The Perfectionism Project

I started Smart Twenties in 2013 and at the time, I had no confidence in myself whatsoever. Starting a blog brought up insecurities I never even knew I had and those insecurities kept me small and stuck for a long time. Five years on, I still struggle with many of the insecurities I had when I first started but I’ve learned how to manage them and how to keep myself moving forward. In this episode, I share the biggest lessons I’ve learned and how you can move past your fears - if you have the same ones I had! If you’ve been wanting to start a blog, make sure you join my Start Your Blog Workshop that’s coming up on 10 June 2018. Click here to find out more and sign up.

At the beginning of 2018, I set myself an ‘impossible’ goal of making $500,000 in my business. The first 5 months of 2018 have been a rollercoaster ride filled with failure and self-sabotage, so I thought I’d share it all with you. I’ve learned an incredible amount about myself and my beliefs already, as well as what it means to work towards a goal without knowing exactly how you’re going to achieve it. I hope you find this helpful and if you’re working towards a big goal, I have no doubt you’ll be able to relate. To find out more make sure you visit the show notes. And if you want to sign up for my Start Your Blog Workshop that will be happening in the coming weeks make sure you click here.

I asked you guys if you’d like me to chat about personal development on Instagram Live (@smarttwenties) and you said yes! But some of you said it’s hard to find the time so I thought I’d put it all of it up on the podcast too! In this episode, I’m sharing some of the thoughts behind two of my popular instagram quotes (since the captions never give me enough room). Here are the quotes I’m chatting about: “It’s always wise to ask yourself whether you’re failing on purpose to avoid failing at your purpose.” “To get what you want, you must be grateful for what you have. Otherwise, you’ll always be waiting for more - even when you get it.” I hope you guys enjoy this style of episode and as always, I’d love you to let me know if you do! I’ll be putting one of these up every time I’ve done a couple of Instagram Lives. And if you’re not already following me on instagram, make sure you find me at @smarttwenties!

If you don’t know what you want, it’s insanely hard to get it. And while we all know that intellectually, many of us are still blocking ourselves from finding the answer - without even knowing! In this episode, I’m share 5 reasons you can’t figure out what you want as well as the way that I’ve blocked myself from creating goals in the past. I hope you find it helpful! And as always, this episode is part of a series on this topic. I’ve written a blog post about how to figure out what you want, created a free workbook to walk you through each of the life-changing exercises and filmed a YouTube video that will help you see why you’ve been holding yourself back. You can find it all in the show notes.

The fear of what people think is one that controls many of our lives. Even though we intellectually know that it doesn’t matter what people think, we still find ourselves bending over backwards for approval again and again. In this episode, I’m sharing my journey with the fear of what people think and the exercises and breakthroughs that have helped me overcome that fear. I hope you find it helpful! And as always, this episode is part of a series on this topic. I’ve written a blog post about how to stop caring what people think, created a free workbook to walk you through the journaling exercises that will help you take this to the next level and a Youtube video that will help you keep moving forward while your fear is still there. You can find it all in the show notes.

So many of us work so hard towards our goals without realising that the opinion we have of ourselves is causing us to self-sabotage and stop ourselves from achieving them. It’s something I’ve really started to see in my own life and I have no doubt you’ll be able to relate to what I’m talking about in this episode! In this episode I share the aspects of my self-image that have been stopping me from being successful, from struggling to identify myself as an entrepreneur (and even a blogger), to seeing myself as a disorganised person that’s always late and being bad with money. I also chat about the things I’m doing on a daily basis to reshape my identity and how you can do it too! This is part of a series on self-image. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out the show notes where I share my blog post on 5 Steps To Change Your Self-Image as well as my YouTube video on 3 Reasons You’re Not Achieving Your Goals and my guide to walk you through the process of taking control of your self-image so you can achieve your goals.

There’s an overwhelming amount of information out there about how to be successful. And while it’s important that you have certain things right, it’s also extremely important that you’re not unknowingly blocking yourself from achieving your goals - which so many of us do! In this episode I’m sharing 10 ways that you might be blocking yourself from success (don’t feel bad - I’m guilty of all of them) and I also share which ones I’m currently working on in my business, as I haven’t got this all figured out yet! This is part of a series on the Law of Attraction. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out the show notes where I share my blog post on The Law of Attraction for Beginners as well as my YouTube video on the best Law of Attraction Youtube channels and my guide to help you get started with using the Law of Attraction to achieve your goals!

I used to love doing the Smart Twenties Book Club back in the day, but I always found it quite challenging to talk about books. Which is why I eventually stopped. But now that I have a podcast, I thought it would be fun to bring the Smart Twenties Book Club back in a chattier form. So that's what I'm doing! This is the first of many bonus episodes that will share the lessons I've learned from a book I've just finished reading. These episodes will be going out as frequently or as infrequently as I finish books and I won't be doing book reviews so much as I'll just be chatting about each book as if we were catching up over a coffee. For the first episode, I'm sharing lessons and takeaways from Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. If you've been following me for more than two seconds you already know I looove Tim Ferriss' work and this book is no exception! Listen to the episode to hear my favourite quotes and lessons from the book as well as the highlighting and tabbing system I use to make the most of all of the personal development books I read. Also, there are A LOT of books that were recommended within Tribe of Mentors and I'm planning to read pretty much all of them, but I thought it might be boring to read off the list. So I've included links and a little description of each book in the show notes in case you've been looking for some new reading material. Make sure you check it out after you listen to the episode!

If you’ve never tried using affirmations to help you achieve your goals, now is the perfect time to start! Affirmations are a simple way to help you train your brain to see possibilities you’ve never seen before (if you need a scientific reason to try it - it’s called reticular activation) and create beliefs that will help you achieve your goals and stop you from self-sabotaging. In this podcast episode I’m sharing my personal experience with affirmations, including the affirmations that haven’t worked and why. I hope you find it helpful! This podcast episode is part of a series on affirmations so if you’re interesting in doing a deep dive into affirmations and giving them a try, make sure you watch the YouTube video where I share the do’s and don’ts of affirmations as well as my blog post where I share more about how to use affirmations to help you achieve your goals and a workbook that will help you create your first affirmation. For everything mentioned in this podcast episode, as well as all of the other resources in the affirmation series, make sure you visit the show notes!

Journaling is such a powerful personal development tool that I thought it might be helpful to dive into the things that help me stay consistent with my journaling habit. As someone who tends towards an all-or-nothing mindset, there are certain things I make sure I do and don’t do when it comes to journaling. And I hope that by sharing the things that keep me on track, and the things that reliably throw me off my habit, you’ll be able to create a consistent journaling habit too! For everything mentioned in this podcast episode, make sure you visit the show notes!