Juggling Too Many Balls? Motivational Speaker Nicole Walters Teaches Us What to Put Down and How to Focus on What Really Matters

These days, it can feel like we’re living in a perpetual positivity trap. Gurus everywhere tout advice for finding our values and employing sticktoitiveness and discovering who we’re meant to be one day. It’s almost as if the future is a shiny star and the present is something simply to get through. “Too often, we feel like purpose is this destination rather than the actual journey that we’re traveling,” says Nicole Walters, a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and corporate trainer.

Walters flips this idea on its head. Via her global coaching business, the mother of three offers advice aimed at teaching people to honor their time, worth, and value right now—wherever they find themselves. She does this with a welcomed dose of realness (in short: admitting that it’s impossible to do it all). “I have stopped trying to figure out what the priority is or where I should be,” she says. “The reality is that you’re always going to be juggling things and you will always drop a ball.”

We chatted with Walters about how we can focus on what really matters. Here, she offers us her fast tips for knowing which “balls” to drop (her theory on this is simple and impactful), how to stop chasing the future, and why exactly where—and who—we are today deserves celebration.

4 Tips for Focusing on What Really Matters

#1: Stop Thinking You Can Do It All

Get this idea out of your head, first and foremost, says Walters. “The number one question I get asked all the time is: ‘Nicole, you do so much […] How are you doing all the things?’ And the truth is: I am not. I have stopped trying to figure out what the priority is or where I should be.”

#2: Identify Your “Glass” Balls

We are all juggling many things—meetings, dinners, playdates, personal and family care. But some things are more urgent than others at certain times. To decipher this, Walters looks at all the balls she’s juggling as “glass” or “rubber.” Glass balls will metaphorically shatter if dropped, meaning those are meaningful moments you may not get back. Rubber balls stand for more casual or reoccurring events, and those will bounce back. “This makes it a lot easier to determine where your time should be,” says Walters.

Two examples from Walters life: A rubber ball for her might be letting someone handle carpool pickup. “Sure, my kids might’ve loved to see me for pickup, but that ball will bounce back.” A glass ball would be not planning a business dinner so she can be there for her kids on their first night before the start of school—a non-negotiable important life moment.

#3: Show Yourself Serious Grace

The world is set up for us to be hard on ourselves at every turn, says Walters. “Everything is a competition. Everything is about matching up to somebody else, whether it’s likes on social media or getting the higher salary or being smaller or thinner or prettier—all these things.” To move forward with ease and confidence, it’s imperative to give yourself room to simply be, says Walters, who learned this tool when she was going through a substantial weight loss last year. “I realized I couldn’t hate myself during this process. I couldn’t think that I was less than until I reached a certain number. I had to love myself through the process and grant myself grace as I worked through it.”

#4: Know You Can Live Your Purpose Right Now

“I don’t want to ascribe to this concept of ‘find your purpose’ as though it’s this mystery thing that then makes it as though we’re wasting our time in between. You can live your purpose right now,” says Walters, who believes our purpose(s) changes and evolves, just like the seasons. To start living your purpose this moment, she says to show up for everything—whether it’s with your kids or friends or at your job—with intentionality. “Your purpose can be the way that you show up for your kids every day. It may not be all that you are, but it certainly doesn’t minimize that what you’re doing matters.”

She continues: “That’s the shift that most of us need to make to land on the thing that makes our heart sing. That thing might be where we want to spend most of our time, but we can’t not lose sight of the fact that every day matters too. We’re always doing important work.”

Nicole Walters is a former top-selling corporate exec who has worked as a client-facing business executive for Fortune 500 companies in both sales and marketing. Walters quit her six-figure sales job in front of 10,000 people and built The Monetized Life, a million-dollar consulting firm that provides business and financial solutions to everyday entrepreneurs. Walters is a wife, a mom to three adopted kids, and a global speaker who is passionate about teaching people how to increase their income and monetize their life. Learn more at nicolewalters.com and find her on Instagram at @nicolewalters