Struggling with how to stay disciplined in your business?? It may have something to do with the good ole’ messy middle…something entrepreneurs often don’t talk about and the #1 thing that throws new entrepreneurs off their discipline game.

I like to define the messy middle as that period of time in between when you start your business and before you get your first client.

You’re super excited, the passion is there, you can’t wait to change the world, you start creating content and it’s …crickets.

Everyone congratulated you on taking the leap and starting, then a month or two goes by and people stop checking in. People stop caring. Everyone who follows you are your friends and family and they eventually stop engaging with your content.

You’re struggling to attract your dream customer and build a community. You’re pouring your heart and soul into creating content and nothing is coming of it yet you know you have to push yourself to keep going if you’re going to make this work.

Then the limiting beliefs, fear, negativity, mindset blocks, imposter syndrome start creeping in. You’re ready to throw in the towel…

“Why did you start this business?” “You’re just embarrassing yourself.” “This is never going to work.” “Give up on your dreams.”

But your intuition is begging you not to. There’s a piece of you that still wants to hold on because you know one day it’s going to click and you’re going to change lives.

That is what I call the messy middle.

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Something my clients ask me all the time is, “how do I stay disciplined when no one is clapping for me?”

Here’s how:

You learn to clap for yourself.

You learn that this whole journey is you vs. you and you’re either going to win or you’re going to lose. Both decisions come down to you.

There’s no competition, it’s no one else but you vs. yourself.

You learn to love yourself and stop relying on external validation to define your worth.

You’re forced to rebuild your relationship with yourself and discover who you really are.

You learn how to be proud of yourself again, just like you did when you were a little kid.

Discipline is a form of self-respect.

When you nail discipline, your vibration raises. That raise in vibration is going to help you attract and manifest your dream customer a million times faster than when you were putting yourself down.

Your intuition guided you to start your business for a reason and it’s been guiding you to not throw in the towel for a reason.

Thank the universe for showing you that you’re unaligned in an area of your life and heal what you’re being called to heal.

Then watch everything fall into place.

Here are 3 tips on how to stayed disciplined to help you get started on this journey:

1). RECOGNIZE WHEN YOU’RE PROCRASTINATING OR GETTING DISTRACTED

Is it happening before you’re about to do something you’re afraid of?

For example, if you find yourself feeling the urge to do the dishes right when you were about to hop on Instagram Stories and do a mini-training for your audience, you’re likely procrastinating because you’re afraid.

Start acknowledging when it’s happening so you can begin to heal.

Remember: lack of discipline is always the symptom of a bigger problem.

2). START REBUILDING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

It’s hard to respect yourself if you don’t know who you are.

Losing yourself and forgetting who you are is much more common than you think and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

It’s happened to me. The journey back to myself was everything I needed.

I’m willing to bet the same for you.

Get grounded in who you are. Get to know yourself again. What do you like? Who is the highest version of you? How can you be that person every single day?

Start looking at yourself in the mirror again. Focusing on giving yourself credit again. Learn how to be proud of yourself again.

It starts and ends with you.

3). RAISE YOUR STANDARDS FOR YOURSELF

Set goals for the day and give yourself a commitment to follow through with them.

Don’t stop until you’re done and that doesn’t mean to hustle and burn out – I don’t believe in working like that – but give yourself realistic goals every single day that you can hold your hand to the fire with.

I like to give myself 3 needle-moving goals I want to accomplish in my business each day and 3 goals I want to accomplish in my personal life. This can look like:

Batch record 3 YouTube videos + upload them.

Spend 30 minutes in my DM’s engaging with people.

Pitch myself to 3 podcasts as a guest speaker.

Vacuum the house.

Take the dogs for a 30-minute walk.

Do a 45-minute workout at the gym.

This will give you something concrete to work off of for the day and allows you to show yourself the respect you deserve to get them done.

Doing this is also a fantastic way to build trust with yourself.

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These are my favorite ways on how to stay disciplined when no one is watching – from someone who didn’t make a single dollar for 6 months and took much longer than that to build an engaged audience.

If you need 1:1 support with this, check out my 3-month Aligned CEO 1:1 Program where you and I would work deeply on rebuilding your relationship with yourself while we get your service-based biz from surviving to thriving.