The left side involves fear, fear of failure, and fear of missing out. It holds self-doubt, fear of judgment, and a lack of knowledge or confidence.

On the other hand…

The right side of the scale contains just the opposite — things helping you, pushing you forward, and giving you the energy to take that next step.

The right side might include:

Personal values
Your desires
Dreams and aspirations
Anticipation of some positive experience

The right side can also contain avoiding something negative. For example, your boss tells you to do something, and that directive pushes you forward to finish your work.

It could also be accountability from friends and peers pushing you towards a common goal.

So, we have these two balls, right? These two pans.

One is holding you back, and one is pushing you forward.

Do you want to know the secret to taking any action or making any decision?

Make sure the pan on the right is heavier than the pan on the left.

Whatever pushes you forward must be heavier than whatever is holding you back.

As you can see, it’s a balancing game.

If you want to change the balance, you can try to remove some weight from the left by:

Working with your fears
Increasing your confidence
Finding extra accountability that you’re missing

There are infinite ways to change the balance, but the key here is to shift the balance when you’re feeling stuck.

Procrastination or feeling stuck is simply the left pan weighing more than the right.

The things that are holding you back are heavier than the things that are helping you.

That’s why you’re procrastinating.

HOW TO STOP PROCRASTINATING

When you realize you’re procrastinating, you need to see what you have in the right and left pans.

From there, you’ll know how to address this problem.

You might discover that you’re procrastinating because you’re driven by the wrong motivation, maybe because it’s unrelated to your values.

That’s why you don’t really want it.

You have to dive deep into what really drives you and understand why you haven’t taken that first step.

Your motivation to do something has to be strong enough to do it. That’s what that weight is all about.

Your motivation to do something has to be stronger than your motivation not to do it.

Life Design Principle #5 — Principle of Good Quarter

If you’re struggling with consistency, see if you’ve got a good quarter.

What does that mean?

Well, the tricky thing with motivation is that the strongest motivation isn’t necessarily the best motivation.

So, the Principle of Good Quarter addresses that.

Let me explain.

Picture a quadrant. I like to call it the motivation quadrant with two axes.

The horizontal axis, or the x-axis, would be for whether your motivation is for the process or the outcome.

On the left, you would have the goals where your focus is on the outcome.

On the right, you work towards your goals because you enjoy the process.

The vertical y-axis represents your motivation, whether it’s external or internal.

An external force, someone telling you to do something, would be at the bottom of the quadrant, and the top part is an internal motivation, a goal you’re working toward because you believe it will improve your life and well-being.

So, there are four equal parts in this quadrant.

The idea is that some goals are good goals and some not so good.

To begin, let’s remove the quarter that says you’re working on a goal because somebody is forcing you to do it.

Then, let’s look at the bottom-left quarter. These goals are externally driven, and you do it for the outcome, not the process.

Externally-driven goals might be:

Doing something because everyone is doing it.
Pursuing a goal to be accepted
Doing something because of a fear of something bad happening (getting fired or divorced)
Chasing a goal because it’s expected of you

Then, as you move towards the top-left quarter, these goals are still working towards the outcome. You don’t love the process, but you value the outcome.

Internally, deep inside yourself, you know this outcome will make your life better.

These top-left quadrant goals are still outcome-oriented, but they’re very much connected with your core beliefs and values.

These are good goals.

As you move into the last quarter, these are the best goals.

You value the outcome, and you enjoy the process.

You should strive to have as many goals in this “good quarter” as possible.

You might not be able to get all of them there but do your best to.

If you have goals where you value the outcome, but you’re really not loving the process, try to fall in love with the process.

Let’s look at an example.

I didn’t really enjoy running when I first started.

I was doing it for the outcome — my health.

I wanted to be fit, stronger, lose some fat, and so I started running.

And the more I did it, the more I fell in love with it.

Now, I go for runs because I love running, not necessarily to lose weight.

If you’re struggling to stay consistent with a goal, find a way to connect it back to your core values. Make it mean something to you.

This will help you move that goal from the bottom-left quarter to the top-left quarter.

And now, it’s time to move into the final principle of Life Design, where everything comes together.

Life Design Principle #6 — Principle of Ripple Effect

Start the ripple and watch it elevate your whole life.

Life Design and these principles will 10x your life. It’s not about making a slight improvement somewhere. It’s about taking your entire life to the next level.

You can 10x your personal and professional life without doing 10x more things.

Isn’t that what everyone wants?

This is why I created this system. Because it’s what I want.

So here goes.

The Principle of Ripple Effect.

You have all of your different areas of life — family, business, work, personal time, hobbies, and friends.

Each of these are different domains.

Usually, we try to create a new life, having goals within each domain.

We want:

A better career
To take our business to the next profit level
To be in a healthy relationship
To be better parents for our children
To be fit and healthy

We have all of these goals, and we try to work on all of them at once.

But our capacity is limited.

When you try to work on ten things at once, you give each one 10% of your energy at best, which means very average results.

By operating in this way, you aren’t really moving the needle. It gets frustrating, and you give up.

So, what if you focused on one goal at a time in one area of your life at a time?

For example, say you want to focus on motherhood.

You set everything else aside for the month and focus on nurturing a deeper connection with your kids.

Of course, you have your daily routines, but you’re not trying to uplevel your entire life at the same time.

So now you’ve reached the end of the month, and you’ve likely produced much better results.

It’s pretty simple math.

But here’s where it gets fascinating.

By achieving these results in just one area of your life, you are automatically elevating other areas, too.

Because, while you were working on this one goal, you gained some energy, experience, confidence, and new skills, and you can apply that to all other areas.

Your homework?

Focus on one goal at a time for some amount of time, and instead of stretching yourself thin trying to do ten things at once, you see 10x better results.

The ripple effect is when you create momentum, some positive energy for yourself, and that energy pushes you to take another step in a different area.

It’s like magic.

This is the beauty and power of Life Design. You become unstoppable, achieving the biggest possible goals and dreams.

All you need to do is follow these six Life Design principles, apply them in your life, and continuously make adjustments when things aren’t working.

If you have any questions on how to do it, please feel free to DM me on Instagram. I’m always here to support you on your journey.

xx Olena

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