Chapter 1: What is the main theme of March's podcast series?
want to ask you something and I want you to actually think about it before you answer. How many times have you started something and your routine and you have it, a new way of doing things and it worked beautifully for about two weeks, maybe three if you were really fired up and then life happened. You got busy, you got tired, you got stressed and the whole thing just quietly fall apart.
And here's the part that really gets me. You probably told yourself some version of the same story every time.
Chapter 2: Why do our best intentions often fail to stick?
I just need more discipline or I'm not a morning person or I am terrible at sticking to things. What if none of that is true? What if the problem was that you were trying to run on motivation? And motivation is one of the least reliable things we have. Welcome to the Leading Yourself Podcast. This is your host, Carolina de Arriba.
I'm an HR professional, coach, wife, mom, and above all things, a goal getter. In this podcast, we're going to be digging into all things leadership, professional and career development, habits, and relationships. This is a podcast for those who want to become the best version of themselves. Those who have big dreams and are willing to embrace the journey and put in the work to achieve them.
My goal is to share with you the tools, tips, and tricks to help you in your journey. So let's dig in into today's episode. Welcome back to a new episode of the Leading Yourself podcast. Today, I am excited because we're entering a new month and that means a new theme on the podcast. Can you guess, just based on our introduction, what our theme is going to be this month?
Let me tell you a little bit more and let me connect the dots on the journey we've been so far this year. This month, we're making space to talk about building a life that actually works. Not in theory, not on your best day when you wake up motivated and your inbox is empty and you get to sit down and just enjoy your cup of coffee. I'm talking about real life on a random Thursday.
when you're tired and your calendar is packed and your to-do list feels overwhelming, that's the life we're designing for this month. Because here's the thing, clarity only matters if it survives real life. So now we're in March, and if you've been here since January, first of all, I see you. I am so proud of you. You've done a lot of real work this year. In January, we got honest.
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Chapter 3: What are the three levers for building effective systems?
We stopped chasing what looked impressive. We stopped defaulting to what we thought we should want, and we asked ourselves, what actually matters to me? What kind of person am I becoming? What do I want my life to feel like, not just look like? We build clarity. In February, we got even more honest. We stopped pretending that time management was the solution to everything.
We did that energy audit. You remember? We track what drains us, what fuels us, when we're sharp, when we're depleted, when we're operating in our genius zone, and when we're quietly burning out. We stopped treating time as the primary currency and we started treating energy as the real one. And that changed the conversation. But here's the question.
What good is clarity if life just bulldozed right through it? You know your values, you know your capacity, you know what fuels you, and yet a few weeks in, you're still saying yes to things that don't align. You're operating past your limits, watching your best intentions get swallowed by everyday noise.
Not because you don't care, not because you're weak, but because clarity without structure doesn't last. And that's That's what March is about. We're calling this series Protect the Work because you've done the inner work. You have reflected, you have audited, you've got honest with yourself. Now we build the outer structure to protect it, systems and boundaries.
Two words that can sound a little corporate, a little therapy speak, but in reality, They are the difference between clarity that change your life and clarity that feels powerful for three weeks and then quietly disappears. So this month we're getting practical, not complicated, not extreme, but intentional.
Today we're starting with systems because if you don't design your environment, your calendar and your routines, they will design you. So let's get into it. I want to start by telling you about a pattern that I've noticed and see if it sounds familiar. Someone does something like our January work, all that we've done in our community. They get generally clear on what they want.
They feel this surge of energy and possibility. They can see it. They're excited. And then they go back to their regular life and nothing really changes. Not because they weren't serious, not because the clarity wasn't real, but because their daily life wasn't set up to support any of it. Here's the thing about goals that no one talks enough, in my opinion. A goal doesn't change your life.
A system does. Think about it this way. Say your January clarity told you that your health is a genuine priority this year. Not just something you say, but something you actually mean. So you decided you're going to work out consistently. Great goal. Clear intention. But then Monday comes. You're tired. You had a rough night. Work is already piling up before you've even had coffee.
And suddenly, working out requires you to make a decision. A real, active, effortful decision. about whether you're going to do it right now or not. And here's what I know about decisions made when you're tired and stressed. They almost never go in the direction of the thing that's good for you long-term. They go in the direction of whatever is easiest right now, every single time.
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Chapter 4: How can inputs influence your success in achieving goals?
A system is just a decision that you made once and you don't have to keep making it. That's it. It's a routine, a ritual, a habit, a setup, whatever you want to call it. The whole point is that when the moment comes to do the thing, the decision is already made. Your environment is already arranged. The path of least resistance leads directly to what you actually want.
The best systems, and this is the part I really want you to hold onto today, are built for your worst day, not your best day, not the version of you who woke up rested and motivated and ready to conquer the world, but the version of you who is tired and maybe a little annoyed at everyone in your life and absolutely does not feel like doing anything. Because that version of you shows up a lot.
And if your system only works when you feel like it, you don't actually have a system. You have a plan that sounds good. You need to design for your worst day and your best days will take care of themselves. Let's do a little visualization here. I want you to picture a triangle. At the very top of that triangle is your goal. The thing you're actually aiming at.
The vision that you built back in January. Remember that vision? This is the thing you talk about when someone asks you, where do you see yourself in a year? At the very bottom is your daily life. The stuff that's just always happening. You know, your commute, the kids, the groceries, the emails, the appointments, the meetings, the tasks. The relentless, ordinary business of being alive.
And right there in the middle is the part that most people skip completely, is the system. The bridge between where you are and where you want to go. Here's what actually happens for most people. They look up at the goal. They look down at daily life and they try to leap. They go from I'm exhausted and behind on everything to...
directly to I'm going to transform my life with nothing in between to support the jump. And then when they fall back into all patterns, They think the goal was too ambitious. Or they're not the kind of person who can pull it off. When actually, they just skip the middle. They never build that bridge. The system is the bridge.
You cannot get from your daily life to your goals without crossing that bridge. Let me tell you a story. And hopefully this... with you because I think this is something a lot of people probably can relate to. When I was thinking about what is an example I can share that most of you can relate to, I decided to go with this one in hopes that you're going to recognize yourself on this.
A few years ago, many years ago, I decided I was going to get serious about my health. And I did what felt like the most committed, responsible thing that I could do. I signed up for a gym membership. Not just any gym, one that had a daycare specifically. So I could drop my son who was in daycare at the time. I thought this will solve my problem. I have a plan.
You know, I was so thoughtful, right? I knew that with a toddler, it was gonna be a challenge to go to the gym. I didn't have babysitter, never had one in my life. So I thought this is the perfect plan, right? This is the perfect setup for me to start being consistent at working out. And let me tell you the truth, it was a disaster.
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Chapter 5: What role does your environment play in your daily habits?
I had been away from him all day. He'd been in someone else's care all day and now the one thing I was doing for myself meant dropping him off again. I couldn't enjoy the workout because I was thinking about him. I couldn't fully be present with him after because I was exhausted. It wasn't working.
And not just logistically, it was costing me something emotionally that I wasn't willing to keep paying. So I quit. And I felt like a failure about it for a while. Until I stopped asking, how do I get to the gym more? And I started asking a completely different question. When in my day do I actually have an interrupted time that belongs to me? The answer was early morning.
Before my son woke up, before anyone needed anything from me, that time existed. I just wasn't using it. So I built a system around it. I found a workout subscription, like a Netflix kind of subscription that I could do at home. No commute, no daycare drop off, not driving home in the dark feeling guilt. I set an alarm two hours before my son typically woke up and that was it.
That was the whole system. It worked, not because I suddenly had more discipline, but because I stopped fighting the reality of my life and I started designing around it instead. I still do. That early morning time is mine. I have been doing that same routine with variations of it for over 15 years now.
Not because I was naturally a morning person, even though I think I am, but because I built a system that made it possible. The path of less resistance. Because I design it for my actual life, not some idolized version of it. That's what I want for you. You don't need a better gym membership. You need a better system. And you can apply that for any goal that you have set for yourself.
Okay, so we know what a system is. Now let's talk about how you actually build one. I think about system building as having three levers you can pull. The first is your inputs. Your inputs are the things you deliberately put into your day that move you towards your goal. Not the big drastic gestures, the small consistent daily things, the ones that stack. Here's the key.
Your inputs need to match your actual goal. This sounds obvious, but I promise you it's not. I have watched so many people work incredibly hard on things that had basically nothing to do with what they say that they were aiming at. and then wonder why they weren't making progress.
If your January clarity told you that this year you prioritize your health, your input need to reflect that specifically, not generically, not I should probably eat better and move more. Specifically, what are you eating? When are you moving? What are you consuming? on your phone, in your conversations, in your environment. That either supports or undermines that goal that you have.
And here's the part that's a little uncomfortable. You already have inputs. You already have a system. It's just that your current system is optimized for the life that you have right now, not the life that you say you want. If your life was already set up to support your goals, you would already have your goals. That's not shade, that's just true, which means the work
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Chapter 6: How does the feedback loop impact our commitment to goals?
All starting Monday. And then by Wednesday, you're overwhelmed and the thing collapses and you feel worse than when you started. Here's what actually works. Start with one thing, one system, one habit, one smallest specific daily action that moves you towards your goal. And you do that one thing until it becomes automatic, until you don't have to think about it anymore.
It's just part of how you operate. Like me laying my workout clothes on my bathroom every night. Then you stack. Habit stacking is exactly what it sounds like. Once a habit is solid, you stack a new one on it. You use the existing habit as a trigger for the next one. It's like building a chain. Each link holds the one that comes after it.
Let me make this more concrete with an example that I think is going to feel really familiar. Say your goal is to start your work day with more intention, less reactive scrolling, more clarity on what actually matters that day. A lot of women I talk to about this, they want to feel like they're running their day instead of their day running them. So you start small.
Every morning before you open your email or touch your phone, you write down three priorities for the day, just three. Takes two minutes. That's your one system. You do it until it's automatic, until reaching for your priority list is just what you do before anything else. Now you stack. After the three priorities, you spend five minutes on the most important one before you do anything else.
before Teams or emails or messages, before the noise starts. Priorities, five minutes of focused work, that's it. Now you stack again. After those five minutes, you do a two-minute check-in with yourself. How am I feeling today? What do I need? What's my energy like? We did this work in February, so you already know how to read your own signals.
You're just building it into your morning as a non-negotiable. So, so far we have your three priorities, five minutes of focus, energy checking. You've just built a morning work ritual that takes less than 15 minutes total and completely changed how you move through your day. And you didn't overhaul anything. You added one link at a time. That's habit stacking.
Start with something so small that it feels almost too easy. Then add. Then add again. Give each new habit time to take roots before you pile on the next one. Now, before we get to your challenge, there's one more thing. There's one piece that changed everything for me that I want to share with you. I learned it from someone else and I'm going to pass it forward.
When you design your system, I want you to think about your worst day self and set it up for her. Not your best day self. She doesn't need the help. Your worst day self, the one who is running late and stressed and has already made a choice that she wasn't supposed to and is generally considering just laying down on the floor and quitting.
That's the one person you need to keep in mind when you're building your systems. How do you make the system so easy that even she will do it? Let me give you a few examples. Put the workout clothes out the night before so you literally wake up and it's there in front of you. Preset the coffee so morning you doesn't have to make decisions.
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Chapter 7: What is habit stacking and how can it help you?
It's exactly what this work looks like in practice week by week. The link is on the show notes of today's podcast episode. Now, before we go, I want to give you a teaser for what is coming next week.
Next week, we're talking about systems into your career because the same thing that's true in your personal life is absolutely true at work, except the stakes are higher and the pressure to just push through on willpower is even more intense. We're going to talk about how to design your career life that runs on structure instead of hustle. Make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss it.
Thank you again for being here. Thank you for doing this work. I hope you have an amazing week ahead and I'll see you here next week for another episode of the Leading Yourself podcast. Okay, my friend, that's all I've got for you today. But before you go, two quick reminders. Number one, if we're not already friends on Instagram, let's get connected. You can find me as leadingyourselfpodcast.
Number two, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me today. I am incredibly grateful that you're in this journey with me. I want to leave you with one last thought. I want to remind you that you're destined for more and that every step that you take brings you closer to becoming that best version of yourself.
Embrace each day as a chance to learn, grow and chase your dreams. The world needs you to shine brightly so go out and shop fully and authentically. Take care and I'll see you next time.
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