You can’t blow the clowns all at once

Are you like me? Do you have a ton of things you want to do, projects, courses, new offerings, writing a book, or laundry? No wait, I don’t want to do laundry; I’ve got to do laundry. 

Do you have a lot of big goals and dreams to accomplish? 

Sometimes the overwhelm of it all is real, and none of it feels like it will ever get completed.  When we scatter our energy over multiple things, everything gets little dribbles of our attention. 

I’m picturing that carnival game where you race your competitors by shooting water into the mouth of a clown to blow up a balloon until it pops. The first one that pops gets the prize. 

Except in our version, the only person we compete with is ourselves.  And we’re running back and forth, trying to blow up all of the balloons. 

Just as one balloon starts to fill up, you’ve got to set the gun down and run to the next clown, but while you’re doing that, the balloon of the first clown begins to deflate because you’re not spending enough time on it.

And our problem is that we’re working on too many things at once, and we have unclear, fuzzy results in mind.

Experiencing the overwhelm is when Marie Forleo’s Follow Through Formula comes in handy. 

It’s comprised of two steps: 1) Decide and 2) Define

Decide on one goal to focus on and define that goal in a specific, measurable, and attainable way. 

I know that choosing just one goal to focus on feels like a letdown because you have all of these other things you want to accomplish. But if you focus on just one thing and complete it, you can more quickly move on to the next big project. 

Just imagine shooting water in only one clown’s mouth at a time. That ballon will fill up much quicker and burst, and you’ll get the prize of saying, “I did it!”