What Do You Want 2021 To Look Like & How Can You Make That Happen? By Cate Murden

What does 2021 look like for female CEOs and women in business? How do you keep motivated when working between home and the office? These are really interesting questions, however, are they the the right questions? What about wondering what should they be instead or how do you want 2021 to look like and how do you want to feel throughout it?

Where should you start in being able to answer these questions? Let’s kick off with what do you want 2021 to look like…

1. Do a self-audit: What do you stand for? What things are important to you? What things make you feel good and bad? How can you do more or less of them? 
2. Consider your personal values: They are completely unique to you – your own personal suit of armour. If you were being true to them, how would your working life and personal life be affected? What would you have more and less proximity to?
3. What are your goals for 2021? How can you turn them into a monthly plan so that you can be accountable and understand how you’re constantly moving forward? The feeling of accomplishment is crucial for feeling motivated! 

Now moving on to motivation and, frankly, that’s a bit of a fallacy. 

We only have so much ‘motivation’, in fact our brains are more like mobile phone batteries than we realise! We literally only have so much energy and capacity for motivation, decision and thinking each day. Pretty much all of that is going on our consistent and growing workloads. So, the questions should be, how do we create routines that enable us to do what we need to?

1. Work out different routines that support being in the office or working from home. Get on the front foot. 
2. Crucially, make a commitment to self-care – this is what will make you feel great!

Self-care is portrayed as some kind of indulgence – either that it’s something we do rarely or that is luxurious – like chocolates, bubble baths or spa treatments. 

However, self-discipline is the ultimate in self-care and it’s bloody boring: For example

• Turning off the TV instead of watching another episode of The Crown because the alarm is going off at 5am so you can get to the gym.
• Declining the second drink at the office holiday party. It might even be declining the first drink.
• Saying “no” to the thing you don’t want to do even if someone is going to be angry at you.

How to get good at it? Turn these rituals into routines, then the quicker it becomes a habit, the quicker it’s committed to our sub-conscious and we can leave our energy and brain space for other things! We are the products of our repeated daily decisions.