Transcript
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This is Crappya Happy, and I am your host, Cas Dunn.
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I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher
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and of course author of the Crappia Happy books. In
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this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent
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people who are experts in their field and who have
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something of value to share that will help you feel
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less crappy and more happy. Hello and welcome to another
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solo episode of Crappy to Happy. This week, I want
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to talk about goals and why we want what we want.
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I'm going to try and keep this quite short and sweet,
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but I have been thinking about this a lot lately.
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I am a coach, as many people know, I started
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life coaching over twenty years ago. I have then become
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a clinical psychologist. I have a master's in coaching psychology,
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so I've worked across the spectrum of coaching and therapy
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for many years now. And you know, coaching is all
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about creating goals. And there's loads of research that says
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that having goals, setting goals, and working towards them is
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really good for you. Like, it's really good for your
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well being, even if you're like a bit of an
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anti goal kind of a person. And I have definitely
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gone through those stages myself, and I am a little
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bit scattered and distractable, so I'm not that great at
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sticking to what I say I'm going to do. That's
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a whole other story, says the life Coach. But it
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is really important to kind of have some sense of
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the direction that you're going in, and we all know
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that if you don't do that, then it is very
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easy to just kind of go with the flow of
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life and end up going down a path that you
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hadn't really necessarily intended to because you didn't actually have
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any clear intention about where you wanted to be. So
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all a goal does is really give you a sense
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of direction. And it is not to say that you
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are then locked in to something that things can't change,
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that you can't change your mind or unexpected circumstances pop
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up and life takes you in a different direction. But
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it is really helpful to then kind of reorient yourself
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and decide what it is that you want in the
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new kind of world. If that has happened to you,
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it just gives you something to work towards, you know,
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and we humans are kind of driven to evolve and
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grow and develop mastery and to have some sense of
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purpose and meaning and contribution and having some idea of
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where we're headed can help us with that. Anyway, I
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don't want to go down all of that path and
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convince you of the value of goals. That could potentially
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be another topic. But what I did want to talk
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about is the question of why we choose the things
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that we choose when we think about goals. I think
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this is an important conversation and I want to talk
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about two different but related aspects of this. So one
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is what it is when you set a goal for yourself,
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and it could be in your career. It could be finances,
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could be health, could be your weight, could be what
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you want for your family, or travel or personal development, skills,
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hobbies that you pursue, upskilling in different areas as anything
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like that you can pursue. But the question is what
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is the feeling that you perceive you are going to
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have when you achieve the goal. So if you set
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us a goal to achieve a particular level in your career,
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or to achieve a certain level of financial well being
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of financial independence, you know, money goals, career goals, weight goals,
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health goals, whatever it is that you're working towards. I
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think it can be really useful to ask yourself, and
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as a coach, I've always asked my clients this, what
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is the feeling that you believe you're going to get?
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How is it going to feel when you achieve the goal?
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Like what is it that you perceive that that goal
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is going to give you? Because anytime you're pursuing a
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goal and you're thinking about, yeah, i'd love that, that
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would be really amazing, that would make me feel so
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satisfied and proud, But there's something more than that, and
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typically what it is going to give us is a
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feeling of freedom, of happiness, of inner piece of safety, security.
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So whatever it is that you are working towards, and
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if you haven't thought about this for a while, it
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can be really useful to even start to spend a
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bit of time thinking about where am I headed in life?
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Am I just coasting going to work each day doing
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the things that I do each day, managing my house,
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managing my kids, my relationship, you know, all of that
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sort of stuff. Like it's very very easy to just
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be busy doing the day to day of life without
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ever giving a whole lot of thought to where might
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I want to be in a year's time or two
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years time or five years time, like where is all
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this headed? You might have some vague kind of notion
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of what you would like for your future, but it
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can be really helpful to take that vague notion I
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love a fuzzy kind of vision of the future, and
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wind that back, reverse engineer that a little bit and
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bring it back down to something that's quite concrete that
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you can work towards. It can just give you kind
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of a bit of a spring in your step, a
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bit of motivation and inspiration to take certain actions or
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change certain behaviors if you have a sense of this
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leading to something bigger and desirable in your future. So
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if you haven't thought about goals for a bit, have
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a think about where you're headed, what you want, and
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then ask yourself, what is the feeling that that's going
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to give me? And the reason that I think that
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this is important is because for many people, and this
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is what really struck me. When I first trained as
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a coach and I started working with people closely towards
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achieving their goals, what I began to notice was that
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when I would ask people as a way of motivating
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them and as a way of getting them really invested
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in doing what needs to be done to achieve the
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thing that they're working towards, we would talk a lot
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about evoking emotion and what's it going to feel like
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when you achieve this thing, and people can often very
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readily tap into that feeling. But the problem that I found,
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which caused me to just rethink everything, to be honest,
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was that all of these people were attaching their happiness
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to the goal they There was a story running, even
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if it wasn't conscious. There was this kind of idea
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that when I get the goal, that's when I'll be
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able to feel free and peaceful and happy and successful
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and proud and confident and safe and secure, Like when
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I get that, that's going to be great, Like it's
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going to be amazing, and this is how I'm going
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to feel. But while that's great for motivation, what it
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does is it implies that none of those feelings are
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available to you now, and that all of my happiness
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and wellbeing is on the other side of achieving that goal,
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which kind of just leads to this, yes, motivation, but
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also this feeling of lack of dissatisfaction with where we're
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at right now, and then the striving towards the goal
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is kind of coming from a place of scarcity and
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lack and dissatisfaction as opposed to it being driven just
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from you know, like things are great and I'm fine,
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and I've got everything that I need, and it would
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be great to also achieve this thing, but not because
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I don't have everything that I need right now. I
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don't know. That might sound a little bit paradoxical, but
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what we don't want is this idea of attaching our
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happiness to an external circumstance that I haven't attained yet,
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to something that I don't have right now. When I
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was doing my coaching and when this struck me, this
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whole attaching happiness to a goal and putting my happiness
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on the other side of a goal, and all of
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my sense of satisfaction and confidence and competence and well
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being and worth was all attached to achieving this particular outcome.
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This is what led me to going down the whole
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Buddhist path, and not Buddhist, but you know, mindfulness, acceptance, act, acceptance,
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and commitment therapy, like all of that idea about living
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by your values and being able to tap into what
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is really good about life now. So the point of
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all of this is to say, when you are able
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to articulate, when you're able to identify what it is
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that you perceive that this goal is going to give you,
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then the next part of that exercise should always be
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where is that in existence in my life already? Where
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do I already have freedom and happiness and satisfaction? And
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where can I already cultivate feeling of confidence and security
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and safety? Like what's going well right now? All of
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these things that I think this goal is going to
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give me, How can I look at my life now
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and see that those things already exist. I can still
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want the goal, I can still go after that thing,
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but it doesn't come from a sense of lack, and
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it doesn't come from a misunderstanding that my happiness is
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attached to the outcome. That's what we want to avoid.
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We don't want our happiness attached to an outcome. This
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is that whole Buddhist idea of non attachment, you know,
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like the cause of suffering is attachment. When I believe
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that something else needs to change or something else needs
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to be different in order for me to feel a
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certain way. Then that is the root cause of suffering.
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I am always going to feel dissatisfied and my happiness
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is always going to be outside of me, always out
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of my control, because something else outside in my world
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needs to change. So I need to change someone in
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some way before I can feel happy, and that is
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what we don't want. So it is this balance of, yeah,
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have a goal, be inspired, live your best life, fulfill
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your potential, do what you're capable of, and feel good
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and strong and confident, and evolve and grow because that's
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what we're designed to do, but all the while knowing
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that I have everything I need right now that I
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don't need that in order to feel a certain way.
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So I hope that makes sense. It's a useful exercise
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to do, and it might just help you to shift
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your perspective a little bit, and it just helps you
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to let go of some of that grasping and scarcity
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and feeling of lack. Now, the other thing on this
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is why you want the things you want. And this
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occurred to me because I was talking to one of
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my coaching clients a little while ago, and if she's listening,
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she'll know who she is. And basically her story is
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a very very common one, and that is having a
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feeling of being behind and having a feeling like you're
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not able to achieve what you are capable of because
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she's got young children. This is the eternal struggle for women,
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and it is women. You know, there's not really an
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issue for men who have professional goals, have career aspirations,
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worked and studied and built yourself up to a particular
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level in your career, in your own business potentially, and
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then there is this pausing and stepping out and stepping
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back in order to raise young children, and then seeing
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everybody else progressing and moving ahead and feeling in some
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way that you're being left behind. And we were having
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a lot of conversations about how she manages that, how
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she manages those feelings, and this is something that has
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come up in my group, in my Beyond Confident group,
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which is opening again next month. I'm very pleased to know.
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If you're interested in that, go to my website and
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get yourself on the waiting list. Women who return to
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work after having a baby often feel the lack of
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confidence most strongly because they feel like they're out of touch,
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they feel like they've been left behind. They often go
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back part time so they can't contribute at full capacity.
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So there's this constant kind of comparison with other people
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and where they're at in their career and where you
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could be potentially. It's not an uncommon problem. Everybody who
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has maybe taken a step out to have young children,
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well to have children, will be familiar with that feeling.
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And she said to me one day that she had
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been listening to a different podcast and she heard this
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term mametic desire, and she realized that some of what
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was going on for her was mametic desire. So that
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that's a really interesting concept and it might be something
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worth sharing because it could be something that you relate
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to as well. So if you're not familiar with the term,
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mimetic desire refers to wanting something or having desires or preferences,
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because that is what society and culture portrays as being desirable.
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So it is being influenced by the world that you
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live in, by the society that you live in, and
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the cultural aspects. It can be media and can be advertising,
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it can just be what everybody else is doing. It's
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amplified by social media because we can see so much
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more about what everybody else is doing and what they're achieving,
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and it causes us to want what they want, or
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it causes us to feel like what we should be
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aspiring to. The goals that we set for ourselves are
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the things that the world tells us. The things that
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society tells us are what we're supposed to want. And
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because we're so marinating in these influences, because they're all