If you are super driven, you might like to make last minute decisions because you are always on the go.
But here is a thought…
If you were taking a road trip, if you don’t have a destination plugged into the GPS, you can waste a lot of time, money and energy going around in circles.
Either you will run out of gas, or get stuck on the side of the road, or worse – crash and burn.
Neither of these outcomes is ideal.
So how you take back control, is by deciding your goal before you set off on your trip.
The GPS will show you the quickest, fastest and most economical route to get there, while avoiding accidents and the traffic delays.
Being intentional and deciding where you want to go is half the battle. Without vision or direction, we will find ourselves in inaction or taking the wrong wrong action.
Learn more about Intentional Goal Setting on today’s Mimika TV podcast!
Enjoy!
TRANSCRIPT
Intentional Goal Setting
Welcome to the unstick your mind podcast on Mimika TV. Get ready to get unstuck align with your true purpose and unlock your God. Given potential. Well, really what got me started on this path, whereas, and where I’m at today. If we had to rewind and I had to look back really of where it started with the intention of, in my twenties of always wanting to be an.
And for me, I’ve always loved the whole idea of being an entrepreneur, the freedom of time, because even before I had kids, my whole goal was of having a business, was to be able to have the freedom, to be there for my kids as they grew up. So out a soccer practice or dance practice to actually be there.
But, as anyone knows, when you’re in business, it’s you become, you become the most difficult boss cause you don’t give yourself a lot of time off and you could be really hard on yourself. And so through the years, like my husband and I have been married for 26 years. We are childhood sweethearts.
And we started our business in South Africa. That’s where I’m originally from. But when we started our business that was always our goal is to be those freedom printers, right. And his business has evolved and mine evolved as well. And we moved country from South Africa to England and then from England to the USA.
And we’ve been here about 16 years now. And throughout that process, like I’ve had different types of business. But what I’d realized, like what brings me here today is along that process. I wasn’t really intentional. I, I kind of would come up with an idea. My husband says I have a terrible habit of ready fire aim.
let’s go, taking action before actually thinking about it and intentionality wasn’t really on the top of my mind, it was more about what do we need to do now? And especially when you are in survival mode, when you’re starting a family, or you starting a business, or you’re in those early startup stages, you have to extend a lot of effort and make a lot of sacrifice.
So forward planning and big thinking, doesn’t really, it kind of takes a backseat, but what I’d realized is along the way of running a business and doing the mom and managing motherhood and marriage and, and, and, and business I didn’t see the signs that it was time to slow down. I’m very much, I will push myself until I drop until I some, the wheels totally fall off the bus until they did.
So I had been running a, a marketing and branding agency for about seven years, doing all the things. Trading time for money, being available all the time until eventually it hit a, a, a pivot point where I had a business launch that didn’t do well. And within a six week period, my mother-in-law passed away from cancer, which was a huge blow because, it’s a strong woman of faith.
She she’s the one who told me, encouraged me and taught me a lot about faith and healing and prayer and all. So when she passed away, there was a whole totally rocked my faith. And in the same period, my middle child was having a mental health crisis. So it was literally like the perfect storm where things came to her head.
And I hadn’t been paying attention to the signs I hadn’t been in being intentional about my decisions. I was just going with the float until everything imploded, and I literally had to take time out. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. I was so burnt out. I mean, physically my body was so tired. Like I, I literally couldn’t get out of bed for three months.
I actually felt physically ill. Like, and I’m not normally that kind of person who, I can normally pull it out of the bag anytime and just keep going. But eventually my body was like, yay. Time out. You’ve pushed yourself beyond repair. You’ve gone through stress after stress, after stress. You’ve gone through the survival men, it’s kind of like playing whackamole in life. You just, things pop up and you just keep trying to put the fires out. And I always felt like I was being pushed from behind. And then eventually when things did fall apart, I’d realized this isn’t how I wanted my life to be like, how did I end up here?
Really? What, what got me here? And I started thinking backwards like, oh, well maybe it was a decision there. Or maybe it was not doing that there. Or maybe pushing too hard. And I took like a whole year to 18 months off. I closed my business down and really just spent time in per and contemplation and getting myself my health back.
I actually volunteered by local church just to kind of do something other than certain feel sorry for myself. And I’d realized I had to get beyond myself to see that, that I wasn’t done yet just because I was going through hard things doesn’t mean that this was, the end. I had to realize there was more in me and more opportunity, but I had to be more intentional about how I picked and choose things.
So I had to decide what I wanted my business in life to look like. And in that process I actually discovered coaching and really loved the model of how you helping people make decisions so that they can actually be more proactive instead of being like defensive of whatever happens in life. And, oh my gosh, this happened and being a victim of circumstance.
To being no, I’m, I’m in the driver’s seats and I’m designing the life that I want taking the choices and making the sacrifices where I feel it’s appropriate. So redesigning and going back to that and the way that I am, if I’m very much focused, I, I wanna learn something. I’ll throw myself straight into it.
And I really love the idea of neuroscience and how the brain works. Like behavioral science actually got certified as a behavioral can consultant. I’d really love to understand how the brain works. And as I was doing this work for myself, I’d realize this is really important work we can do to help others so that if you can take the time to plan and to sit and be intentional and to do a vision board and to say, Hey, where do I wanna go?
Instead of just throwing yourself into things now, depending on your personality, like clearly you can tell I’m more of a outspoken influencing direct. I kind of just throw myself into it where Members of my family are the exact opposite. They need more time to process, more time to think things through.
But in both spectrums, we can find ourselves an inaction or wrong action. And what I mean by that is whether you are super driven and you just, you’re very impulsive to where you, you spend too much time making decisions and staying stuck. We, we still end up stuck on the side of the road, just like if life was driving.
You are you set out on your path and you decide, okay, I wanna go today. But if you don’t have a destination and you don’t plug the, the dress into the GPS, you can drive a lot around wasting a lot of time, money and energy until you either a run out of gas or get stuck on the side of the road or crash and burn.
Neither of those two are ideal. So how do we take back control is to decide before we set off on our, on our drive. Where do we wanna go? Because if you use GPS, it’s gonna show you the, the quickest route, right? The fastest route, that’s gonna avoid all the, the accidents and the traffic delays.
So if we kind of took that approach to life and business and how we make decisions and become more intentional with that, I think we will be so much more efficient. We get there faster. We use less energy, less gas. It’s where we want to be. And it, what that does is it puts you back in the driver’s seat.
It helps you feel like I’m choosing this because it’s my choice. Not because society or my parents or my friends are expecting things of me. And I think when you feel like you have control back in your own life, that’s when the magic. So I think that is definitely the key to moving forward and getting unstuck.
Being intentional in the first place of where you go. And this is the thing is, is if people have, can create bad habits, they can create good habits, but it’s through choice. Like, do you pick up the, the cigarette or do you go pick up your running shoes? Do you go for the, the tub of ice cream when you’re feeling sad?
Or do you go for a walk? Do you like what, what do you choose? And it’s, I said, life is a is a bunch of choices. And life is 50 50. It doesn’t get to be, you don’t get to escape the bad without the good or the good without the bad. I mean, that’s just how life is. And I think we live in a society where there’s so much denial and I don’t wanna deal with this and we don’t wanna feel things.
We don’t wanna go through things. We want to avoid them by distracting ourselves. That’s what really the addictions are, is based on not wanting to deal with the feelings of, with a shame, guilt, whatever. And then we, we, we, we look for vices to make us feel better because we don’t wanna be sitting in the moment of dealing with what we feel like we need to deal with.
And this is a big aspect that I talk about as well as even though I lead with the fact that I’m a, a mindset trainer, a lot of it is aligning your thoughts with your emotions. What I mean by that is like, society is all about how do I feel? I don’t feel motivated, so I’m not gonna do it. I don’t feel good enough.
So I don’t feel confident. Like we give our feelings way too much credit. Why are we dealing and allowing our feelings? To rule the roost. Like if I think about it, when I explain this to my clients is your feelings are like a two year old having a tantrum. So if you don’t get your own way, what does a two year old do?
It throws a hissy foot. And in my case, my kids were like, like fish out of water, very embarrassing. Especially my first one. She was really strong willed. And there is no reasoning with the two year old having a tantrum. Like all parents know that when the child gets past that point of return, they’re not hearing you, they’re not reasoning.
The only thing you can. Put them in timeout for their safety and your sanity, because that there is no reasoning with someone who’s passed that they, they, it’s kind of like, why am I having this conversation? But what we do in life, even as adults, we let the two year old in our brain rule the roost.
And the last time I checked any household who has a two year old throwing out demands, isn’t a very happy household. So if we have to think that we have the, and it’s like almost like two sides to the brain, we have the two year old and we have the. Who are you gonna be in your life? Are you gonna let the two year old decide how it feels today to feel motivated to go for a run?
Or are you gonna be the adult and say, Hey, I’m making this intentional choice. I don’t feel like it. I would rather take a nap on the couch, but I know that if I don’t do this today, I’m gonna suffer tomorrow. So I’m gonna be the adult here, put on my big girl panties and just do the thing, whether I feel like it or not.
And when you just take that off the table and realize. Your feelings are freckle. They’ll go up and down depending on the weather, depending on the circumstance. But you get to choose as the, the adult in the situation of what your day is gonna be like, again, back to the waking up in the morning or who you deciding is gonna take control today, then everything that you decide to do is gonna be more from a point of intentionality of like, is this really what I want to do?
Like if. I eat a whole, but if I eat the whole box of cookies, am I gonna feel so great? I don’t think so. So even though I’m craving it doesn’t mean I have to give into that, cuz that’s not gonna, the result is not gonna take me or where I wanna be. So when you realize that this is the power of thought, the power you have as human beings is our free will is our power of choice.
And when you start to take back your own power and you realize, and you step into that, that this is my will to exert in areas and make these choices. It’s amazing how life starts to look so different. You don’t start to blame the circumstances, the weather, how you were raised, your lack of money or wherever you are, the bad job, bad boss, or the economy you realize that’s that has no bear.
On your life because it’s, your life is based on the choices. So when you come to that, it’s like a whole new world opens up for you. The concept of perfectionism often comes up, especially for high achieving driven people. And oftentimes if you look under the herd of things, it’s that root comes from normally a root of rejection, or perhaps they didn’t feel like they were seen and heard as a child.
Now, what I mean by that? when you raise an environment, usually when you are in a toxic environment or things are not exactly stable and you don’t get the, the nourishment and encouragement you need as a child, it’s like you are craving that validation. So like if mom and dad were fighting or like, in my case, my parents got divorced.
There was absent father figure. You always like, look at me, dad, look at me, mom, do you see me? Do you hear me? You looking for that valid. Now where perfectionist comes in is that we are the hardest task masters for ourselves. We always have this high level of expectation and we are the worst critics of ourselves.
Every, we think the world is staring at us and looking and judging us. But in actual fact is just us looking at ourselves because most people are more in interested in their own lives in really judging you, but really where perfectionism is dangerous is that there is no such thing as perfect because it’s unattainable.
So I always like to say, instead of it being perfect, let’s switch it to excellence because excellence has some wiggle room for you to think I’m always aspiring to do better, but I’ve never arrived and it’s okay. There is no the end with, with, with life until it is the end. So in the process of that, how can we be better today than we were yesterday?
That even though we are not where we want to. Thank God, we are not where we were, but we are growing and learning and becoming who we want to be and decide through those choices again. So if we can reframe that idea of like being per perfect, where does this come from and why do I feel it’s important?
And oftentimes as adults, we don’t think about where this, this thought pattern or this habit. Came from. And oftentimes when we need to look under the, under the hood and say, when did I start feeling like this? When did I start feeling like I wasn’t enough, or I wasn’t good enough, or I wasn’t, pretty enough or smart enough or whatever in insert the enough, we all have these aspects because of the way that the world has has the messages has given us, especially by the time you were reach age eight, a lot of that sort of identity formation has taken place that if you missed out on.
Establishing proper relationships like with girls, their identity comes from their father, especially up to the age 12. And then for boys as well, they model their behavior on seeing their father’s behavior or as well as whether they’ve had nurturing as a younger age. And it’s not to say like, oh, we say our parents did the best they could with what they had.
Now, if you didn’t have a very good experience and your parents were not as nurturing as you would’ve liked, we can let them go with in, in forgiveness and love and say, you did the best you could with what you had, but what you had was wasn’t really great, but I’m gonna learn from that and I’m gonna try to do better.
So when I raise my kids, I wanna do better than what my kid, my parents were able to do. So I can learn from their mistakes. And this, this takes a little bit of maturity and time. I mean, if we still have issues where. This might, if this feels like a little painful or a little sore and you be pressing in some buttons or some triggers, that is good.
It means you’re highlighting something that needs to be dealt with. And I’m very much about dealing with people at the root level. I’m not gonna just, paint the outside and say, oh, they’re there. Everything’s great. I’m like, Lean into those hot buttons. What is pushing those buttons that make you feel like you have to be a, a, a puppet on a string?
What is that’s causing you to feel like perfection or bust? Why is it so important for you to feel like if you don’t do things exactly right. That there’s something that there’s something wrong with you or there’s lack. And if we can kind of understand where that comes from and always say, think back of when the first time you felt like you didn’t measure.
And if you think about it, if, say for instance, you were age five, if you, as an adult are still allowing the five year old thinking to drive your choices and your personality decisions and cuz personality, isn’t just what you’re born with. It’s what you were taught and what you’ve learned, right.
Are we allowing that five year old, that hurt five year old to constantly make and be in the driving in the driver’s seat? And you start to realize that that perfection is unattainable. So why am I pushing so hard and believe me, I’m a recovering perfectionist. I gave in my membership to controls freaks anonymous a while ago, and I had to learn and adopt the saying done is better than perfect.
And believe me, my brain still goes, oh my gosh, it’s not done until it’s perfect. I’m like, no, it’s good. Constantly rewiring back to excellence. If you’ve done it with the heart of excellence and you’ve shown up and given what you can, even if it’s not. A hundred percent at least, you’ve done your best.
And that is really where it comes down to. So perfectionism can be very toxic if it’s allowed to perpetuate your thinking and your decision making. But again, take the time to think about what you’re thinking about. That’s what make it makes a cognition. And what we are talking about today is be intentional and hit the pause button and say, why do I think like this?
Where did this thought pattern come from? And how do I decide to rewire it? Because you can rewire it. It’s a choice. I would have to ask and say, well, what is it that you want? What is, what is your goal? What is your heart’s desire? Because you can only take the steps of when you make that decision. So you decide what you want.
And again, this comes back to taking back ownership, right? I’m not a victim of circumstance. I’m the director of my own destiny. And I’m the driver of my own car. So what do you, where do you wanna go back in the day or now as a kid be like dear D I can’t believe what so, so said to me it’s like, and the actual neuroscience is proving that when you use pen and paper, you’re using that creative side of your brain that you tapping into your subconscious.
So I always say to people like, when you’re feeling stuck or you’re feeling frustrated, like document and journal, what you’re thinking or what you’re feeling, because being able to read back what you’re thinking. You start to see yourself from a outside perspective. And that’s when you, when the growth happens.
Like, I always say, when you write down the thoughts and you realize like, Ooh, I wouldn’t talk to my friend like that. Why am I talking to myself like that being so self critical and you realize you get to catch those thoughts. So you allow yourself to be. Aware of when you’re doing it and you stop yourself from going down the drama McQueen road and you realize I’m not gonna get on that train.
It’s gonna take me somewhere. I don’t wanna go. So again, and by using, I mean, why do we teach kids to use, crayons and to draw it really, it gets your brain into that flow state where you’re not actually. Like filtering how you come across. Cause when you’re typing, you’re more like what I call editing mode.
You’re like thinking of what you’re wanting to write and trying to make it sound great. But when you just allow yourself free flowing and you just kind of doodle or like, I mean, they even have adult coloring books now that are, if you feeling a little stuck in that area, you can kind of, and it’s like, what I call the shower, thought you’re in the shower and you have the best idea, right?
Because you’re not actually working, but your brain is in that free flow state where you start to think of something. So, if you can allow yourself the, the freedom to think creatively, even if you don’t feel like you’re creative, every one of us has creativity in us. So that’s not even true. Allow yourself to get out of yourself and to see your life.
Like you are watching a movie, as opposed to being the character in the movie. You start to be more intentional about how this, this character should be behaving or how this character is feeling because you’ve created that sense of separation. Because you’ve allowed yourself to see what you’re thinking and feeling.
So I’ll definitely say journaling is a really, really good tool to use in this process. Are you ready to change your brain to change your life? Discover how to break limiting beliefs, stop self sabotage, and unlock your full potential by rewiring your brain. Using neuroscience coaching and faith-based principles.
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