Elevate with Grace

S1, Ep3: Why we've got to talk about our Why

• Elevate with Grace • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode we will explore the brain science and long known benefits of taking charge & setting the vision and goals.   As always we have scoured the best content out there to bring you a curation of the best tips, insights and knowledge.  You will discover that being passive in vision / why undermines your efforts in every area of your life.

  • Starting out that why vision is so important 
  • Benefits of setting your vision 
  • Three hacks to help you unpack your why  
  • Elevate Action challenge
  • Show notes below with all of the great links

ELEVATE ACTION CHALLENGE:
Let's find your key goal and action for now. Start with an SFD (remember it's only paper)
Set yourself a timer know 10 minutes and write down everything that comes to mind - thoughts on visions, goals, things you love doing.  If you have finished in 3mins then start to use one of the models from the podcast (listed below).
Once the timer stops its pen down & walk away.  That's it - just 10mins today.
Next let it ruminate - allowing thoughts to flow in the shower, exercising, and getting your brain to work for you while you sleep.
 
First thing in the morning (next day or as soon after as you can) open up your book, don't look at what you wrote, first just write down everything that comes top of mind.  Then go back and review your earlier list and start to articulate your key vision and narrow in on what is the most important goal that you really want to achieve now. Perhaps there's one for each category of your life. Perhaps there's just one big one that you just really want to work towards. If there are extra gems on the page, save them in your calendar or somewhere that you'll look back to.  Next week when we go through our what, then we'll start to really narrow down on our vision.

SHOW NOTES:
Simon Sinek - https://youtu.be/yNiWviKEoa8 (a short video from Simon Sinek presenting his concept around why) reminder: this is business focused but absolutely can be applied to your vision & why.  His books - Start with Why and Find your Why
https://www.booktopia.com.au/start-with-why-simon-sinek/book/9780241958223.html 

Carolyn Tate, The Purpose Project
https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-purpose-project-carolyn-g-tate/book/9780646971001.html

Dominic Price of Atlassian: https://domprice.me/personal-moral-inventory/ 
>> Consider your life in 4 buckets - Productivity & Profit, Purpose, People, Planet and seek to first score yourself -1 to 1 on how you are tracking and then consider a vision for each area.

Michelle Obama, Becoming - both in book form and also as a Netflix special https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81122487
Quote from Michelle Obama in Becoming: "What I've learned is that getting back on what track? It's a whole new track. It's not getting back on track. I'm creating my next track. I'm doing what you're doing. I'm figuring out what I want to do, what I care about. And it takes time to process your life and figure out what it all means." 

Brene Brown: For more on SFDs check out Unlocking Us the podcast or Brene's website for a quick cheat sheet: https://brenebrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-SFD-and-Checking-Our-Stories-Secondary-8-1-19.pdf

7 core value areas: #1 career or contribution #2 financial #3 personal #4 spiritual & connectedness #5 intellectual #6 relationship and #7 physical health. 

For more thought starter hacks please check out our blog on the website: www.elevatewithgrace.com.au

Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah

Miranda:

Welcome to the Elevate with Grace podcast, for women who are short on time and long to take steps, to create success on their own terms. We embrace school university and our early careers with gumption, ambition and passion. We are all in and ready to create a life of success. And then something happens. We start to hold ourselves back as we move through our lives. Research suggests that women become less inclined to take risks, career leaps and maintain financial independence as they move into their thirties, which is way too early to reap the rewards of all of those A's and long hours put in. This is

Miranda (2):

what

Miranda:

we want to explore with you on our Elevate with Grace podcast. Our aim is to curate and share the best tips, insights, and knowledge from all of the content out there then take the brain strain out of it by giving you the, so what, and some immediate actionable steps for you to easily squeeze into your life each week. Through regular action, we will propel you forward and offer support as we all create paths to achieving success on our own terms.

Claire:

A big hello there I'm Claire and with me is my gracious co-host Miranda and today in our Episode 3 of Elevate with Grace, we are going to be talking about why it's important to spend a bit of time exploring and deciding on what our goals for life are. And within that, our goals around our career, financial independence, health, and wellbeing, and any others that are an important element of your personal definition of success. Being clear on what a life of success means to you at your most personal level will help you narrow down and define some micro activities that you can slot seamlessly into your day and each week going forward to get you on your road to your life being lived on your terms. Most importantly, we want you to come away from this episode with some thought starter hacks that you can do to start to figure out your personal vision of your life. And this is the really important bit, because we know it can feel like you want to roll your eyes right now and start thinking I hate it when I'm asked to get behind one of my big passions for this life, or have to come up with some audacious goal that I'm supposed to be aiming for". But listeners, please stick with us, Miranda and I find that super frustrating too, because we know how precious little time there is and how much mental load we're all juggling already. While we are going to be talking about getting clear on your big picture, your vision, your why, whatever you want to call it, that makes you feel comfortable doing it. We are also going to be giving you three thought starter hacks for you to use that will help you get quickly on with the business of getting some starter thoughts down as to what you want your life to be like one, three, five years from now. Before we do that, let's do a quick check in on how we went with our Elevate Weekly Action Challenge from last week. The action was to identify one of the things that might be holding you back. And come up with a couple of behavior busting challenges that help you pause from doing that thing that is holding you back before it holds you back. Miranda, good morning. Hello. How are you today?

Miranda:

Good morning. I am excited as always. I just love this content because I think this is really where so many people get stuck and just don't realize it. So, can't wait to dive in.

Claire:

How did you go with last week? What did you find? What's your AA version of what's holding you back?

Miranda:

Unsurprisingly, I am dealing with a mixed bag. So I think we just imagined making a bit of a smoothie. We've got a touch of imposter syndrome, a touch of not always leaping into those difficult challenges as early as I could. And just a little bit of perfectionism, just as a sprinkle on top. So having acknowledged this, I can now ensure that I put these tasks at the top of my to-do list and force action. And for me, that is the difficult conversations. I think that's the one, my eat, the frog. So there'll be no more hiding. It's far more important that I achieve my vision by not getting in my own way. And I think there's more on this to come, but before we do, I just want to thank all of our listeners for your honesty and your feedback during the week with the acknowledgement of what is holding you back we just know that you're going to be ready to slay those demons when they next arise. Claire,

Miranda (2):

what about

Miranda:

you? How'd you go?

Claire:

Hi everyone, my name is Claire and I'm a negative self-talker. As we mentioned last week when we were doing POD 1's Elevate Challenge, I recognized that I was being super hard on myself about getting enough done each day when I was doing the stock take on what I love doing and what I loathed doing. For some reason I must be in a bit of a phase of beating myself up a little bit lately at the moment because a close friend of mine called me out on this too last week and told me that at the end of each day, I had to write down a list of all the good things I achieved that day, no matter how small. I thought that was a good addendum to writing down what I loved and loathed each day so I did that as my behavior hack for this one. And there was some days where I battled with it to be honest, but it was definitely a good behavior hack because it forced me to remind myself that the concept behind Elevate with Grace is to keep moving with micro steps on your path, to the life that you've decided you want to bring out for yourself. And so I found myself being much kinder about what a successful day for me was like when I looked at it from that angle. So yeah, I found it to be helpful.

Miranda:

So good. If you are still finding some challenges with what's holding you back, there is some great tips in episode two. Please do check it out. Let's kick it off. Let's really understand why clarity around your vision is so important. So now we understand what holds us back from achieving our dreams. We can stretch our braveness muscles and really start to think creatively about what it means to you and your future self to be successful by how you've defined it and created it. Firstly, let's ensure we are clear on our vision, also called our why. Pulling out the Man of Why Simon Sinek first. He became famous for his motivational push that we all need to understand and know our why. His examples of business that do this really well will really give you pause next time you're making a purchasing decision. He states we happily show off their brands and buy into their story, less focused on their product attributes and more on their why. When

Miranda (2):

this why aligns

Miranda:

with our own, we tend to want to broadcast this by wearing or showing off their brand in turn telling a story about us and the community that we're seeking to attract. Now, before you go. No, no, no, I don't do that. I'm definitely looking at the specs of a product, the examples were quite compelling. Two examples that have stood out to me over the years, the first of Mac fiends, who would never dream of covering up the Apple icon and how ownership unites you with a similar community, regardless of other demographic factors. The other that I've greatly benefited from as a unification of country folk when you travel, just being Australian, when you're in another country, offers community and friendship, when none would have existed had you both been in Australia. I've gone on to find this to be true in other areas of my life.

Miranda (2):

If you haven't heard Simon Sinek's talks or read his first of many books,"Finding Your Why" I encourage you to check out the links in our show notes. Although business focused, you can see the points are super relevant to our every day. The key point here is if we are clear on our personal, why then our actions, communications and decisions are all linked to our vision, our beliefs and values. This gets even cooler because how we want to show up in the world. The signposts we follow subconsciously or consciously are within your control with this clear vision. Without clear direction, your brain goes into autopilot with the people, community that you surround yourself with as the direction that your brain's following. The key takeaway loosely described, you need to set yourself a clear vision so your brain, your subconscious, this why aligns the communities you spend your time in and your futures decisions. Simon Sinek's famous quote,"people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it". And the more you talk about what you believe, the more you focus on this, the better the decisions are that you move forward with, the more you attract a community who believe similarly to you. And he also states that in this factor, people will really help or trust you if they believe like you do. So once you've set that vision, you are going to help to bring yourself on that path by having that clarity.

Claire:

For some reason, I haven't read any of Simon Sinek's books. I don't really know why but I do follow his work through the podcast channels and his LinkedIn posts. And I hear what you're saying Miranda that his framework and approach on why your why is the most important thing is really well explained. I think he explains it better than I've seen it explained elsewhere. I checked one of the YouTube videos you sent me this week that he's on. And I like how he says that there are three elements when it comes to our work, which are what we do, how we do it and why we do it. And that everyone has the right to love what they do. As in loving what you do, isn't a luxury it should be seen as a necessity. And if you don't know your why behind the work that you do, then you owe it to yourself to do the work to get that alignment for yourself in your life. And I think like we were saying at the beginning, it's really hard to pin down your why, or at least I find it really hard and I'm sure quite a lot of people do because my why can't be about financially contributing to my family or getting to work with great people. Those things that outputs or outcomes of what you choose to do. So then, what the heck is my why? About five years ago, a friend gave me The Purpose Project by Carolyn Tate. It's a book. And the premise behind the book is that it takes you through a series of journaling activities that are designed to help you uncover your passion and purpose, and then figure out how you can weave that into the paid work you do currently rather than take some drastic action of quitting your job and spending a year, finding yourself. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And I think the author did do that and then said that she thought that there was other ways you could do that and that's why she wrote the book. Surprising to me, I actually took a lot out of the book. It was quite practical and it really did help me figure out what I enjoy is connecting people to ideas, tools, and concepts that will empower them to uncover their best selves and maximize their enjoyment of this one precious life we have. And it also helped me figure out that I would be keen to get more involved with helping women create financial independence for themselves. Like I said, it was about five years ago now, and it's not really been until the last few months that I've started to make every day changes to work on these things that I've uncovered as my why's. And I've asked myself, why has it taken five years to form it? And then back to. Hello, I'm Claire and I'm a negative self-talker. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to do it. It doesn't matter the way that you go about doing it. It doesn't matter if you start five years ago and it takes you a few years to finesse it and figure it out. None of that matters, but it does really help to start to narrow it down on why you're doing things. And I think it ties into that activity of what gives you energy that we did from POD 1, you'll start to really understand that.

Miranda:

I personally having seen you on the journey in the last couple of years, I think you have woven it into your work and on your passion projects on the side. I think once you set this vision for yourself, listeners, and you start to get on that road, it is going to help you see the small changes that you're making.

Miranda (2):

A couple of interesting facts, why it's important to have a clear vision. I went through quite a few things and look, there's not a huge body of work out there on this, which was interesting. The Oxford dictionary defined vision as the ability to think or plan the future with great imagination and intelligence. Note, this is not really referring to dreaming. This is a vision that you intellectually imagine for yourself. I just loved that. Then a bit of a Google search actually took me into the old Testament, that you need to write down your vision and make a plan to achieve this. So even back in the day, they understood the power of your vision. If nothing else that really cements it for me, that this is just something that is a no brainer. It is a must and we really do need to make the time to do it. So think about this from your own experience, reflecting back. When you've really been clear on your vision, you've had a really clear idea of what you've wanted to achieve. I'm confident that you've made that happen. And I think perhaps that we don't really get that clarity. We keep rolling along enduring those minor bumps or feeling a little off. However, when we get this clarity. It's amazing. And things start to fall in place for us. Unfortunately, we don't usually come back to it until things are really hurting. Hopefully that's not where you are right now, but I still encourage you to come on this vision with us and go, this is the time to really create this vision.

Claire:

I really liked those definitions that you found that one in the dictionary, that it's an intellectual activity. You're using your brain about practically identifying what you want. It's not all love and sun and mungbeans like, that's the point that we're trying to get across here today. I actually did find quite a good list of 10 benefits from knowing your purpose in an article by Goalcast, 10 benefits of knowing your purpose in life". And I actually found that it's a really good list, I think any of us could look at it and pick, two or three good reasons for why we should spend a little bit of time on our why. I think for me, one of the key reasons why it helps you to have an idea of your bigger picture and what success means for you is that it helps when you're making choices. We are so overloaded like we keep talking about, and just having a better picture of what you're trying to do and where you're trying to go for yourself, you know better whether a situation or a job or person in your life fits into your life and what you should be saying yes to and what you should be saying no to. So I think spending that time repays itself later on down the track. But it is daunting and time consuming and actually quite hard to do this, especially when, on top of being really stretched for time as it is, we also rationalize to ourselves that we don't really need to be spending time on our"why", we don't have time for that sort of stuff. We just need to get busy with the day ahead. And I've been guilty of that many times. But I bet if you look behind why you were telling yourself that there is no point in spending time figuring out what your best life would look like for yourself, I think you'll find that the excuses that you make up will be inextricably linked to one or more of the things that's holding us back that we talked about in last week's podcast. I find that all the time, I'm like, you're just getting in your own way, Claire. So, as we mentioned, we have got some thought starter idea hacks to approach how you think about your why and get cracking with putting some things down on paper. Our first thought starter hack idea is to start small with getting down and dirty on some quick ideas about what you want to have done in a year from now, even three months from now. It doesn't have to be big and grandeous. It can just be getting some thoughts down about what you think you want to strive for in the next year. Something that I came across recently, that a girlfriend of mine mentioned to me, is the personal moral inventory created by Dominic Price from Atlassian. Dominic's view is that there are four things that contribute to our happiness, productivity and profit people, planet and purpose. And that you should do a stock take on how you are balancing your life across these four elements, and that you can only give yourself a score of between minus one and one for each of the four categories. So in a nutshell, you have to come up with something for each category and score yourself on it from minus one to plus one and where you're not at plus one, cause that's the maximum you can be, it gives you an idea of the other areas of those four that you should be working on. So for example, for planet, I might say that I'm going to have one day a week where I have a vegan diet and that I'll always take my use plastic bags to the supermarket. I find it quite a good idea when I'm looking at my activities, I kind of go well, is that productivity or profit? Is it planet? Is it people? Have I got all of those done? If it doesn't meet any of those things, why am I even doing it? How about you Miranda? Have you got another approach to this first starter hack?

Miranda:

I must admit I haven't tried the Dominic version, so I might try and give that a go. Only being able to score yourself for minus one-to-one is so limiting, but maybe freeing as well. I'll have to see how I go with that.

Claire:

Yeah, because I think the concept is that for say productivity and profit. So your job. And the money that you make from your job, can only get you to feeling a level of happiness to a certain extent after that, it's not having the same trajectory feelings so I think that's the concept behind. Yeah, it's an interesting one.

Miranda:

And the Happiness Project tapped into that as well. I think a simple example when we all need to make some of those serious choices is just to cast your mind back to those final months of school, when you were all deciding what plans you were going to take at the same time. While there was pressure, it also forced some big questions and you were guided through them. Whatever that process was for you, perhaps try and cast your mind back to what that was, remembering back, I started with my vision. How did I picture my life when I started thinking forward 10 or 20 years, my vision of where I wanted to be didn't actually match with the what I wanted to do. I had to really dig deep and explore much wider.

Miranda (2):

Really try and understand if I take on that opportunity, does that match with my"why", does that match with where I want to be, how I want to go forth in the world and if not, then keep digging. So fast forward, I think about the choices that I've made. I've swapped industries, I've taken a step back in my career to get on a different track, and now they all really line up to that past vision. What we said at the start with Simon Sinek, if you can picture your vision, you understand where you want to be, you will get there and it's definitely not a straight path but you make the choices because you know where you want to go. I find it quite hard to actually think about my future vision when I'm not experiencing a level of frustration or discomfort. And there's some tools that I've found along the way that really gets into the what, and so let's talk about that next week. You mentioned the Dominic model.

Miranda:

Another Model

Miranda (2):

is seven key buckets Korea, financial, personal, spiritual, or soul, educational, relationship and physical and health. And these are the ones that I've had in the back of my mind, but I've really focused on career, personal and physical development, and relationship. If I think about it, my financial vision really relied on my career goals. And then other vision areas that have largely neglected a spiritual connection. And now for me, that practice is essential. In the past, I've turned inward during those long drives or bike rides, so maybe that's how that's come to fruition for me. But when you don't have these, I've found that guided meditation is possible. The hardest thing for me is always getting it written down. What do I want to do? Where do I want to be? I really struggled with writing it down. You and I have spoken a bit about how hard that is on the blank page. I remember listening to a Brene Brown podcast and her offering permission to just start an SFD. So SFD a shitty first draft, and I'm probably not doing this light bulb moment justice as I have heard it before where they just say, just create a draft, just write it down, but actually thinking of it as a shitty first draft that was going to go in the bin really helped remove any expectation that excellence was coming. heheh. Have you embraced this term?

Claire:

Actually, yes, because I'm doing a little bit of work on writing more. And the first person to talk about shitty first drafts, SFDs, was the writer Anne Lamott in the book that she published in 1994,"Bird by Bird: some instructions on writing and life". When she says that perfectionism basically kills creativity and you just need to get over yourself and just get that SFD down. And I think it's the perfect application to how to get some thoughts down on your higher purposes. And I liked the categories thing. I think that helps then if you've got categories. And as you said, pick the four categories from Dom's model, pick the seven categories that you mentioned, but it gives you a little bit more of a framework then to pull it all together and move forward to get cohesiveness around your purpose and what you want to achieve for yourself. We, touched on it last week, as well as something that might be holding you back the disease to please and perfectionism, fear of failure. And so I think if you can embrace that SFD concept, just get it down and get something down. Like I started five years ago with getting something down and it will evolve and move over time so I think that's a really good suggestion. Our final thought starter hack is just to simply start where you are. It's very much linked to a carry over from our Podcast Episode One Challenge, which was to start to take note of the things that you love doing and the things that you loathe doing as you go about your day and each week. You can use that to build out and start to think about what really is driving you and giving you energy and how do you build that out into a vision for yourself that you get more of that and less of the things that you don't like. I was watching the Michelle Obama, Netflix documentary,"Becoming" recently, and there is a part not far into the doco where Michelle is chatting with some young women at a Philadelphia community event. And one of the girls asked Michelle how she feels about transitioning back to her normal life and getting back on track to what she had done before she was First Lady and Michelle said, what I've learned is that getting back on what track? It's a whole new track. It's not getting back on track. I'm creating my next track. I'm doing what you're doing. I'm figuring out what I want to do, what I care about. And it takes time to process your life and figure out what it all means. And I think the message from that is, if the thought bubble is it's too late, I can't change careers now I've spent 15 years doing this one thing and I'm invested in it or I can't move house or I can't move states for whatever your reason is and why you can't do it, you can absolutely start today where you are and start to really think about what you want to do. And I think a lot of people are doing that in the new COVID world, right? I think the last 18 months has given us lots of things to think about as to whether our lives are fulfilling for us in a new COVID world, as they were pre COVID. And I just encourage everyone to do a stock take and use any of these three techniques or a combination of them, whatever you need to do, but just start to get some thoughts down about what you want your life to look like for your future self. We talked about in Podcast One about the loving and loathing. I think some more thought provoking questions would probably come in handy for this. I must admit I'm not a big fan of ones like what would you do if you couldn't fail or what would you do if money was no object, they're a bit too abstract for me. But again, this is a menu of things that we're bringing you the best curated content. You don't have to use all of this stuff. And some of those questions might work for you and others might not. Miranda, do you have any thoughts on extra questions we can ask ourselves about how we can look at our lives right now and get some feelings towards what we want our life to look like for our future self?

Miranda:

Yeah, sure. I think, easiest thing is we'll put some great thought-starters in the show notes. We can start to think about is where would we volunteer our time if we had any? Where would you imagine yourself in five or 10 years What tasks do you love doing and what do you hate doing. What tasks at work light you up and end up always at the top of your, to do list when they probably should be somewhere in the middle. And then what do you hate doing? What do you wish somebody else could do for you? Work or personal. You hear somebody telling you about this experience, or telling you about this role or telling you about this thing that they do. And you're just like, oh, I really wish I could do that. Start to record some of those things down. Some people will have a really clear view of where they want to be and just have the idea of how they're going to get there. And some other people will have different personalities, where you actually more"what" driven and then you have to work back to your why and so we're working on that next week. You can start with your what, and work back to your why if you're really struggling to pinpoint what that is. Which is a perfect segue to our action challenge for this week. So let's find your key goal and action for now. Start with whatever comes to mind an SFD rather than trying to get it perfect. Remember it's only paper, we can throw it away and start again. Even set yourself a timer know 10 minutes and just write it all down. Have a think about it when you're out for your exercise or even when you're driving. Let it ruminate, and, by putting ideas down before you go to sleep, your subconscious also does some of the work for you. So then you can wake up in the morning. Review that list before you even check your phone, because you'll find that something in your head is going to help you there. Start writing down all your thoughts around your vision, your goal, desires, get it out of your head, and then examine the list and start to articulate your key vision and narrow in on what is the most important goal that you really want to achieve now. Perhaps there's one for each category of your life. Perhaps there's just one big one that you just really want to work towards. If there are extra gems on the page, save them in your calendar or somewhere that you'll look back to. And next week when we go through our what, then we'll start to really narrow down on our vision, narrow down on what those key ideas of key things to move forward with. And I encourage anyone that wants to share any visions or anything that they come up with in the Instagram or on the podcast.

Miranda (2):

As we round out this podcast, I'd like to quickly summarize the content that we've gone through today. Starting out that why vision is so important and that setting your vision will help everything else fall into place. From here we've touched on those three hacks to help you unpack your why and action challenge to get you there. Next week, we're going to dig into the, what we do it with this big vision once we have a little clarity, and if you don't have clarity, as I mentioned, sometimes working on the what can help you get back to your why. That brings us to the end of Episode Three. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe where you are. We really appreciate you sharing this with friends and family And we are on Insta for great notes as you go through the week. So thank you so much. Thank you, Claire. Have a great one.

Claire:

Thanks Miranda. Talk soon.