A simple practice to help you CRUSH uncertainty in minutes

My favorite mindset hack is to lean into what fills you up first thing in your day before doing anything you are obligated to do. It helps you move your energy from surviving to thriving! Since I am all about crushing uncertainty to assist you during this time as you navigate managing through the Covid-19 crisis, I wanted to share a simple exercise on how you can jump back in control of your life and start filling yourself up again. 

I call this the Fulfillment Factor Assessment exercise. Around three years ago, I started using this tool with my clients. In order to help them easily articulate what was most important right now, and how to help them identify what was holding them back, the distractions, the activities that did not fill them up. I published the tool in my book, Be A Badass: Six Tools to Up-Level Your Life after I had see the amazing results leveraging this tool with them. 

As an over-achiever, hyper organized, control freak in my 20’s, I realized that as much as I was checking the boxes of the success map I had set out for myself, I was never really asked if I was happy or if the work I was doing filled me up. Some of you are in that stance right now, survival mode of checking the box to make sure everyone around you is taken care of, but on the inside you are feeling depleted and looking outward for rescue from this situation. In order to reduce the stress and immediately combat uncertainty, focusing on what fills you up matters most right now. 

This assessment tool is what I lean into every time I am feeling uncertain about what to do next, or bogged down and dreading waking up in the AM so I can focus on how to fill myself up first, and step into creative opportunities to serve. The result allows me to truly see what I feel about my activities. What fills me up, and what brings me down, and helps me prioritize my day leveraging what is most fullfiling first thing. It helps me figure out the areas of obligation that might not be filling me up as much, and ask if I can shelve that activity for now. When moments of uncertainty occur, I lean into this method to give me clarity on what I can do almost immediately to change my state and jump into action. Using scales to measure what something means to you, is the easiest way to articulate where you are right now, and also shows you what needs to change.

The Fulfillment Factor Assessment Exercise

Grab a piece of paper and draw the first column to be twice the size of the second column, add a third column the same size as the second. 

• List: In Column A, write down all the activities you do in life. I mean everything! From the time you wake up on Monday to the time you go to bed the following Sunday. Take your time listing this out before you go to the next step. 
• Score: In Column B score how fulfilling each one is, 1 being the least fulfilled you have ever felt, and 10 being the highest level of fulfillment. 
• Group: In Column C put the letter L for Low Fulfillment on anything you scored under a 7, and then put a F, next to any activity that had the score of 8 and up.
  • List all the F's on one page - so you can clearly see what lifts you up
  • Go through your original list and ask yourself with each L activity, anything under a 5, ask is this important right now? Do I have to keep doing this? Is this something I can delegate?

Now that you have your data set, let’s look at it together. This allows you to see first hand what is really going on in your life, your career, you relationships, your business, your family, your commitments, etc. that fill you up. It allows you to assess and realize what pushes you forward, and what is holding you back. 

Now look at your schedule for the day, can you rearrange it so that anything that is in the F group of activities that fill you up, you can do first thing in the AM, during a break in the day, and/or right before bed? Start to incorporate more of what fills up up into your day, every day, and see how your energy shifts into certainty. Also see how your response to uncertainty is a shoulder shrug because you now have a tool that allows you to get your mind right before you tackle anything new. (#winning)

Your Fulfillment Factor is key to understand because it helps you easily identify what to let go of, delegate, stop doing that has a low score, and realize that if you just dialed it up on the items that fill you up, you would to lead a thriving life. Having an easy way to measure what is going on in your world, helps you decide what you need to take action on with ease. When I use this exercise with my clients it brings a lot of “aha” moments on simple things that need to change in order to build a fulfilling life. 

I hope this tool will make it easier for you to shift into what fills you up, and start crushing uncertainty with ease! I recommend you trying this with every member of your family, so you better understand what fills them up, so you can prioritize those activities in their day as well. It will make being in isolation so much easier to manage having this list to suggest, schedule in for everyone. 

Resources: 

• Click here for a copy of the Fulfillment Factor Assessment Worksheet in my Be A Badass Workbook. 
• To access my latest talk on how to use the tool, go to this video on Youtube.
• Want to Crush Uncertainty Together: Join my 6 Week Live Coaching Program Starts on 04/06 at 8:00 PM on Zoom