Effortless Thursdays #42: Struggling to achieve your goals with fun and ease?
Goals are not just an outcome: they're an intention.
I was really stuck earlier this week. I had been invited to speak and host an event today, and I was struggling to work out how to leave the 150+ attendees who had signed up with something valuable when they left.
It was also the first time in a while that I was hosting an event in person. No more hiding behind the safety of a Zoom screen with my pyjama bottoms out of sight!
The event I was asked to talk at was one of the regular networking events of the Junior Women in Law community.
My challenge: I was finding it challenging to work out what I wanted to talk about.
What was the thread?
What value could I offer to each of these women who were taking time out of their busy schedules to listen to me?
What if they were bored with my content? What if it didn’t resonate with them?
I was testing the limits of Parkinson's Law, the adage that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The clock was ticking, time was running out, but I didn’t have something to fill it!
I felt the pressure, and that pressure caused me to freeze. I was stuck.
My turn in the hot seat
Then on Tuesday, I was in the hot seat for a regular WELL Mastermind session. Four of us get together and each time one of us rotates in the hot seat, while the other three coach. We’ve met almost every Tuesday since early 2019.
Here’s our vision for the WELL Mastermind:
We are a community that encourages, challenges, inspires and supports each of us to walk with grace through life. We help one another answer:
What’s mine to do in the world right now?
How can I contribute with meaning?
How do we embrace the human experience and help each other cultivate growth, happiness, playfulness and wellbeing?
Our vision has changed since we started. Not significantly, but our focus has shifted to encompass the challenges we face in life in general, not just the ones we face in the work we do.
Being in the coaching hot seat is always a pleasure, even if - as on this occasion - I didn’t know what I wanted to focus on. I mean my head was in such a place of disorientation - in part because I’ve had a bad flare-up of my autoimmune condition, psoriasis - that I didn’t even realise that my stuckness was something I should bring up.
At the end of my WELL Mastermind hot seat, I felt a great sense of relief.
I could see exactly how I wanted to run the event - what I would say, the value I could offer. It felt in flow.
My insight
What was it that shifted that allowed me to go from stuck to being in flow?
It was this 👇
Often we talk about our process as an outcome. I want my life to be fun and easy, and I often measure that in terms of what happened. At the end of something I’ve done or achieved, I look back and think “Yes, that was fun and easy!”. Often it IS the outcome. But earlier this week, a fun and easy outcome for the event I was hosting seemed impossible.
It was one of the three coaches in my mastermind group that shared this reflection: what if the outcome is also a way of showing up?
Bingo.
Not only could fun and ease be my goal, but it could also be my intention. It could be the way I wanted to show up in the world: stepping into that fun and ease at the beginning instead of waiting for it to arrive at the end.
So what’s the plan now for the event? Talking less, coaching more, relying on the wisdom of the audience and - despite my fear of not being fully prepared - ad-libbing in front of a live and discerning audience.
Wish me luck!
Over to you!
In what ways can the process outcome you want (your goal) be your intention?
ps If you’re an entrepreneur, a lawyer or another high-flying professional and want to build a healthy brain for a career that’s full of success, joy and feels effortless, get in touch and let’s have a conversation.
That’s it for this week!
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To your health and success!
Eric
Good luck with that, Eric! Loved this.
Good luck indeed! Can't wait to hear how your presentation goes!