Mindset hacks to add HOURS back into your week

One of the biggest reasons people start their own business is to create freedom and flexibility. But what happens when you get into your business is that you find the complete opposite. You end up working all the time, and you aren’t even making as much perhaps as you were in your previous corporate job. In today’s episode, I’m gonna share with you some mindset hacks to add hours back into your week.

The money stories you might have around your business

One of the biggest struggles that I hear from business owners is that they don’t have enough time. They don’t have enough time to do all the things in business to travel, to spend time with the kids and partner. So if I asked you, well, why don’t you have more freedom and flexibility in your week? You’d probably answer me with a a list of all of the things that you have to do. And here, my friend, is the exact reason why mindset is so damn powerful in terms of creating more freedom in your life because you’ll have stories about anything that you are wanting to create.

So if you’re wanting to create more freedom in your life, the stories might sound like, well, I have kids and they have sport, and it takes up so much of my time. Or you might say, I have so many moving parts in my business. Or perhaps you say, my team always let me down. Or another thing you might say is, I don’t have any freedom because I can’t afford to go on holidays. I don’t have the time or money. Now, sometimes our stories are true, but often they are just perceptions that we have decided is a truth. So what I’m gonna do now is share some really practical examples about how your stories translate into your reality and how you can shift your thinking around them. And this is the crux of mindset.

So let’s pick one of the examples that I shared before, which is the reason that I don’t have more freedom in my life is because I have kids and I have to take them for their sports. So you might say, I can’t create more freedom in my life because the kids have sports and there’s no one else who can take them except for me. Now, firstly, kids do not have to do sport. I know if you’re a parent like me, of course we want our kids to do sport, and really it’s a massive privilege to be able to take your kids to paid sports lessons, trainings, games. I know for me, at one stage I said, I have to take my kids to swimming lessons because I live in Australia, and if they can’t swim, they could drown. But if I look at that really critically, it’s not a truth that I have to take my kids to swimming lessons. Even here in Australia, I’m willing to bet there’s plenty of Australians who have never taken their kids for a swimming. Now, bear with me. I am not saying don’t take your kids to sport. I’m not saying go and pull them out of swimming lessons. But what I am saying is, rather than looking at the situation and saying, I have no choice, I want you to recognize that indeed, you do have a choice.

You are choosing to take your kids to sports or to swimming if that’s what you’re doing. Now, let’s go this next bit further in that truth that I stated earlier, that we are now starting to pull apart. So the next part of the equation might be the kids have sports and there is no one else who can take them except for me. Now, when you make a statement like that, it might feel like a flat out truth. There is no one else, Clare, it’s only me. And perhaps you are a single mom and you don’t have any family support, but is there really no one at all that could take them except for you? There are some options. Maybe you could ask a neighbor or a friend, or you could hire a babysitter. Now, again, the important thing here is I’m not suggesting that you should do these things. It might not be right for you, but what I am saying is that you do have a choice. Do you notice the difference? And maybe this example isn’t resonating because you don’t have kids, but what I want you to look at is the stories that you were telling yourself about things where you say, this is a truth. I have no freedom. I have no time because X, y, z, and just check in.

How to recognise your stories around money

Is it a truth or is it a story? So let me show you how I can reframe the story about my kids doing soccer and swimming, which is the sports that they play. At the moment, I could very easily say, I have absolutely no choice in it. This is a fact. It takes up at least four, five hours of my week taking the kids to sport. But if I look at that situation differently, I can say I’m actually incredibly blessed to be able to afford to take my kids to two different types of sports each week. And if I break it down, I could hire a nanny to take them to their sports. I actually did that last year. We used to have a nanny who came four afternoons a week. She’d pick the kids up from school and from childcare and she’d take them to their sports and activities. But this year we are really diving into our finances. If you’ve been following my story for a while, you’ll know that my husband and I really wanna build our dream house. So we decided that spending money on a nanny at this point in doesn’t feel aligned. So we’ve chosen in the short term to do the juggle, which means that some days my husband will take the kids to sports and activities, and some days it’ll be me. Now, I recognize this might be really triggering, and you might think, well, I don’t have that choice or option.

But the truth is, you do have a choice with your money. If you were really desperate, you could take on extra clients. I’ve even had clients of mine who have driven Ubers at night for some extra money. When it comes to your money, you do have a choice, and maybe it’s not something that you wanna do, but I think the important thing that I’m trying to highlight here is that you do have a choice when it comes to your money. So the first step when it comes to your money and your freedom is recognizing your stories. I heard someone say today, everyone is struggling with money right now, and it wasn’t the appropriate environment, but I thought, are they, is everyone struggling right now? I know when I look at my own situation, retrospectively, there have been times where I have said there is no money.

But looking at it in hindsight, what I meant was there is no liquid cashflow. And the choice that I was making is that I didn’t wanna pick up extra hours of work, and I didn’t wanna cut back on our grocery bill. We love to eat, you know, good, healthy, nutritious food, and I wasn’t willing to compromise on that and eat tinned baked beans. I mean, that is a very real option. So when I said there is no money, there are a couple of things. When I dive a little bit deeper when I’m out of the emotions of it all that I can recognize, actually I was making a choice not to spend money on those things at that point in time. So when it comes to taking that mindset work and actually converting it into a practical way that create more freedom in your life, I want you to check in, how could I do this differently?

So let’s pick an example about cleaning the house.  One of your stories about why you don’t have more freedom and flexibility in your life is that there’s so much housework to do. So using the framework, let’s check in. Is there so much housework? And the answer might be, yeah, there actually is. That’s the truth. But is there truth that you have to do so much housework? What are the other options? How could you look at this differently? Could draw up a schedule and split up the chores in the house with a partner. If you have a partner, could you hire a cleaner? And again, instantly there’ll be a second layer of stories that pop up, oh, that’s good for you, Clare. You can afford a cleaner, but I can’t. And then I want you to check in on that. What is the story and is it a truth?

So the third hack of how we actually put the thinking and exploring the options into practice is that we actually put the wheels into motion. We take action. So let’s continue on with the cleaner situation. You might think I, I can’t afford a cleaner, like I cannot afford a cleaner. Now, a friend of mine is a nurse, and we were having this exact conversation. She’s a single mom, she’s a nurse, and she said, I literally cannot afford a cleaner. She said to me, do you know that I’m only on $30 an hour and that’s how much a cleaner costs i’d? I’d be actually going backwards by paying a cleaner. So I asked her, do you like your job? And she said, yeah, I love my job. And I said, what if you picked up an extra three hours a week and paid a cleanup for two hours a week?

She’s on 30, the cleaner’s 30. The reason why I said three to two ratio, sorry, this is my accounting brain coming into practice, is because obviously she needs to pay tax on her income. So I, I made a ballpark adjustment for the fact that you know that she would need to pay tax. You need to pay the cleaner out of her post-tax dollars. So I said to her, what if you picked up three extra hours a week in a job that you love doing something that you really enjoy and paid a cleanup for two hours? And she said, huh, I’d never looked at it like that. And it got her really excited because she hates cleaning  Now, hopefully you are charging your time out at a higher hourly rate than what a cleaner earns. If not, we need to talk  Make sure you come and check out my Money Mindset challenge, mindset challenge.

But you can see how the framework works. You need to firstly understand what your stories or beliefs are. Then you check in, how could you do it differently? How can you reframe it? What are the options available to you if you aren’t operating from a place of those beliefs, stories and limitations? And then the last step is to take action to put that reframed solution into place and reap the benefits of more freedom and flexibility your life. Hopefully this episode is highlighted to you how important mindset is because our stories are creating our actions and our actions are creating our outcomes. And if we wanna create different outcomes in our life, it really starts from the core beliefs that we have or our mindset. As I shared at the start of this episode, if you are starting to recognize that your mindset needs a bit of work, it’s not too late to come and join the three days to a new Money Mindset challenge.

You can join via a link in the show notes. We are already two days in, but you can still jump in. Or if you are ready to just go all in on this doors to my course, the Profit Academy Accelerator, open tomorrow to the General Public Accelerator, is my most comprehensive mindset training that I have created to date. It’s a way to master your money mindset, to put yourself in the driver’s seat of your life. There’s no vague woowoo spiritual stuff, or just think positive bs. This is proven strategies to help you break through your limiting beliefs and fears when it comes to money so that you can create the freedom and the lifestyle that you dream of. The link to join is in the show notes, and the sooner you jump into accelerator, the better because there is an amazing early bird discount that is disappearing very quickly and also some incredible early bird bonuses.

So go and click on the link in the show notes for today’s episode. I would love to join you inside this live round of the Profit Academy Accelerator where I can help you to transform your money mindset and create more freedom in your life. Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode, to learn some mindset hacks, dad hours back into your week. If you do follow this framework and have some wins and add hours back into your week, please send me a DMM on Instagram. I’d love to hear about the wins that you have from putting these processes into place. Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of the podcast, and I can’t wait to chat to you again next week.

I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a podcast. So I’d be very grateful if you could take the time to hit subscribe, write me a review, and share any of your favorite episodes with your audience on social media. The more people that we can reach, the more people we can empower to earn more in their business because you can and should be earning more money.