Hello and welcome to The Own Your Health podcast,
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
So, tell me what you want.
What do you really, really want?
In the helping profession?
We ask that question a lot, and I often ask
my clients as they come to me for coaching, I say,
what is it that you really, really want?
And maybe you've heard this advice.
Figure out what you really want and go after it.
Heck, there's even songs in the world.
Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.
Thankfully, I didn't sing it for you.
But the harsh truth is, many of us don't know.
Here's the good news.
If you want to be able to answer that question,
even if it's just for yourself, I've got you covered.
Now here are two things to consider when you
really want to figure out what you want - context
and scope. Context is important for making sense of
the millions, if not billions, of pieces of data
that our brains take in every single day.
And the same is true for figuring out what we want.
Now, without the context for the question being
asked, we don't really know if we want
world peace or a hot fudge sundae.
Frankly, both would be kind of nice.
All kidding aside, when we're trying to figure out what
we want, we have to have some type of framework.
So, A) what do you want from your marriage?
Or B) what do you want from exercise?
C) what do I want from my career?
Or even D) how do I want to feel?
Then we consider the scope.
What do you want from your marriage
in a weekend away or in
couples therapy? For the exercise program,
do you want a whole new body or just
a bowling league once a week? For your career,
do you simply want recognition for what you're doing
or do you want to find a whole new profession?
How do I want to feel now in the next hour
or how do I want to feel about
my life over the next ten years?
All of these wants are perfectly valid,
but have entirely different scopes and stakes.
Now the challenge arises when we give the same amount of
thought to what we want to order for dinner as what
we want to do with the rest of our careers.
Think about it.
So maybe not on purpose, but often that's what
I see when I start asking my clients.
Those big scope questions deserve time.
Time to simmer and contemplate. Time to
try it on. Time to adjust and reject.
We so often feel the pressure to
come up with the right answer.
Now, that may be fine if the waitstaff
is beside our table looking at us intently.
But it's not so fine when the decisions
are big and the stakes are even bigger.
And this is where journaling can be really helpful.
If you've been with me for any length of
time, you know how important I feel journaling is.
But you may still wonder, how can I write about
something if I don't even know what it is?
Well, it's easy.
You write to try on ideas.
You write out what your next career move could be.
So go ahead, write anything.
The more outrageous, the better.
Now, how did that feel when you wrote it?
How did it feel when you read it?
Did it feel exciting or silly
or scary, or just plain wrong?
So try another idea.
Did it feel less silly?
A little more interesting?
A little more exciting?
What idea comes from that?
Now continue this process for several more rounds.
Just writing down ideas.
Crazy ideas, interesting ideas.
The value in journaling is writing these
down, and it's that writing that prevents
your brain from taking the shortcut and
eliminating anything new or anything uncomfortable.
Now our brains are just trying to be helpful
and efficient, but that's not what we want in
this process of discovering what we really desire.
So give it a try.
Pick a context for your next big question,
and then go for a grand scope.
Like what kind of health do I
want to be in in five years?
Who do I want to become as I change careers or retire?
What would it feel like to wake up happy each morning?
Give it a try and let me know how it goes,
how you like the process, and how it works for you.
I read and answer every one
of your comments and emails.
As always, if this has been helpful for
you, please like and share this episode.
So, until next week, let's go out and own it.
