Last year we had the same goal and we missed it by one spot. We were number 26. It simultaneously felt great to be that close (you know what they say: if you shoot for the moon, at least you’ll land amongst the stars) and crappy to miss the chance to be whisked away on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Dominican Republic.

So, we set the goal again this year. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

But here’s the thing: until very recently, I had been holding on so tightly to this goal that if it had been a little bird, I would have killed it by now.

The goal had claw marks in it. It couldn’t breathe because I’d been suffocating it with the intensity of my grip.

Suffice it to say, having this goal was not feeling good. It felt desperate, needy, icky, and pressured.

Thankfully, while I was having dinner the other night with Scott, one of the top earners in our company, I shared my goal to be in the Growth 25 and how it wasn’t feeling good. I also shared my action plan to achieve it: work my butt off and sacrifice everything for the next 10 weeks to make it happen.

In his adorable Texas drawl, Scott replied:

“You know, often times we think that in order to make more money we have to work harder. But that’s not always the case.”

Cut to me sitting next to him, a stunned expression on my face.

Do I not teach the power of choosing ease?

Do I not teach how the feminine energy of pleasure and enjoyment attracts to us what we want?

Do I not teach that there’s no inherent value in working more hours just for the sake of working?

Do I not teach that it’s not about working harder, but instead smarter?

Yet here I was with my death grip on a goal, ready to sacrifice enjoyment and well-being to grow my business.

Thank God for Scott and his simple wisdom.

It doesn’t always have to be so freaking hard.

Is there value in buckling down? Absolutely.

Do you sometimes have to forego your freshly homemade green juice for producing good work on that particular day? You bet your bippy.

Is getting where we want to go sometimes uncomfortable? It can be, especially if it’s somewhere we haven’t been before.

But squeezing our goals so hard that we give ourselves anxiety attacks from the pressure of it all is totally optional — and actually possibly not even particularly productive.

Not taking good care of yourself in the name of hitting a goal just for the goal’s sake is absolutely insane.

Working harder and harder for more and more hours without intentionally choosing actions that produce results is asinine.

As I listened to Scott talk about the possibility of growing a business by focusing on efficiency and cutting out the activities that don’t net the results we’re looking for, my shoulders relaxed.

As he waxed eloquent about the power of outsourcing, focusing on the most important, not necessarily the most urgent, tasks first, and having clear boundaries, my soul breathed a sigh of relief.

Go for what you want. Go for it with gusto.

But remember that white-knuckling it and suffering for the sake of achievement is absolutely optional.

How you do it is what you get.

When you make it to the podium, get the gig, win the award, or cash the check, it will feel better if you made the process part of the prize.

And remember, making more money, growing your business, or expanding in any way you desire doesn’t necessarily mean working harder.

You want 3 concrete steps to help you stop making it so freaking hard? Here you go:

1. Get clear on what you want (and perhaps more importantly, why you want it).

2. Choose the activities necessary to get you there without spending a lot of time and energy on extraneous stuff that doesn’t net results.

3. Enjoy the heck out of making it happen.

Then you can smile with the delicious satisfaction of not only having reached your goal, but also of having had a damn good time along the way.

This is what I shall be doing over the next 10 weeks as I grow my business with ease and pleasure.

It doesn’t have to be so freaking hard. How you do it is what you get. (Tweet it.)

Do you have a goal that could benefit from you loosening your grip a bit?

How do you make sure that you enjoy the journey while reaching for a goal?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

P.S. Speaking of things not having to be so freaking hard, my mom, Dr. Christiane Northrup, is teaching a fabulous course called Lightening the Mother Load: Healing Strategies for Daughters starting May 9th. In honor of Mother’s Day and the mother-daughter relationship often being one of the most challenging in our entire lives, she’s teaching a course to give you some practical ways to infuse your relationship with your mother with more ease. Interested? Click to find out more and register.

But one of the most important lessons of all: freedom is an inside job

This summer I had a chance to experience it first hand – in a dressing room. Of all places.

I took a branded shopping trip with my friend and colleague Kristen Domingue, creator of Ignite, a boutique style and brand consultancy. She specialized in helping women entrepreneurs link their style to their brand, and their brand to their purpose, so they KNOW they are attracting the right clients, on and off-line.

Given that I do so much speaking, and dress from my suitcase-cum-closet, a little style pit stop felt like a good idea.

After filling out her extensive brand assessment, and talking about my brand and purpose with her, she hit the streets and set aside clothes that were aligned with my core message. Clothes for dates, for speaking gigs, for working with clients, and just plain old hittin’ the road.

We had a lot of fun, broke a few sales associate hearts. And more than that, I realized we are aligned on something important.

I believe that freedom is something that happens inside of you when you tell yourself the truth (about money, love, etc.), and then align your life with that truth.

Inviting Mike on the Freedom Tour? Truth.
Starting the freedom Tour? Truth.
Taking a break this summer? Truth.
Not doing a daily video blog? Truth.
Cutting my hair? Truth.

And as a result, I am feeling more like me, and more free than I have in a long time.

Kristen totally understood that – in fact – just like I believe freedom is an inside job, she shares that branding is an inside job: the outer expression of your internal purpose; aligning your brand with your purpose leaves you free to have the kind of business and life you really want.

I mentioned in another post that this year, I launched a new business partnership, ended another one, then ended the one I had just started, experimented with being homeless, and fell in love.

With all that transition, my brand was a little hard to nail down.

But I can tell you for sure, my essence wasn’t.

It’s in stripping away everything that wasn’t me that the truth of my loves, likes, dislikes emerged. Which meant that while we saw tons of cute clothes, I felt most like me when we took an off-the-plan stroll into Cathryn Malandrino (a personal fave of mine) and I fell in love with a dress I wore to dinner that night, and then to a wedding the following week. It felt so much like me, that I bought it in 2 colors.

There is something magical about finding a dress that compliments you perfectly, fits you like a glove, and truly looks like you to the most important person of all: you.

And as I transitioned all year, a magic is emerging on The Freedom Tour that has it “fit me” just like my Cathryn Malandrino.

This year on The Freedom Tour (just like in the dressing rooms,) I tried on, I took off. I looked for the right fit, color, cut and shape.

I didn’t settle.

And I found freedom in the perfect little black (and peach!) dress…

What I noticed about Kristen in our time together, is that she is committed to getting down to the core essence of a person. She doesn’t want you to just look good, she really wants you to have something that fits YOU.

She’s offering a tele-class about this called Magnetic Branding. On it, she’ll share exactly how to infuse your brand with your purpose – your truth – and how this creates more freedom in your business and life.

Click here to register for it:

Magnetic Branding
November 8th at 3 pm EST

More than anything, I do The Freedom Tour to inspire you to find the keys to your own freedom. I know this tele-class is one tool to help you do that.

Click here to register now.

Here was another smart, young woman who had packed up everything and was living out of her car traveling the country. Awesome!

I emailed her “Contact Us” form immediately not expecting a response (find out why in our episode below.) Much to my surprise, Molly called me immediately and…

…within 24 hours we were laying in the grass in Central Park musing on life, love, and what it means to be a young women with a world of possibilities in your late twenties.

I caught up with Molly this past June (yes, this is a semi-vintage Glimpse TV – note the long hair) at the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR. Molly told me all about the ups and downs of her road trip (which it turns out was her honeymoon!) and she filled me in on her very intriguing new product, Joy Juice.

Joy Juice is made up of 120 journal writing prompts to tune into yourself, get unstuck, and boost your confidence.

Sounds good to me! It will take you through an entire year of getting to know yourself better. Divine!

Tune in to find out how Molly went from wearing a suit and heals selling mini Cokes for $4.50 to business men to sleeping ON TOP of her car, among other inspirational vignettes and giggles.

More Molly:

Website: www.stratejoy.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Stratejoy

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Stratejoy

Get your hands on Joy Juice!

Glimpse TV with Dr. Lissa Rankin: Be all of yourself all the time. from Kate Moller on Vimeo.

Dr. Lissa Rankin is a lot of things. She’s a mom, an artist, a community builder, a teacher, a coach, a writer (her first two books BOTH come out this year: one is on encaustic art and the other one is on gynecology), a wife, an OB/GYN, and I’m sure many other fantastic things that I’ll learn about as our budding friendship unfolds. I was introduced to Lissa through my friend Danielle Vieth (namer of my TV show, one of my business partners, and my dear friend) who met her through Twitter. She launched her blog, Owning Pink, in April of 2009 and it has since grown into an international community 40,000+ strong in just over a year. Her new book, What’s Up Down There?: Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist if She Were Your Best Friend (with a forward written by my mama) will be available in September. I am blessed to have had the chance to catch Lissa on one of her recent trips to New York City to chat about authenticity, letting it all hang out, mom haircuts, and Lissa’s alter-ego, Veronica Rochester. Tune in for our conversation.

Subscribe to Glimpse TV.

So many self-help books, programs, and seminars prey upon the fact that we inherently disapprove of ourselves. If I’m into self-improvement work, I must feel like there’s something to be improved upon in me. I must feel that I am fundamentally flawed and that I need some spackling and sheetrock in order to rectify the situation. Yep, I would say that’s accurate. And, on the other hand, rather ironically, I’ve learned at Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts, at Sacred Center New York, from Louise Hay, and from other teachers, that the key to solving practically any problem is loving myself.

So how am I supposed to love myself while still being obsessed with self-improvement? Are self-love and self-improvement mutually exclusive? I dunno. This one is going to require some unpacking. I once heard that you can’t hate yourself enough to feel better. It turns out that self-loathing isn’t a direct path to happiness. Wayne Dyer says, “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” It is the ultimate frustrating irony that I can’t disapprove of my stomach enough to make it flat and I can’t criticize my fine hair enough to make it thicker.

Our culture has taught us that the best way to get what we want is to push up against what we don’t want. We’re taught to fight for everything. We fight cancer, heart disease, and AIDS. We raise money for the fight. We walk for the fight. We run for the fight. And when we’re trained and raised as fighters, we’re guaranteed to find something to fight against. I’m always surprised by the words chosen by organizations that are fundamentally desiring peace and health. Rather than choose words that are energetically aligned with what their ultimate goal is, they are stuck energizing the problem. We raise money to fight against things rather than raising money to promote our desired outcomes: peace, love, happiness, joy, and health.

It’s no different in my own life. My desire is to be happy and free and to feel loved and to love. My desire is for peace of mind. And yet at times I operate under the erroneous belief that the best way to get there is to pick myself apart. I have a wrinkle between my eyebrows that makes me look old; I said the wrong thing to that guy and now I’ll be alone my whole life; I’m a failure at life because I have some credit card debt; I’m a loser because sometimes I don’t get out of bed until 10 am. Oh, I could go on, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. Plus, I’d rather you fill in the blanks with your favorite self-loathing statements. Air them out. If you articulate the negative, repetitive thoughts in your mind out loud, they actually may sound ridiculous. Get a sense of humor about the whole thing. See if you can love yourself for how mean and disapproving you can be. If you can’t, see if you can love yourself for not being able to love yourself for disapproving of yourself.

When I get really, really upset, I usually call my mom. I’ve been trying to train myself out of that to make sure I have some other tried and true coping mechanisms, but she really often does know just the right thing to say. When I’m beating myself up for doing something wrong, she asks me if I can love myself for that behavior. And I get annoyed and then she asks me if I can love myself for that. She urges me to find a glimmer—just one tiny sparkle—of self-love in that moment. Generally, if I dig deep enough, somewhere in my mascara-stained, snotty-nosed stupor, there’s a little bit of love. And then I can find myself adorable for the whole thing—at least a little bit.

I am the self-improvement queen. At my relatively young age, I have read the vast majority of the self-help section of Barnes and Noble and have taken countless seminars and courses. I once told some friends that I was “getting a PhD in me.” Sound self-centered? Perhaps, but I do believe that by being the best people we can possibly be, we’re able to make the world the best place it can possibly be. I will never tell anyone to stop doing self-improvement work. I do it like it’s my job (which it sort of is), and I would recommend it to anyone.

But, what I will recommend is to come at it from a place of knowing that you’re perfect exactly as you are right now (opt-in on my list on the right for a free 30-minute audio that will teach you how). See if you can open that book on how to find your soul mate while loving yourself and knowing that you’re great. Throw yourself an “I rock” party before you take your next weekend seminar on overcoming fear and playing full out. Put your attention on what you want (love, happiness, joy, self-acceptance, peace of mind, whatever) and then, and only THEN, get out the sandpaper and spackle and begin to buff yourself up. No, I don’t believe self-improvement is mutually exclusive of self-love, but I do think you’ll get a lot further if you love yourself first, right now, exactly as you are. Plus, you’ll have a lot more fun.

Happy self-improving!