Hi Brooke,
I had a goal of making $250K by Dec 1 of 2018. I didn’t make that. I did coaching work on it then because I knew I wanted to feel disappointed because I didn’t make it, but I also realized I was feeling shame because I was thinking it was a reflection on me as a person (and that’s not a thought that’s true or that serves me).
I decided also that I should ask my future self (who’s impossible goal is to make $2million/year within 3 years as an artist/coach) what she would make it mean. She just makes it mean information – I was a certain number of dollars short (math) and that I could look at that difference and ask myself what I would do differently this next time – or not. I can see that I did certain things well – like first I wanted to make sure to be proud of myself for setting a big, uncomfortable stretch goal and being courageous enough to take action and fail, because I could feel how, unintentionally, I was using that to mean something bad about myself.
What my 2 million dollar self is telling me to do now, based on falling short of my goal in 2018, is to simplify. She tells me that because it is a sure thing that we are accessing those millions available to us, that I can relax and play big and don’t need to apologetically play small, tone myself down, and follow every little nickel and dime and be in constant scrappy mode.
She is pointing out that that being in scrappy, apologetic, artificially small mode is what caused me to not honor my own boundaries and priorities and led me to getting burned out/sick the end of 2018. I was still working, meeting my commitments, making offers – but I wasn’t feeling on fire and magnetic and strong, I was feeling sick and so then I was drawing back on my energy because in my head I was thinking, “I can’t sustain this.”
So, now I know that simplification and knowing what’s sustainable are important parts of getting to my impossible goal.
And, specifically, in terms of simplification, it looks like this:
1. Make art
2. make offers
3. the kind of rest that rejuvenates/nourishes
4. brilliant, life changing, world-class coaching, group program and content
I have gone through this – and I can feel a part of me nagging at me, saying that I should feel badly about missing my $250K goal – that if I don’t feel badly then I’m not going to learn and I’m going to repeat my mistake and then miss my goal again. I am trying to unlearn this habit of beating up on myself though, and also unlearn the habit of needing a lot of negative pressure and stress to show up to do the work. Am I missing something? If I am doing my massive action, feeling certain negative emotion on purpose, not avoiding the action or the feeling – could I still be missing something?
My future self creates from a place of abundance, love, self-trust, freedom, courage, vulnerability, joy, and having an unshakeable high opinion of herself and her worth. I don’t see her scrambling, stressing out, beating herself up. A part of my brain is shouting, “You don’t have the right to feel that way yet! You have to earn it and you clearly have not earned it! And you’ll only earn it once you hit your money and other goals! You have SO MUCH you need to worry and feel badly about and stressed about between no and then – how will you ever be successful if you feel great!” But I get to decide to feel the way I want to feel now…right? I do not want to delude myself – am I missing something? And honestly I am NOT feeling great all the time – sometimes are the heavy purse days and plenty of days I’m feeling scared/rejected/disappointed, even tired….but I also just really want to practice feeling free of the tyranny of my brain that says, “this is not going to happen for you unless you are maxed out!”
Thank you so much! Really looking forward to this year… XOXO