Stacy

Digging Deeper on the “Where”

Changing Your Life / By

Now that you figured out the who you are, now it’s time to figure out where you are going. According to Bob Goff, “Instead of thinking geography, I want you to think biography. Figuring out where you really are is a big part of discovering who you really are right now.”

You know what your values are. What ambitions do you have that follow those values? When ambitions and values align your world seems to click into place.

What is your ambition in life? Get real about where you are vs where you want to be. You are setting your starting line. It takes brutal honesty with yourself to know what that starting line is. Big ambitions take time. Give yourself grace just as God gives you undeserved grace.

Getting to the finish line is not a sprint….it’s a marathon. Pace yourself with small steps. Reward yourself along the way. Allow the people around you to pick you up when you fall. Allow other people to help you. God puts those people in your life for a reason.

“We can’t get on the path toward our ambitions without figuring out where we are. What has felt like your resting place is now a starting line. If you have the honesty and guts for it, what you’ve been stuck in is what you’ll be freed from. Where you are today is simply the harbor from which your ship is about to sail. Cut loose the lines. The horizon is where you’re heading because it’s where your ambitions reside.” Bob Goff

Digging Deep on Who You Are

Changing Your Life / By

The first of the big 3 questions we will dig deeper on is “Who are You?” This is the first important question because you have to figure out who you are before you can decide where you are going. Discovering who you are will help sort out what is worth your time and sacrifice to go get it. (aka the where question)

Having self awareness gives you massive power. Don’t overlook it or think that it isn’t for you. Spending time reflecting on your life keeps you focused on your values. Do you know what your core values are? If not, that’s the first step. What words do you want to be remembered by? How do you want someone to describe you? That’s your values.

Another reflection point is learning what core motivations are behind the actions you take. Reflecting on your motivations helps you understand if you are following your values. Based on your reflection you can know what actions do you need to change or keep doing. This requires asking yourself “Why did I do that?” Make a weekly routine or even daily routine of doing this. You will be amazed at the progress you can make with being intentional.

This time IS important. It needs to be uninterrupted with your phone put away and distractions gone. It doesn’t have to be long. Start with 5 minutes. Write down your thoughts. Do whatever it takes to make sure you are following your values.

“We can’t fix what we won’t take the time to understand. If you’re willing to make the trip under the surface, you’ll find some pretty great stuff there. Why settle for the surface-level version of yourself when you can go a little deeper and discover the core of who you really are?” Bob Goff

Take the time…right now… don’t wait….

The Big Three Questions

Changing Your Life / By

Identifying and pursuing your ambitions is tough. There will be self doubt and wondering if you should really be doing this. It takes courage to keep going and clarity with self reflection to make sure you are on the right path.

Three Questions

  • Who Are You?
  • Where Are You?
  • What Do You Want?

“Organizing your thoughts around these three questions will help you accomplish in the future what you haven’t been able to make happen in the past. They can be a cocktail of identity, desire, purpose, rejection, life experience, struggle, fear, hope, and longing rolled into one.”

“Start with acknowledging that deeper longing within you. If I had to take a guess, that’s why you’re here. You can feel it. I don’t even have to define what it is—you know exactly what I’m talking about. It is that “something more to life” rumbling around in your gut, that tug drawing you toward a scary, audacious dream.”

“Once we get real with where we actually are and our desperate need for God’s help, He’s got a person He can do something with, and He’ll drop the people you’ll need in your path to help. Your job is to find them.”

Finding that person usually comes when we least expect it. God’s plan was in motion before you even started to think about that dream. What is your job is to ask for help. This can be difficult especially if you are one of those independent people or maybe just have no idea where to even start. It starts with telling people about your dream. In order to that you have to be vulnerable and put yourself out there.

Yesterday was all about failure. “This is something that happens to our best ideas all the time. We’re so close to them, or we’ve ignored them for so long, that we can’t even see them for what they are anymore. Then just when we think we have corralled them, they change. When this happens, don’t get bummed out; get current with your new ambitions. I know it feels like a hassle, but it’s a good thing. We’re supposed to be new creations, and there will be nothing new about us if everything remains the same.”

“No more doing what merely occupies, entertains, and numbs us? It’s time to go after your dreams, your faith, and your ambitions with gusto.”

It’s Just Simply Time…..

Note: The excerpts all came out of Dream Big Chapter 3. I honestly couldn’t write it better than Bob so you got a mix of Bob & Stacy today 🙂

Failure Happens

Changing Your Life / By

I absolutely totally completely hate failure. Yep…you read that right. I don’t like to fail, BUT I know failure is part of the journey of life. If you don’t fail then it means you are not trying anything new. Although I don’t like to fail (who does…) I know it means growth.

Fail Forward

Getting out of your comfort zone means that you are going into your unknown. It means that something will not go according to your plan no matter how perfect the plan was. When this happens you fail forward. It means learning what went wrong and what could you do differently in the future. Learning is what makes us grow and move on to the next “out of our comfort zone” experience.

Acknowledge the Failure

This is where you have to be self aware and retrospective. If you think you are perfect, you are not….you are human. Being able to admit your mistake is what helps you learn and reach your dream.

What was your last mistake? What did you learn? What will you do different now?

Be the Balloon AND the String

Weekly Challenge / By

This week’s challenge idea comes from an idea in the 1st chapter of the “Dream Big” by Bob Goff – Don’t Go Alone.

Last week I challenged you to start dreaming big with your ambitions. Those big scary butterfly in your belly dreams is what keeps us floating toward the future like a balloon. The problem with helium balloons is that they will fly away if you don’t have them tied with a string. The string is the person in your life that holds you accountable and keeps you grounded. Who is your person?

Find Your Person

You may be able to easily identify that person in your life. Maybe it’s your best friend, spouse, or parent. If you don’t have someone, your challenge is to find someone. Finding your someone can be hard! It’s being vulnerable and opening up the deepest wants in your heart. It’s also rewarding as you have someone to share this with. We were meant for this connection.

Flip the Switch

Once you make the decision to go for it your mind flips a switch from thinking about it to actually doing something about it. This is when you absolutely talk to your person about what it is, why you want it, and what you are going to do. This helps you get clarity of what you want, but also has that sense of accountability because you said it out loud. Saying it out loud makes it real. Writing it down makes it real.

Having this kind of clarity is rare & beautiful and unstoppable. Aim for this in your life and you will find great joy. – Bob Goff

Be Both Balloon & String

You and Your Person are like the balloon & string. If you want to achieve those scary goals, you can’t be all balloon with no string. We need to be anchored by God and tied to one another. Anchored to God because our purpose is not found in another person’s validation or approval. Your person will disappoint you because we are all human.

Going to leave you with one final quote from Bob for this week’s challenge:

Someone wiser than me once asked, “If God answered every one of your prayers, would it change anybody’s life except your own?”

What’s Your Rocket Engine?

Weekly Challenge / By

Ambition: a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.

I just finished reading “Dream Big” by Bob Goff. The book is all about dreaming big, discovering your ambition, and going for it. That’s what these next few blog posts are going to be about: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You’re Going to Do About It

The challenge this week is to follow along with this series and do the work. This is not going to be easy, but it will be fulfilling and fun. It will get those butterflies of excitement and fear going again in your life.

The next version of you is the one who will pursue the ambitions all the previous versions were unable to accomplish. – Bob Goff

First Challenge: Grab a friend to do this challenge with you or support you, but it would be more fun with you.

Don’t feed the Gremlin

Changing Your Life / By

In the movie Gremlins, there are these cute little animals with the warning not to feed them…. Why? Because they turn into…

This is exactly what we do in our minds with our thoughts. Our mind is a POWERFUL place. Your internal world of thoughts becomes your external world. If you CHOOSE to feed the negative and self doubt, your cute little gremlin will become the scary monster. Those thoughts do not serve you. Yes the world around us can be bad, but you get to decide how you think and feel.

Think of every negative thought or doubt as a drop of water. Those drops of water add up pretty quickly until you are drowning in your own ocean. I know that sounds harsh, but it is reality.

Who do you hang around with? Do they give you energy or drain you of your energy? Do they help fill you up or tear you down? I’m not saying you can’t support your friends going through some tough time, but don’t let their tough time become your tough time.

Don’t let their tough time become your tough time.

Your world is how you make it. Choose to show up every day excited about something that day. If you focus on the positive, you will see more positive things. If you focus on the negative, you will see all the bad.

The direction you focus your life is the direction you will go. What will you choose?

Worried & Stressed?

Growing in Faith / By

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

You probably read the title and thought YES give me something I can use. Then you read the Bible verse and you were like REALLY…..

Going through the hard is well, hard. It’s so “easy” to keep trying it your way to get out it. It’s handing over that reign of control over to God that is probably about the same hard as what you are going through. Especially if you are type A personality like me.

Don’t underestimate the power of prayer. When you choose to give it ALL (and I mean all) to God you do get this sort of peace in your heart. It’s taking the burden of all you are going through and asking for help. God works in all kinds of ways. Help may come from a friend calling or texting, a random act of kindness, softened heart with the one you are praying for. The list goes on. His works are mysterious and wonderful.

With that mysterious and wonderful comes timing. We want it to be over NOW. Lord, get me out of this situation so life can be good again. Here’s the thing….He works in HIS timing and not OUR timing.

It sucks…it’s okay…you can think that too. But you can also think of how he is trying to use you in His big plan. He uses our struggles to further His kingdom.

What story can you tell from your situation that will help someone else? What have you learned about yourself and others?

Move from Overwhelmed to Confident

Changing Your Life / By

Most of us have a thousand things running through our head of things we need to do and places we need to go. You may feel like you are living in chaos with no light at the end. You don’t feel confident you have it together, you feel like you are taking it hour by hour or even minute by minute. You feel stressed out. You have big goals you want to achieve, but the thought of it just makes you want to crawl back into bed.

Does this sound like you?

This is where a Sunday planning technique comes in. It sets you up for success and makes you feel less overwhelmed. It takes 30-60 minutes of your day that you won’t believe how much better you feel.

Here’s what you do:

  • Review your calendar of what meetings, appointments, events that are going on this week. Do you need to prep for meetings and who’s taking the kids/when?
  • Meal plan – based on what’s going on each night & even the weather. If it’s nice, you might want to grill out. If it’s going to be rainy, maybe plan a casserole. If you have a busy night maybe plan a crockpot meal that you can start before work or make it a leftover night. Maybe you plan a night of getting take out. This planning helps so when you get home, it’s not another decision of what are we having for dinner or do we have the ingredients. Bonus to plan/meal prep your breakfast & lunches.
  • Write down all the things that you want to accomplish this week. You can make 2 lists – 1 for work and 1 for home. Think about how much time each item will take. Breakdown the tasks to 1 hour or less increments. I call this my brain dump. Notice I said “want” and not “must” so don’t get overwhelmed. The whole point is to just get it out of your head.
  • Prioritize the list you just wrote. Either do a A, B, C or even you can number them. It’s however your mind works bests to prioritize. Not everything can be an A or B. If everything is a priority then nothing is a priority.
  • Review each day to determine how many hours are “open” to get the stuff done off the list. Again, you can separate work and home.
  • Then it’s just a plug and chug. Start with your highest priority items and plug them into your calendar starting with Monday. Make sure to give yourself some time for flexibility as life will happen so don’t plan every minute of everyday. Don’t forget to put some “me time” in there to enjoy life. Note: you will more than likely not fit everything on your list in the calendar. THAT IS THE POINT! You want to work on the most important things first. Stop working on those low priority items..they can wait.

At the end of the week, you will feel accomplished and be amazed at how much you got done. Each day you will have the plan so you aren’t scrambling each day to figure it out.

Taking that 60 minutes each Sunday will make the difference between living a life of chaos/overwhelmed to confident and relaxed.

But I still have a long way to go…..

Weekly Challenge / By

If you are a goal getter, you probably have some lofty goals that take time to achieve. The problem that we sometimes run into is that we start out full steam ahead, but over time our motivation starts to dwindle a little bit. That’s where this week’s challenge comes in!

The challenge is to reflect upon the progress you have made so far and acknowledge what you have done so far each week. Yes…you read that right. EACH WEEK!! If a goal is important to you, you should be making it a priority in your life. That’s where setting too many goals becomes an issue. You lose focus and get overwhelmed. Narrowing your focus keeps you moving forward and making progress.

At the beginning of the week, plan out what you are going to do this week to progress your goal. What will you do? What day / time will you do it? The more specific in your planning the better. Make it like an appointment you have to keep. Yes, life will get in the way some weeks so adjust and still do it. At the end of the week, celebrate your success that you did what you said you would do.

Good intentions are just that….intentions. You must act on those intentions to move that goal forward.

Now to be a little vulnerable here…. At the beginning of the year I set some pretty lofty work goals and personal goals. The problem is that I focused mostly on my work goals and let my personal goals become “good intentions.” Yes I made small progress with them, but not enough to be on track.

Now I could have just reduce down the goal or even quit, but that’s not me. What I did was reflect on why? What do I need to do to meet the goal now within the next 6 months? If you know me, I am a tracking fiend! Reflecting back, I didn’t have a tracker or really a written down plan. That’s where I failed. What do you do when you fail… YOU FAIL FORWARD!! I spent the time to make trackers to make sure I stayed on track. I committed to expedited timeline to still meet my goals and what is needed to do that.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

What do you want to achieve by the end of the year?

Why does it need to be by the end of the year?

What do you need to commit to doing to make it happen? Weekly / Monthly

Now make your specific plan for this week and this month.

YOU GOT THIS GOAL GETTER!!!