And to me, I wonder if you agree with this. I think the richest people in the world are not rushed. Like, if I think about what it means to be rich, like, rich in relaxation, right? Rich in not feeling like you are being chased by a saber tooth tiger just because it's the school pickup line. You know what I mean? Like, that's like a richness, like a wealth. Okay, I'm not even talking about having, like, tons and tons and tons of open time on the calendar. That's not even it for me. There is a difference between a day that is full. Like, this is what I really want you to consider. This has been so interesting for me to consider is, can we hold multiple truths? Can we have a full life? I think there is a difference between a full life and a busy life. I've actually been trying to not use the word busy. Like, if somebody asks me how I'm doing or whatever, I try not to say, oh, my God, it's so busy, or I'm so busy. There's something about it that I just personally don't want to identify with anymore. I will use the word full. I'll say, yeah, you know, life's been really full lately, and I just feel like I have such a different relationship to the fullness. There's nothing wrong with having a full life. In fact, I am so grateful for my full life, but I don't want to be remembered as somebody who's so busy. Like, she's always in a rush, like, never has time for anything there. It's just such a difference between those two things. And I really think about the CEO that I want to be. Think about, like, when you picture the kind of CEO that you aspire to be, they are definitely like having a full calendar, right? They don't. They're not sitting there like, gosh, I'm so glad I have eight hours of open time on my calendar. I think this is where we've gone wrong in this conversation in the past is it's felt very much like you're either like, girl bossing your way through life, or you have eight hours of open time. And I'm here to say, let's find ourselves a middle ground, right? I think about the kind of CEO I want to be, and she's definitely got full days, right? Her day is kind of going from thing to thing, but she's not rushing from thing to thing. She feels like she has plenty of time. She is like, we're gonna get it all done. And she's just like. I mean, she's just a boss, first of all, but, like, she just is. Like, I could almost picture her in my mind as if. As if I'm watching, like, a day in her life on TikTok or something, like a mini vlog. And it's like she's the one who's getting her workout, being there for her kids, running her. Her amazing company, kind of like with a smile on her face. Not that she's loving every minute of it, of course. Like, we're human. It's not about, like, gaslighting yourself into thinking everything's amazing all of the time, but why do we have to be so rushed? Why do we have to be freaking out the whole time? And it's really just something that I've come to realize that frantic and panic are optional, okay? Frantic and panic are very normalized. I mean, how many movies and TV shows have you seen where, like, the main characters just, like, stuck in traffic, like, beating their steering wheel? Like, they're just having this terrible day? Like, it's. It's very normal. We just see that as, like, part of the modern. Like, part of modern life, right? But it is really optional. And I've just been thinking about the fact that it's one thing to hit your goal, right? But it's another thing to hit it in a way that you don't hate, okay? Like, to move through it and have the experience of reaching your goal in a way that doesn't, you know, let's not even go anywhere near the B word burnout, okay? Feeling like you just can't take on one more thing, feeling like you're crashing your nervous system just to hit a goal, right? Like, that's obviously none of us want that. And something I've been really loving about this conversation I've been having just with myself so far now with all of you is. I think what this really is, is a beautiful combination of what is traditionally seen as the masculine combining with the feminine. I really feel that the discourse on this topic online is either so incredibly masculine, where it's like, go, hustle. Hard work. Get it done. Go, go, go. 4:00am, like the 5:00am club. Whatever. Super masculine, right? And then the feminine side is like, the soft life. Don't burn out. Don't do too much. You might hurt your cortisol, right? And it's like, I actually really think the yin and yang of this is the beautiful middle ground where I want to be hanging out, right? I want to get so much good work done. Not busy work, good work done. And I want to feel awesome while I'm doing it right. I want to expand myself beyond the. And push myself past the capacity that I ever thought possible. Kind of more masculine, right? And I want to be soft while I'm doing it right. Like, I want to show people my vulnerability. I want to make my clients feel loved and safe and held. Right? Like, why can't we have both? Is really what I'm asking. So to me, when I think about calm planning and having a calm plan, this is. This is really like the. The. The essence of it for me is it's like sometimes I see when, you know, I even hesitate to use words like calm because they've been so claimed by the conversation around doing less. And I just really don't think that's what this is about or doesn't have to be what it's about. You can be an incredibly ambitious person who also identifies as a calm person. This is news to me, okay. And it's something that I am so excited to play with. Okay? So if you're with me so far, what I also wanna share is that your beliefs about calm and your belief about your ability to be calm starts with your beliefs about time. Okay, Let me say that again. Your beliefs about calm start with your beliefs about time. And the reason why is because you cannot be calm if you always have your hair on fire. Period. End of sentence, right? You cannot be calm if you're always freaking out. And I'm not judging you if you're freaking out. You have no idea how much of my time in my life I have spent freaking out about time. It was my. My clients know this. I tell them about it all the time. It was prevailing story of my life. Okay? I am not exaggerating. Like, my number one story, especially when my kids were even younger than they are right now, my number one belief about my business and my life was I don't have enough time. Okay? It was the most compelling story I ever told myself, right? But what I realized one day was that this feeling of having my hair on fire was coming from the belief that I didn't have enough time. Right? Here's the reality. We say I don't have enough time or I'm running out of time. Like, we are reporting the news. Like, really think about that. Like, that's how I was doing it. I was just like, this isn't enough time. It is not possibly enough time. And there are. I could have a whole separate podcast about why I think we tell that story. And listen, I'm not here to gaslight you. If you, if you are someone who has a very, very full schedule and you are, you know, side hustling and parenting and I. Look, I. I get that. It's a lot like, I am not here to take that away from you. That is a hundred percent true. And also, it's so, like, it changed my life to challenge this thought, okay? I didn't actually ever have to have more time in order to release it. I did not end up with more time to stop letting this be the prevailing story. The truth is, I think what really, one of the things that really helped me is I started hearing stories of people who had even less time than me. Okay? There were stories of friends of mine, mentors of mine, colleagues of mine who, you know, were up at 4 o' clock in the morning building their business, you know, and then going to a day job and then having a long commute and then parenting, right? And I would talk to people who were like, yeah, I just don't ever think about the time. Like, I don't make that the story. I think it can be so sneaky. I know. For me, I'm just speaking for myself. As long as I told myself I didn't have enough time, I never had to reach my full potential. I'm sorry. But it was true. As long as I could say. And it was really keeping me safe in my. Again, I'm speaking about myself, okay? As long as I could say, well, you know, I would hit my goals if only I had more time, or I would be further along if only there was more time. If, you know, my life would be totally different if only school wasn't canceled all week. If only this kid didn't have the flu. And you see how that was keeping me safe, right? Like, there was this. This scapegoat. It was like, well, yeah, I would be successful, except it's this, right? And it was very scary to let that go. It was really like my little wubby security blanket that I was sleeping with every night, you know, it was like, well, if I fail, I can just say it was because I didn't have enough time. But what I realized after a while is it was costing me. It was costing me my ability to play bigger. It put a ceiling on how much I could do. And on top of that, it made me feel like crap. If you've gone through your life with that being your prevailing story, you know how bad it feels, okay? But the good news is I'm speaking from personal experience. You don't have to keep that story. Right. What I started to do instead. And I. I think I've shared this before, but it's worth bringing back up here. I found. And you gotta. Here's the thing. You gotta find another thought that you can believe. Here's the one that I found. And the day that I thought this, let me tell you, I was like, I still remember where I was. I was like, sitting in my office in my previous house, and I just remember my jaw opened. I was like, oh, my God, that's it. I remember writing down in my journal, my time is not my most important resource. My brilliance is. And I think I taught this at. Actually at a recent training. So if you've came to that training, you may have heard me talk about this. My double. Your launch training, which happened at the end of last year when I realized that it didn't really matter if I had an hour or 10 hours if I wasn't using my brilliance. It doesn't matter how much time you have, right? You can have. This is the. And this. Here's how we know this is true. There are people with tons and tons and tons of time. I talk to them all the time, by the way. I talk to people who have so much time, who just like, maybe they, you know, their kids have left the house and they're like, I have so much time, and I still can't figure this out. If time were the problem, every person who has a lot of time would be rich as hell. And I promise you, it's not the case, okay? Time alone is not going to fix your problems. Okay? So when I had the thought, time is not my most precious resource. My brilliance is, let me tell you. That's when things started to get fun, because then you can start to play with what I like to call time bending. And time bending looks like taking something that you think should take two hours and being like, what if this takes 20 minutes? I've been telling myself that getting a podcast started is going to take three weeks. What if I do it today? I tell my clients this all the time and they look like they want to kill me, right? They'll be like, well, I want to get a podcast started by the end of this month. And I'm like, cool. Uh, message me on Friday when it's done. It'll take you an hour. They're like, an hour. I'm like, yeah, an hour. That's time bending. I want you to. To let yourself start to Play with this. Especially if time has been your story, it will change your life. Having the thought, what if this could just take 20 minutes? Right? What if this is gonna take half of the time that I think it is? What if time is not a problem at all? It'll change your life. I can promise you that. If this has been your prevailing story, if you release it, there's such a big life waiting for you. Outside of the stories of not having enough time, I, like, I'm not perfect at this by any means, but I can't tell you how good it feels to not freak out anymore when school is canceled or when somebody's sick or when whatever happens, right. I'm not gonna say it's not stressful. Of course it. There's like a moment of stress, but I don't have to let it, like, be this just like, prevailing breaking news, like, banner going across my brain all the time. Okay, all right. So you gotta challenge your beliefs about time if you want to have strong beliefs about your ability to be calm. Okay, now I want to talk to you. I think this part's going to be fun. This is going to be a little bit more, I don't know, like, tactical. I want to talk to you about calm year, what I'm thinking about for having a calm year, calm week, and then calm day. We're going to break this down from big to little. Okay? So when I think about. Let's think about having a calm year. How do we do that? How do we. How do we create a calm year for ourselves? Well, starting everything I have here on my list is, like, kind of in no particular order, but I think one of the things to think of right away is asking yourself, how do you want to feel when you think about having a calm year? What does that feel like for you? And get specific with it. Okay. Maybe it's, you know, for me. So I'll just be specific about me. I don't want to feel like. Let me give you an example. This is hilarious because this just happened. I was sitting down to record this podcast, and I was making my outline and I was like, okay, I'm ready to record. And my daughter's. Let me just be. She won't talk about time. My daughter's going to get off the bus in about 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Okay. So I, you know, before I started recording this podcast, I noticed that I really had to quickly use restroom. And I literally, this is how baked and ingrained it is in me. I was like, well, I can record this episode and like, go after. And I just stopped. Like, it's the practicing in the big moments and the little moments. And I was like, girl, like, calm year is letting yourself get up to go pee, right? Like, let's go to the bathroom, let's get a cup of water, let's step outside for a 5 minute, 10 minute walk. Like, it's just like, that's how I want my calm year to feel. I. And this is gonna come up again in a little bit. But knowing for me, another example is like the power of journaling and the power of writing my thoughts and cultivating my identity before I dive into my day. And how many times I tell myself I don't have time for that, right? Well, me having a calm year means I get to choose that. Especially when it's a high leverage, high value activity, like going on a walk, you know, pouring into myself, writing in my journal. Okay? So how I want to feel is like I have time to do the stuff that I'm like, that I need to do without rushing from thing to thing. That, that for me is how I define a calm year. It's not that I'm not going to be doing stuff. I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be doing all, I'm gonna be doing the most. Okay. But I don't have to rush from thing to thing. So then the next thing is, once you identify how you want to feel, I think it can be so powerful to ask ourselves, how do we start giving that to ourselves now? Right? Why do I have to wait until I hit some benchmark to begin practicing that? Just like I told you, I practiced it right before this podcast episode. So figure out how you want it to feel and start looking for the ways big and small that you can give it to yourself now. Okay. I think so much of this also hinges on having what I call a North Star for the year. Now, I talk about this inside of you're on the wall. So if you don't have that program and you want to take it, you can go to yearonthewall.com and just grab the replay and learn what your north. North Star is. But this is all about knowing what you are driving towards specifically instead of just a vague more. Right? Like, I just want to do more. I just want to do more. I want to do more. Yeah. That is not a calm thought that I always have to be doing more and it's never going to be enough. I don't think you can be calm with just the vague goal of more. Okay. You have to know what you're driving toward, you have to know what the goal is. And if you don't know what the goal is, like I said, it's time to figure that out. In addition to knowing your North Star, I think you need to know the general vibe. Like, what's the vibe? I feel like we sort of already covered this with, like. For me, the vibe is not rushing from thing to thing. What's your vibe? What's your calm year vibe? And then something else is, I love this one. But just know that in a whole year, your brain and your previous patterns are gonna try to mess this up. They're gonna try really hard, and they're gonna do such a good job. Okay. Trying to mess this up for you, your brain. Right? And this is so true with me. And I know I shared that I am my, like, vibe of the year, in addition to not rushing, is being boring, keeping a boring business, having a more boring life so that I can actually hit my goals. And in the first week of the year alone, I did multiple things. I caught myself doing multiple things that were not boring, Engaging in drama online that I didn't need to be a part of. Okay. Uh, another example was, I don't know, think, like, starting to question my plan that I already made for the year, writing a content plan, and then starting to write another content plan. Like, that's not boring. That's not boring, but that I'm supposed to be doing boring. My brain had such a compelling story for why I should do, like, do the things that I was doing. And the truth is that those things do not align with having a calm year. And so I just had to catch myself. And not with any self criticism. I was just like, oh, oh, look, look. Look at these patterns. Like, this is, you know, just redirecting myself. Like, my. One of my kids keeps waking up, like, so many times in the night recently, and I just think about myself walking that kid back to bed. You guys know, the parents know. We just get up, we walk him back to bed. I don't even say anything. I just get up, and I'll walk them back to bed over and over again. I feel like that's what I'm doing with my brain. I'm like, hey, brain, you're out of bed. It's nighttime. Okay, we're going back to boring. Bed is boring. We're going back to boring. I'm just gonna have to do that every single week, all year long, and you're gonna have something that you have to do. Mine is Being boring. I don't know what yours is, but you know what yours is and you just have to sign yourself up for that. The last thing I wanna say about the calm year is thinking about being strategic more than I'm being scrappy. Now I know I am like the queen of scrappy selling. At least I have been in the past. And I still think scrappy selling is a really important skill. Scrappy selling is just like. And scrappy strategies in general is just like getting stuff done, shooting from the hip, like, like kind of just having quick upstart, right? Just jumping in and finding a sale or jumping in and putting up a post, whatever the case may be. But for me, calm year looks like shifting into having a strategy and following my strategy, right? And sometimes being scrappy, like it's like that dopamine itch. So being aware of the fact that I really want to be strategic more often than I'm dipping into scrappy. Okay, so that's calm year. Let's think about calm week. Okay? So if we want to think about, well, what does it look like to have a calm week? If we want to bring the focus in a little bit more to having your calm week, the first thing of course is quick plug for my totally free 15 minute planner method. This is still the method that I use years and years later. I use the 15 minute planner method to plan out my week. You can go to stephcrowder.com plan Like I said, it's totally free. If you've gotten away from it, just come on back. It's the best, right? So set yourself up for success. I do not overly plan my time. I do that when we get to calm day. Okay. I really only detail plan my life one day at a time. So we'll come back to that. But when you do your 15 minute planner method, you're gonna make your list, you're gonna get stuff outta your head. Cause you can't be calm if it's all running around in your head. And you're going to decide your big three for the week, right? Decide the biggest three needle movers that you are going to calmly commit to. Okay, so that's definitely one thing. And then something else is don't give yourself too much time and don't give yourself too little time. I think both of those things are equally damaging. I talk to people sometimes who are giving themselves way too much time to do a task and then they wonder why they have no time. And then I talk to people on the other side who are giving themselves Way too little time. And then they, you know, end up feeling like crap that they put 15 things on their list when like six was realistic. Okay, so maybe this is the year that you can get good at that. Goldilocks. The Goldilocks of it. All right. How can you give yourself the right amount of time? I personally think it's a great idea to push yourself a little if you were going to go one way or the other. Most people need to give themselves less time. But for some of you, you'll know if it's not for you, for some of you, you're trying to, as a wonderful mentor of mine used to say, cram 20 pounds of crap into a five pound bag. Okay, so know, know thyself on that. Right? So another thing with this is under commit, I. I wrote down under commit and decommit. If to have a calm, calm week, calm year, you're stop committing to so much stuff. I know that I am so over committed and I am undoing that this year. And it's hard. Like, I'm not going to lie. It's. It's really hard. But I, week to week, try really hard to under commit when somebody's like, can you, can you do this? Can you do that? And I'm like, sure, I could do that. It's like I'm really making myself pause and be like, yeah, I could. Steph Crowder, just because you could, does that mean you should? So under committing and then what can you do? Decommit from gasp. I know, right? Like, go back. Is there anybody you can go back to? Any commitment you can go back to and be like, hey, I know I said I would, but like, truly, I gotta. I gotta sit this one out. It's hard. But I have found that doing less, doing less when, when possible, especially if it's not high leverage and high value, that's gonna help you have a calmer week. Especially for my women, for those of us who are women, how much are we just doing stuff because we can. Because we're so good at doing stuff. I'm sorry, but we're so good at it. We're so good at doing stuff. So we just do it because we' good at it. And it's like, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Okay. Time tracking, time tracking. Another boring, amazing habit. Where is your time going? Who even knows? I don't know unless I track my time. So I like to use Toggle. It's free. I think I pay for a very low cost paid plan, but that's because I have team members. I don't think you necessarily need to have the paid plan. But I love seeing where my time is going. It tells me the truth. That's one of the other things that helped me bust my stories about not having enough time. I was telling myself, oh, my God, all 25 hours that I have every week to work, they're. They're getting used. And I track my time, and it's like, Steph, you're actually working 15 hours, and then you're doing other random stuff with the rest of the time. It is so eye opening. So if you want to have a calmer week, be tracking your time. All right, and the last thing in calm week is find your anchor. So this one's really, I think, interesting. What can you do on a weekly basis that helps you just ground and calm your whole week? All right, Mine is meals and groceries. If I figure out what we are eating for the week, then. And I like to order grocery pickup. Like, you know, just the drive up. If I just get that done, my week is so much more calm. I don't like to be like, what are we eating today? What are we eating tomorrow? I'll just write down some of our family favorites. I actually took time this weekend to write down, what are 14 meals? Just 14. Okay? 14 meals that I know that we like. And I'm just gonna back to my boring year. I'm gonna repeat those 14 meals. Okay? So that's all I'm doing from here until a while, for the next few months at least, and then we'll see what we get sick of. But, like, I know for me, I'm like, every week, I'm, like, looking up recipes. Like, I don't need to be doing all of that. I can find, you know, just 14 meals that we can just eat again and again. And just know, like, for some of them, I even have them memorized already, so I can really just make sure we have the groceries. And my week is. Is good to go. I also know what time I'm going to the gym every day. I go to the same boot camp class, same time, every most days. And so it really helps having that decision made in advance. So know what your anchor is. Okay, rounding us out with calm day, how do you have calmer days? Well, I certainly think that this is very individual, and you need to find what makes you feel calm. But some thoughts that I have for you, some things that have been game changers for me, Journaling first. I already talked about the power of journaling. A lot of times I don't want to do this, but I have asked myself this question. What if coaching myself and creating high quality thoughts and beliefs is the most important thing that I do in my entire day? What if creating high quality thoughts and beliefs about myself, about my coaching, about my. My company, about everything. What if that is the most important thing that I do in my entire day? And to take it a step further, I have experienced this myself. But a lot of times, low quality actions come from low quality thoughts. So you might be thinking to yourself, yeah, but I just need to get into action. I don't have time to be sitting around writing down dear Diary. Right? But I know for me, when my thoughts are in the dumpster and I try to take action from that place, do you think I'm creating amazing content? Do you think I'm, you know, giving my clients the best of me? Absolutely not. And so for me to have a calmer day, this is just one of those things that I do. Something else is I. I was talking to a client about this, and I. I thought, you know, I need to do a whole podcast episode about how I plan my day the night before. So when you can plan your day just the night before, it takes me five minutes. Some people call this scripting your day where you literally. I don't plan hour by hour, but I literally will just open my planner and be like, first I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do that, then I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do that. And I just kind of take a couple minutes to picture myself doing it. So then when the day comes, I'm moving through it with that sense of calm, not having that hair on fire feeling of like, what are we doing? What are we doing? You know, jumping from thing to thing. Okay. Then another piece is something I'm working on this year that I'm loving, is theming my days. Now, this is a place where you could spend a lot of time procrastinating, so don't go crazy with this. But just knowing that on certain days, I do certain things in my business for the most part. Okay. On Mondays, I am mostly working on sales and marketing. So that looks like creating content, getting ready for upcoming campaigns. If I'm in, you know, an open cart, period, I'm doing sales calls, things like that. Okay? So on Mondays, I'm really, like, right now, I'm recording a podcast. It's Monday. Okay. So that's kind of my theme. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, Those are client facing days. And then Friday is another content day, creative day, CEO day, that type of thing. Okay? That alone has helped me feel so much more calm. I'm not asking myself when I'm doing every day. And the last thing I want to share about calm day is, I heard someone say this a while ago, and I haven't forgotten it is loving on the tomorrow version of you and asking yourself, how can you make her life easier, his life easier, their life easier, Right? Little things like getting your coffee ready to brew the night before, or having a glass of water filled up that you put on your nightstand to chug when you first wake up, laying out your gym clothes, having the lunches packed. You know, it's one thing we've all heard to do that crap in advance, but isn't it so much cuter to think of it as, like, loving that version of you? So now when I come down the stairs and the lunch is made for my kids, I can not just have the thought, oh, good, I made the lunches. But I actually like to think, like, aw, this version of me, like, loves me so much. She took the time to do that, like, and I just feel that little moment of love. I know it's so cheesy, but it feels wonderful. It's a wonderful thing. So that's something you can do to give yourself more calm is how can you love on the tomorrow version of you? So, my friends, I could go on and share so much more, and I probably will share more as the year unfolds, because this is something I'm really thinking about is how to have a calm plan, how to feel ahead without that panic. I really hope this has been helpful. I hope it's given you some good food for thought. I hope that you take what you love and just leave the rest. You know, do with this what you will. And if you enjoyed this episode, if there's pieces that you like, I hope you'll let me know. You can reply to any of the emails that you receive from me or you can just DM me on Instagram. I'm at hey, Steph Crowder. I always love to hear from you. And just let me know, are you gonna kind of try out these ideas that I have for calm planning? You gotta keep me posted. All right, I will see you all in my next episode. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.