The Awkward Productivity Habit That Takes 30 Seconds a Day

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

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There’s a habit I do every single morning that takes about 30 seconds, and once I tell you what it is, chances are you might roll your eyes. It’s something that feels weird, a little silly, and as if you’re lying to your own face. I know because I felt the exact same way when I first started this habit.

But I still do it every single day because of how it changed the way I work, the way I live, and how I see myself

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Hey, hey, welcome back. If you are a solopreneur, you probably are the type who wants the practical thing, the system, the workflow, the tool that saves you 20-plus minutes. So when I tell you that the habit I’m talking about is daily affirmations, I already know what you might be thinking. In the last episode, I shared a few that I say every single morning and what they mean to me.

But after that episode, I really started to go back to the time when I first started saying affirmations and also remembered how my husband and son felt when I really encouraged them to say them too. So if you are skeptical or you’re just not entirely comfortable with them yet, don’t skip this episode.

Being skeptical and uneasy and uncomfortable is exactly where we all started. But before we get into it, if you are that practical type or even the mindset type or a little bit of both, that’s exactly what my free community is built for. Because here’s what I see over and over again. You’ve got the planner, the app, the color-coded system, and you’re still stuck.

Or you’ve got all the motivation in the world and have no idea what to do every single time you sit down to work. One without the other rarely ever sticks. So The Real Life Productivity Lounge gives you both. It gives you simple systems you can actually use, plus the mindset and encouragement that keeps you going when the week falls apart.

And if you’re doing it alongside other, other solopreneurs who are also juggling real life and business, no one’s pretending that they got it all together, okay? We are all a work in progress, and we’re figuring everything out together. It’s free to join, so head to cheerstoproductivity.com/community, and I’ll drop the link in the show notes too.

So be sure to join us.

All right, so now back to the affirmations because I, if you haven’t listened to the last episode, go back and listen to that one after to un- to really know the affirmations that I say every single morning, the exact ones. But when I first started saying affirmations, I remember feeling super uneasy and not confident at all.

It really felt like I was lying. I’m saying things that I’m like, “Yeah, that’s not true,” or, “I don’t even believe that yet.” And when I really started to encourage my husband and my son to do it, my son is now 13, and I believe it was when he was 12 that we started. And so it’s been a full year for all of us, at least minimum, we’ve been saying affirmations.

And they were very uneasy. Like, I remember my husband would have to s- like, even now, sometimes we feel like it’s private. Like, we have to do it behind closed doors. We’re saying it to ourselves. My son would mumble it to himself. He’d kind of whisper it, you know? And over time, we’re really having to, like, hype each other up ’cause we’re going through this together and really trying to say, “No, we have to say it out loud.

We have to say it out loud. All right. We’re gonna say it out loud, but no one can be near me. Like, everyone move, go, go away.” And it was hard. It was hard because it feels silly. It feels silly to do, especially because we’re saying something that we don’t even believe yet. But the more I started to say it, the more I started to realize that my voice got a little bit louder, and I started to believe it a little bit more.

Throughout the day, whenever I would have a moment, then I would remember one of the affirmations, and I could say it in that moment, and it would calm me down. And so I started to really see how these affirmations started to change me, and that is at the point when I actually started encouraging my husband and my son to do it, ’cause I was like, “Whoa, this works.”

Like, I’ve done them before but never as consistently as I had been. And so my husband says the same ones that I do and a few others, and then my son has some very specific for him. He’s very much into football, and he’s in school, so his are very much around that to help him get courage and confidence and strength through God.

And b- And so that, you know, that is part of our routine now. That is part of our routine. So the point here is that if you are feeling awkward at first, that’s not a sign that it’s not gonna work. It’s not like a red flag or anything. It’s kind of the point, like feeling weird doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong, but it does mean that you don’t believe it yet, which is kind of the whole point, right?

That’s kind of the whole reason why you need the affirmation in the first place, is because the belief isn’t yet there. Because if, uh, if, if it was already there, if you already believed it, then you wouldn’t need to say it all the time because it would already be ingrained in you, right? So if it feels awkward, silly, whatever, it just means that you’re not quite there yet to the point where you fully, fully believe it, and that’s okay.

But the more you push through that discomfort, the more you’re going to grow from it, and that’s, that’s the amazing part. So if this is where you’re at right now, then I want you to name the objection that you’re actually having when it comes to affirmations. So you can say maybe for you it’s the fact that it feels fake.

Like it just feels fake. It feels like it’s not gonna work. Maybe it’s just that you feel silly, like I just, I feel silly when I do it, and I don’t like to feel silly. Maybe it’s like this is too woo woo for me. Like maybe you’re one, um, someone who is like, “Nope. I’m, I’m just all practical, nothing else.”

Like no mindset, like this is too woo woo for me. So once you name it, once you can identify and name the objection, then you can see it for what it really is, which is resistance. It’s just resistance. It’s not proof that it’s not going to work. It’s just naming that like, “Oh, this is why it’s not working, it’s not working for me,” or,

” “this is why it’s something that I don’t want to do. This is why I don’t want to do it, or why I feel like it’s not going to work.” It’s not proof, but it is showing you where the resistance is coming from So now what does this have to do with productivity, Lucy? Like what does this have to do with productivity?

Well, what you believe about yourself shows up in how you work and you live, So it, it’s basically a foundation to everything in your life, It shows in what you avoid, it shows in how fast you spiral, and all of this affects your productivity because you can literally say affirmations for anything and everything in your life about yourself, about your business, about the type of parent you wanna be, about the type of partner you wanna be, like, all of these different things which helps you become a better version in those scenarios, which does ultimately help boost your productivity.

So affirmations isn’t just another task, okay? I don’t want you to see it that way. It literally just takes 30 seconds or less, like, literally not even a full minute to do, to say, and it changes the person who’s saying them. So if you start to say these affirmations, you start to become a changed version of yourself, and typically that’s a better version because you’re saying positive affirmations.

So you’re l- you’re not second guessing as much, you have more confidence, you have more courage, you believe in yourself more, okay? So in Proverbs 18:21 it says, “The tongue can bring death or life. Those who love to talk will reap the consequences.” And it doesn’t say that it’s bad consequences, okay?

Consequences can be good or bad. So our words, our tongue, what we like to say, is incredibly powerful, and if we’re going to be talking and saying things, we might as well say good things. We might as well say positive things. You know, it’s that saying that says, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, it’s true.”

Yeah, that’s what basically this is. That’s what we tell our son all the time. I was actually telling him About, um, school. You know, he’s just talking about how boring school is and how much it sucks and this and that. I’m like, “Well, that’s what you’re going to continue to believe because that’s what you keep saying, right?”

You just keep saying how boring it is. It’s like, maybe you say something different. Maybe you say something exciting will happen in math today, and eventually, your brain will start to be like, “Okay, well, let’s look for something exciting in math class today,” right? Um, so the things that we say are very powerful, and our brain always wants to prove us right.

So if we’re speaking negative things, then your brain is going to intentionally look for more negative things to prove that you’re right. But if you start to say positive things, then it’s also going to try to prove you’re right, so it’s gonna look for those positive things that you’re saying. You know, you’re saying, um, if you say something exciting is going to happen in math class today, then your brain’s scanning.

It’s scanning for something exciting because that’s what you said. You said something exciting is gonna happen in math class today, so now your brain’s like, “Okay, what’s exciting? What’s exciting? What’s exciting?” And that is true for anything that you say. So you really want to catch what you’re saying about yourself.

Don’t say something like, “I’m so behind. I can never finish anything. I’m just not good at systems. I’m so terrible at this. I’m just not someone who can manage my time well.” Like, stop. Full stop, full stop, full stop. Like, don’t say any of those things about yourself because that is going to stay true. So swap out what you’re saying about yourself with something more positive and forward-facing, forward-looking, okay?

Something that you want to believe about yourself, something that you want to be true. Don’t focus on the now if you feel like the now is not good, okay? So here is how to start. You’re simply going to start by saying them out loud daily, and try your best to mean it, Saying it out loud beats reading it in your head, because hearing your own voice is what helps make it more powerful, hearing your own voice out loud.

And then repetition moves it from just saying it to believing it. So yeah, when you first start saying them, you might not believe it. When you first start saying them, you might start saying them kind of quietly. You know, you might say something like, “I can do this,” right? Like, that’s like the whisper. Like, “I can do this.

I can do this.” But the more you start to say it, the more hyped you get. “I can do this. I can do this. I got this.” You know, you add more energy, the more you start to believe it. But you s- gotta start somewhere, but you gotta start by saying it out loud, even if out loud is with a little whisper, okay? And when to say them, you can attach it to a moment in your routine that you already have.

So it can be before, in your morning routine, your bedtime routine, maybe both. there’s not really, like, a right or wrong time of when to say it. I specifically say mine in the mornings during, as part of my morning routine, but I also say them randomly throughout the day as I feel like I need to change my mindset on something.

Again, listen to the last episode, ’cause it gives a lot of context on why this is And if you’re like, “Lucy, it, it just feels so weird, it feels so silly, it feels so awkward, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to do this,” say it anyway. Yeah. Uh, say it anyway. Say it before you mean it, and don’t give up on it just because three days in you’re still like, “Nope, this is too weird, this is too weird, this is too weird.”

No one is watching you, No one is judging you. No one is looking at you saying them. No one. Say it when you are by yourself in your bathroom mirror. It’s good to look in the mirror, by the way. But say it when you are by yourself. No one is there. You’re not recording yourself. You’re not putting this as content on social media.

Um, you’re not saying this in front of a huge crowd. You’re saying it to yourself. So say it anyways. Really, really push yourself to just say it. Why does it feel so silly to say something to ourselves? I don’t know. I mean, it has to do with a ton of our own traumas, honestly, but we’re by ourselves, and it’s something that is going to be good for us.

So say it anyway, and say it before you mean it. I promise you that the more you do this, the more you will start to believe it, the more you will become that changed version of yourself that you are really wanting to be, and the more healthy your mind is going to be because you’re speaking positivity into your life, okay?

So- If you want some affirmations, you can steal mine from the last episode. I share some randomly inside of my emails or my community. I actually have a productivity spark that’s part of our premium tier inside of the lounge where every week they will get an affirmation. But honestly, you can also ask any AI tool.

You can say, “I’m struggling with XYZ, give me some affirmations.” Or you can say, “I want to improve XYZ, give me some affirmations.” Like, write them down, put them somewhere where you’ll see it, so by your mirror, on your phone, on your desk, on your planner. I actually have them all over the place. Um, but write them down.

Put them somewhere where you can see them, and change them up as often as you need. The awkward feeling that you’re going to feel as you say these things, as you say these affirmations, please don’t take that as a sign to quit, okay? It means that you’re just saying something that you haven’t caught up to yet, and that’s, that’s kind of the point.

That’s why we’re saying it. Your words are already shaping how you show up, whether you’re paying attention to them or not. So, you might as well make them work for you, and starting is more simple than you think. Say it out loud, say it every single day, and try your best to mean it. Pick a part of your routine that you already have and just stack it there.

All it takes is 30 seconds, and it can literally change your life for the better. Now, if you want help with this part, come join us inside the Real Life Productivity Lounge. It’s my free community for solopreneurs, and it’s where we work on both the practical stuff and the mindset stuff together, because you really do need both.

There’s also a premium tier in there, and that’s where I do the Productivity Spark every single week. It’s a short pep talk with one mindset shift plus a brand-new affirmation to keep your momentum going.

That’s the membership that lives in the lounge, but you can come hang out with us in the free tier too. So come get inside. Join us at cheersofproductivity.com/community, and the link is in the show notes. I’ll see you inside and in the next episode.

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.