Ep 177: Deciding on Purpose

In this episode, Marie unpacks one of the most powerful habits a person can build: deciding on purpose and ahead of time. She kicks things off with a behind-the-scenes look at the summer bucket list she just built with her family — and why that one ritual is setting them up for a collaborative, empowered, unforgettable summer where they actually get to know each other better and make real decisions about how to spend the moments of their precious life together. 

From there, she shares why her recent Time Whispering class is getting rave reviews (spoiler: it's the deciding on purpose ahead of time of it all), and then walks through exactly how this practice changes everything — from how you eat and move, to how you build your career, to how you show up in your relationships, to how much of your life you actually feel present for.

What You'll Learn

• Why "in the moment brain" is reactive, negativity-biased, and almost always defaults to what's easiest
• How deciding ahead of time lets you pull from your wisest mind — the one that actually has your best interest at heart
• Why goals are never really about accomplishing the goal — they're about who you become as you reach for them
• A repeatable process for making decisions, recommitting to them, and moving through the obstacles that show up along the way
• The truth that you're always deciding — either on purpose from your highest mind, or by default in reaction to whatever life throws at you
• How to apply this to the real, daily places it matters most: diet and exercise, career, relationships, and time with the people you love

Mentioned in This Episode

• Time Whispering Course — the recent class is getting rave reviews because it puts this exact principle into practice. Grab the course to get the full resource and start deciding ahead of time about your time.
• The Moxie Mixer — Marie shares details on the upcoming Moxie Mixer event and how to grab your ticket. Listen in for the link and how to claim a spot.
• Summer Bucket List — try this with your family or even solo. It's a small ritual with an outsized return on your summer.

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 177 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where over here in my world, we are in full swing summer on day four of our summer. And I know this because each day has been so full of very summery things. And uh we this weekend, on our second day of summer, did our summer bucket list as a family, which I've talked about on the podcast probably once a year. We're in what, our fourth year on the podcast? So I've probably talked about it four times, but I love to bring it up because it's a seasonal thing that is so fun for my family. And I'm gonna tell you a little bit about how we do it because I've been getting more questions about it. And then I'm gonna talk about our Time Whispering course, which I just ran, because it's leading us into the content for today from all the beautiful work that's been done in the last few days. So, first of all, this whole summer bucket list thing. Here's how me and my family did it this year. We, and we, you know, I've iterated on it over the years because we always love a summer bucket list. And again, this is directly tied to what we're gonna talk about today as well, as a way to collaboratively, as a family, create a vision for what we want to experience with the one summer that we have when everyone is the age that they're at right now, when everyone is in this moment of life that we're in right now. We oftentimes b just believe that life extends on in front of us, and we're gonna have many, many other opportunities to do whatever the thing is that we're putting off right now. When in reality, if I think about my own life, this is the only summer when I'll have a 13-year-old beautiful girl and a nine-year-old beautiful boy in my house. They'll be different next year. I might feel like I'll have forever to do the things with them that I want to do, but they will be different next year, and who knows what else will be different. Will we still be in this house? Will my husband still be working in the job that he's working? Will I still be doing the work I'm doing? Like what will we have the freedoms that we have? Will we have the community that we have? We don't know. We never know, right? So let's always prioritize deciding what we most want right now. And let's do it collaboratively. When we do it as a family, we get to know each other better. We have a collective experience of empowerment where we're designing our experience together for the summer and what's important to us. We get to both collaborate and sort of like compromise in ways, like the good kind of compromise, right? Where we're saying, where are our want matches across all of the things that we want to do this summer and how does that create a beautiful experience for ourselves? We also get to have things on a list that supports us later on in the summer when we're like, what should we do? We've already decided all the things that are important to us, and we have this buffet of flavors, of options that we can choose from on a day when we don't know what we want to do yet and we're hanging out together. We also just feel that empowerment from the kids that they're starting to design their own experience, and we have this kind of fun getting to know you where we hear about each other's hopes and dreams. Now we have this family bucket list, but we also then each have our own individual bucket lists. So here I'm gonna talk you through the process and you'll hear a little bit more about why I recommend this so much. So the first thing that we do is we this year got out large pieces of paper and like just kind of it happened that we just started kind of designing them a little bit and kind of chatting and having fun, all sitting out with all these like colored pens and and tools. And we like just drew on them summer bucket lists and we were chatting. And then each person put on the list all of the things that they wanted to do this summer. Now I have a nine-year-old, a 13-year-old, and my husband. So my husband and I might be autonomous in ours. My 13-year-old is mostly autonomous in hers. My nine-year-old might need a little bit more support. So the way that I do this, and I was just talking through this with a client who has like a three-year-old and a five-year-old, really different age group, is that I might ask guiding questions to my kids to help them think. So those questions might sound like, what are the things you want to do with a family? What are the things you want to do here in town? And what are the adventures you want to have for us all out together? What are the types of things you want to do when you're like on a day with mama or with dad? And the things that you would do with one of us? What are the things you want to do with all of us? What are the things you've done before? What are the things you've never done before? Some of those ideas, I like to pepper in some examples, might be to go miniature golfing, we've never done that before. Or to go horseback riding, we've done that, and we love that. Or to lie on a blanket in the grass and read a book. Or to wear our hair and pigtails. Like, what are the things that are big adventures and just tiny experiences? I want to drink a banana smoothie this summer. Like, what are the little things, right? That you want to do? What are the big things you want to do? Then I'll ask questions like, who are the people you want to spend time with? Who are the people that you want to have play dates with? What are the things that you want to do when you're by yourself? And I'm working and you're here at the house by yourself because you didn't want to be in camp. Let's make a list of all the things that you want to do. What are the things you want to play with, the games you want to play, the drawings you want to make, the Legos you want to build? What are all the things you want to learn? And so then it becomes this resource list for the kids to use, any of us to use, when we have a day in front of us that we don't have a plan for yet. And then after we've all made our own, each person reads theirs and we take turns listening, asking questions, getting excited, getting to know them a little bit better, right? The members of our family, based on what's on their bucket list for their summer. Why is that on there? Oh, you like roller skating too? I didn't realize you like it so much. Right? Questions like that. And then the last piece that we do is we listen for the want matches. What are the things that all of us want, or three out of four of us want, or that two want, and the others say, Oh, that's a good idea. Those go on a chalkboard that chalkboard lives in our kitchen the entire summer. So those are the things that are on the family bucket list. And throughout the summer, we cross them off as we do them. Cannot recommend this highly enough. Of course, you could do this for every season if you want. We love doing a fall and winter one, a holiday one. We want to go see the lights in Belbo Park. We want to go, we want to make cookies with our cousins. Like it's so much fun to have these things that we've decided ahead of time or the experiences we most want to have in this one precious life that we get to share with one another. Which guides me straight into the reason that I'm talking about making decisions on purpose today, which is our episode, because I just led for three days a three-part time whispering course. I have taught time whispering, which is my version of time management, for decades now, in my old organization, to the people I used to manage, to the directors of sites in our innovation program, now in my own coaching practice to individual clients and now in group coaching. And I teach time whispering as a tool for ultimate freedom and presence to have a calendar that feels like a party full of the people you love most and the things you love most. And I taught three days of this. What people, the feedback that I'm getting on this class is so amazing. I saw someone at a party, a pool party yesterday, and she was like, Guess what I did all day yesterday? I did my calendar like a party. There's a telegram channel that goes along with the course, no matter when you take it, whether you, you know, did it with us live or whether, you know, for those that have uh purchased the class and are doing it on their own, they can still come into the telegram channel and ask the questions and chat about time whispering anytime they want. So the questions that are coming out of it, the feedback are just how wonderful it is to be using a time whispering system. And the reason that I believe that the time whispering system is so wonderful for people is because, and by the way, if you want to take the time whispering course, you can always purchase it on your own. You can always just buy it and do it. It's three days, it's three one-hour classes that you can do on your own. And it also comes with worksheets and with extra digital tools that are mine. You can always do that on your own. Just let me know. Go to the.bloom.coach if you want to purchase the time whispering course, and it's in the link tree that's attached to my the link in my bio. Um, you can also go there to purchase the eventbrite tickets for next week on Thursday for women. We have a Moxie mixer event. So if you're a woman in San Diego or that wants to fly into San Diego, we have a couple people doing that. And to come to the mixer, we're all just gathering together for an evening of chatting, of getting to know each other, some light coaching, some drinks and refreshments. These will be happening every couple months. I'll have a live event of some type, whether it's in a mixer or a retreat. So you can also go to the link in my bio for that, the.bloom.coach and Instagram. All right. So the reason time whispering is such a relief and so wonderful for us is because it allows us to make decisions on purpose, to decide ahead of time. So let's talk about why this is so important. Well, either way, we are making decisions all day, every day. We're making decisions whether we're deciding on purpose or whether we are being reactive. Just because we don't intentionally make a decision, it doesn't mean we're not deciding. When we are reacting, however we're reacting, is creating a decision for us. We are deciding how to react, how to act, what to spend time on. So time whispering, deciding ahead of time how we're gonna spend the moments of our life, creating a summer bucket list, deciding ahead of time what's most important to us collectively as a family and individually. These are allowing us to live lives on purpose. What do we most want? I want to have a dirty dancing watch party. My daughter's never seen that, and I love that movie, and so does my husband. So we're having a watch party where everyone's dressing up as characters from Dirty Dancing or along the theme, and we're all having watermelon and having this watch party. We had to reschedule it. If you've listened to my podcast episodes, you know the story of the power going out. And so we're doing this next week. First thing getting crossed off the bucket list for the summer. But we're deciding ahead of time because otherwise, if we don't decide ahead of time, these things would never happen. We, if we don't decide ahead of time, we let life decide for us. Either way, though, we are deciding. So that's what we're gonna talk about today is deciding on purpose and deciding ahead of time. So let's talk about why this matters. I'm gonna do this by sharing some examples of ways that we decide ahead of time that make a difference for us. So, first of all, in the fall, I've talked a little bit about this. I talked to my husband about, hey, we're having our 15-year anniversary of being together as a couple, being a family, you and me, and we're having our 10th wedding anniversary. We had our daughter first, right? So deciding ahead of time is sitting down and saying, how do we want to mark this moment of our life? And because we decided ahead of time, we had this incredible vow renewal. Because we decided ahead of time, we designed this experience we'll never forget for all of the people in our lives. If we don't decide ahead of time, we roll into an event that we could celebrate in this one precious life in an extraordinary way, or we could just go out to dinner because we didn't decide ahead of time. Now I'm gonna give you a bunch of other examples of what might happen if I don't decide ahead of time. The summer bucket list that I just described. We might, without deciding ahead of time, we are gonna let life decide for us. So we're gonna wake up in the morning and we're going to maybe sleep in a little bit, maybe start scrolling on our phones, maybe some families will just watch TV. We're gonna roll through days without having a significant event or adventure or connection with the people that we love the most that is designed from our what our deepest desires are. Now, some days we love just rolling and having no plan. But if the entire summer goes by like that, we're gonna miss out on incredible experiences that we could have and we'll end up just being wherever we end up. By deciding ahead of time, we are going to have specific people we most want to spend time with, specific experiences that are always some of the highlights of our summer, and we are deciding ahead of time in a powerful way. Now, if I didn't decide ahead of time for my food and exercise plan, if I didn't decide ahead of time, here's my goal for the summer, my husband and I sat down and talked, and we are going to wake up an hour later so we have a little bit of relaxation, but we're still gonna work out four or five mornings a week because we feel really awesome. I'm still gonna meditate all of the mornings because I feel amazing when I do that. If we didn't, then our exercise habits would absolutely slip if we didn't decide ahead of time because we'd feel like sleeping in every morning. If I didn't decide and talk through with my husband how do we want our eating habits to be this summer, we would definitely be eating a bunch of burritos. We would be eating whatever is in the fridge. Instead, we decide ahead of time. We cook healthy meals, we have food prepped, and we have actually goals for how we want to feed our kids that help them learn how to nourish their bodies and make sure we're cooking fun things. We're exploring recipes we want to. We actually decided ahead of time with our summer bucket list. What are the things we most want to cook? We want to have a Cajun cookout in our backyard where we have a whole bunch of crawfish on this giant newspaper spread on our table in the backyard and have friends over. We would never have that experience if we didn't decide ahead of time. Now, if I think about my goals for the summer with my own work, I've decided ahead of time that I want to finish my book. If I didn't decide ahead of time and look at, you know, whether I do it this summer, if I don't do it this summer, when am I ever going to do it? If I didn't decide ahead of time when the hours are that I'm gonna write it, it will never get written. It's been on my bucket list for years. I want to finish this book. It's off written. If I didn't decide ahead of time about emailing my email list and putting emails in their inboxes because they've been asking, because they love these emails and they've been asking me to get back in there, I would not make it a priority to do it. If I didn't decide ahead of time to have my retreat and book my retreat and believe in it ahead of time and make these decisions to push myself, to write my book, to have my retreat, to have live events, to set goals with my business partners for what we're creating for the future. If I don't sit down and decide ahead of time on these big goals, in the moment, I am going to decide with my fight or flight brain, which will always give me negative thoughts and self-doubt. Thoughts like, oh gosh, don't have an event. What if no one comes? How are you gonna talk about the event? What are you gonna do with the event? Like, oh no, don't do that. There's too many unanswered questions. Let's do that sometime in the future. What about the retreat? What if no one signs up for the retreat? What if you don't know what to do? What if it's boring? What if it's all of the thoughts that our brain is gonna give us? If we don't decide ahead of time, our brain is gonna act out of fear, doubt, negativity, because that's how our brain is wired. When we decide ahead of time what we're gonna do, we are becoming who we want to be, living in line with our values, and short-circuiting those fear and self-doubt negative thoughts that pop up by deciding something and just figuring it out along the way, committing to sending an email to my beautiful people on the email list that have asked me to do that every single week. I'm deciding ahead of time. I'm gonna show up to my podcast, show up to my email list. I'm gonna provide that value for free for my people because I want to. And what happens if we don't is we don't lead a conscious life. Our best and our richest life in the future is the one that we design ahead of time. My best and richest life is the one where my kids and I have all these co-created, collaborative adventures this summer, where we go on a road trip together that we've designed together, where I've finished my book and my daughter's written her book that she's working on, where I've served as many women across the world as I can with Moxie to help be the change that I want to see in the world, where I have created events that bring people together, that make them feel connected in San Diego. That's my best and richest life, where I've written my book because it's on my bucket list for my life. And I don't want to let another year pass by where I'm not crossing stuff off that list. Because if I don't decide ahead of time, I decide in the moment. I react to what life gives me. I say yes to all the requests that are for other people's vision for their life instead of deciding on purpose. When I make a decision now, when you make a decision ahead of time, it takes away the exhaustion of carrying things around in your head. We talked a lot about this in the Time Whispering course. The exhaustion of just a head full of ideas and maybes that aren't captured anywhere. When we decide ahead of time, it gives us the beautiful gift of presence in our life. We're here for it. We're anticipating the fun things that are coming, but we're here in the moment, present for the things that we have decided on, because we're not thinking about what are we going to do next? What should we do? We've decided ahead of time. We make big decisions and then we follow through on them knowing we're becoming who we want to be. So, my first question for you as you're thinking about all of this is what are all of the decisions that you haven't been making ahead of time? What are all of the things that you're just letting happen to you? Is it like how you want to spend your summer, what you want to do with your life, what your next career path will be, who you want your relationships to be with, who you most want to spend your time with, what idea you're making real next. Because in little ways, when we don't decide ahead of time, we leave ourselves. We're never prioritizing what's most important to us because it won't be the most urgent thing in the moment. And a lot of people live their life that way in this middle ground that feels just icky. That's like, maybe I'll do this, maybe I'll do that, staying in that indecision. It takes away our power and it uh makes us live in uncertainty, which doesn't feel good. Our mood in the moment is not as important as our most resourced mind planning for us for the future. When we plan right now for the future, we have all of our resources, our creativity, our innovation, our set of values, our big dreams. That's the brain that is making the decisions for us from our highest good. Who do I want to be? What do I want to experience in the next year, in the next 10 years with my family this summer, next week? When we decide in the moment, we are basing those decisions off of what feels good. That's when we scroll, when we comfort eat, when we Netflix on the couch, when we decide we're not gonna do something because of self-doubt, those descriptions I was giving you earlier, like, what if people don't come? What if I don't plan it right? What if I don't have the right things to say? Those are all the in the moment voices. Our mood in the moment is never as good for us as the brain that decides ahead of time. So, what we want to do when we're deciding ahead of time is to really go deeply into our own brain to figure out what do we want ahead of time? What's our best guess for ourselves? What are the secret things that we want? What are the not-so-secret things that we want, but we've been putting off because we've been telling ourselves that it's not the right time. We don't have time, something else will come up. We don't know how. If we're trying to make a firm decision, one of the tools I teach people is not a pro and con list, but to list the reasons that you will do something or the reasons that you will not do something. Go deeply into your brain, pull out all the reasons on both sides and then write it out. Which of those reasons are reasons that are coming from self doubt or fear? Which reasons are coming from meeting everybody's expectations and people pleasing instead of doing what you most want to do with this one precious life? Say it out loud. Say all your reasons out loud. Get them out and then make a strong decision. Every time you make a decision for your life, you're releasing power out into the world, personal power into your life. You're deciding on purpose, you're taking the reins, you're living intentionally instead of living in that maybe, in that part where we haven't made our big decisions for our life. We're just living in reactivity. We're playing out our own beliefs that have been programmed into us. Every time we decide, we are saying no to life just coming at us, happening to us. Every time we decide on purpose, we get to want more for ourselves. Because we often go into this mode where we're just like, okay, we've decided, and then life starts coming up, and then we we forget what we've decided, or we're not deciding on purpose, or we kind of lose track of our goals. But if we can decide right now and stay committed to a goal that we set for a year from now, for six months from now, for the summer, then we see who we can become in the world. We are living life on purpose. We're deciding on purpose and going for it and living a life that is most in line with our values. So one more thing I want to say about this is there's the tool of deciding ahead of time. There's the tool of writing down all of your reasons, deciding ahead of time and then committing to it, the practice of committing to it. And there's one more process that I want to recommend, which is to recommit and redecide. So when we get sort of like into the action where we're progressing towards our goal and things are falling off track and things aren't working, that's when we find out who we are. That's when we see what's coming up for us. The purpose of a goal, of setting a goal, of deciding ahead of time is to live life intentionally and live life on purpose and to see who we are becoming, to live our biggest, brightest, most high contribution, amazing life. It's never to actually accomplish the goal. It's to live on purpose and to see who we are becoming as we move towards that goal. And I say that because I hear a lot of people making decisions on purpose, living towards their goals, moving towards their goals, and then beating themselves up when they don't accomplish their goal or don't accomplish it ahead of time. Setting a goal is never the purpose. Accomplishing the goal is never the purpose of setting a goal. The purpose is seeing who you become, seeing what comes up for you as you move towards it, working through the things that come up so you can evolve as a human being in the ways you most want to. Living life on purpose, living life intentionally instead of letting life happen to you and living out your old programming over and over again. So when your goals are not accomplished, check it out. See what comes up. What are the thoughts that are there? What are the things you tried that didn't work? What are the things that you tried that did work? What do you want to try now? What are the old beliefs that are coming up about why your goal isn't working yet? Work through those beliefs and you will blow your own mind. This is how we continue to evolve intentionally. This is how we see who we're becoming. So in those moments when things get hard and you think my goal is further away, just check out what's the obstacle that's in front of you. How do you want to approach it? What's a new strategy? What's an opportunity that that obstacle is presenting that wasn't even there before? Every obstacle is a strategy waiting to happen. What is this obstacle in front of you? Is it fear? Is it procrastination? Is it a lack of funding? Is it a you don't know how? Whatever that obstacle is, other people not believing in your idea, it taking longer than you thought, whatever that obstacle is, is your new path to your evolved self that is becoming more and more you as you move. So recommit to that goal. Double down on the dream that you had that you're moving towards. Double down on understanding how is this happening for me? How are the frustrations and the obstacles in my way the very best thing? Because without moving through them, I'll never be who I can become by moving through the hard parts, by getting through the hard stuff, by figuring out the obstacles. Because at the end of every road, when we achieve our goal, we are someone different because we moved through all the obstacles that were there in the way that we had to overcome in becoming who we are now once we've achieved our goals. And we know that hedonistic adaptation that every time we do achieve a goal, our brain's just gonna be like, okay, great, we're here. Now here's all the next stuff I want. So it can't be about achieving the goal. It has to be about the process. It has to be about the incredible evolution of us becoming who we are when we decide on purpose and move towards our goals. So I asked you earlier, what are the things that you're not deciding on purpose that you're just letting happen to you? Now you have that list. Your homework is to decide on purpose. Write out those things that you're not deciding on purpose. You're not deciding ahead of time. What are the things that are important to you? Decide them on purpose right now. List out your reasons for, your reasons against, decide, commit, and go. Because who you are on the other side of those decisions is the most powerful, beautiful, joyful, self-expressed version of you. And that's what we need. All of us out here in the world waiting for that you, we are cheering you on. The you that comes on the other side of deciding on purpose is a you like you've never met before. All right, so decide on purpose, my friends. As always, reach out to me, share what comes up because I can't get enough. I love hearing about your journey. I love hearing about all of it. Welcome, new podcast listeners. I forgot to say that I've met a bunch of you lately saying, ah, I love your show. I'm listening for the first time. So fun. I love hearing it. Keep the feedback coming. And go to the dotbloom.coach on Instagram to purchase those tickets for the eventbrite in-person San Diego event for women with Moxie Thursday, uh, this coming Thursday, June 25th. And go to thotbloom.coach to the Linktree to purchase the Time Whispering course. You can also purchase the relationships course called Love and Moxie. And I have a couple new courses coming out soon. So check it out. Join us there. Love you so much. And that is what I've got for you this week. So I will see you next week. Bye, my friends. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you gotta come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time.