Change Yourself

Romi Neustadt is an entrepreneur in a multi-level marketing company. The Nonfiction Authors Association gave her previous book, Get Over Your Damn Self, a Gold Award. Using her downloadable in-book worksheets, identify your main focus and define priorities and goals to support it. This takes work and clarity about your life goals, but following Neustadt’s concise path can help you succeed. Even with children, a spouse and career, Neustadt shows you can find your way. She seeks to help women who struggle to define their dreams while nurturing the dreams of others.

What You Want

Neustadt asserts that you can have everything you want, but you can’t do everything you’d like to do. To determine what is important, find one word that has meaning for you. Write it down and define it. This word is the guiding star for your priorities and work in the coming year.

How we spend our days is how we spend our life. Romi Neustadt

Write down two or three priorities, in the present tense, that align with your word. Each priority should have at least two, but no more than five goals that support it. Devote yourself to achieving these goals. If a priority is, “I live in a home I love,” because you now rent an apartment, your goals might be to save a specific amount every month and stop eating out.

Spend Time Wisely

Calculate the value of your time by describing your dream life. Thinking ahead five years, write down where you live and in what type of house. Describe your family, including any pets. Describe your career and that of your spouse or partner. Include information about vacations and your finances. Describe all aspects of the life that you want to live. Give that life an annual price tag.

Dream big about what your determination…and daily efforts can lead you to, because it will keep you from wasting your time. Romi Neustadt

How much do you want to earn annually and how many hours per week do you want to work after you achieve your annual income goal? Neustadt wanted $1 million per year with a 20-hour work week.

Multiplying the 20 hours times 52 weeks gave her 1,040 hours per year. She divided that into $1 million. The resulting hourly rate was $962. That became her benchmark. If she could pay someone less than that for tasks, she did and used that saved time to build her business.

Your Priorities 

To determine which tasks to eliminate or delegate, Neustadt suggests documenting everything you do in a week and how long each task takes. Categorize tasks that support your priorities, your goals and your fun. Mark items you hate, tasks you think you “should do,” and daily activities you must do. The last category includes, for example, sleeping, washing and eating. Often, you do things you hate because you think you should, such as housework, grocery shopping and cooking.

There’s an undeniable truth for the modern woman that’s reached an epidemic proportion: We’re Should-ing all over the place. Romi Neustadt

Delegate anything you can hire or train someone else to do. Then focus on achieving your priorities.

Emotional Clarity

Don’t create worst-case scenarios in your head. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt and assume positive intent on his or her part. There are many people in the world, and not everyone will like you. That’s okay, Neustadt states. You control how you feel about yourself. If a relationship doesn’t bring you joy or energy, redefine it. Write down your feelings about yourself in that relationship, whether the relationship is relevant in your current life and the role you play in it. When you free up your emotional energy, people who inspire you will fill your life.

Habits

Creating habits means enduring short-term discomfort for long-term rewards. Change how you think about habits. Neustadt found that she could create new habits, for example, when she identified what caused her pain. She then learned what to do to turn that pain into pleasure. Her addiction to sweets, for example, made her lethargic, reactive and mentally unclear, so she stopped eating refined sugar.

Technology is easy to access and efficient, which keeps you in control. If you reach for your phone to avoid doing something else, your phone controls you. To limit your time on social media or apps, set a timer for five or 10 minutes. When the alarm rings, get off.

The Real You

Playing a role is exhausting. Not being yourself makes it more difficult to define, much less achieve, your priorities. 

When we start expressing and embracing all the things that make up the real us…our inner power shows up. Romi Neustadt

Being authentic means living your beliefs and values. When you act in concert with the person you truly are, you expend less energy and see greater benefits in your relationships and work.

Forgive Yourself

You, like everyone else, concentrate more on your mistakes than your successes. Learning to forgive yourself enhances your physical and mental well-being, Neustadt writes.

Review why you did a particular thing, even if that process is painful. Figure out how not to repeat certain behaviors and let go of your feelings about the event. 

Learn to accept your weaknesses. Many people can list what they do poorly but not where they excel. If you focus on the negative, you’ll use all your energy. 

Fear

When you start a new path that connects to your dreams, you will be fearful.

Fear keeps many of the entrepreneurs I work with from building the businesses they’re capable of. Romi Neustadt

Embrace your fears. Identify the fear and question why you feel that way. Then explore the most positive result of your situation. This creates a new story filled with options. Remember that fear can be a harbinger of progress.

If your dream is to have it all, overcoming fear of what other people think is paramount. You must also learn to truly, deeply and unconditionally love yourself. Champion yourself and your dreams. Eliminate everything that doesn’t support what you want in life.

Owning Your Priorities

Romi Neustadt provides a rare gift: a self-help book that genuinely offers help. Her enthusiastic pragmatism makes Neustadt’s suggestions real-world useful and relatively easy to institute – though, as Neustadt notes, all positive change is difficult. Her program is particularly valuable for prioritizing how you use your time and her methods for reducing fear and self-loathing. Neustadt proves readable and memorable; you may end the book regarding her as a true friend.

Romi Neustadt also wrote Get Over Your Damn Self; and The Official Study Guide & Workbook for Get Over Your Damn Self. Similar books include The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins and What It Takes by Raegen Moya-Jones.