180 | 10 Ways to Resume Quickly (Instead of Starting Over)

Speaker A: Words matter. When we were in coach training, we were taught that words matter. They resonate with different people in different ways. And it is so true. So in episode 178, I was talking about four tips for better consistency. Even when you don't feel like it, you can go back and listen to that episode. But today, the word that mattered so much when I heard it this week was resume. In that episode, I talked about restarting. Oh, but the word resume means everything to me. It feels so good and so different. So in this episode, I'm giving you 10 tips to help you resume faster. So as you're listening, I want you to leave after this episode is over with the one of these 10 steps that resonates the most with you that you're gonna take with you this week and implement.

Speaker B: Are you ready to work less, feel more organized and productive? Start. Streamline repetitive tasks and implement systems that allow your coaching business to run smoothly even without you. If so, you're in the right place. Welcome, um, to the Organized Coach podcast your go to source for practical tips and solutions. I'm your host, Tracy Hoth, professional organizer, certified life coach, simplifying expert, and most of all, down to earth fellow coach just like you. No matter if you think you're missing the organizing gene, have ADHD or just love anything organizing, I'm here to help you become an organized coach with a business that works for you. Pull up a seat and let's get started.

Speaker A: Let's resume.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: In episode 178, we talked about the four tips for better consistency, four levers that we can pull to help us be more consistent. And at the end of that, I was going to keep going and then I thought, oh, this is already almost 30 minutes. I don't want to add more onto that. I am going to do another episode about 10 tips to help us restart faster. I had just done a workshop in Organized Life Academy about restarting, and it was so fun because one of the women shared in there that that has really helped her. So then, uh, one of my clients, previous clients, Jason Shout out, thank you so much for sending me this article. Uh, is a faithful listener to the podcast. And then he got an article and I'll include the link to the in the show notes, but it was from the optimized pastor. Don't restart. Do this instead. And I read the article and I was like, yes, yes, yes. You just know when a word is right and how restarting made me feel even when I was teaching it. Like, I was like, restart over and over and just become okay that you're restarting over and over. But when I read his article, I was like, oh, my gosh. That is the difference in one word, resume. You're resuming. And I love the thought of resuming. Let's say you miss a day, you just resume the next day, or you get busy, or vacation. You go on vacation, or the kids come home and they interrupt you, or you have really busy time at work. You don't have to restart. That feels hard. It feels like the boulder that's sitting at the bottom of the mountain and you're restarting over again. So I loved how the word resume made me feel. You're not wondering how to get started again. You already know. You've already been doing these things. You just resume where you left off. That one word makes a difference. So thank you, Jason, for sending that to me, and thank you to the optimized pastor for planting this idea in my mind. When you think about the word resume, it means nothing has been lost. You're not over. And it made me think about a TV show or a series on Netflix or Amazon Prime. You have these series and you don't restart from the very beginning, right? You just resume. You actually. The word resume is on the screen, and you resume in the episode where you left off. So you haven't missed anything. You haven't wasted any time. You are just. It's so exciting. You get to go back and resume where you left off. So let's talk about that word. The same thing is true for organizing. It's the same thing is true for exercising. For me, like I did, I switched my tracks in Evolo to five days a week last week, and I didn't get the fifth day in. It really bugged me. But I just resume where I left off. We haven't lost anything.

Speaker B: We.

Speaker A: We aren't behind. We're just resuming where we left off. So let's talk about 10 tips to help you resume faster, better, easier. What's the right word there for you? Number one, don't make resuming a big event. And that's just it. Where restarting feels bigger, resuming is just going. We just pick up where we left off. We don't need to wait till Monday. Wait till the beginning of a new month. Uh, my favorite. Wait till I get a new journal or a new planner or some people tell me about waiting until they get their desk completely clean before they can work on something. Or waiting until you have just the right amount of time, like all day on A Saturday before they can tackle a project. So we don't need any of that. We make resuming tiny. Like, not a big event. Resuming happens in a moment. And you can even say it out loud, I'm resuming right now. Not tomorrow, but right now. The longer we wait to resume, the harder it feels. If we just say, I'm resuming right now and take the next little step, that is what can help make it easier. Okay. Number two, remove the shame. When you think about why you stopped doing something or why you missed or how one day turned into five days that turned into a month, then it becomes shameful. You feel like a failure. And then all those old identities, like, I always quit. I can never stay organized. This has ruined everything. I'm back to square one. Or another super popular one I hear is, I'm behind. I always do this. All those thoughts, those stories, they're just things that have kind of, like, patterns that we have that we're finding evidence for an old identity. We just have to remember, we missed a day. We missed a couple days. It's nothing more than that. It doesn't mean anything about who you are. You don't have to feel shame about it. Your identity as a new organized person is not changed. All that progress that you made, or even the little tiny bits of progress that you made didn't go away. You just paused for a moment, and now you're resuming means nothing about you. You have no need to feel shame about it. When we make it a little event and we don't feel the shame around it, we don't make it mean anything. Number three, make the resume ridiculously small. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to resume at 100% or 100 speed or the whole thing, like, big time. And that part is hard, and that makes us procrastinate. So what if we resumed at 1%, we read one page, or we walked for five minutes, or we put away 10 things. One of my clients today and I talked about one of the tasks that she's been wanting to do is to get her files moved over, cleaned up. I think she uses the word shaggy. They're shaggy. She wants to get them cleaned up. And in her mind, that takes a long time. That needs a big period of time. And we talked about, okay, from one of my other clients, which we did a podcast episode on this. No, zero days. We don't have any zero days. Meaning there is not one single day that goes by where she is not going to transfer over or move, uh, file one thing. She doesn't have to do more than that, but she has to do one thing. And it's like that saying, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Is that how it is? That sounds terrible. Is that really what it is? You eat an elephant. I don't like that one. So you. You do the thing one little step at a time. So you're going to resume at 1%. You wanted to have this whole project. You've quit for a month, and now you're just going to take one file and put it over there. Ooh. I think about this in my writing. I'm going to write one paragraph. I'm going to open my planner for the planning. If you're stuck on laundry, you're going to fold one piece of clothing or one load of laundry. Remember, all those small wins are going to create that momentum. And then the momentum just builds. That is what creates the consistency, is just that moment momentum and that resuming. Okay, number four. Ask yourself one powerful question. I love coaching through questions. And I. And I know. I don't think I ever had that skill before I got coach trained because questions direct our brains. And by learning, that's the art of coaching. And a lot of times I have to slow myself down and remember they know the answer. Even though I think I know the answer, they know the answer. And them discovering the answer by me asking them a question or by my coach asking me a question is so powerful for us to discover it. So I call that powerful questions. Asking yourself a powerful question. So here's an example. Instead of asking, how am I ever going to catch up? You ask, what's the next one step in this moment? Or you could ask instead of, I'm so far behind, I'm never, why do I do this? Why do I always fall behind? You're going to ask yourself, what would future Tracy thank me for if I did it right now? M. What is it time for? Lyssa Figgins uses that. What is it time for right now? What would an organized person do next? Okay, it's asking the powerful question so that your brain is directed in the right place. Instead of going to see, why am I like this? What is the problem? Why do I always do this? Which is fine. But in this moment, you want to resume, and so you want to ask yourself a powerful question. Okay, number five. Look for evidence instead of perfection. When you resume, immediately focus on everything you've done already. Don't focus on everything we haven't done and how far we have to go. Instead, look for at least just one piece of evidence. For example, I have been trying to eat more plant based protein. What happens with me is I buy all these groceries, I do this meal prep, I'm like so good for like a week or two and then I run out of groceries and I just don't focus on it for the next day or two. So instead of looking at all the ways I'm not doing it well, I immediately look for a piece of evidence to resume and I look at, ooh, I can list 10 plant based proteins now where I would never have been able to do that before. Evidence. One of my clients today, we were talking and she has done some amazing things. She's accomplished one of her biggest dreams and she has this thought that she's gonna go back to where she was, that she is going to let it go or not be able to make decisions to get where she was before. So as she's resuming, she has to find a piece of evidence. And one of them that I can see so easily is that she made tons of decisions to make this project go through to finish complete this project. So moving forward she'll be able to make decisions. She's practiced that skill. She also is aware that she doesn't want to go back to where she was. So she knows that that awareness is evidence. So what evidence can you find that you are becoming the person that you want to be? Your identity grows through evidence, not through doing it perfectly. So you're resuming and you're finding evidence. Number six, remember your why. Often we don't just need more discipline. We kind of talked about this as one of the reasons to be more consistent is just remembering why we wanted to this, connecting to why we wanted this in the first place. Why does organization matter? Why did you start walking? Why were you spending time journaling every morning? Who benefits from you accomplishing this goal, from you resuming this journey that you're on? Is it you? Is it your family, your clients, maybe your state of mind? Don't resume because you should resume because you remember why it mattered in the first place. Connect to that. Number seven, return to your identity. I love any identity work that we can talk about. Don't ask do I feel like it? Because feelings, uh, they're good, but they're not leaders. Instead, ask who I am. Remember, I've talked about this so much, I am organized. One of my clients thinks I am an excellent decision maker. I am a CEO, remember? With working out, all of a sudden I'm thinking I am an athlete. If I am working out regularly, I can consider myself an athlete. And when I think that I'm an athlete, it just brings me to this new level. So return to your identity and resume, because that's what athletes do. That's what organized people do. I'm someone who follows through. I am a resumer. And then all you have to do is act like that version of yourself. Number eight, expect to resume hundreds of times. This is such a freeing part of the mindset piece. If you think that consistency means you don't stop, well, then every time you stop, you're just going to be so disappointed in yourself. So we know that it's not true. Consistent people constantly stop and they resume. They constantly resume because that's what life is. It's interruptions. It's time. It's pausing, it's imagining, it's dreaming, it's changing the direction. So if you resume 247 times this year, I think you should say, whoa, that's amazing. I never quit. Life is always going to have those interruptions. I mean, think of it. Think of what your interruption was this last week. What was it? Expect that you will be resuming often. Every day, every week, every month. Number nine, Learn something new every time. This is so important. Don't waste any time beating yourself up for the fact that you've paused. But just get curious and think, okay, what happened here? Is it something I can control? If so, what do I want to do about that? What can I learn from that? Is it something I can't control? If so, what do I want to learn from how I handled that, how I showed up? There's other questions you can ask, like what made this difficult? What friction existed? One of my clients just said, I make everything too complicated. I can tell when I get in that zone that I'm making it so complicated. Maybe that's what happened. You had this morning routine that was so complicated, nobody would be able to do it. And so you didn't keep up with it, and now you're ready to resume. But what. What can you learn from what happened? You also could ask, what could make resuming easier next time? So every pause that you take, think about it like it has something to teach you and get curious about it. Remember, shame is going to build that avoidance. It's going to keep you procrastinating, but curiosity is going to keep you learning. So every time that you pause and resume, you're going to learn something from that. Number 10. This is kind of an interesting one, I want you to practice resuming before you need to. What would that look like for you? Could you miss a day of doing something intentionally? It just sounds so counterproductive. But what would that look like? You miss one day intentionally and then you go, oh, I'm resuming today. And it's the next day and you just keep going. Or what if you're working on drinking, you know, let's say eight glasses of water, and you skip glass seven on purpose, and then glass eight. You're like, I'm resuming right here. I'm back. And you're training your brain to see that pauses are normal and it's not a problem. Like, you have the capacity to resume. You're kind of removing the drama from it and just teaching yourself that resuming is simply part of life. The goal isn't perfection. The goal is becoming someone who always comes back. And it's almost natural to the point where you don't even have to think about these 10 ways to resume quicker. You just do it, because that's what life is to close.

Speaker B: Let's review.

Speaker A: Number one, don't make resuming a big event. Number two, remove the shame. Number three, make the resume ridiculously small. Number four, ask yourself one powerful question. Pick one that you can ask yourself every time. Look for evidence instead of perfection. Number five, find a piece of evidence. Number six, remember your why. Connect back to why you're doing this in the first place. Number seven, return to your identity. What does someone with this identity do? Number eight, expect to resume hundreds of times. Number nine, learn something every time. And number 10, practice resuming before you need to plan it out this week. In closing, to tie it Back to episode 178 where we talked about four tips for better consistency, maybe the consistency is simply becoming really good at resuming. And I kind of talked about that in that episode because life is always going to interrupt us, but we are resumers. That makes me think of the saying, I think it used to be up on a wall. Like, we are overcomers. No, we are resumers as well. So expect challenges. Organized people I know aren't organized because they never got off track, fell behind, skipped a day. They're organized because they don't stay off track. They've learned to resume. It's not a big deal. They pick up where they left off. So choose one tip and implement it this week. And then think about what is one thing you've been waiting to restart that you could resume today, right now. Because remember, you're not beginning from scratch you're resuming. I picture I just watched a whole series and I picture that resume button. I like to hit it as fast as possible. Skip the intro. I don't need to see the intro again. Skip the intro and let's go. Thanks so much for listening today. If this episode encouraged you, share it with someone who thinks they've fallen behind. I think all of us need a reminder that we don't need to start over. We can simply resume. Happy organizing. See you next week. Wait.

Speaker B: If you're finding this podcast useful, you must check out the Organized Coach Academy. It's my course where I walk you through every step to get your business organized. To get yourself organized, to save money and time to prepare to hire someone to do all the things that you want to do in your business with ease. Check that out@simplysquaredaway.com OCA Also, I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but

Speaker A: I would love it.

Speaker B: It's my way of knowing that you're enjoying the podcast. If you leave a written review, I have lots of freebies for you. They're linked in the show notes. You can find them in my bio on Instagram tracyhoth. And until next week, have a beautiful day.