Today Is The Finish Line! Yay!!! | The Brilliance Mine

Today Is The Finish Line! Yay!!!

Today is day #365 of my writing daily Brilliance Nuggets for one year. I’m at the finish line. It has been an AMAZING journey!

Most of all, I thank you! I could not have done this without you!

If you did not see yesterday’s nugget about this journey and what you could get out of doing your own version of it, I invite you to check it out!

I invite you to watch this video (you can speed it up to watch it faster -that is a trick I often use). It is a celebration and a thank-you to you!

I’m also sharing what I have learned – not all of it was expected or could have been foreseen. I sincerely hope it will inspire you to do your own version of a Brilliance Nugget journey.

I’m so excited. Woohoo. We reached my goal of writing 365 Brilliance Nuggets. I’ve produced these short little daily blogs by writing, recording a video, or both over the past year. 

Let me tell you: I was skeptical in the beginning. When I was given this challenge by my dear friend, Robert Donnell, I wondered whether I could do this. Lo and behold, I have done it. WE have done it because I could not have done this without you. I am incredibly grateful to you!

I published a little nugget yesterday. I invite you to go back to it, but I talked about some things I’ve learned along the way. I hope this will inspire you. 

One amazing thing from this experience is showing yourself what discipline you can have. That alone is something because you can tackle other things and say to yourself, “You know what, my word is good. I will do it when I say I will do something and commit.” 

Also, I acquired a whole bunch of skills. I talked about that in yesterday’s nugget.

  • Keeping things brief. Wow, that was challenging for me, but I got better. You get better at anything you practice for 365 days (or less). 
  • Delegating more; because I had to. Put yourself in a position where you’re pushing your envelope of comfort. That is so important.
  • Building a system. There’s a whole production system I put in place. It’s not utterly complicated, but it’s still a system. We want to have systems that are as simple as possible and as capable as necessary. Keep that in mind.
  • Overcoming perfectionism. Whew. That’s a gut-wrencher for me. Here’s how I put it: pitch your promise against your perfectionism. I invite you to remember to pitch your promise – a promise to yourself or someone else – against your perfectionism. Ideally, I find a promise to myself AND other people. So, with that, come heck or high water over the last year, I got that daily nugget done. Several times it was published one minute before midnight, but baby, it got done.
    • An example of pitching your promise against your perfectionism: Yesterday, I published a nugget using software I was barely familiar with called “Prezi,” but I learned it enough. Our family was going to an event. My husband said, “Hey, we gotta go!” I said, “But I got to finish this nugget.” I finished it as fast as I could. Then we went to the event. I’m talking about pitching your promise against your perfectionism. I had to get it done. I didn’t have time to make it “perfect” (whatever that means anyway – there is no “perfect”).
  • Learning how to express what you do. I talked about Brilliance Mining™ for a fair amount of the time. Not all the time, though. There were many other Brilliance Nuggets about business and life because who wants to talk about Brilliance Mining every day? Even I have limits on that. But I realized that, especially when you’re talking about something new and innovative, you must think about how you say it. You say it this way and then that way. You observe and ask people for feedback to learn what resonates. We must do that when we develop something new, innovative, and creative. That’s part of what I’ve done this year. 
  • Forming new habits. When we do something frequently, it becomes a habit. Over this past year, I’ve learned to observe my thoughts and write them down very quickly. I often used shorthand, but I did whatever it took to capture the thought. I used an app called “Notion” – I’ve written about it. 
  • Being open to surprises. Please don’t ask me exactly how this happened, but I also acquired more faith. I didn’t see that coming, but it’s an amazing blessing.
  • Then people often ask me, “What will you do with all these nuggets?” Well, we’re going to publish a hyperlinked multimedia book. It will be even more exciting than a written book. 
  • People have asked me, “What do you get from all this effort? With all this effort you are putting into this, are you making money from this?” I would say “yes” and “no, not directly.” But, somehow, indirectly, it has raised my business to a new level. It is the best year yet. Wow. Yeah, I know. You do good things, stay in motion, and good things will happen. 
  • All it takes is one foot in front of the other. This morning. I was running with my dear friend Laura at Camp Gladiator. We have a choice: We can run the little loop or the big one. I thought, “I’ve written 365 nuggets. All it takes is one little step in front of the other. That’s how I’ve done those nuggets. One little step.” You can’t think, “Oh my God, I still have 300 or 200 to do.” Occasionally, I have thought that. But I remembered you must focus on the next step. This morning I ran the big loop twice. I said, “I’m just going to go slow. I’m not going to think about how long it is. I’m just going to focus on the next step and the next step. My only goal is not to stop but to keep running.” And I did. You can, too. 
  • Last but not least: the support, the love, the ideas, and the embracing I have felt from you all this year is humbling. It makes me feel extremely blessed. I can’t thank you enough.

What Is Next? Treasure Tuesday!

People have asked me what is next. Meet Treasure Tuesday. If you are currently getting an email from me every day, you will get one email weekly. If you need to be added to my email list, I will let you know how you can get those weekly emails. It’s going to have five parts.

  1. First, a visual of the week because it is so important to express a complicated concept at a glance in one graphic. That’s one of the things that I’m already pretty good at. Still, I keep practicing every day, making graphics of complex context content as I extract brilliance from others and even myself.
  2. The second one is the most gratifying brilliance I’ve extracted that week. That gives you a little glimpse into what we are doing.
  3. The most inspiring book I’ve read that week. My average number of books I read per week is, as of recently, five. Yes, I like to push myself a bit, but I don’t read them cover-to-cover, but I read them well enough to isolate one action. I recently wrote a nugget about that.
  4. Number four is the boldest idea I implemented that week. Now there’s a little selfish motivation behind that. That is because when you say to several people that you will publish the boldest idea you implement that week, you better have implemented at least one bold idea. So keep your eyes peeled. That’s a great way to have accountability for yourself. I wrote 365 daily nuggets over the past year by making a public commitment. Otherwise, I would’ve slipped, a day here and a day there. As soon as you allow yourself to slip, it is easy to think, “I’ve already slipped here. What’s another slip there?”
  5. The fifth nugget of Treasure Tuesday is the surprise of the week. Who doesn’t like surprises? I mean, good surprises. Awesome. Cool.

One fun email sent to you once per week on, you guessed it, Tuesday! It contains five brief but powerful goodies, as you can see in the image below.

You can get “Treasure Tuesday” here. It is one fun email per week. Note: If you were getting the Brilliance Nuggets, no action is needed.
  • There’s one more question that many of you have asked me, and I want to ensure that I answered. “How can we keep staying engaged, and how can we help you?” Thank you for asking me how you can help me because it’s not just about helping me.
  • I see the conversation about Brilliance Mining™ as a movement. It’s a movement where we have an ongoing conversation about how to make even more of our brilliance (our expertise, experience, and wisdom). You could say it’s given to you by God. I would agree with that. Or, you could say it’s given to you by the universe. I would agree with that, too. You worked hard to get it, and I would also agree with that.
  • You have all this brilliance, and you want to do more with it. The people I work with have some idea of their brilliance. They think it’s a certain amount. But when we explore it, it is much bigger than they realized initially. There’s so much brilliance – all of us don’t even know how much brilliance we have because it’s unconscious competence, as I call it.
  • I invite you to see your brilliance and get in touch with it. That’s, that’s number one. Just engage in this conversation because it will help us get the word out. It will help you get more in touch with your brilliance, which is awesome. That’s what I’m here to make happen. We have several vehicles. We need a vehicle to get from point A to B, just like we have cars. Here are the vehicles:

Here Are The Links to Engage and Share

Thank you from my heart to yours. I look forward to connecting with you again. Watch out for the first Treasure Tuesday. Please drop me a line. I love your comments. Thank you!

I’m Curious

Please share with me: Which nugget inspired you the most? Or, asked in a different way, which action/s were you inspired to take because of you reading/watching the Brilliance Nuggets? For example, did you

These are just some examples of what might have happened in your life. I look forward to hearing from you!!!

Live brilliantly!

Dr. Stephie

Stephie Althouse

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