I am writing this having spent a glorious afternoon with 12 amazing souls. My heart is so full of love for everyone of them, they showed up so vulnerably and it has made me reflect on the power of taking time to really connect to what we want.
Or to be more clear – when we are truly honest with ourselves about what we want… and importantly why.
When was the last time you really thought about what you want …
This is often one of the first questions I ask my clients and it can take them by surprise, we can often get caught up in creating our goals around what we think we should want… what would other people like us to do… what we think is expected of us….
We often forget to think about how we want to feel.
But when we can really honestly think about why we have our goals it can sometimes become clearer that some of our goals aren’t ultimately the things that will bring us happiness/ exhilaration/ peace or whatever you desire…
In the spirit of true honesty I have a cautionary tale from my own life when I forgot to consider my why in the pursuit of a big goal
If you had asked me years ago what the big goal was I would have said to get to senior management, I worked really hard, put in extra hours, took on new projects and finally I got it… great you say?... hmm well maybe for a bit, then reality hit in.
You see, I didn’t really love my job, but I was good at it and felt an expectation from others to keep moving ‘up’. And (surprise surprise) moving to a higher position didn’t really change that, I felt stuck and miserable. And add to that frustrated, I had achieved my goal why wasn’t I happy?
What no one asked me was why, why did I want this… what I didn’t think about was how I wanted to feel..
I began to look at my why – I mean really honestly, and a found some pretty awkward truths
· I thought that people would think I couldn’t do my job if I wasn’t promoted
· I wanted to prove a previous interview panel wrong
· I wasn’t feeling happy but was too scared to make a big change to tried to apply ‘more of the same’ to the situation
You won’t be surprised to hear this uninspiring list did not result in my happiness!
And so I got really intentional about what I really desired and why, I gave myself permission to consider how I wanted to feel first.
So I would love to invite you to think about your dreams, starting from how you want to feel first.
Which goals will truly support you to feel the way you desire to feel and what needs to change to truly connect to a life that lights you up.
How can you let go of the expectations of others and focus on the one person you are responsible to make happy – you.
And what’s the ripple effect?
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