Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host, your coach, your partner in change and personal and collective transformation, and just someone who's really, really passionate about the seed of greatness and excellence and human potential, human greatness that is in each of us. I'm passionate about helping you to cultivate the conditions, the mindsets, the toolkit to help you nourish and sprout that seed of greatness into something that will amaze you. So today we are talking about our goals, hard, long-term goals that if you are pursuing one, a goal that might take a year, 10 years sometimes, five years, two, three years of work that is hard to track directly linked to that goal. Like, are you moving towards your North Star or nowhere? When we are pursuing longer, harder goals, it's not always gonna look like a straight line to heaven. And very often it would feel like a step back, like you're moving backwards, not forward. And you might start burning out for the pursuit of that goal. You might start thinking, it's staying too long. Am I really going anywhere? Does it really matter? Should it just uh give up and quit and start pursuing maybe something that gives me much faster satisfaction? And hey, no judgment here. It's up to you where you want to go, how you want to distribute the time of your life, what you want to pursue, what you don't want to pursue, what's worth your time and effort, what isn't worth your time and effort. It's up to you. But before you give up on those higher goals and aspirations, guys, we are long-living creatures. We have, you know, these days, if you take care of yourself, you can pretty much uh work and pursue great things till you like 90. And so even if you are like myself approaching, let's say 40, it's like another 50 years, you can achieve tremendous things and change the world in your own unique way if you dedicate enough um effort and energy and your uh personal um resources. But it will take time, and there will be a lot of moments where you feel like you're just a little bit burning out of that pursuit, and you wanna quit and you wanna shift and you don't want to uh struggle anymore. And today, guys, I wanna give you, I wanna walk you through an exercise that we are taught in high performance training and high performance mindset training and coaching, which is a part of high performance psychology. You're gonna learn an exercise that will help you to gain a different perspective on your pursuit of hard high goals. And then also it will help you to feel lighter, more energized, less pressured and stressed by the pursuit of those goals that you might feel like, well, I gotta keep myself accountable and I'm not moving anywhere, I'm just spinning my wheels. Like, what's it all for? Maybe I'm not made for it, maybe I should again pursue something else. But very often, those hard goals they are hard because of this journey that requires you to stick with that long term with consistency. But very often, again, high achievers, uh, you ambitious people, leaders, we often put stress, too much stress for the wrong reason. We focus on the wrong kind of things that create this mental emotional pressure and stress that makes us feel more drained and more fatigued than necessary for us to make progress. So, today I wanna walk you through a shift of perspective exercise, which will help you to not carry that baggage that you don't need to carry to pursue high hard goals. Believe it or not, guys, even pursuing hard things over many years, you can still enjoy your life and you don't have to feel stressed and pressured all the time. Challenged? Often, yes, but not pressured and stressed every time until you can show some scorecard for your pursuit. Today's episode is actually about letting go of the wrong scorecard that ambitious, goal-driven people often carry and try to live by the wrong scorecard. Too much luggage that again you don't need to carry towards your next destination. I'm gonna help you to travel lighter, even towards the hottest, highest, longest goals you can be pursuing. So, how to let go of this wrong scorecard and how to feel energized even with the pressure of external demands. There might be pressure, but you don't have to feel pressure. I'm looking outside my window, and there is this pigeon that just decided to sit there and listen. Just funny. Anyhow, so the high performance performance mindset coaching tool or exercise, one of the major ones. Focusing on what we can control. The tricky part of this practice, focusing on what we can control, that makes us feel lighter, more energized, more motivated, less drained, less fatigued, less pressured. The tricky part about this exercise is that very often lines are blurred. And we might think that yes, I'm focused on what I can control, and yet you might not be focused on what you can control, but instead on what outside of your control. So let's talk about that. Through examples: performance, personal growth, and performance area. Focusing on process you follow versus results you get. Process is where you can control. For example, you can show up to train every day, you can't control the exact timeline of the result that you get. Or habits versus goals. Habits you can control. Goals, not so much. You can design a daily writing habit, but you can't force your book to come out on time and become a bestseller. Progress versus winning. You can improve your 5k pace slightly, little by little. You can improve, but you can't control who gonna who's gonna finish the race first. Preparation versus luck. You can prepare your pitch for that startup or that public talk, but you can't control if the investor or the public think it's any good or they are in a good mood to applaud. Curiosity versus certainty, you can stay open to learning, but you can't guarantee everything will make sense and fall into place right away because of this learning. Systems versus willpower. You can build systems that make good choice easier. And but you can't rely on willpower to always be strong. Effort and mastery. Effort versus outcome. You can give your best in a presentation, but you can't control who applauds. Practice versus perfection. You can rehearse a lot, but you can't remove all the possible mistakes. Consistency versus intensity. You can take a step forward every day. You can choose to schedule work on things that matter every day, but you can't know if today you're gonna hit your best. Consistent action versus motivation. You can act even when uninspired. But you can't hope for inspiration to strike exactly on your time. Focus of resources like time, energy, effort versus speed of execution. You can prioritize how many projects you take on or one specifically very meaningful project, but you can't say you can't order how much time will excellence on this project take. Relationships and communication. You can control how you show up, but you can't control how others respond. You can listen fully, but you can't make people agree with what you're learning or what you're trying to present in the best possible way. Speaking clearly versus being understood. You can express your truth to the best of your ability, but you can't ensure it's interpreted the way you mean it or you want it. Authenticity versus approval. You can be honest and true to yourself, but you can't guarantee applause for it. Boundaries versus reactions. You can say no respectfully, but you can't control the disappointment that others people might have. Tone of voice versus interpretation. You can choose kindness expressing anything, but you can't choose how someone takes it. Work and leadership, clarity versus control. You can clarify direction, but you can't control what everyone does with it or where everyone chooses to go. Decision quality versus outcome certainty. You can make the best call with the data you have, but you can't control the market's response. Prioritization versus business. You can choose what matters, but you can't always control how much work it will actually take. Leading by example versus being liked. You can embody your values, but you can't make everyone comfortable with it. Accountability versus blame. You can own your part, but you can't rewrite how it's taken. Resilience versus well-being. You can pause or resilience and well-being, not versus well-being. Response versus trigger. You can pause and choose your next action, but you can't stop life from testing you or throwing curveballs at you. Perspective versus circumstance. You can reframe the story about what's around you, where you find yourself, but you can't always change the facts. Routine versus motivation. You can't wake up and walk, but you can't hope to always feel ready to walk. Rest versus exhaustion. You can schedule recovery time, but you can't always control life's demands. Gratitude versus entitlement. You can notice what's working, but you can't control what's missing. Creative and strategic thinking. Experiment versus expectations. You can test your ideas, iterate them, learn as much as you can, but you can't guarantee the exact outcome on the exact date, exactly as you want it. Iteration versus excellence. You can release version one and get better, but you can't hope to excel without messy attempts. Feedback versus validation. You can invite feedback, but you can't demand praise and applause. Testing hypothesis versus guarantee of result. You can learn fast, but you can't remove uncertainty of it. Adaptation versus control. You can pivot, you can't freeze the world in place. And whenever I work with clients on their hard, high, long-term goals, we're working through challenges, you know, my clients stay with me often for two, three more years. We often return during our work to two grounding questions, especially when we start losing motivation and burning out for the pursuit. We focus on two questions. Are we focused on what's in our 100% control? Are you guys, are you focused on what's in your control? Like truly, is it in your control? Or is it external scorecard? And then second question: are we making progress toward what truly matters? And progress can be learning, it can be understanding something, it can be just trying things that doesn't work, and because of that, choosing something else. Or it might be knowledge of that, you know, that pursuit might actually not how or what I want to do. Maybe it is the time to pivot. But are we making progress toward what truly matters? And that what matters might be self-knowledge, self-awareness, understanding of who you are, what your life is about, and what you want to do in the world. So, two grounding questions. Are we focused on what's in our 100% control? And are we making progress toward what truly matters? And that's how you stay focused on what you can control, what matters. That's how you stay in the growth zone long term, challenged, but not girl, goal, burned out, fatigued, and exhausted. Guys, I hope it was useful and it gave you perspective about things on things that might be stressing you out, pressuring you, feeling making your life feel happy and necessarily, like again, challenge comes with growth journey. But you don't have to be carrying this heavy baggage of external stressor, stress, and pressure while pursuing hard things. If you have more questions, would like to talk about that, email me, angela at brainbreakthroughcoach.com or info at your bestculture.com. The email is in the show notes. Also Instagram, Angela BrainBody Coach. Also, if you are a leader and need a little bit of help rewiring your negative thinking, there is a custom chat, custom GPT that I created that might help with you. So the link is in the show notes. Other than that, keep moving forward without that heavy luggage of external stress and pressure, and keep changing, keep pivoting, and keep growing and making awesome things. Till next time.