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Take The Time It Takes

Welcome back to creative lie we just finished up the last segment lesson eighteen be the boss of you and now we're going to go into lesson nineteen, which is taking the time that it takes and this segment is special because we have a special guest who knows a lot about this subject and that is a dear person he weren't were only get tau we'll get to do this because in large part because of this next guest and this is our next guest is craig swanson, co founder of creative life way welcome back have a c all right, so, um in fairness, I didn't even tell you what we're going to talk about. I'm used to that with you he's cured? Yeah you wanted to know, but here's your very well versed in this subject, so lesson nineteen it in the discovery journal is entitled take the time it takes and it's really getting a better understanding of your your your heart's yearning and the way that your heart's yearning is expressed is in goals or desires in accomplishing them. And um, it's not so much about t...

he goal as it is about what we imagine we will feel when we've actually accomplished that goal that's really what's driving us is that emotional weather pattern and you are very well versed in this because you have created this which started and we've talked about this the last time you were on this whole enterprise started with a fifteen dollars webcam and the other thing that you mentioned and I'm I'm doing this, making this point again deliberately that if you had ten years ago, met the version of yourself today, you do feel a bit intimidated, I might I might I could be wrong, but yeah, that's, how I might feel you might ten year old virg, right? Right, so obviously it took time to go from a fifteen dollars webcam to this multi million dollar studio broadcast here and in seattle, I mean, it took time and you didn't sit around during that time you became very ill, deliberate and strategic about creating a vision and, um, defining very clear, specific goals and identifying resource is and so ah lot of that you are all were all told, you know, we have to create a goal, but there's not I don't believe enough information about how to create a smart goal or specific yl or had identify the goal in the first place, and you recently invited me into a private facebook group, which was about this very topic, and you're very systematic and your approach, which I love. I love I love it and you had it wasn't five total exercises it's okay actually this is a process I've been using since twenty years I think I was about twenty two years old when I started this particular this's fascinating this is fascinating to me so I'm gonna have you tell the story of how this started but this goal setting process that craig does every single year in the week between christmas and new year happened when you were what eighteen years old it was kicked off by conversation had when I was eighteen years old tell us that story so I mean it's a fairly s o I was in high school in front of mine were talking about coming back toward twenty five year high school reunion and we were teenagers we didn't you know we basically said, you know, really what is a high school reunion is a competition who did better? So we basically wrote up a little contract cause we don't want to leave it up to chance we decided we would actually have a bet to see who did better with their life that we would look back twenty five years and say, ok, who won who want it life? Um how's he doing by the way we're friends on facebook we actually haven't reconnected on this I hope you think nights a week a little party between you and andi you know, to be honest, it wasn't that it was once one of the things that we would do up late at night when we're avoiding studying for our calculus final so but basically we decided okay, we said we set up a little bit structure for it we had a sheet of paper we kind of wrote this thing out there we're gonna compare our lives at twenty five years, which I think that point was two thousand thirteen what kind of a playful games game except we didn't want to leave it up to chance and basically said okay, so we're going to basically break it up in a five different categories because it wasn't just the person who made the most money it wasn't actually the person that had the best marriage it was it was, you know, money, career, family, friends on dh spiritually basically those who are five personal spiritually you yeah that's what's on my spreadsheet exactly on basically we also set the criteria that everybody that we were going to be judging our own results. So this wasn't some arbitrary third party was deciding who did better who did worse? So we're going to go that's an important point because you are the final judge of your success and happiness and we are often caught in a treadmill living out expectations or perceived expectations external expectations of what is going to make us successful and that's very I did that unconsciously for many years and then when it became deliberate about what it made me happy things changed drastically. I think one of the one of the most one of the biggest traps that I think people can experience their life is people who are good execute people who know how to get things done, people who have been trained from a young age to be able to accomplish goals that that that that they've been given by other people. So whether his parents or teachers like get a straight it gets straight a's three days do this do that whatever it is right to live a life trying to accomplish something that someone else has set out for you whether we take that on um consciously or unconsciously you get to the and thinking that somehow you're going to now get your award and the reward never comes at the end like the things you said at the beginning is, you know you set a goal so you get that expect you know, the emotional result and the problem is that's not how life works and a lot and people end up putting a lot of work into their life and feeling hollow when they accomplish the big goal when they come for a big old because that's not where the emotional payoff happens, right? And, you know it was in the it was in the green room. We're talking about this and I said, you know, life isn't doesn't just have this big gold button at the end where basically wanted to live my life and then, like, clap that thing at the end, as I am, like heading to my grave because what a waste of life life is lived in the doing of life and so it's this combination for me, I'm talking to a little structure I go through, so basically I do want to talk about the status or the short version is this cat setting us up? This this idea from he started with a bet with a friend in high school and a j a j. And then in my early twenties, I had started, I had started a business, I was reading a lot of self help books. I was doing a lot of personal development, and at every juncture people were talking about how important goals were, but no one really laid out a system golson write. And so when I was about twenty two, I thought, okay, this I need some type of structure I can use, and I've actually went back to this, this this kind of contract we'd written up, I said, okay. I'm goingto set my goals system around my goal setting system around this this bet that I had was eighteen years old, and so I go through this process between christmas and new year's every year of basically dreaming and visualizing all the possibilities that I might want to experience my life and then go through a process of kind of dialing that into a siri's of tangible goals I might set for myself tapping into and testing and really feeling the emotional drive to see what the still true to me, because a lot of the goals don't feel true to me when I really write them down, they're not really mine that one really came outside. They came from a belief I have about myself that that that isn't true or that, at least whether it's true or not doesn't feel true to me. You're unconscious. Of what? The true motivation behind it, iss you know, I did this. I did all of your exercises and accept I put a little spin on it. I used my asai dio I used my friend grammy dance process, the remembering process, and so when I was spilling out these imagined things and opportunities I'd like to accomplish rather than just making a list. I had fun and I said I remember when I was inside of the egyptian pyramids and I remember when I was in japan having tea and I remember when I went back to england for christmas and and ah the like the fun stuff comes out which is what you want to look back on and left when you're on your deathbed he went toe look back at those joyful moments where you really engaged in what was playful and fun for you so I switched it up a little bit I think your structures brilliant by the way but that's one thing that that I did was I just I found that making the list felt like I got to get two hundred one preg damn that's a lot and then and then about uh I think maybe it was like number maybe fifteen I remembered the remembering process and then it just flowed and no problem coming up with one hundred one things that I want to accomplish so it's now that I'm in the middle of this can you explain the structure so you defined this structure or it's five steps so that was over five days I mean basically five days just write down everybody just kind of walk through what we did over the five days basically day one was all about just dreaming and it was just about basically creating brainstorming a bucket list with a hundred won things that I want to do in my life, right? And they can be crazy big things, they can be small things, and the whole point of that exercise is to try to just allow allow ourselves to tap into the kind of abundance of life and possibilities. There's nothing magic about a hundred won there's not something to strive for this if it were twenty, but the problem is most people end up. Most people go into any type of visualization of gold saying processor is kind of like your planning process on some level, just thinking about what they're already executing on. So on some level of people sit down to do goals a lot of times, what their goals look like is a slightly more efficient version of me doing pretty much what I'm doing today. I agree, and one of the things that I also recommend if you saw my last course, I had a magic wand because I'm actually because it works about one reason, but the reason is because I want to have fun and, you know, as creative people watching creative, live, you have this enormous asset, which is you're fundamentally creative person, so use that use your imagination, your playful imagination to imagine one hundred one or five hundred or whatever you want. Yeah yeah the first part this is like the one hundred one is something I've done a lot of times one of things I do I use a lot of kind of brainstorming tools in my own life in fact creative live showed up the business model the concept of creative alive showed up on one of my hundred one lists uh my dad back in I think two thousand to so in two thousand two you still have that list I do in fact there was a time there where I was taking a month to do my hundred one list where each one I would basically right out like a little white paper so I did one hundred one white papers on potential future ideas that was a lot more work but eh a a future white paper showed up with a lot of little element like probably creative live encompasses three or four different ideas that kind of spread out over time during that process but the whole idea is basically the first step for me is about just brainstorming just just getting a whole bunch of ideas out just allowing ourselves to go shopping and imagining the future of life go shopping with your magic wind exactly yeah um so that was day one or a weak one or whatever period time it takes for you to be able to get a list of at least one hundred one possible ideas good, bad ugly fun doesn't matter just just ideas for things you don't experience your life um and then the next step what we're doing in day two is we're creating something I was calling the goal lifeline grid and basically making describe it what we do is we would fold a sheet of paper into square so we've basically fold in half fold in half against e of four squares along the top and you fold it into six parts along the from top to bottom and then you have look grid there along the top we basically list time from short term mid term long term so so given example of short term everybody write this down this is the second part of this process and you're calling it the the goal lifeline grid the goal lifeline griggs so it's you are short term mid term and long term goals for me short term is a year midterm is five years and long term is either ten years or twenty five years I tend to use twenty five years so you're advanced in this area if a year is uncomfortable for you you could do a week you could do a month where you know do what makes sense to you and what right I mean if this is this is just a structure but you khun dial it up or down depending upon what feels right to you so but yours is one five one year five, five years and then ten to fifteen, ten to fifteen, ten to twenty five and that a little bit depends on just kind of how what I'm feeling at that particular time. And we're all assuming we're going to live that long, so hope go yeah, that that might be something to put on my grid for, you know, I am alive, and then then that leaves five squares from top to bottom on the left hand side, and I basically label that money s o career and business money, um, family and friends, um, and personal spiritual health helpers and the personal spiritual right, so what I basically done is I have taken five areas of life kind of spread them out with a grid over three different major time time horizons from a year to twenty five years, and then I just go through and start filling that in I take a look at some of the ideas of not putting all one hundred one ideas into that I basically am now going back to my shopping list of one hundred one ideas and baby picking just the ten that really feel powerful, untrue to me, maybe it wasn't really resonate with you, then you'll take them and put them in this grid and in their category of spiritually money, business, relationships, health exactly. So health was if we could just dive a little bit deeper into this, let me let me before going to them, we'll jump back as an example. The one thing'll end up happening is then, as you're filling us out, the grid will look a little bit little bit of a swiss cheese. So there will be certain things that point. There will be things that we like. I might have a really clear vision of what I want five years out when it comes to business, and I might have no idea what I want when it comes to health or different areas. I kind of look at what is in there, what's not in there. For me, the classic one was when I was twenty two years old, and I was doing this. I knew I wanted to have children. And so in my ah long term grid, my long term in a box for family I had I had died, three children, and nowhere on my list had I talked about a future spouse, the future relationship. I just I was twenty one and I was a twenty year old guy. I I know I want to have kids someday right somehow and extrapolating that desire out, I went, okay, actually, this probably means, you know, and I I started to actually build out kind of this lifeline grid of what my life might look like a different categories. I realise I have not really figured out my relationship with women. Certainly not certainly not on a basis. I want tohave the future, you know, future mother of my children and long term like my my relationship with women was not figured out anywhere along those lines. I wasn't ready to be that personal relationship. Yeah, and in fact, that was actually so my short term goal was just for me to get in a place of being ready to even meet my future spouse. My five year goal became being married within a loving relationship with my spouse. Um, and now the goals didn't lead to any of that, but I helped kind of clarify some things are a lot of times you in touch with your desires, which is what this is all about once also connecting our desires to certain prerequisite sequence of things there's a there's, a natural sequence of events and having children is an excellent example of where you have to follow a certain see quinn, you don't have to, but it's best you wanted teo that's, the that's, the program you were signing up for? Yeah, so really so the idea is to basically take what I know flesh out this grid started extrapolating out what I don't know either for my desires or just from logic, figuring things out until I have just kind of this map of of a potential future visualized life that that holds together that becomes kind of a single piece that doesn't have a huge gaping holes in it so that that's basically we get to the end of day two, so day two are step two, you've got a pretty logical sequence, but it's coming from your emotional desire and you're also gives you by mapping it out in this fashion, and I've done this so it I encourage you to do it. You can see where there are some holes where you haven't thought things through or felt bring felt things through. So then there's a third part of this process and what? How would you describe that? So the third part of this process? And this is something that write this down, everybody I kind of learned early on, I learned early on, whenever I have a desire to create something in my life, I have a belief that that desire is driven because I believe it's going to create some type of emotional response in me, so so so I basically almost like you take this little piece of lamb in it and you put it down over your grid. And just focus in on each one of those little boxes, so you've got fifteen boxes I can look at what, my, what I've written down for health in my one year goal, I can look at what I've got health, my five year goal, these different areas, and just imagine what it would feel like to actually own and accomplished and be everything I, whether it's a new car, whether it's something else and for me, I really in this last year got in touch with basically help I I was really visualizing what would be like if I hit my goal of being bye fin and trim and wearing size thirty two genes and having really well to find out. And you. You, you, you ran if you regularly run five case now, right? I yes, I now I regularly runs before that if you don't mind me saying you described yourself kind of a couch potato by, well, I started running five k's this year, but I've only been running now for about one hundred forty five days at this point, and you drop some weight. I've dropped off fifty pounds this year, fifty pounds, but a lot of that comes from so let me lay the scribe of this process, this this was the first time that I really made health a focus for for one of these annual kind of goal setting process this is a good one, by the way because you don't into this in your email I I had written down to find abbs thin and trim and three to uh inch waist and I got to that exercise it basically visualizing what that looks like and I I could not identify the emotion I thought that would really truly exist in my life if I had if I had to find abs and I really do and I really, really going hunting because I wanted to find out how I wanted it, but I couldn't articulate why I'm honest, no motivation I did not have any belief that my wife would love me any more if I had to find abbs I bye rationally unless I walked around the office with my shirt off, nobody even knows it so like like to find out, you're not something you're actually like like they're not public knowledge, right? So obviously not so all this work, and I can't really even clarify what it is that I'm getting out of that right on dh. Furthermore, when I really visualized myself as this thin on and trim person, I realized that I it was bringing more sense of fear and more fences sense of resistance than it was giving me a sense of of happiness or accomplishment. This is such an excellent point because you felt into it the way that you did and really examined me try to identify the emotional motivation you encountered your resistance, which is maybe why you don't exercise until recently so and this is don't miss this part of the process. It's really important that this was huge for me because I had always been I've been I am still fairly big, but I've been much bigger and I've been a heavy guy, and when I really is picturing myself as thin and trim, I did not want that I I really found myself resisting that, and it felt scary. It felt like I'd given something up, and so I know that I cannot like I can't override my desires intellectually, I if I want something, I have to figure out how to put the things I want really is my my emotional reward into whatever I'm building, and so I really had to figure out what it was emotionally that was going on for me and for me, I mean, this is not the case for anyone else. We've won that the real story and that's the point of this is this is incredibly personal, and the other big point of this is that. The's air goals and motivations defined from within by you and no one else that's actually really great example because there's a lot of external logical reasons why that would show up on my list right for you because if you look at the cover of men's magazine health magazine or yeah you see the visible abs are part of the elevated equation so what did you identify is was what was actually taking energy away from that ball from me for me just for may I realized that on a really strong level I felt like I was giving up my power at visualizing myself as a thin and fit person and for me wait was associated with power associated with like a nerve you like you can take your briefcase take up space and for me power equated to pride to strength and so I realized that on some level like that like on the daily emotional level I didn't want to give up my weight because my weight I associate with strength on dso a couple things I rewrote michael so I first of all I went with strength as my goal for health maur than so I took thin completely off the table so thin was taken off the table and I rewrote I am strong and powerful I'm wearing size three two genes still wanted that still want to find out and I started doing more weight training in my daily routine and for me, I have found that when I am focusing on becoming stronger, I am much more comfortable allowing the physical fat and wait to shed off my body because I'm getting my strength in a different area and I'm getting and for me also it's also really important, I think, for me, strength, strength is not really an emotion strengthen ties into it, but for me like that really triggers a sense of pride. So and how about just confidence, confidence that way and not for you? Obviously the point the point of this is that it's again, these goal setting this isn't part of the general instruction guide we get we say set your goals what's missing from the common instruction is the only reason you're setting goals is so you can feel a certain way so it's very important to lean into in feet, you know, discover what it is, how you want to feel exactly and so jumping back to the side of this grid so basically can't go through this exercise. And then we pictured we laid down this theater aisle and basically we're writing down what we feel, what I believe will be my emotional reward for accomplishing all these individual goal, so I've got this this grid of now fifteen things, and if it's on a transparency could almost pull away all of the underlying goals and just basically, I would have a list of the emotions that I believe I am building for my life, what it is, I want to create my life, and I have a belief that the best way for me to build an accomplished the goals I want to have my life is to build inhabits that on a daily basis, allow me to touch the emotion and experience the emotion that I want tohave about the end result today. So the best strategy for me to accomplish the things I say I want is to build the emotion into my daily life through actions that trigger that emotion, rather than somehow believing that the end of doing all this work over for several years, I will get the emotion then, right? Because two things, but I don't want to wait for that to feel that way. Well, for one thing, because life is spent in the doing life is spent in the day to day period of time, I don't believe in living a life that is empty for the whole of a rewarding moment for the fleeting moment of reward, and I talked to so many people that our goal driven, that talk about the emptiness of goals to them, the emptiness of life, because they work and work and work and get the thing, and they everything they sacrificed, everything they've built everything they've done has been for the hope that they would get this payoff that point later on instead of the instead of now and it never works or if that payoff comes it comes so fleetingly that then all you're left with is this hunger for the next thing right? So we're winding down to the next the end of the segment I wanna make sure we get step four and five so really quickly what step for and what stefan so step for is basically to look at the so first well, I can't have everything in my life at one time, right? So so yes so for me like I believe I can't have anything but that doesn't mean I can have everything and everything all at once exactly so I picked the one or two areas in my life I'm going to focus on most over next twelve months and one of the reasons why fitness really never hit for me has it never made my top two list so that step for is focusing on the prioritization of that of those aspiration where am I? Where am I gonna put my work over the next twelve weeks? Okay? And um then to try to identify habits I can build my life that do two things simultaneously habits that tactically move me forward in the direction of creating what I say I want and number two create the emotional response in today that I am going for does that does that step five that's that's step for this theft for so basically like logically kind of think out and plan out basic habits that I can do so for me like like certain weight training I could do with the gym? I get that for me it's three times with three times the weight of the week. This also goes for money if you want to have more money if you want to save money, you have to tie it into a way where you were actually doing the work of saving, creating, doing whatever he wanted with money while the same time ticking that emotional response in yourself that you are going to want to be building for for three or four years down the road and we don't have time to get into that and that whole exercise trying to figure out something this's really a wonderful breakdown so that last but not least there's a fifth step in this process and the last step is based likely to break my year into twelve weeks segments. So basically what what I basically do is kind of the rhythm in my life is an intense week of visualization and dreaming followed by letting those dreams go and working in a habit and just working the habits and working the behaviors for twelve weeks and then repeating than coming back dreaming, visualizing, being intense and visualization, and then letting it go it's a cycling back to cycling back if you ever if you ever thought about when ideas come to us and I do this for problem solving ideas for a lot of things, if there's a problem I'm having with my life, I will often be very, very intense dive into it just really focus on it for a day or a period of time and then let it go and then yeah, and when you let it go, then your subconscious will take over and we'll solve the problem for you while you're taking a shower or driving down the road, we're coming to the end of the segment, and I think this is brilliant and I just wanted and one I would have, um, just mentioned something else that you talked about. We were talking about your in your habits and building habits and also it's also an encouragement to the to the audience that sometimes you have, you have to find a goal and you're not one hundred percent, you know, one hundred percent believe it all the time that you're actually going, teo accomplish that goal, but you do believe that on a habitual basis, you khun, get up and put your sneakers, I or you can you know, choose not to eat a doughnut or whatever it is like you could at least you can't believe that you conform the habit on that given day, this countess idea of intense visual ization fall by letting it go. I kind of picture is like throwing a ball, I have to think and plan and aim the ball when I throw it, but once I've thrown the ball it's in motion and I just need to be there to catch it, I don't set myself up to have to believe what I'm doing for twelve I have a belief that things worked for me even when I don't believe them. So basically worked create what I want to create set up this structural habits in my life just a couple days like not overwhelming, like like four things I can do on a recurring basis that will start to move me in that direction and for me also, and maybe not even doing significant movement just to get me in the space of creating something like I like for some people, like I had one goal. I wanted to write a thousand word today, and I wasn't I totally wasn't writing a thousand words that were writing always too big, and I cut it in half down a five hundred word today still wasn't doing cut it down to two hundred fifty words a day all of a sudden I was doing it and the idea is to not pick goals that are going to accomplish something big but they're going to instill the habits into my life you know how do you teach a horse to jump over like a pole likely for pole vaulting you basically lay that pole on the ground to start with and have the horse walk over and enough times until you have built a habit with the horse and slowly raise it up so what I look for is basically over those twelve week periods not getting a result but getting the habits bill to my right not reaching the goal but just enforcing the habit and becoming getting in a rhythm exactly and as long as I've done the intense visualization ahead time so there's a part of my brain that's working on it every time I come back to do that behavior I am creating yet one more opportunity for my life to kind of click into place and for it to start working in that direction and so as long as I commit to doing the behaviors over time I could even just completely lose faith in the goal I'm shooting towards as long as I do that minimum behaviour on a daily basis over time because for me belief can't last forever and lack of belief can't last forever, and all I'm looking for is like this wave and fall of when I'm doing the work, and I happen to believe stronger on that day, and I take it a little bit further. Excellent. Wow, this was so that's what I want to talk about, I see what I said you knew you would have if I knew you would be so articulate and so, you know, so practical around the subject that you already knew it, it's why I didn't prep you. I kept him in the dark about what he was going to have to talk about during the segment, so I hope that was informative. I've done these exercises and they're brilliant, and I suggest that you connect with someone and do it with someone that you trust in love, and they're really, really, really great. So thank you so much because obviously, your goals and work wow, is that great way had a conversation about goals and habits. John this's this's a big topic for john so thank you so much for joining us for listen nineteen take the time it takes, and our next lesson lesson twenty is about giving yourself permission so thank you very much.