Episode 8: Borrowed Goals

What if the goals you're working towards aren't actually yours?

In this episode, we dig into borrowed goals: the ambitions we absorb from the people around us - parents, teachers, religion, culture, social media - without ever really stopping to ask whether we actually want them. Marriage. University. The promotion. The venture-backed startup. Some of these feel so deeply ingrained it's almost impossible to know where they came from in the first place.

We get into why so many borrowed goals are unconscious (and why that's not always a bad thing), plus the idea of 'gifted goals' - the ones that people who believe in us hand over intentionally, opening doors we didn't know we could walk through.

This episode covers:

• The difference between borrowed goals and gifted goals — and why it matters
• How to spot a goal that isn't really yours (wheel-spinning, hollow wins, and that nagging feeling of tug-of-war)
• The invisibility test: if no one could ever know you'd achieved it, would you still want it?
• Why we borrow timelines as well as goals — and the pressure to hit milestones when everyone around you is hitting theirs
• How to customise a goal so it actually fits your life, not someone else's version of it

Your goals deserve to be yours. This episode will help you figure out which ones actually are.

Listen now and grab your journal 🧶

We share journalling prompts after every episode — sign up to get them straight to your inbox: substack.com/@untanglinglifepod

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:06

Welcome back to Untangling Life. I'm your co-host Hattie Willis and with me is the amazing It's just Andy, really. Just Andy.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

It's just Andy.

SPEAKER_05 0:18

Just Andy. He just has an MBE, but it's just Andy. I love it. Okay. Ashley, that's such a beautiful way into this. I didn't mean to drop your MBE as a segue, but I'm going to run with it.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Oh dear. I'm going to run with it. Just introduce myself normally. We could have just got past. We're talking about borrowed goals today. We're about to go to some street interviews, and when we get back, you're going to give me a hard time about this MBE.

SPEAKER_05 0:41

Not a hard time, just to be clear. I think it's amazing, but we're going to talk about where goals come from, borrowed goals, what we admire. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I went to university because my family expected me to.

SPEAKER_04 0:53

Um, maybe following in the family business. Andy, so many places we could take this.

SPEAKER_05 1:01

I want, I guess from my side, to make sure we touch on a few different aspects of borrowed goals. So I'm going to signpost us up front so I don't lose the thread.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_05 1:11

And then listeners can write in when we completely forget to talk about something I've said we're going to talk about. So I want to explore borrowed ang borrowed goals from a few angles. I want to explore where do our borrowed goals come from. And particularly this idea of unconscious borrowed goals. And it doesn't have to be bad that we're borrowing them. I then want to look at what are some signals that might tell us a goal isn't right for us. And then how do we pick our goals that are for us or adapt goals that we've seen other people achieve? Does it sound like a good structure?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

It does. We can go in a lot of different directions. So I might need your help bringing me back on track.

SPEAKER_05 1:47

I'll I'll we'll we'll go on some lovely tangents.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:51

So first things first, I want to go into what does borrowed goals mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

I think borrowed goals are those ambitions that you have that may have been influenced by others. And it could be teachers, it could be friends, it could be parents, it could be society, it could be even someone that I've seen on social media. But it's like I've adopted the goal, I didn't just create that goal from scratch. So when you first said it just now, what came into mind actually, which I didn't expect, was where did I get this concept of marriage from? Like I want to get married one day. And I I had that view before my partner did actually, in terms of like, I do want to be married, and I I took it back a step and was like, okay, my parents were married.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

So maybe seeing them and being in a household where they were married, where I had a lot of friends that came around who had single parent families, I did see a difference and I did appreciate and cherish the fact that I had that privilege of had having both parents in the households.

SPEAKER_05 2:54

That makes me think just briefly of the idea of sometimes we make goals because we've seen something we admire. Yeah. So in your case, this lovely family unit. Yeah. And sometimes we set goals because we've had an absence of something and we then almost and sometimes we overcompensate, but we we want to replace the thing that we didn't have. Because actually I think that is a big part. You can there'll be probably lots of people listening who really wanted marriage or want marriage, but they haven't grown up with that amazing model of that.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, and I think before I thought marriage was a beautiful thing to achieve, um, and probably parents, and I'm wrapping up in there, I should probably separate it, but I'm talking about both almost like intertwined here. Um I probably thought it was the right thing to do from a religious perspective, from a biblical perspective, without maybe understanding the depth of what that experience is actually like.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

You know, and I think a lot about morality in the same way, like, oh, don't kill, don't steal, don't. It's the right thing to do. And then over time, when you grow up, you're like, no, it's not only the right thing to do, actually. This is why I believe that I don't steal, I don't cheat, I don't X, Y, Z.

SPEAKER_05 4:04

And it I think we're starting to touch on this thread that so many goals, it's really hard to disentangle where they've come from because they've been socialized so long.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:13

And so I think there is this whole point of I think marriage is such a good one, actually. Because I I think a lot of our listeners will either be married themselves or maybe they're in, you know, we've actually got like the two ends of the couch, right? This is this is the division line of whether you have a partner. But I think the thing that a lot of people will resonate with is a sense of wanting, but then maybe a questioning of well, why do I want it? Where did it come from? At what point was was this given to me as a as a goal and an objective? And again, like religion's gonna play a huge part, different cultures being unmarried is seen as still quite shameful, yeah. Lots of parental pressure on it. Not in my case, just to shout out my own. Yeah, yeah. I'm not getting pressured into marriage. But I think there is a whole point around that idea of some of this comes very loudly. Yeah. You're hearing people tell you you know that pressure is on you.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Especially that parental pressure, like as a rite of passage or not, like you have to get married. It's expected, it's the thing to do.

SPEAKER_05 5:15

And also, like some of the time that's coming from a just a wanting you to have, you know, your parents might be desperate for you to get married because actually they're aware of like their own mortality and they want you to have a partner to take care of you, or they want you to have the partnership they loved, or they just believe in love. You know they again, these goals that we borrow, I want to kind of challenge the idea early that just because they've been given to us or just because someone is pushing them on us, it's not necessarily bad. It's just something we need to observe because it it's not right for us.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah. When you thought about borrowed goals, what what came to mind for you just out of interest?

SPEAKER_05 5:50

I think a few things. I think I am someone who does set a lot of my goals by thinking about what will validate me. So if I think back to when I was 11, I got taken around Oxford and told like this is what you should be aiming for. And I went back as a kind of later teen closer to applying and was like, I love this, I want this. But there was still a part of me that's like I I I don't know if I'll ever know if I just was got early enough by my school to be told like this is what you should be wanting, and so it became this deeply entrenched sense of who I should be. And and you and I have talked about it before, but this sense of like living up to potential, yeah. And there's this beautiful point of telling someone their potential, but sometimes that almost corners them into thinking you're gonna not realize your potential. I have a lot of friends and I who's a lot of pressure there as well. Yeah, and I think a lot of us do feel this sense of pressure to realise potential. If you you know th validation is amazing, but if you're seeking it because you feel that you owe it to someone else or you you owe it to yourself, I I think it can get it it can be unhealthy.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:08

And I definitely had so much of my sense of self tied up with am I gonna get into this university? And I I got in and then I missed the grades I needed to go.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:20

And because I'd done a different kind of um sixth form education, I I I got my results like a month before the A-level kids. And so they told me you have to wait a month. And I think that month was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Didn't you couldn't have told me that on results day. My mum, funny fact, my mum on results day for my uh for my sixth form exams was in the other room, like it was across a corridor, they were big rooms, and she was like waiting with the other parents. We had to go in and get our results on our own. She was in the other room, and they heard this like wail from the results room, and my mum went, Oh no, that's mine.

SPEAKER_04 7:57

Like the the mother always knows the cry of her child, even when they're 18. She was like, That's my that's my child, just audibly wailed.

SPEAKER_05 8:06

And but like, but it was it really genuinely. I at that point thought if I can't go here, I've completely let myself down and let everything down.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

And and I then like Academically, I feel like a lot of listeners will relate to this that the academic pressure to perform. Yeah, and I think there's a layer that sometimes can come from parents, but also even from schools or teachers or people that you don't want to let down.

SPEAKER_05 8:29

Yeah. And and and and I think there is this this tricky thing of helping people realize, and I still remember, and I think I've said this on the podcast before, but I remember you know, my my dad makes such a beautiful thing of like I could never be actually my mum too. I have a card from her says like we could never be prouder of you. And and I this sense of like, what what could you? What could I do? And actually that came from me completely because they were always telling me, like, we're proud of who you are, you don't need to perform until what else do I need to tell you? And I was like, but but now, are you prouder of me now? Like I used to test it, and they were like, No, no, we're still as proud of you as we were before you achieved this thing, like we're really happy for you because you wanted it. But that they really tried to make sure it's like, Well, let's be happy that you achieved the thing you wanted, not you're not earning it.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

And do you feel like that borrowed goal, you made it your own by I don't know, choosing what subjects you want to study, choosing and having autonomy over that your choices rather than feeling like, oh no, I have to study these subjects, this is what my parents want me to study, and I have to do well in that because this is what my parents and my teachers want me to do well in.

SPEAKER_05 9:34

You know what's hilarious? So I nearly didn't study what I studied because my brother had studied it, and I was so fed up of being compared to my brother, not by my parents who were great at it, but my school literally used to compare us all the time, like everyone at school would compare us, and often in comparison at school, it was like not always a favorable comparison to me. Um, because my brother's just amazing, and so he had studied French and history, yeah, and so I wanted it. I quite liked history, and I was really interested in it. And my history teacher was like, Well, why aren't you thinking of studying it? Um and I said, Oh, Ed did it, and he was like, That is the worst reason ever. And I was like, Oh yeah, it's not a great reason, actually, is it? He was like, That's so that's that's outrageous. Like, why would you not do the thing you want to do? Because your brother did it, and I was like, Yeah, you've got a point, actually.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

But it was like an inverse borrowed goal, but I like that because that's that's an example of for me of like borrowed belief, like, and it's a borrowed belief from that teacher in that moment, and then that belief became my belief. But in that moment, I did need that teacher to challenge me and make me think, like, oh yeah, like why am I doing that? And we all have times in life where we need someone like that to play that role for us.

SPEAKER_05 10:42

And actually, that same teacher had to pick me up other times. Like, I had another um another teacher who told me, you know, you're not oxford material. I got told I was like the worst application school I'd ever seen at one point. Um my school was nice as well. I'm I feel like I'm painting them cruelly. But like I remember going into his class and he was so kind and and really built me up and no, you can do this. Um so I think and and it's something I guess we want to touch on this broad belief thing, because it can again come from someone telling you you're capable of something you didn't believe. Yes, but it also comes from seeing someone maybe who looks like us, who we relate to, who has a similar background, yes, and us going, oh, if they could do it, I could do it.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Absolutely, absolutely. And what I love about this this topic that we're discussing now is um that that teacher, it wasn't in their job description to have that conversation with you, encourage you and treat you in that way. They went above and beyond because of who they were. And I had a mentor called Mr. Maine, who sadly passed away, but he was like that person for me when I was um leaving university and he was working in a city, and I could ask him all my stupid questions. Like, what does this role mean? What does an auditor do? What does a management consultant do? What is a strategy consultant? Are they one in the same? And he would never make me feel stupid or small for asking those questions. And then he would intentionally, and I realize this now, like ask me to come and meet him at like a private members' club. And he's trying to expose me and normalise these settings and these environments to be like, you belong here, come dressed as you are, it's fine, you know. And I look back and I'm like, that all of that was intentional, you know. And then he introduced me to people that worked at Ernst and Young at the time, and that's where I got my first job. And it was because of his conversations and his his introductions that I even believed, like, oh my gosh, I I like this career, I want to do this career, and I can do this. And if not for seeing him, I would think people like us don't do things like that.

SPEAKER_05 12:33

I so I think that is such a beautiful example of where a borrowed goal can actually be. And it's almost borrowed is almost the wrong word, actually, in that case. It's almost like a handed a goal that's been handed to you, or a goal like it's now yours. Is this for you? It's like the gifted goal. It's like oh I like that gifted goal trademark TM undangling life. Yeah, so I I think I'm you know Massive. So Mr. Mayhu.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Mainu Mr. Mainu, Mr. Mainu.

SPEAKER_05 13:03

Mainu gets a shout-out, and also Mr. Fellows on my side. I feel like I should be able to drop him.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah, Mr. Fellows, honestly. Legend for the internet.

SPEAKER_05 13:12

So, okay, so we've got this concept of borrowed goals, we take them from lots of places. Are there any other goals that you feel like can you remember any points where you borrowed a goal and then realized it didn't feel right? And I guess there's two ways you could realise a goal doesn't feel right. Or three. One is you're completely wheel spinning on making it happen. So you've got this goal, but you're not really doing anything about it. It's not really motivating you. You're like, yeah, I'm aiming for this thing, but I'm not moving on it.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:42

And sometimes that's because we're actually too scared that we're not capable of the goal, so that can be a protection mechanism. But sometimes it's a mech it's like I just don't want this that much. Two is you achieve the goal and you feel very little. Or three is even as you're doing it, it conflicts with something at a values level that you think that that you're feeling an active tug.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:05

That you know, and that might be about you know, I think I I should be wanting kids, but actually really valuing freedom.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:13

For instance, you're feeling this very clear tug between the goal that you should be having and the one you do have.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah. Um, I immediately thought about money.

SPEAKER_05 14:22

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

I just feel like like my relationship with money over the years has definitely veered on both sides of the tracks where like, like, what's the reason that I want to make money? And I noticed that it's such a difference in my drive and my relationship with the money when there's a more purposeful goal at the end. Like, I want to save up in order to uh buy a new family home. That feels good, it motivates me, and I'm willing to sacrifice maybe a couple of nights out and a certain a few subscriptions to save up for that goal. And actually, there's something in me that I just love saving for long-term goals and seeing them work. Like, oh my gosh, that took me five years, and wow, I love that I did that. Whereas the shorter term money stuff, which is more vanity, it never feels good.

SPEAKER_05 15:07

Yeah, we talked about this a lot in the in the episode all about financial mindset, which came quite early. And I'm still in awe of your ability to see that far out and find that motive. I I struggle with that. Actually, maybe that's another point about goals, is what length of goal. Yeah. Because I think some of us, what I'm hearing from you is it's it's almost easier to set that bigger, further out goal and motivate yourself to keep hitting it. How do you do that? Because I find that really hard. I can have a far out goal, yeah, but it almost, if it's too far out, I don't know if it's the ADHD thing of it's either now or it's not now. We're very kind of time-blind in that sense, but I find it really hard if there's no urgency around something, I find it really hard to motivate myself.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I think my problem is I don't want to feel like every year it's January, New Year's goals, and I reset and I start again and I'm setting goals again and I'm a brand new person again. I I want to feel like I'm continuously building and and I've always loved long-term storytelling. Like when I've watched WWE growing up, and you'd watch like a year-long story of like, I know this is wrestling.

SPEAKER_05 16:16

I'm sorry, but WWE is long-term storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

It is because you'd watch these characters go through these story arcs for a whole year to this grand event called WrestleMania.

SPEAKER_05 16:25

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Which is like the big, big deal. But but you go through the ebbs and flows across a year sometimes, 12 months, to follow this story through. You know, for some people that was East Enders. For other people Eastenders, but people would watch that for years. And Christmas was like a big thing in East Enders when it was a Christmas episode. I see. But but it's something around these long-term stories that I've always admired, and I think maybe I'm thinking about that for myself. Like, what is my long-term story? What is my long arc? Like, how can I commit to a longer arc rather than every year feel like I'm starting from scratch? I didn't like that feeling.

SPEAKER_05 17:03

I'm fine, I I also I'm finding that easier as I get older. Do you have you always had that?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

No, I I agree with that. I think it must feel easier. Like, I feel like the mistake I made when I was younger, I when I I think I touched on this in another episode of Success University and the multi-level marketing scheme. Yeah, yeah. That was wrong on the values level, and that felt bad, and I had to stop it, you know. Um, I don't know if I told a story as well about PIP, my friend, I eight friends of I of mine, and we saved money together to buy a property and it didn't work out.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

And when I look back, I'm like, that was actually a great idea. It was just wrong timing for me for them. So it didn't work, you know. So I don't kick myself, but I'm like, actually, that was a good goal.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

I just wasn't in the right environment with the right people to achieve that goal.

SPEAKER_05 17:46

And I think that that's part of it, actually, with goals, we have to be willing to fail at them.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:52

And I think the other thing is with the I guess the older you get, the e the more you know yourself, the easier. Because I one of the things I used to struggle with is I used to say in my career, I think this is often a goal people have as career progression.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:07

And that could look like I think it's often attached to promotion, salary, job title.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Status, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:12

Definitely was for me. And I had this really clear idea of I want to get, I want to be the youngest partner of the company. That felt like a really clear goal. It felt very measurable, very achievable. I was being told you can do it. It was it was it met all the smart goals. I was like, great. Yeah, but it actually wasn't something that would have motivated me past the day I got to write it on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:31

Like it had felt great when the praise poured in, and then I'd have been doing a job I hated.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:36

And I it took me going travelling to realise that. I was really lucky. I got six weeks off kind of before moving into that path, not to say I was gonna get promotion or return, but to that was my path.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Was that like a borrowed belief? You tried to tail it for yourself, realised it didn't work, and then you kind of rejected it.

SPEAKER_05 18:50

Yeah, so so so so I think work had a clear progression plan that they were trying to create for people like me. So there were a few of us who they put on the partner track, and they kind of said, you know, right, your associate partners now, we're gonna you know, we're gonna invest in you, we're gonna help you. This is this is what you would need to do personally to get there.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:09

And the day that happened, it felt really motivating.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, yeah, it feels like wow, you've been picked for this special.

SPEAKER_05 19:15

Yeah, and I felt I felt, wow, I'm really doing it. I mean, I was really proud. And then it took because I went away, I was meeting loads of new people and constantly telling them, What am I doing? And at the beginning of the trip, it was like this ego thing of like, oh yeah, you know, I'm an associate partner. It felt good to say I'm a big deal, you know, vibes, and which I wasn't, um, but you know, that that was how it felt. Yeah, and then towards the end of the trip, I realized the stuff I was talking about going back to, what my job was going to have to become in order to achieve that. I was like, not just in love with it, it was literally taking everything I loved about my job and getting rid of it, and taking everything I didn't love about my job and making it my job.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah, but it felt like a probation period, like you needed that space to chew on it, to mull on it, reflect and decide is this for you or not.

SPEAKER_05 20:05

And actually that was really helpful. And I think it I think it sometimes the goal is it's giving ourselves that space to actually sense check this, to talk it through, to see how it feels. Because it was through that process that I realized this doesn't feel right. Yeah. So I had that sense, that growing sense of I'm not excited by this. And in fact, I actually increasingly feel like oh, I'm kind of trying to, I'm trying to energize myself around something that doesn't feel energizing.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:35

And I think that's probably again how you know you've borrowed something.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

That feeling.

SPEAKER_05 20:41

Yeah. And and another example, so then I went into kind of venture building, and that was really fun and new, and it allowed me to try something to be different. I really enjoyed it. When I left that, I was thinking maybe I wanted to start a venture-backed company because I'd been in that space, right? So everything I'd been absorbing for you know 10 years was like, ah, ventures are so cool, you want to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

This is good, by the way, because I wanted to get onto the concepts of ideas and goals. Yeah. How is it when you have all these ideas and it's like, oh, I didn't achieve that, I didn't pursue that idea, that idea didn't work out. Do you see that in the same way in terms of like borrowed goals or goals that you're inheriting or adapt to the other thing?

SPEAKER_05 21:17

Yeah, like I I think when I look at the goals that I haven't achieved, they've been the ones that I was never able to make mine. And so either I ended up dropping them by choice, which was the best outcome, or I sly dropped them because actually I just kind of shuffled them to the side and forgot about them.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:36

I also have a load of goals that are mine that I have set that I was excited by, I just don't have time for. Yeah. But they're not actually turns out goals that motivate me enough. I'm excited by them, but I'm not actually going to make them happen.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah, that's fair. And I guess it comes back to what you were sharing there in terms of what drains your energy and what brings you energy. And sometimes it's not just the goal, but it's also the way you go about and achieving the goal.

SPEAKER_05 21:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Yeah. I'm really big at the moment on like I actually just want to live and maintain. I just want to maintain my lifestyle, maintain my income. I'm not trying to shoot for a million. Um, but in doing that, I recognise that like maintenance isn't a sexy goal. Like people don't find that interesting. People don't write about that.

SPEAKER_05 22:18

I think people would even go so far as to say, is that a goal? If you're just keeping the same thing, we don't see that as a I would say most people wouldn't even count that.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Yeah, but I think what drives me is how I'm doing it.

SPEAKER_05 22:30

Oh okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

I'm not picking up any bits of work that I can. I'm not trying to do work that I hate. I'm actually trying to stay in alignment of doing the things that I love while maintaining this lifestyle and this income.

SPEAKER_05 22:40

I love that. So so with that maintenance goal, how like how would you articulate it? Is there stuff when you're setting that as a goal? Is it I want to do more of these things within that? So is it I want to work with more I want to work more with Hattie? You know, I want to join Guessworks as a partner, speaking into existence.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Wow, we're speaking so much into existence right now.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

Is it that vibe?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

I love the way how she smiles with everything.

SPEAKER_05 23:07

I'm just gonna lend a goal, a good gift of goal, Andy. Thank you for lending. I appreciate this. You're welcome. Doesn't send me anything.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

It's actually one of my goals is to uh give you that goal. So it starts with like financially, how much do I need to earn, which is enough?

SPEAKER_05 23:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

And and I I've I think we spoke about this in a money episode, but I feel like I know what enough is for me. And let's say it was 5k a month, which is not. But let's say it's 5k a month.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

I know what it is. It's not.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Let's say it's 5k a month, and how I want to make that up. Maybe 50% of the work that I want to do is entrepreneur-facing and I want to do it with guestworks and with Hattie and be a partner and build this amazing company that does think.

SPEAKER_05 23:45

I think that's a great idea, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. You can vote on that too.

SPEAKER_05 23:48

Yeah, yeah, upvoted, please.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

And maybe 50% of my work, I actually want to just be creative and write books and like express myself in different ways, but I don't have to worry too much financially about that because I know the awesome work that I'm doing with guesswork gets to gets me to achieve my 5k a month.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

And that's the way I like to think about it, you know, because I don't want to put pressure on the creative work that I just want to express myself. I even see this podcast in that way as well. Like, I'm not we're not doing this to monetize or to become number one streamers. We're doing this as an art of expression of ourselves, and then obviously the content that comes from it is super useful because it all shows different sides of who we are, you know. And I I and I see that portfolio of things as I need these things to work together in order for me to achieve this goal of maintaining.

SPEAKER_05 24:34

I I love that, and I think that's such a good, and I think we keep coming back to this idea of energy almost. Yeah. The the this setting as a good way to set goals or as a way to interrogate goals. So maybe let's spend a little bit of time looking at because I think we've talked about where where do we often borrow goals from. We've talked about education, we've talked about mentors, we've talked about family.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Can I interrupt and add one more to talk about? When we're gifting goals to others, like just now in this conversation, you're like, you're gifting me, you know, a goal with with guessworks, and it made me think about my daughter, yeah. And like how how how far am I gone on this spectrum of influencing her? Like, oh, R you're really good at dancing, you should become a dancer, and then I might, or am I am I saying I'm noticing how good you are at this thing, you should keep on feeding your curiosity. Yeah, yeah. I feel like there's a line there where I need to be careful as a parent in how much am I almost like dictating what path she needs to go down versus encouraging her because I can see something there.

SPEAKER_05 25:34

And and I I'm not saying you're doing this, just to be clear. But also I think the tricky thing I can imagine about parenting as a non-parent is that so much of that happens so unconsciously on both sides. 100%. So you you and I talked when we were recording the first ever episode. You uh you did a little, you showed me what you've been teaching Arya for freestyle dance because you used to love freestyle dance as well. And so I can also imagine that this is this great way to have like daddy-daughter time where actually like she's getting a lot of your attention, not I like she gets plenty of your attention, I'm not saying this is rare, but actually I can see as well that it would be really easy to just bond with your child on something that you love, and then you're reinforcing, like, hey, if you do more of this thing, you get more yeah. I mean, like it's a mind feel, but obviously that's also really natural. Like, I if I have kids, a hundred percent would want to spend more time doing the things I also enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

But then I need to be careful in mini. Oh, because I love manu and football, yes, I do support man you. Um, then suddenly am I making sure that all of my children need to play football because this is what I like versus actually she would have been really great at netball and hockey, but I didn't like play those sports, so I'm not encouraging that.

SPEAKER_05 26:46

And and actually it's an interesting point about like gender roles as well. Uh you know, I think women's football has done so much in this space. I love that lots of people are now.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

I'm actually spending time with the Women's Football League today. Funny enough.

SPEAKER_05 26:57

Have you um and have you heard this trend, which is that we don't call women's football uh women's football, we call it football and we call the other one men's football, just to you know repeat. Oh, I didn't know of that. It's a new trend. I didn't know of that. So you if you're talking about manu, you'd say oh the men's football team. But if you're talking about manu women's team, you'd say manu football.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

I like that. I didn't know of that.

SPEAKER_05 27:16

But actually it's all these little things that tell us, but it would be really easy to gender stereotype your kids and say, I'm gonna do this with you, and I'm gonna do this with you. Yeah, even going to watch a game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Am I going to watch the men's game or am I going to watch the women's super league? 100%.

SPEAKER_05 27:33

And it all adds up. It's so true. It's so true. And often I think when you hear these amazing, I'm currently watching Drive to Survive, I'm very late to the party. I appreciate it. Very late, what's so good?

SPEAKER_01 27:46

I envy you. So good.

SPEAKER_05 27:48

I cried already.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

He's cry worthy.

SPEAKER_05 27:50

And and one of the reasons I cried was there was there was a it's not a spoiler because all these races have happened, but there's one uh one guy who's a crash. No, I haven't got to the crash. Andrew, don't spoil it. Well, it's actually been loads of crashes, but I haven't got to crash. But uh there's a there's a race where Leclerc is is racing in Monaco, which is his hometown, and it talks a lot about his dad and how much it's meant to his dad, and and and like the whole last lap he's talking, you know, that they're like interchanging with an interview about he suddenly for the first time in any race just can't stop being emotional, getting emotional. Talk about it. It was so beautiful, and it was this real sense of like aligned goals, like his he really wants this, yeah, but it has mm like another level of meaning for him.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Yeah, and I think again you want him to win Monaco, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:40

I live that whole thing I think, but yeah. I don't think I breathe for that last few laps of just in drive survivors. You don't see all the laps, so imagine watching the real thing. But I think there is this beautiful thing of of actually sometimes one of our goals meaning something to someone else, like it does it does sweeten it, it does make it more meaningful, but you're right, it's super hard to know how to not inadvertently project our goals on someone else, and and and I think that is where we all have to have this responsibility of how am I interrogator and teach and maybe teach maybe this is the point. Maybe we can't fully change what we unconsciously signal to kids, to people we're we're mentoring, to teams that we're building or managing, but we actually can start to equip them with the skills to set their own goals. And we do this in corporate teams all the time, right? Let's set your OKRs, let's set your KPIs, let's set your smart goals, whichever your organization loves to use. But I don't think we're actually teaching people we're teaching people what does the organization want to measure. We're not teaching people to actually interrogate where's that beautiful alignment between what you genuinely want and would mean something to you and what needs to be true in this environment for that to work.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

And I think there's something there around core values, like your parents saying, like, I'm proud of you regardless of what you do, and reminding you that again and again and again, you're more than enough, you can be whatever you put your mind to. All of these little things sound like that little sayings, but actually, when it gets ingrained and it sets, and you start going to your core and start remembering those things in times of need, it does help.

SPEAKER_05 30:14

Yeah, 100%. And also being given permission, I still remember um gives permission, yeah. Yeah, and I still remember going to my dad the first ever time. I've definitely told the story before, but I genuinely think it's like just such great parenting. I just want to share and share and share. But the first time I ever got a job offer, like a proper, like full-time job, I went to my dad and said, What do you think? And he was so great because he was super he he got an amazing balance between being like effusive. So he was like, A, it just sounds great, like well done. You've built this relationship and that's why you've got it, and and I think this is why it sounds great, and this, but he was like, but also the point of your first job is not to get it right, it's to learn.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

That's so good.

SPEAKER_05 30:56

I know, and I think I think it helped that his his career he's done. I love this idea actually. Someone else um I interviewed on not my first guest, Zoe Peddon talks about acts of your life. We've now got the next act program we're working on for people in their 50s who are looking at the next act that you and I are working on together, but I love this idea of acts, and I can see in my dad's life these different acts, right? He was studying to be a lawyer, he met my mum, she conversed him to Christianity, he then became a vicar. Career change, mid-degree. He then is a vicar, he then becomes a charity fundraiser, he then starts doing funerals, freelance, and I can see all these threads between the different acts of his life, but what he was But even with those examples, sorry to interrupt you.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

No, no, don't forget your trailer thought.

SPEAKER_05 31:46

I will, but it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

I feel like when you just told that story about your dad's different acts, that rather than him being intentional about setting goals and achieving goals, he was just actually feeding his curiosity. And I'm almost seeing it on the same spectrum in a way. Like your dad fed his curiosity and led him from law to is it Vicarage? Yeah, and then from Vicarage into and I just feel like he's just feeding the things that Phil Wrightman are interested and he's curious about. Yeah. But I wonder if there were mini goals within that or if he just continued to just 100%, and I think, and he was really great at sharing that.

SPEAKER_05 32:17

So I remember when he first started doing funerals, his kind of latest career transition, and I remember him telling us. I was kind of I was probably I probably wasn't adult in my like twenties. Yeah, he did it after my mum died, so it it m I must have been in like mid to late twenties. And I remember him saying to me and my brother, so this is how many funerals I need to do a month for it to financially work. This is why I think I'm gonna do it. And it was this really it was so helpful because it was this really clear sense of like, oh, being brought into this goal setting.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Did he achieve that by the way? Did he get to those longer?

SPEAKER_05 32:56

He he he smashed out of the park. Wow, and he was doing I mean intense. This is a bit sad, but it was also he did do it not very long before COVID, and COVID did massively increase the local death rate, so there was a lot more business, which was very sad, but he did do very well on his goals. But he but but there was also this, I guess, purpose goal. Everything he did, he wanted to study law because he really believed in justice, and then he moved into wanting to be a vicar because he became so convinced by the resurrection story, yeah, having not believed it, that he then wanted to share it. Yeah, and and and and he's very I would say he's actually very unevelical in the sense he's very comfortable with, you know, well, he's very I think he's quite comfortable with my loss of faith, and he's very gracious with it. I don't ever feel judged by that, yeah. But but it obviously meant something to him to go and share this story. He had a real mission there, and then with the charity fundraising, he found causes he really cared about and and really wanted to make a change on, and then with funerals.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I like this language you use of missions. Yeah, it's like it's more than a goal.

SPEAKER_05 34:02

Yeah, and I I think with the funeral side of things, um, you know, I've I've definitely and and you know, maybe you'll relate but but uh I've been through quite a share of um had have had quite a share of funerals where I've been like very close to the planning of it. And it they're really hard to do, right? Because often you've got someone who really wants one thing, someone else who really wants a different thing, and you've got it and and actually I used to hear him on funeral calls um because his his fla his house is quite open plans, you could he would like to sit on the landing at his desk, and like if I was sat down at his house, I could hear him. And every like without fair, every time I did it, I found it so moving because every time I thought this was exactly what I needed when I lost my mum. Like I you know, it wouldn't have been appropriate for him to do my mum's funeral, but but I was thinking, God, I really wish this was my experience because actually the and and so for him and and I told him that a lot, but I I think that was a big part of his mission, yeah. And he had seen obviously he'd be doing funerals for a long time before my mum died because he'd been a vicar for a long time. But I think he also did see that experience to my brother and I. And I think I I suspect that probably did make a part of the mission of wanting to give this experience to people. So I think I think again we can we get goals from different places and they build, but yeah, he's he's been such an inspiration, and then you know, he has he had this big goal for a long time. He for a long time he said he wanted to move to France.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

I thought you were gonna say that.

SPEAKER_05 35:38

That I suppose we had no idea where this is coming from. Like everyone's always like, oh, is he like from traveling?

SPEAKER_01 35:43

The other ones where he says like where did this come from?

SPEAKER_05 35:45

I honestly like I don't get it. Like he doesn't even love cheese. Sorry, that's not the only reason to move to France. He doesn't love cheese that much. But um, yeah, and and and he's and actually, you know, that was really important to him, and he he found a partner who that was important to, and and they, you know, and he then has worked towards that as a goal so clearly with her, and I can see how he's and he's across a number of years. Oh, like across like five years. Yeah. I mean, and there was a long um kind of physical calendar in his house that was like building up to moving day, and you know, he was so excited by it, but it was a real it was his goal. Yeah, it was like a real clear that that was not borrowed, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

And that's inspiring as well, isn't it? Like seeing that long-term tendency to a goal. Do you do you ever feel like like with your dad's story? I thought it's so authentic. It felt like, oh, this is so what's his name?

SPEAKER_05 36:38

Jeffrey.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

It's so authentically Jeffrey, it's very Jeffrey, it's so Jeffrey. But then are there goals that you've ever had where you you look back and you're like, that wasn't authentically Hattie. That wasn't that wasn't really me. Like the partner one was a good example.

SPEAKER_05 36:52

Partner one was one, wanting to start a venture back business.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:55

I mean, like if you know me.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

No, I feel like all of us had a period where like we would have gone down that path. It was it was like the thing to do.

SPEAKER_05 37:01

And I think venture back businesses, people who aren't in that space, they just require such an intensity of building, and and such a a singular, not singular, but but quite a singular focus on that being your life.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 37:13

And that is very on me. It doesn't, it doesn't, for those who know me, that doesn't tally with how I like to work and and how I want to be. So that was a I think a really clear one. I think an interesting one that is very live for me right now is the kids thing. Because I know I want kids, obviously. And you know, I've done in lots of ways a lot to try and achieve that goal, including kind of restarting the kind of hunt for a partner.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

But that sounds quite a bit. I'd like to take that back hunting, yeah. If I'm currently dating you, yeah, there's no traps, there's no nets, there's no spears. Please skip that part. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

Uh sorry. The search. Yeah. The search. The quest.

SPEAKER_05 38:02

The quest, quest. I love quest. Oh, give a bunch of the quest. I'm reading a book about Arthurian legends, so I love Quest. The Quest Repartner. Um so I'm I it is clearly a goal in the long term, but I I think what's I'm finding quite conflicting is I am 32, and so my friends are going on this quite, you know. I've got I've got three godsons who I'm obsessed with, in case anyone has not come across this, follow me for two seconds and you'll find out. You think um but I somehow have this this really real sense that though it's definitely something I want, I also it's not my timeline is not now. Even if I had you know married the last guy I was with, I'm not at the point where like that's my next moment. I want it in a couple of years, yeah, a few years' time.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Like as your next act, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:01

Exactly. And I feel like there is this tension between when you want the same goal as other people, feeling like you should be mirroring their timeline, forgetting it. And I do sometimes wonder, like, I'll look at my friend's kids and be thinking, should I be wanting this right now?

SPEAKER_03 39:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:16

Like they they're all they're all go not all, but loads of them are going. And does it feel like that? Like, oh, another one's gone. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

But I think we can all live like that, isn't it? Oh, should I have had kids sooner? Should I have had kids later? Yeah. There's no perfect time, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05 39:30

No, but I think it's a big part of the the when we borrow goals, yeah, even when we're boring, even when it's the right goal and we're not borrowing the goal, like I I have really interrogated. Do I just want kids because I've been socialized into it?

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:44

You know, I've I've been told.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

But I think that's the work. The fact that you've interrogated, the fact that you thought about it reflected similar to your earlier career decisions, I think that's the work to know that you're you're tailoring a goal to make your own or you're disregarding it because you've done the thinking.

SPEAKER_05 39:58

And I think there's a lot of goals that we pick up, and I got really challenged on it, like the goal of kids being something where it's like it's so romanticized, right? There are these goals that are romanticized. Marriage was a great example at the beginning. And actually, I think the good thing is like I've seen you know, I I I love my friends listen. One of our one of our greatest listeners is one of my dear friends, mother of my one of my godsons. And um, you know, they will say very openly, like, they're not sleeping. And she's like, I'm not functioning. But because how can I? I'm like completely sleep-divided. And I look at it and I go, Yeah, like that doesn't like that doesn't look fun. Like there are bits of it that look really fun. Like, don't get me wrong, but I but I I do think, do I really and I have moments where I'm like, do I really want this? Because it's a reality. I'm suddenly seeing the real, you know, there's like a lot of poo they they they throw up on you, uh, which as we know I don't love to be thrown up on. Um they you know they're they're kind of gross, yeah. Like very snotty, they're like loads of them can't even wipe their own noses.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

In in a way, you know too much. It's like ignorance is bliss.

SPEAKER_05 41:12

But it's still a goal, and I think actually there's power in that of like, have I just set this as a goal but completely and that was what was happening with the partner thing. I'd romanticized it without actually looking at looking down the barrel. Down the barrel and gone, what does this really look like? What does this really mean? Am I what am I willing? And actually that brings me back around to a question I guess that's helpful. What am I willing to sacrifice for this goal? Yeah. When I've when I've engaged with the reality of it, not just when it's this like nice thing.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 41:41

Do you have any examples for you that have been you mentioned like on the money side, like actually that's helpful to think about will I sacrifice subscriptions? Are there any other examples for you where you've either got rid of a goal because you realised you weren't willing to sacrifice for it? Yeah. Or where it's required a big sacrifice.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Two two stories came immediately to mind. The first is in 2015 I was in San Francisco, I had a 10-year visa, I could have I could have lived and built my life in the US and just worked in Tech and Venture Capital. Um and my friend at the time who I wanted to be with, um, I invited her to the US and she didn't come out, and I came back and and I didn't look back. So I sacrificed, if you like, that career earning potential. I didn't even think about the earning potential. It was more like just being in the epicentre of entrepreneurship to come back to London and I look back, always the right choice. I've never regretted it before, but it's just coming up because we're having this conversation.

SPEAKER_05 42:37

Um and even as you're saying that as someone who knows you, like before you'd even finish telling the story, I'm grinning because I'm like, well, of course you'd come back for Lynette. She's great, like you know.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Well, it worked out. If it didn't work out, I mean maybe I wouldn't move back out there, who knows.

SPEAKER_05 42:52

Um actually that is a point, like you can. I think we need to overattach these goals and we forget we can rebound from them if they don't if they don't go back.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

100%. I think that's an important point, actually. Um like being willing to fail, but also knowing that you can rebound and build and get back up.

SPEAKER_05 43:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

And and that's the reality, that's the truth.

SPEAKER_05 43:08

I can start a company, but then actually, if that fails, maybe I just get a job.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

It's a great example of business building, exactly. When you're talking about actually all of the analogies about children and they poo, and then I thought actually being like a lot of people wouldn't have started a company if they knew it was how all-consuming it is to build a venture back to the state.

SPEAKER_05 43:23

And that is the tricky thing with kids, is you can't, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

You can't undo that. You can't undo it. Um and the second story that I was share very quickly was that a lot of people are surprised when I say that I'm not afraid to go and work at a company. And I'm willing to do that in aid of a goal.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Hopefully, it's work that's really aligned with things that I like doing. Yeah, but I'm not one of these purists, like, I have to be my own boss, I have to be an entrepreneur. I just love solving problems and doing that with other people. And if that means joining a company to do that, I'm willing to do that. And I think that surprises people because I've been entrepreneurial for so long. Like, how can you how Can you like reintegrate into a company? You're unemployable in a way now. Like so unemployable. I don't fit into a category or into a role very neatly. But in order to achieve a certain goal or the house renovation, or I would do it if I had to. I wouldn't put my family at jeopardy or their lifestyle.

SPEAKER_05 44:16

And I actually think that's a key point is that we often hear that spoken into existence and we speak it into existence. I'm unemployable now, is something I hear so many times from founders. Yeah. I think that is true. And I think we are telling each other it too much. Okay, so we've we we need to start wrapping up. So I'm just gonna check. We've checked all the boxes I promised that there's a lot of boxes. So we talked about the fact that a lot of goals we borrow unconsciously, and some of those could be positive goals, like Mr. Mainu bring you into places, and Mr. Mr. Fellows telling me I could I could get there. Um some of it is unconscious and doesn't work for us, and that's often attached to kind of more vanity goals of a title, exactly, something that I can shout about.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah. And we're gonna partner at a firm, by the way. It wasn't the marital potential. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:03

Yeah, but actually the marital thing, I think actually for a lot of people, could be I want to be a wife. I often see this on dating shows, side note. I see this all the time on like love is blind, da da da. It's I want to be a wife, I want to get engaged. It's not I wanna I want to have a happy marriage, yeah. It's not I I want to be a loving partner. It it's still like this sense of like I want a rock on my finger and I I want to reach this like life milestone, which I get completely because it you do feel a pressure on it.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Yeah, it's a means to an end, really. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 45:33

And so we've got all of those kind of goals. We've we've explored how that often leads with borrowed goals to to things that we can pick up on, that wheel spinning, that sense of I achieve it, but it doesn't mean anything, yeah, or that sense of actually I I feel this real tug of war going on constantly. So let as we wrap up, let's maybe talk about what we can do to do a bit of a sieve of goals to work out what is ours and isn't ours. And then I think the the final part I just want to touch on at the end is this idea of I think when we get gifted goals, how do we make them our own? So I'm not just I'm still customising it, it's still mine. And I think one thing I love is this idea of the invisibility test. So if your goal came true but no one else could know about it, would it still be a goal?

SPEAKER_02 46:29

I love that.

SPEAKER_05 46:30

I think it's so strong, and for me, actually filters out a load of goals.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:34

Because I can look at a real example actually right now. I now have two people I work with closely who have MBEs. And so I'm like, oh, should I try and get an MBE? Is that a thing I should be aspiring to? Like, I I I admire you, I admire LJ, actually, three, another person I work with at Virgin Startup, amazing. All three people I really admire, really rate their work. I'm like, oh, should that be the goal?

SPEAKER_01 46:55

I don't think it was a goal for any of the three. No, it wasn't. It wasn't a goal for any of the three, but actually I understand it, being surrounded by the yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:01

But if I filter it, I go, actually, the MB isn't the goal. They're doing work I admire them for because they're proud of it, and it's work that I think is meaningful. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:09

So that invisibility test I think is really important.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Lovely.

SPEAKER_05 47:12

Energy test?

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:14

Is this draining my energy trying to even work out how to get started? Is it sapping my energy trying to achieve it? I think is another really good test.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Or actually, is it just neutral and balanced and it's just something I get along on with, but it doesn't bring or drain my energy.

SPEAKER_05 47:29

And and and how do I feel when I'm getting milestones along it? Does it feel do I feel anything?

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Yeah, yeah. Does it fulfil me? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:37

And then I think just moving on to that kind of final point to close off of how do we customize? So if we've done a bit of a sift and you think, okay, I've unpacked where this has come from. I'm comfortable that maybe some of it's still a bit unconscious, but I'm comfortable broadly that I do want to be shooting for this thing. Yeah. Whether that's short or long-term goal. We touched on that a bit as well. But how do you go about making so so you let's take the Mr. Mayno example?

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:02

You know, you've been shown all these. I love it. You know, you've been welcomed into all these spaces, you've been he helped you get a job at EY.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:12

But you're not still at EY.

SPEAKER_02 48:14

No.

SPEAKER_05 48:15

So how did you customize those goals that you were getting kindly gifted? I think that's a the best example of actually someone who was really trying to model for you, you can be this thing. Because often when we don't see something, we don't believe we can be it.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Yeah, absolutely. That's an important one, actually. If you don't see, definitely don't believe you can be it. Um, and two things came to mind when you when you just shared that prompt. The first is the power of visualizations, like visualizing what it would be like to achieve that goal and what it would feel like. And I think that picture gets updated all the time once you're in reality like on the road to achieving that goal. So I can have a vision of what it would be like to work at EY. But actually, once I start working there, I have to update my vision and ask myself does that fit with what I thought it was gonna be? Is it better or is it worse? You know, is it draining? Is it is it giving me energy? What parts of this are actually what I thought it was gonna be? Is it living up to what I thought it would feel like being in this position? So I think visualization is one thing that's important, and and the feedback loop is visualizing how it will feel like versus how it actually feels like.

SPEAKER_05 49:17

I love that so much, and I I think the one thing I want to add into that is that sense of when you visualize it, is it a day or is it a life? So is what you're visual visualizing the day, or maybe the better way, is it the day-to-day or is it a day?

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:33

So is what you're visualizing actually that moment where you update your LinkedIn? Is it the moment someone, you know interested? Or is it actually in your day-to-day? I feel, you know, when you described your maintenance goal, yeah, what you described was actually very day-to-day.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:50

You know, that could be measured on any day when you've achieved it, and it would look similar. You're feeling creative, yeah. You're feeling fulfilled.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

How does that become a more regular feature of my life rather than just doing exercise?

SPEAKER_05 50:06

I love that. Beautiful. We need to wrap up. Any final journaling prompts?

SPEAKER_01 50:11

I think that's good actually. I think that's some neat ones there at the end. Yeah. I feel there's a lot to untangle there as it is.

SPEAKER_05 50:17

Yeah, so tell us how you go. I would love to know if any goals get updated or changed. And we'd also, as ever, love to hear. We have a newsletter. So after every show we will share a newsletter, it will always include these journaling prompts. So if you want to be reminded after you've listened, or even before you've had the episode sometimes, sign up to that. We'll there's a link always in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 50:39

But also do apply, like, tell us how you get on. We want to know, we want this to be a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Yeah, and we'd love to have some guest contributors sharing your stories and what's worked for you. 100%. So, yeah, please do write.