The Extraordinary Everyday
The Extraordinary Everyday
Crafting a Year of Intention: A Guide to Meaningful Goal Setting
Embark on a transformative journey with me, Wendy Johnson, as we harness the fresh energy of the new year to set meaningful and attainable goals. In this episode, we don't just dream big; we strategize. Discover a two-pronged approach to turning the tide on the often overwhelming wave of New Year's resolutions. We'll start with a brainstorming session that spans the essential life domains—physical health, relationships, career, and financial freedom—teasing out our innermost longings and pinpointing our areas of discontent. Then, we'll refine these ideas, learning to trim the excess and nurture what truly resonates with our core values.
Feel the power of putting pen to paper as we delve into the story of a woman who dared to reach beyond her routine for adventure and purpose. This episode serves up the essential questions you need to ask yourself to ensure your goals are not just another list, but a blueprint for a life lived with intention. I also extend an open invitation for you to become a part of our community, a gathering of women committed to personal growth and embracing the extraordinary in the everyday. So, grab your journal, press play, and let's turn the page on a new chapter of your story.
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About Wendy Johnson:
I'm a certified life coach for women who want to take their 'good' lives and make them extraordinary with personal development and life coaching tools. If you are going to find your passion, increase your self-confidence, make more money, strengthen your relationships, build your business, and do it with less struggle and frustration then you're in the right place. My programs are for busy women who want to feel better and live well in their everyday lives.
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You're listening to the Extraordinary Every Day podcast with Wendy Johnson, episode number 41.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Extraordinary Every Day podcast, where women come to be inspired and motivated to become the best version of themselves and elevate the quality of their everyday. Now here's your host, certified life coach, Wendy Johnson.
Speaker 1:Hello, beautiful friends, how are you today? How is your week going? Don't you just love this time of year starting with a fresh slate, having the feeling of a new year, new you. I love it, but there's a challenge to watch out for. Your brain is overwhelmed with so many possibilities. Maybe this is the year that you get in shape, you take on a new job, you move out of the country, you make more money, write your book, or all of the above, see. The problem is is you're swimming in too many ideas and things you want to do, and this is normal. There's this excitement and energy at the beginning of a year. You're swept up in this new year, new you slogan, and if your excitement turns to overwhelm, then this episode is for you. You'll learn my two step process to eliminate burnout before it happens and get clear on what you truly want. This process is perfect to help you start the year off strong, or anytime you have too many things on your plate and you feel like your head is spinning in circles. This two step process is to brainstorm and then prune.
Speaker 1:So let's start with the first step brainstorm. This is where you suggest a lot of ideas very quickly before thinking about them more carefully. This is getting all your beautiful dreams and goals out on paper. I want you to write all the things you want to do to be to have to experience over the next 12 months. Get it all out of your head and in ink. Why do we do this? Well, there's benefits to brainstorming, and the best part of brainstorming is it lets each idea stand on its own, so it's not swimming around in your head with all these other ideas. It builds ideas and creates new ideas, which create another chain of thoughts. So maybe there's things you didn't even think about that are now coming to you, and you're not turning down ideas because they sound silly. Also, brainstorming can reveal improvements you never knew you needed, and when you brainstorm, you get a list of ideas that can make you creative for months after doing one of these sessions. So if you're feeling stuck or in a rut during the year, this is another great opportunity to take time to brainstorm. Now, I know this sounds simple, but you'd be surprised at how many people don't do it and wonder why. They're overwhelmed and you want to consider this brand up in four domains of your life, and let me give you all four domains and I'll give you ideas for each of the domains.
Speaker 1:The first domain is physical health. There's a whole realm of possibility of health, well-being and feeling good in your own skin, maybe having a strong self-esteem, having a quick, alert mind, having a strength and stamina in your body. Where is your longing in this area? And then also discover where is your discontent, where are you not happy, and those would show up as symptoms or pain. And the second domain is relationships. Do you long for a close, intimate, deep, powerful relationship with another individual? Do you long to design or remodel or recapture with someone you're in a deep relationship with? Do you wanna take it to a deeper, stronger level and have more fun? So, in this area of relationships, where is your longing? What are you yearning to do? And where is your discontent? Where are you not happy? Is there some discontent or distance in a relationship you either are or have had and it bothers you? Maybe you see this person walking through the street of your mind, you bump into them and it's not a comfortable experience and even though this isn't a real physical experience, it's still happening inside your head.
Speaker 1:The third domain is your work, creative expression. Do you long to write that book, open that business, write that travel log and travel and write about it. I don't know what that is for you, but I know that there's some longing for you to express you in the world. And what is that? Pay attention and honor your longings and honor your discontents. How would you like to express you in the world? Maybe you're in a business and you'd like to close it, get out of it, remodel it, expand it, or this is the year you're gonna make $5 million. What is it that is your longing and your discontent in the area of your creative expression, your work in the world? What would you love to be, do experience, express or give. Let those ideas come to you and shape themselves inside of you and get them out on paper, honor them, and you don't have to figure out the how.
Speaker 1:And the last domain, the fourth domain, is time and money, freedom. And this is freedom and low, which you move in the material world or in your financial supply. And in your financial supply, money is energy. It's good to make us comfortable enough so we can be creative enough to deliver the gift we're here to give. If you're cold, hungry or worried about paying your bills, you're not going to be creative enough. That is not the universe's plan for you. The universe wants everybody to be abundant and creative. So this is a signal that you're out of harmony with yourself and with the way the laws of the universe work. Because the more you're in harmony with the laws of life that is seeking to continue to expand and express itself, the easier things get.
Speaker 1:When you think about freedom and flow in your financial supply, in the material realm, what are your ideas? What life would you like to live? Physically, relationally, expressively your work, your money, your community, how you spend your leisure, what does it look like? There's different seasons in your life, and this is something you always have to check in with. What is your longing and what is your discontent Doesn't matter if you're a college student, a mother, an empty nester or a retiree.
Speaker 1:This is for everybody to consider, and there's scientific evidence to something that all great gold cheavers have known for many, many years. It is this there's amplified power towards a dream when you actually write it down. Brain research tells us this that one part of the brain is activated when you have an idea. When you're mulling around with this idea and you're thinking about your dream, it activates a part of your brain which sends wavelengths. Now, as you already may know, everything is energy. Everything is vibrating at different rates. So if everything is energy and you're shaping your reality by the thought forms in your head that you hold and then you focus upon, they energize over time. So, if you want to build a goal or dream, it's like building a house At first you have to build the foundation. And to have the foundation of a house, you need a blueprint. And this blueprint is a picture in your mind, it's an idea of something you want to create. Then, when you have the blueprint, then you can dig out the dirt and create the foundation to make it solid.
Speaker 1:And I want to rewind a bit, because I started talking about longings and discontents and I want to backtrack and go back to those. Your goals and dreams speak to you in two ways. They speak to you through your longing and your discontent. So you want to spend time exploring what is it that life is saying to you right now? And every year you have to evaluate what is it that is possible, that if I were to wave a magic wand, or if money were no limit, or if I didn't have only this much background of education or whatever the thought you have that keeps your life small. If I had a magic wand, what would I do? And then open up to the possibilities?
Speaker 1:Ideas can come to you in the form of your longings. So if you're longing for something, you feel this longing to experience, to be or do or express, and at the same time you're feeling discontent, and that's constriction, that's feeling closed in this feeling holds you back from what life is offering you. So pay attention, and the creative power in the universe works in pictures, and these pictures are your ideas of your longings and your discontent. So what pictures are emerging in your head that you need to get out and onto paper? This is the most important thing you can do for yourself right now is to allow your ideas to emerge of a possible life. You would love Things that you were happy with a year ago or five years ago. You're not happy with those anymore. Listen, but here's another problem. Part of your mind is arguing to keep you stuck and safe. It's arguing for the external conditions and it says you can't do that or you don't know how.
Speaker 1:But what we do know about brainwave activity is that if you think it, you have one level of coherence. And if you write it down, you take that from your right brain to your left brain. You activate both sides of your brain. You've not only thought it and spoken it, but you've written it down. Now the whole brain goes to work on that idea, not only when you're consciously thinking, but when you're unconsciously thinking. This subconscious brain is now at work, and before something is created, it must first be a thought. And you've probably heard me say everything is created twice. First it begins in a thought Before it can become a form. Look at everything in your home. First it had to be a thought before it made its way into a form. It was an idea from somebody, and they created it and they didn't listen to that voice that was arguing for conditions. So now we're done talking about the brainstorming.
Speaker 1:Step Now on to step two, and step two is prune. But I want to start with a story first. Anyone who is a gardener knows that you have to prune back a tomato plant, and you do this to make it stronger and healthier. You have to take your pruning shears or fingers to pinch off healthy branches. These branches grow between a stem and a branch and they're called suckers. We don't want those suckers. And when you do this, your plant is going to use its energy, focus on becoming stronger and more robust, and then you'll have a greater harvest of tomatoes.
Speaker 1:The same goes with your ideas. You're going to want to narrow down to one of the four domains that is most critical to you. What will grow you the most? What will grow you physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, mentally? You get to decide what matters to you and what is really in harmony with your soul's calling. Is it in your health, is it in your relationships, is it in your creative expression or work? And, lastly, is it in your financial supply, your time and money freedom?
Speaker 1:So, now that you've made a decision on a possible dream, one of those ideas, I'm going to give you five questions to test the possibility that you're deciding for. And, by the end of asking yourself these questions, you've decided on one dream that you're going to focus on. There are five questions to help you decide if this dream is worthy of you putting your life energy into it for the next year or longer. And the first question is does my dream make me feel alive? Does this excite you? And number two, does the dream fit with my core values? Number three is the dream going to require me to grow? Number four do I need help from a higher power to accomplish this dream? For this dream to be worthy of you, you need to answer yes to these questions. And number five is there some good in my dream? For others, is there a benefit? It's important that the dream we put our energy into is in alignment with your purpose and your core values.
Speaker 1:Let me give you an example of a woman who came to me for a free consultation call. She was in her 30s and I asked her to wave a magic wand and figure out what she wanted to do with the next three years of her life. And she had a dream for adventure. She was currently cutting hair and she had a hair dressing license. She'd been doing that for quite a few years. But she had a dream for adventure where she could cut hair on a cruise ship to be able to go to exotic places and see beautiful beaches.
Speaker 1:But when I asked her to test this dream with these five questions, she knew it didn't align with her core values. Let me tell you why. This dream of cutting hair on a cruise ship was going to take her away from home for three months at a time and then she would come back home for three weeks and then she would repeat the cycle. This was a 15 month time period. She was married and her husband supported her. He wanted her to be happy and he wanted her to have adventure, and he reassured her that he would take care of everything, including their three year old daughter.
Speaker 1:She was considering leaving her three year old daughter for 15 months and she was wondering when she hesitated on testing the dream with this question Does it fit with my core values? She was wondering will my daughter resent me when she's a little bit older? Because I missed over a year of her life? And this is what I told her. You know that you're unsettled and it's a strong indication that it's not in alignment with your core values. Not all parts of you are agreeing.
Speaker 1:So she went back to the brainstorming step and she went back to More ideas for how she could have adventure, and what she figured out was she really didn't want to cut her anymore when she was younger. Her family never encouraged her to go to college and the father had expected that the women get married and they don't go get an education. And she figured out that she wanted to go back to school to become a kindergarten teacher. Her adventure was about learning and Her husband supported her in this and they found a way to make it possible With a loan on their house. She reduced her hair cutting to part time and she was able to accomplish her education in two and a half years. This is such a great story Because in her kindergarten class was her daughter. She was going to spend ample amount of time with her daughter and she still had the adventure and answered a calling that it wasn't that she wanted to go away and see beautiful places. That wasn't the time. She wanted to be at home with her family and she wanted to get further education and quit hair cutting.
Speaker 1:So I hope this story builds in the importance of testing your dream and I want to end with a quote by Jeffrey Abert, and he says the most important thing about having a goal is having one. You must first establish it's a good fit for you before it can be manifested into reality. I hope this episode helps you. I went pretty deep into the brainstorming and the pruning, but I think it will help you to be able to narrow down to one goal and To focus only on that one goal and not everything all at once, and not letting things swim up in your head and creating overwhelm. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and it would be amazing if you shared it with friends. I'd be so grateful. Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to being with you next week. Take care, friends, bye, bye.
Speaker 3:Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out more. You, my community of like-minded women. We show up to create the highest version of ourselves and elevate the quality of our everyday along the way. Head over to on track life coaching. Com forward, slash join. That's o n t r a c life coaching. Com forward, slash join. I'd love to see you in there. And if you haven't grabbed your copy of the mindset makeover, head over to on track life coaching. Com forward, slash makeover and get a copy that teaches and inspires you to show up as your most Extraordinary self.