Before We Get Started
Before we get started I want to set some expectations. The time you spend on this course will be unique by individual, but you should spend at least three hours going through your goals and vision. You may choose to do this in one hour sessions. Sometimes the break allows you time to get additional clarity.
One of the things I provide for every client is a judgement free environment. In light of that, I am asking you to hold back any judgement on yourself. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. (Credit Jordan Peterson) Every judgement you pass on someone else points at something within yourself. Everything in your life up and until this time happened, and couldn’t have been different. I know it couldn’t have been different because it wasn’t. (Credit Peter Crone). Stop and think about that last sentence. There is no return on investment in judging yourself for your past, because it already happened and you can’t go back. So today let’s start with a clean slate, and agree that we will not pass any judgement on ourselves for what we view as past or current failures. As we go through this process if you start to judge yourself or whats possible, just acknowledge the thought, but realize that today is new day and you are no longer bound by those judgments.
Before starting the next step, decide whether you will use a notebook, note taking app, or a word processor for this course. You will need to make lists, and think through some things, and it is important that you get them out where you can read them and think through them. Some say that paper and pen is the best tool, but I have discovered that Google Docs works well for me. One of the things I want to point out here is the power in writing out your thoughts. This tool alone will help improve the quality of your life, and help you get clarity on what you are thinking.
One of the valuable things that a life coach provides is listening skills, and reflective questions to the client. It is often during these reflective listening sessions that clients make the greatest progress. The process of writing and questioning yourself in a journal provides you the same opportunity to be a good listener for yourself. Granted having a life coach for this is a benefit, but if you make a consistent habit of writing your thoughts in a journal it can also provide significant benefits. The other thing I want to emphasize here is the power of questions. When you ask yourself questions in a journal your unconscious mind will often surface answers to your questions. The famous philosopher Socrates said, “The un-examined life is not worth living.” One powerful way we can examine our lives is write in a journal, and ask questions of ourselves, and be brutally honest with your answers. Question your motives for everything.
Create the Vision of Achieving Your Goals
The first step is to create and get clarity on your vision for your life. You can’t map a road trip until you know your destination. Before prescribing specific time bound goals and tasks, you will get clarity on what you want and why you want it. We will then go back and question what we think each of the items will bring into our lives. This first step is to just create the vision.
- Take your notebook or document and list your top three goals for your life. They should be one or two sentences.
- Then write out what a day in your life will look like once your goal becomes reality. These should be a paragraph at least, maybe two.
- When you are done with that. Close your eyes and visualize yourself already having achieved each goal. Spend a couple of minutes per goal, visualizing the detail.
Clarify
For some clients creating the vision of big goals will cause some cognitive dissonance. After visualizing the achievement of these goals, thoughts may surface that inject doubt into your ability or the circumstances required to achieve these goals. This doubt is not only normal, it is also crucial. These self-limiting beliefs are the opportunity for your to overcome what is holding you back. You will ultimately dissolve these self-limiting beliefs as a result of the rest of these short courses.
The next step is to clarify what you think these goals will provide for you. Most of the time the outcome of your goal is just the tool to give you what you really want. Here is an example. When I set my initial goals a long time ago, I listed a certain annual income. I didn’t want the money as much as I wanted the security that I thought it would bring, and the happiness I thought having more material possessions would provide me. Now I have far exceeded those goals, and I found out that the goal wasn’t the answer. What most of us really want is to be happy, secure, and feel worthy. For me, more money didn’t provide that.
For each of the three goals start a paragraph, and ask yourself what this goal will provide you. Write our your answers, and then continue to write out and answer questions to illuminate the true motives behind your goal. During this time you may experience some doubt about your ability or the circumstances required for you to achieve the goals. We talked about this earlier. If this happens continue to drill into using the power of questions to get to the bottom of it. You may ask questions like, “Is it possible that these doubts are really the only thing holding me back?” “Is it possible…” questions are powerful tools to prompt thinking in the right direction. I have watched friends and clients achieve things they never thought possible for themselves and they credit much of the success to the power of questions. One of the greatest benefits of having a life coach is our ability to be good listeners and ask questions that help the client uncover unconscious biases and thought patterns. You will use questions in your journal the same way. You should also be brutally honest with yourself. We all have things we think are shortcomings, but the truth is that we are all perfectly imperfect human beings. Everyone and I mean everyone has some insecurities. It is only after you realize that you are not your thoughts, your past, or how you feel that you will see that these insecurities are opportunities for growth. You are here to learn, not to be perfect.
This powerful questioning process may cause you to uncover some realizations that change your vision, and goals. If this happens you can go back and adjust your goals / visions to reflect these discoveries.
If you still lack some clarity, and if you surface some questions during this process, the next mindful awareness course will help you resolve these. I have blocked off a few free sessions if you have questions around the exercises. You can book your free one on one session here.
This is the most important part of this first short course. Now that you have had the opportunity to go back through your goals, and imagine them. Let’s deal with something that may have come up for you. It comes up for most people. As you were picturing that day in your life, or writing out your goals, did your mind surface limiting beliefs? To this day when I sit down to try to move forward with my big goals, I sometimes get a pit in my stomach, and my mind starts to say things like, “Who are you to do something like this?”, “What if you fail?”, “What if you get sued and lose all your money?” We all have our version of limiting beliefs. The good news is that these can quickly be put to rest, which we will do. When we started this short course, I asked you to reserve judgement on yourself. You are capable of so much more than you think, and in the Mindful Awareness short course, we will deal with this truth.