The Power 12 Minute Increments | DFS 403

Welcome to Destin for Success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, your 12 minute success coach. And today

I want to talk about the power of 12 minute increments. You've

heard me talk about it before. I'm actually getting trademarked

for that. It's really amazing, but I want to break it down and

bring this home a little bit more. Big goals become

achievable in small increments. We get overwhelmed when we focus

on the entire mountain instead of the next few steps. When we

break goals into small increments, it creates progress

without paralysis. My mother had a massive stroke when she was 62

years old, and it wiped out the whole right side of her brain.

It was the size of a grapefruit, and we didn't know if she'd ever

be able to do anything again. It was a right brain stroke. She

was completely paralyzed on her left side, and she didn't make

progress, and she lived 11 years, and we had a lot of

laughs, a lot of tears, and you know it's just.. it's

devastating when you lose your mother, but she did have.. we

did have a lot of fun off and on throughout those years, and when

she was in the hospital, we had to start keeping track on a my

one sister's a teacher now, a principal, principal of the

year, by the way, and she had a spiral notebook in the car, so

she ran out and got that, and we had to start tracking when mom

got her pain meds because she was no longer in intensive care

and in a regular room. I don't know if this was a hospital rule

or if the nurses just made it up. I don't really know, but mom

had to push the button or somebody did on her behalf and

ask for pain meds, and she could have a shot of, I guess, it was

morphine, I don't know, every four hours, and her stroke and

brain bleed was so big that it literally pushed her brain off

center with the swelling, and so with that swelling she had an

incredible headache, and so the pain medicine was for the

headache until the brain started healing, and she wasn't in pain

anymore, so we had to track when she had her last pain

medication, so we could call and then bring it in, and the nurse

would come in and say, 'Ma'am, did you want pain medicine, and

you know her speech originally was a little bit slurred. She

got to where she could talk really well, but she was like,

yes, anything, my head is killing me. And so we start

tracking it, and once that headache went down

substantially, and we could really start interacting with

her more, she was on less pain meds. She was sad and depressed

of all the things she couldn't do, and she kept telling me, "I

didn't have a stroke, I didn't have a stroke, and I didn't know

what to do with this information. So I trapped one of

the nurses in the hall, and I was like, "I don't know what to

do. She keeps saying she didn't have a stroke, and she goes,

then tell her to get up and go home, and I was like, what, and

she goes, well, she didn't have a stroke, then she can get up

and get dressed and go home, and I was like, okay, so mom started

in, well, I didn't have a stroke, and she had again

slurred speech there originally, and I said, "Mom, if you didn't

have a stroke, then get up, get dressed, and go home. And she

goes, "I can't. And I said, "Why not? She goes, "I guess I had a

stroke, but it took us a while to get there that she had a

stroke.

And then she was like, oh my gosh, I had a stroke, now

looked, and she initially could not swallow, and so finally she

could swallow, and she loved Dr Pepper, and so we started

tracking in that notebook everything she could do today

that she couldn't do yesterday, and it started with a Dr Pepper,

and then she was able to eat like oatmeal or something like

soft foods, and we just kept adding to that every single day

what she could do, and then she would get discouraged, and I'd

say, "Mom, let's go through the list of all the things you can

do today that you couldn't do the day you had the stroke, and

every day for the longest time she could do a little bit more,

a little bit more, a little bit more, so it wasn't a matter of

her getting up and walking initially. But she did

eventually. She started walking, so if we can focus on the

outcome. Oops, something just fell off my desk. If we can

focus on the outcome, but little increments to get to the

outcome, like have a sip of Dr Pepper, and you can swallow it

without choking. Perfect. We create progress without

paralysis. We didn't say, 'Mom, get up and eat a whole meal. It

was, 'Take one sip. So, what's that one little thing that you

can do? Consistency beats intensity every time. A little

progress every day is way more powerful than occasional bursts

of motivation. I've had clients prove it again and again, as

well as for myself. 12 focused minutes repeated consistently

can change your business, your health, your relationships, your

confidence over time, a little bit all the time. I spoke

recently, maybe on the last episode, about quitting smoking,

and in one of the smoking cessations programs that I was

trying, said if you can't walk because you're out of breath,

you're overweight, you've smoked forever, you can't get a breath,

walk for one minute and then come back, walk for two minutes

and then come back and keep adding a minute, and then they

recommended you put one small pebble or rock in each pocket,

so now you're walking with weights, and keep adding to it a

little bit at a time, and pretty soon you can do it. I saw an

amazing video of an overweight gentleman who couldn't even walk

because he was overweight, and he started doing a little bit

every day, and now he can walk, because he just built up a

little muscle, a little muscle, a little stamina, a little

stamina. What do you want to learn to do? What is it that

would make the biggest difference in your life if you

could achieve it. One thing I loved about being in

Toastmasters, which is to help with speaking, is you often

started out with a one minute speech, and then a two minute,

and then a five minute, and they kept adding on. You didn't start

out with a 15 minute talk, it was little increments that were

like well thought out. I had been baking in the kitchen with

my mom since I, I definitely remember first grade. I was

baking in the kitchen with my mom, I don't know if it was

before that or not, but first grade, absolutely for sure. I

know exactly where we lived. Our address was 10328 and I remember

baking a cake, and it was in a nine by 13 pan, it was a yellow

cake, and it was a mix, and I said, oh, look, the cake's dead,

and my mom said, no, it isn't, leave it in there, and I was

like, no, it's done. She goes, no, it's not. Leave it in there.

And we argued and argued, and every few minutes I'd say, it's

done, I'm pulling it out, and she'd say, it's not done, leave

it in there. And so, finally, she just really got tired of me

being a pest, and she said, fine, pull it out, pulled it out

in a few minutes.

The center of that cake collapsed because it was raw and

it was my mom and dad and then four of us kids and so we pretty

much kill a cake in an evening after dinner and so we just had

to eat all around the perimeter of the cake I wasn't very good

initially I had to practice I had to get better. I now bake

cakes, I bake cookies, I decorate cookies, and some of

them are spectacular, and some are just kind of half ass. Okay,

it just depends. But I didn't start out very good. It took

practice. Michelle Abraham, who produces my podcast, or Company

Amplify You, produces this podcast, and she gives talks on

podcasting, and she says if you listen to your first few

episodes and they're really good, you waited too long to

start a podcast. Why? Because you get better, you get better

with practice, you get better over time, and when you take

that big goal that you really want to achieve and you break it

down into smaller increments, that consistency builds and

builds and. That momentum creates belief. Every completed

increment builds confidence. When people take one small

action, they begin proving to themselves that they can follow

through, and that's so important for our brains. Jennifer is the

kind of gal that does what she says she's going to do. She

finishes what she starts. It's a very big thing that you follow

through with what you say, and that momentum often leads to

bigger action naturally. You might start with just walking to

the mailbox and back, "My mailbox is not very far, it's

not very far from my front door. I go days at a time without

checking the mail, just because I'm lazy, but I don't want to do

it. But if I want to walk further, I can walk around the

block, I can walk around the block, and then I can add

another, another time, and another time if I want to show

up more consistently on social media, I can spend 12 minutes

and create a graphic, a social media post, a quote, and I can

go back and I can do it again and again and again and again,

build that momentum, do it incrementally. Those increments

add up. The biggest problem most people have is they never start

because it looks too big and too hard. But I promise you, if you

start little and just do one little thing, you're gonna do

more, and you're gonna do better. I had a gentleman that

was not a client, we were actually colleagues in a

mastermind group together, and he wanted to write a book, and I

said, "Let's talk about it. Let me, let me help you break that

book down. And he goes, "Okay. He goes, "So I just sit at my

computer every day for 12 minutes and stare at the screen,

even if I don't have anything to say, that's not how this works.

I said, do you do what you want to write about? He goes, well,

this, that, the other. I said, all right, your first 12 minutes

is to make a whole list of all the things you possibly would

want to write about, and write them down, spend 12 minutes

brainstorming that, and then walk away. Or, if you have 12

more minutes, then I want you to close your eyes for 30 seconds,

think of nothing, open your eyes, and the first three things

that jump off the page, circle them. Why? Because that's what

your subconscious wanted to go. Great, now you have three

possible topics. Next step, come back to it and list all the

stories you could tell about one of those topics. Next 12

minutes, same thing, next hell minutes same thing, then you can

start to see a pattern. Are all three of those topics something

that could be in one book, or are those three books again? If

you didn't know it, I'm a best-selling author.

I think at least six of my books that I've written 100% on my own

have been best sellers on Amazon, and then I've been in

compilation books, I think four that have been international

bestsellers, and I like a short book because I want to get to

the point, I want to get to the point, and I want to tell you

what to do to make it better. Boom, end of story. You want to

write a long book. Great, write a long one. I like short ones,

because I read short ones that have something actionable to do.

It doesn't have to be overwhelming, it doesn't have to

be huge. You want to get your story out in a blog, great,

write a blog, spend 12 minutes, it doesn't take that long. You

can start breaking things down into small increments and make

huge, powerful choices in your life. I'm Jennifer Takagi, your

12 minute success coach, and I look forward to connecting with

you soon. You can click the link at the end of every episode, and

it says "your success call, and you can book a call with me, and

let me help you start breaking your big goals into 12 minute

increments. It's a free call, book it. Let's do this thing,

do.