Advice to Dreamers Who Allow Distractions to Stop Them: Quit it!

Have you ever looked back and realized you’ve been allowing distractions to stop you from working on your big dream?

I haven’t traveled for business in since way back in 2000. Ironically, it was the same sunny state of Florida. I’d been sent to an event to absorb and note some new marketing ideas, but I wanted to use any extra time while away to work on a couple of my dream goals.

Besides being a triathlete, I work in the health industry with another author. Besides work, part of my dream goals includes the application of the marketing I see utilized by health industry websites I work with for my own website. The ideas behind what I want to deliver to my followers might be different, but the concepts are the same: Find your market and find a way to deliver something awesome to it.

That’s what 8 Women Dream is meant to propel for me. Build my own blog, build my own audience, build my own way of offering information for women who want to become triathletes after the age of 40. It’s been 3 years since I started to focus on my dream of being a triathlete and yet my personal fitness website is barely started.

Do you ever back-burner your dreams by allowing distractions to stop you?

On this business trip I suddenly found myself on, I had a chance to meet a few top internet marketers. My intention was to pick up web content ideas, make connections with joint venture partners, and create marketing relationships I can build upon for work. During the presentations, I was taking notes on the topics and the impact they could bring to selling products. The information was eye-opening, the kind where you are so taken aback by the information that you forget to take notes.

It isn’t until you collapse on the bed in your hotel room that the ideas start to expand in your mind. “What if I applied that concept to my own product on 8WD? How would that look? What would it be?”

As 8 Women Dream headed into its 8th year,  the director and creator, Catherine had been pushing us with her idea to launch 8WD products. Product launches weren’t new, but they had become popular and she had been advising dreamers to take advantage of this 8WD platform she had built.

Like any marketing effort, product launches take time and energy. There have been times when writing for 8 Women Dream has been the extent of my energy ability for the week. That keeps me disciplined to write, but when have anyone’s dreams come true doing the bare minimum?

After this 2-day business trip, I described the classic marketing strategies behind new tactics to my husband. He beat me to the punch when he asked, “Could we use this in the photography business?” Of course!

Then came the inevitable question of time. We don’t have time to get it done now, so how could we add these new big ideas into our online dream ideas? I seem to always be talking and writing about time. Time to work out, time to prepare healthy meals, time to recover from a workout.

I’ve got the time. Just not the commitment.

That’s the lightbulb moment, the missing piece for not taking steps to my dream goals. Of course, I want to help build my husband’s business, but my dream is to be the triathlete with an online fitness product and to share my fitness inspiration and tips in a popular newsletter.

But first…

First, there’s my website that needs updating.

First, there’s my newsletter template and layout that I need to build.

First, there’s web content that needs refreshing.

Getting lost in which priority is the true “first” priority keeps me frozen and unable to take action steps. I know that I need to let that go. The website will always be work-in-progress. Content will always need updating. And I have the tools in place to develop a newsletter. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be done.

It really comes down to commitment.

I get up at the same time every day–early by most standards, even though I don’t have to commute more than a couple of minutes down the road. But it’s astonishing how quickly I can fill up my morning time with little tasks that don’t serve my dream.

If I take a look at the last week, can I name anything I did for my dream during those morning hours, or after work or even the prior weekend?

I can only recall one.

And the distractions I allowed to take me off course?

Here’s my list:

• I got sucked into reading and commenting on other people’s Facebook posts that weren’t even about health and fitness.
• I binge-watched several series on Netflix–not one was on health and fitness.
• I stayed late after work every day which meant that I didn’t stick with my running schedule.

Instead, I spent my spare time mindlessly drawn into silly distractions that seem to blend all the days together into one until I was taking off for Florida. And while in Florida, did I use the time in my hotel room to work on a dream goal? NO! We make these types of unconscious choices every day. Before we know it, a year has passed.

Is this how I want my life to be? Distracted from the things I want to create?

It is said that acknowledging a bad habit is the first step in overcoming it. I acknowledge that I’ve allowed distraction to deter me from my dream path.

There! Now I have to go delete that Facebook app from my phone! I’m committed to it!

I hope.

Heather