How do you feel when I ask you:

• Do you have an hourly schedule?
• Do you have things organized and well kept?
• Do you meet all of your deadlines and reporting timeframes for things like taxes?

I hear a lot about how creative types don’t like to have appointments, or be tied to a structured time frame or “systems”.

This is a mindset or rather, an excuse. Creatives, like others, actually thrive in a structured and systemized setting.

What keeps us from making plans and sticking to them? It’s not because we don’t know how, right? We have an idea of when those taxes are due and how to pay them on time.

Children are great examples of this. They thrive when there are boundaries.

Given a set of systemized structures of time, place, and rules, they can really give the task at hand their fullest attention. When they play, they play full out. This is because of the freedom that the systems provide. Freedom to create, play, be joyful and be happy!

It’s when we don’t set up these systems, and don’t follow a productive habit, that we don’t know what to do with that freedom. Freedom needs structure.

Imagine a house without rooms. Where do you put things? What activity do you do in each space because there actually aren’t established spaces.

Things then don’t have their “place”. Before you know it, things that should be in one space are overflowing into other spaces, causing an energy chaos.

So how do we change or alter our mindset to welcome in the idea of systems and structure?

3 Ways to Begin a New Habit = Mindset Shift

1. Be Willing to Do Things Differently

New habits are difficult if not impossible to change if you are unwilling to get uncomfortable. This is because habits are established usually by environment and the people in those environments. Once it becomes habit it’s difficult to change or vary that habit without replacing the environment or people or both.

So in order to create new habits we have to create new settings and often do it with different people. The good news is that most of us work in solitude in our studios.
We aren’t having to do something drastic with our co-workers (ha – like move away or quit). Now we are just dealing with changing the environment so we can implement new ways of doing things.

How about rearranging your studio, your desk, your work place? Your subconscious will not automatically go straight to the old habit.

That’s what your subconscious is so good at… it’s your autopilot whether you want it to make those decisions or not!

Give yourself a way to start fresh with a new productive habit.

2. Be Truthful With Yourself

When was the last time you did a truthful assessment on your environment, those you surround yourself with, and the way you spend your time?

No one likes to perform (or have performed on them) an “audit” but the biggest aha’s and insights to your bad habits and productive gremlins come from doing an audit.

You will learn tons about yourself. I recommend these at least once a year if not more often. I’m a quarterly kind of girl. It works!

3. Learn to Say No

It sounds simple and it is. It starts with prioritizing what’s really important. Not just what is sort-of important, but what is a 10, 9 or 8 on your list in life and business.

We are constantly doing more and more and more… and more! and none of it well!

It’s time to take all your goals, dreams, shoulds, coulds, ought to, need to, can’s and wants and put them all in a “basket”. Go ahead and gather them all up. Take one out at a time and rank it.

Is it a top priority in your life? Would you really be sad and “derailed” without doing it, having it, spending time on it/with it, etc. If not, it’s not a priority and can go in the “Defer Basket”. If it’s a 1, 2, 3 on your priority rating, it needs to go in the “Dump Basket”.

Trust me. It might be painful at first, but you will forget about it very quickly!

Everything that is not in the “Do Basket” needs to be a NO. No for now, not forever. Give yourself that freedom to say “I would love to xxxx, but at this time I cannot. Please contact me in xxxx and we can revisit it.”

It’s going to give you freedom! Lift weight off your shoulders and open new possibilities to abundance.

That opportunity or a new and better opportunity will still exist. Trust me. It might actually be a better, more finely tuned offer next time.

What will it take for you to welcome in structure or systems so you can have freedom, abundance and productivity?