For those of you who have been sending me a loving side eye, I’m back! I needed to take a break from blogging for the month of May to tend to life outside of the interwebs. We purchased a home at the end of April and spent the month of May moving out of our apartment, into our home, and closing out the school year.

And I looked up and it was June.

How?!

How have we gotten through the first 6 months of 2018?!
And how do we only have 6 more months of 2018 to go?!

Recently, there’s been these recurring themes that seem to keep popping up in my life which I can sum up below:

It’s good that you’re successful at this current stage of life–but it’s not great. It’s time to level up. And with elevation comes a need for greater discipline.

Just as I got ready to sit down and write this post, I came across this image on my instagram

Well hello then! Get me all the way together. I mean all the way.

While my flesh wants to scream, “Stay out of my business! You don’t know my life!” the better part of me knows that this is more than true. And it made me start thinking about a few reminders I needed to tell myself in order to step into this next season of leveling up.

1. Comfort zones keep your life small.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to use my entire brain in order to do something really well.

I could get away with doing my version of the minimum because it was someone else’s maximum. I could hide bad work habits because of the familiarity of my work and the quality of work I produced when not at my 100.

Now hear me, I’m not saying I did bad work. I did good work, but it didn’t have to be my greatest. My problem wasn’t that I was somehow producing poor work, it was that I was letting the outside world dictate what my internal bar should be.

Excellence does not depend on what the people around you are doing.
Excellence is not relative.

And for a while, I made it that way.

And when I got ready to dive into my next job–I carried those same habits with me, but the work was unfamiliar and the bar was suddenly different.

When life outside of work got hard, I didn’t have the discipline to make sure that my work didn’t suffer.

Suddenly, my comfort zone wasn’t so comfortable.
And that’s exactly what my mediocre behind needed.

If you find yourself being able to do your work in your sleep, getting by without giving your 100%, or notice that the level of your grind changes depending on your outside influences…you are living squarely in your comfort zone.

 

2. Failure is a part of leveling up.

Because I hadn’t truly made my brain sweat in a while–it had also been a while since I had experienced real failure.

That give it all you’ve got and come up short.

That work while ugly crying because you truly don’t have the time to take your hands off the keyboard.

That put it all in the hands of Jesus ’cause ain’t no way you’ll be able to do this by yourself.

Someone recently told me that I needed to learn how to “fail well” to which I replied, “I don’t want to fail well! I just want to do it well!”

But I get it now.

Failure–not because of your level of effort but in spite of it–is how we continue to level up. Those mistakes that we only need to make once because they hurt so bad the first time. Those moments of reflection that come after a big loss that bring more clarity than any success ever could.

That’s how we level up.
But failures like that don’t happen when you’re out here half assin’ things.

They just don’t.

2b. Your people want to see you win.

I wish I could tell you they did, just like I wish I could say that friends who never call you out on your foolishness are the best kind to have…but they aren’t.

And you know it.

And somehow we are still out here mentally reacting like this whenever we get that hard truth wrapped in love*.

*DISCLAIMER: Your people want to see you win. So they tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. But you better know who your people are. There are people out here who haven’t stepped out of the mediocrity of their own lives, whose circumstances are their own fault, but will instead put their blame on you because it’s easier to point a finger than it is to look in the mirror.

Be careful of those people.

Do some digging, be reflective of the part you play and let the rest go.

But if you know your people are your people, don’t call them judgemental. Don’t be quick to dismiss what they’re saying. Don’t let other people in your life convince you that they’re a hater. Sit down, shut up, and take some notes. You’ll need them at the next level.

Don’t say I never gave you nothing.

3. Say ‘no’ now so you can say ‘yes’ later.

We love to tell people how busy we are.

Love. To.

As I write these words–my spirit is reminding me that my high school reunion is in a week and I bet’not roll up there talking about just how swamped I am.

Because the reality is, I’m not and I could be doing way more with my time than I am.

I recently went to a book talk with Myleik Teele and Franchesca Ramsey for Franchesca’s new book Well That Escalated Quickly Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist go ‘head and get it. You won’t be disappointed.

During the talk she spoke about how if we took the time we used to convince ourselves that people who are farther along than we are aren’t deserving of their success and used it to study what it is they did to get there, we too could be so much farther along.

But we rather discredit the work of others (read HATE ON THEM–come on’ just because the hating happens in the inner sanctum of your living room with only your best friend or your cat within earshot doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, sis!) than do the work ourselves.

That’s gotta stop.

Say no to the gossip.

While you’re at it…say no to hours aimlessly scrolling through Instagram (we’ve all gone through the rabbit hole of the explore page…suddenly we’re 265 weeks into a total stranger’s timeline. Don’t act like that’s just me.)

Say no to mid-day naps when you know you have a passion project to work on for yourself or a deadlines for work. A friend of mine says, “I can’t go to work for someone else for 10 hours and not be able to devote an hour to attending a class for my my non-profit or private practice.”

Say no to spending money you don’t have. You have food in the fridge and the new camera you need to buy for your business is going to stay right on the shelf because you just have to have happy hour sushi with your friends.

Since we’ve already established that your friends are your people…you know they would happily come over, eat your food, and lay on your couch for free 99.

John Assaraf said:

Don’t downgrade your dream just to fit your reality. Upgrade your conviction to match your destiny.

So, how are you leveling up with 6 months left in this year? Leave me a comment below.

There is magic in our musings (and outside our comfort zones),
Nicole