Your New BFF

Your New BFF

Dear Future Me…

Want to boost your mood, improve your outlook on life, pinpoint where your greatest efforts might be served, and create some accountability along the way. Imagine your future self! Picture yourself, thriving and living a full, happy life. Researchers call this your BPS-Best Possible Self and study after study say it packs a powerful punch.

Personally, I’m a big fan of this exercise. For so many of us in midlife who question what’s next and where to go from here, it’s a simple yet highly informative way to start fleshing out a new path leading the way into the second half of our lives.

Getting To Know Your Future Self

  1. Carve out undistracted time – find a place where you’ll have limited to no interruptions.
  2. Select a time in your future – anywhere between one year from now to no more than five.
  3. Spend a few moments visualizing your best future self, consider your –
    Personal Life including your interests, hobbies, health preferences, and any accomplishments you’d like to go            after. Professional Success this includes your career and job, what brings you a sense of purpose, any educational pursuits, your income bracket, and what you’d like for your retirement. Social Life your romantic or dating life, the friends you seek and keep, your relationship with your family, and any regular social activities.
  4. Describe your future self at that time – imagine you’ve invested the time and energy to actualize your best self. What does your life look like? What are you doing personally, professionally, and socially? How do you feel? Think? Experience Life?

Note: It’s important to remember that the purpose of this exercise is not to visualize  your greatest fantasy, but rather your best possible, attainable future.

From this identity you can then start to take action. Asking yourself what would my future best self do right now in this moment. This way of thinking can help you restructure your priorities and serve as a roadmap. So that when you wake up first thing in the morning and throughout your day your BPS can now be your BFF encouraging you to align with those actions that you know support your end game.

With the new year around the corner, this is a perfect exercise to take advantage of so you can hit the ground running in 2022!

Wishing You The Best Of Success

-Holly-

What’s Your Krptonite?

What’s Your Krptonite?

WOOP It Away!

Let’s keep building off of last month’s blog post to address the seemingly common and continued theme I have been hearing from many of my clients regarding a lack of  “omph” or a petering out when it comes to aggressively pursuing their more challenging aspirations.

Unfortunately, many of us are under the impression that we have to feel highly motivated in order to achieve what we want but the truth is motivation is more powerfully derived once we cultivate habits that support it. It’s like a fire that needs to be stoke-motivation, inspiration, resolve, however you want to refer to it as won’t appear out of thin air. We need to create an atmosphere that fuels it. Life is way too distracting and consuming. That is why last month I highlighted the value of knowing and having a strong “why” behind our pursuits as a critical component in keeping a fire under our ass even when the going gets tough. 

Let’s face it, it’s a given that their will be hurdles we will encounter zapping our energy reserves required to make our goals come to fruition. In fact, research proves we can better secure higher levels of motivation and reach our goals if we take a more realistic approach before setting out to attain them. To actually consider all the possible obstacles we may encounter along the way. This way we are not caught off guard and can have a plan in place to work through most challenges and lessen the likelihood of losing our tenacity to push through. 

Gabrielle Oettingen, a leading researcher on motivation refers to this as mentally contrasting, where we examine what about ourselves or our circumstances might specifically prevent us from making our goals come to fruition. Could that be a lack of time, skill, emotional support, or knowledge? What’s your “kryptonite” so to say weakening your motivation level? Maybe it’s distractions due to familial responsibilities, poor sleep, or digital consumption. If so how can you better manage these obstacles more effectively so you can create the greatest likelihood for success.

Using a simple yet powerful four step process, Gabrielle Oettingen, suggest applying a technique called WOOP, it’s an acronym that stands for Wish + Outcome + Obstacle + Plan and works like this:

Step 1– Name your Wish, what you aspire for.

Step 2– Identify how you will benefit from the Outcome of this goal, your “WHY”

Step 3-What about you or your circumstances may create Obstacles in achieving this goal.

Step 4– Write down your if-then Plan to get around any and all obstacles you foresee. 

So for example if you know you’re prone to procrastination and likely inclined to get sucked into a social media rabbit hole, wasting valuable time you can be using towards goal driven tasks, it would make sense to create clear boundaries on its usage or just unplug from your digital devices for a time being. Or possibly, if you find yourself questioning your emotional or intellectual capability in accomplishing what you desire most, then finding support via coaching or mentoring might be the right plan to put into place to help bust through those self-doubting obstacles.

The great thing about the WOOP technique is that it is super practical and can be used for everything and anything, from an interaction with a loved one, optimizing our daily eating and moving, or a presentation/project at work.  It’s where the science of visualization and effective goal setting help us maintain our motivation in the process because we’re not only creating excitement and buy-in but being realistic by considering what may get in the way so we can then make a solid plan to actualize our aspirations. So WOOP away!

 Wishing You Always The Best Of Success

-Holly-

Seeing Is Believing

Seeing Is Believing

Powerful Benefits Of Vision Boarding 

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking “vision board”, really?! Or at least that’s what I thought when I was asked to do one in a most recent self-development coaching program I participated in a few weeks ago. Yep, the coach gets coached…always trying to walk the talk. But when the facilitator suggested doing a vision board, boy oh boy did I have resistance. I thought to myself, she’s got to be kidding me, how do you ask people in the middle of a pandemic, having no certainty as to what the future will bring, to do a vision board? Yet, in the spirit of embracing my willingness to take this crazy time of our lives and leverage it for the good, I pushed through and began my quest in collecting words, images, and photos that embodied a vision that has now stoked a fire within me, crystallizing goals and direction that has me excited even during these unsettling times.

Visioning as a whole is a well revered coaching strategy used to assist clients in actualizing their hopes, dreams, and desires. According to research, brain imagery works because neurons in our brains transmit information and interpret imagery as equivalent to a real-life action. When we visualize an act, the brain generates an impulse that creates a new neural pathway – clusters of cells in our brain that work together to create memories or learned behaviors – that primes our body to act in a way consistent to what we imagined. All of this occurs without actually performing the physical activity, yet it achieves a similar result. And then there is the law of attraction, stating that by seeing in your minds eye what it is you want in and for your life as well as feel the feelings of having those things, will attract opportunities to you that will then bring those things forward.

Of course visualization does not guarantee our greater success and happiness as that will only come as a result of hard work, practice, and a commitment to align daily with those action steps that support our desired outcomes. But when combined with diligent effort and, I would add, a strong support network, it is a powerful way to achieve positive, behavioral change and create the life you desire.

Besides, now with most of us still having some extra time on our hands, what do we have to lose with taking some time to clarify those future experiences that will bring meaning and fulfillment into our lives. Taking a look at last month’s blog post where I shared the Wheel of Life and Core Values Clarification exercises, think about those aspects of your life you may want to start focusing on more and imagine it is some point in the future (perhaps a year or more) and you are living your ideal life. 

Ask yourself…

1st: How do your days start? Where are you? What are you doing? What is different (or maybe not) about how you ideally begin your days?

2nd: Now moving into your day’s activities, where are you going, what are you doing, and more importantly how do you feel?

If you are working– Describe your work environment. How does your space look? What kind of work are you doing? What skills, strengths, talents are you using? What are you learning? What do you spend most of your time on? What is energizing and fulfilling about your work? How is it different from your current reality? Who are you working with? What are those relationships like?

If you’re not working- Describe how you are spending your days. Where are you? What are the components of your day? What gifts and talents are you using? Who are you encountering? What experiences are you having? What are you learning or exploring? What makes you feel good about yourself and your life?

3rd: As you end the day, describe your routine. How do you wind down? How do you transition from your day activities into the end-of-the day routine? Who are you with? What is pleasant and important? Where do you spend time at the end of the day? What routine or practices have you implemented to ensure this part of your day goes as you wish? What is different about how you end your day compared to your current reality?

4th: Before you retire for the day, look back on the day with gratitude and appreciation. Consider what may you be particularly grateful for? What is filling your life with satisfaction, joy, and ease? Who are the people that are making a positive impact on your life? How are you positively affecting others’ lives? How has the quality of your life improved?

Let these answers inform and inspire you, make yourself a cup of tea or pour yourself a glass of wine and start gathering images and pictures that represent your vision for your life or simply just an area of your life. You’ll need a piece of poster board, scissors, glue/tape, magazines or other sources of words and pictures, possibly markers or any other decorative art supplies. It may be easier to create your vision board over the course of a couple of days where you first collect images you’ll want to include and then settling down to arrange them on the board.

Once you complete the vision board be sure to find a space for it where you can look at it often. It’s from there when we can then start creating goals that not only have extrinsic value (i.e. fame, fortune, power, and love) but most importantly intrinsic; identifying goals that are consistent with who we are, what lights us up, and coming from a place of choice. And studies do support that when we exert effort pursuing goals that are close to our heart, we lock in with more conviction to see them through as well as enjoy the journey of its pursuit and moreover complete satisfaction of its attainment.

Love to see your vision board creations…

Wishing You The Best Of Success

-Holly-