COACHING & BUSINESS TOOLS What’s Your Vibe?

A clear understanding of what you want and why you want it will create and sustain your motivation.

By Kate Maria Pennell

Working from my goal, not towards it: When I first heard master coach Rich Litvin talk about this, it spun me on my axis. I could work from a place inside myself that was alive and in Technicolor, as opposed to trying to glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.

My whole perspective changed for the better. All too often we can make our plans and our goals, set out our objectives and our task lists, and it can feel as if we’re desperately reaching for something just beyond our fingertips. It can feel like building steps with sand while pitted against the tide. However, there is a better way to create our future.

LIVING WITHOUT 20/20 VISION

When I have clients who want to work on their goals or strategy, I will always ask about their end goal—their vision. It might be our end goal, but it has to be our starting point, too. How can you plan a route if you’re not sure about where you want to go?

Stephen Covey puts it perfectly, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

And who wants that? No one wants a great strategy to accelerate their progress to a place they neither know about or can envision. To think about it another way, we choose our holiday destinations based on the photos we see and what we can find out about the place. If you’re anything like me, I love to do my homework and get excited about what it will be like for me when I get there. I can picture myself there, enjoying my holiday. The same goes for when I want to change where I am going with my life.

We often show some specific symptoms when we don’t have our vision alive and clear: 1. We lack or lose motivation: “I know what I should do but I just don’t seem to be

able to do it, certainly not consistently,” was the comment from another client who thought that fixing their strategy would fix their trajectory and up their productivity. Knowing what we don’t want is important but not as vital as getting crystal clear on what we do want. This is our “What.” The other crucial factor is understanding our “Why.” Our “why” is what makes our goals powerfully magnetic in that it draws us towards them. If we are not clear on why we want something, are not connected to it emotionally and intellectually, all we have a is a pile of should: I should get up early and write/go to the gym/do my digital marketing/fill in your own task here. Should and its cohorts have-to, ought-to, needto, and must, are not our friends. They don’t really help us get where we want to go. The language of obligation, guilt and self-recrimination will not fire determination and motivation in our bellies in the way that a desire we see in high definition can. It is also much easier to fall back into the habits and lifestyle that we are trying to leave behind if we don’t live and plan from the place of vision inside ourselves. A clear understanding of what you want and why you want it will create and sustain your motivation. 2. We are driven by negative fears or impulses. It’s no fun running from something. Fears can stalk us, making us feel that they are waiting just around the corner, behind us, in the corner of our eye. We walk forward with one eye on the fears from the past.

When we make our plans from a negative place like this, it can be difficult to create a positive future. Now, our subconscious mind works on what we feed it and creates in our lives what we tell it to focus on. Therefore, which do you think is a more powerful, magnetic goal? 1) “I never want to struggle for money like that again, so I’ll have to…” 2) “I am creating a secure, comfortable, sustainable future for myself and my family by …”

The language we use when we speak to ourselves shapes our thought patterns, decisions and, ultimately, our actions. Look at the language in the first goal; the speaker is looking back and focusing on a difficult time in the past. I bet they can still feel the tension of living day-to-day when they think of life back then. In the second part of the line, they are looking to the future, yes, but placing themselves under the burden of chore and obligation (I’ll have to…).

In the second example, they’re using the present continuous tense; how we naturally talk about things we’re doing right now and for the near future. They are present in the moment, focusing and acting upon a positive goal. There is a feel of action and doing about it, right now not just change set for sometime in the future.