How to Goals (when you don’t have one)

Dia Bondi 00:02

What I'm looking for, in my you know, establishing my own goals and also, you know inconversation with you about yours is don't go for right, go for resonant. Youknow, this is about what is resonant for you. Hey everyone, welcome to theDeobandi show a big podcast for women with goals. I'm Dia Bondi, and I am on amission to help women ask for more and get it, resource their dreams and havean absolute blast doing it. I'm so happy to be here with you today. And I'mactually happy for you to be here with me today. Welcome into my little hideyhole. What my kids call a hidey hole. Usually, their hidey hole is in referenceto like when they sleep at Nana's house, which doesn't happen right now becausewe're in the middle of COVID. But even their own home they make themselves alittle special bed and a little pocket somewhere in the house my son's 13 andhe still enjoys a nice little hidey hole. Oh, yeah. So welcome to my hideyhole. Oh, speaking of speaking of of Welcome to our space that that deepbeautiful voice you just heard that is of our our on air producer and audioextraordinaire, Arthur Leon Adams, the third aka baby a Hi, hey, yeah,

Arthur  01:27

sorry to interrupt there. I just, I was just remembering my blanket four days. I've made them as an adult, even

Dia Bondi 01:33

100%100%.

Arthur  01:35

Like, my wife and I, a couple of times have been like, let's just make a not a blanket for but like thing on the floor in the living room moved the coffee table and the chair out of the way and just like put pillows and blankets down and watch movies like laying and

Dia Bondi 01:48

I knew just the hidey hole feels good. I know it does. I feel like this podcast is alittle hidey hole where we get to talk about the things that matter to us. And we get to be we get to be ridiculous when we want to and series is how to talkwhen we want to this is our little fort.

Arthur  02:02

Yeah. So how's it going? What's on your mind today?

Dia Bondi 02:06

So, so much stuff is going on. It's January recording this in January. And it's been areally super I don't know a very interesting month in that I'm talking in myworkshops, and also on the podcast and just across the world. I'm talking engaging,there's so many different conversations. And one of the things that is justcoming up a lot right now, and I'm noticing is how much we just like live inthe tension of opposites. A couple episodes ago, maybe it was episode threejameelah called in and she talked about having a big ask that was on deck forher to try to like get some more adventure in her life. And she said somethingthat really stood out to me that kind of punk she put an exclamation point onthis thing I'm aware of right now that we live in the tension of opposites. Andin fact, sometimes that's even where the magic is. And the energy is. She said,Yeah, I'm gonna make this big ask and there's both both risk and opportunity in

Arthur  03:01

a risk.attunity a risk?

Dia Bondi 03:08

Yes, arisk. attunity? Yeah, so much risk attunity. So, those two things, oh, thatjust gave me a little delight right inside of my heart right there. That Yeah,that that we live in the attentions of opposites. And I feel like I myself am ajust a big ball of contradictions. And it's really easy. Like, in her example,where she was it was a risk attunity You know, there's always this little bitof like craving for the risk part to be smaller for that maybe not to even bethere at all that there's like, there's always half of this, this these twoopposites that we want to like back down or get rid of, or it's sort of the badguy, you know, in this duality? And I don't know if that's always true. Like,what if we reframed it, what do we said, these two opposites that I live inthese two contradictions that exist inside of myself and my personality? areactually the ways in which I am balanced and the ways in which, you know thatactually when they work for me, like I think about my contradictions are that ifI were to articulate them, I think there's a lot of them, but one of themstands out for me is that I am what I think of myself as a positive malcontent.I am, I am a fairly pot. I mean, do you experience me as a positive person?Absolutely.

Arthur  04:26

Verypositive, very up,

Dia Bondi 04:29

I have asense of like, possibility and opportunity. And I'm very, I have a positiveoutlook about the about what's possible. And I'd like I sort of intentionallylook at something and say, You know what's good here, but I'm also malcontentin that, like, I'm sort of, maybe it's more like I'm a skeptic, but I feel likeI'm a malcontent in that like I can, I can enjoy something but there's always apart of it that I'm that I'm sort of like uncomfortable. With or that is sortof like, I'm not totally sure. Maybe I've had to cultivate my positivity tocombat that. But nonetheless, I, I am a positive malcontent. And I also thinkthat's okay. Like if I said, What's good about that? What's good about that isI can, I am forward looking, I can feel bright about what's possible. And myskepticism or my mal contentedness also keeps me discomforted enough to alwaysbe moving forward. It Like, it keeps me skeptical enough that I, I come tothings with critical thinking that I am not afraid to like look at things fromlots of different angles that I can be skeptical enough. And I'm not justdrinking the Kool Aid, you know. So what is it? What is it for us to have tohave these contradictions in us and not try to bat one away, but instead say,what are my contradictions and what's good? Like, here's what I like aboutthat. Here's how it helps me to have both of these presents. How about you,Arthur? What are yours?

Arthur  06:04

Well,yeah, mine's really similar to yours. I think I am a what I would call anoptimistic, nihilist with what that means to me is that life is meaningless.Everything is horrible. It's and it probably is never really going to getbetter, like in the universe, but I'm just gonna find my happiness how I canyou know? And so does it help

Dia Bondi 06:30

youappreciate simple things like picking up your guitar at home or salutely.

Arthur  06:34

It helpsme appreciate simple things. It makes me not sweat the small stuff becauseyeah, it's par for the course.

Dia Bondi 06:41

See,that's what I that's, that's what I mean. And like, when I listen to you saythose two things that are in may be perceived in opposition of one another. Thenihilist part is what you're saying is the part that actually allows you toenjoy things.

Arthur  06:53

Yeah,absolutely.

Dia Bondi 06:54

But butit would be the one that we can easily be like, Oh, yeah, nihilism. That's,that's so useless. And you shouldn't be like, that are so dark, or it's sonegative, or it's

Arthur  07:02

sopeople have accused me of those things before being negative, you know, but,um, but I don't feel that way. Yeah, I feel like I, I have so much joy and lovefor so many things about life. I just know that in the end, what does thatmatter? It just matters to me.

Dia Bondi 07:23

That'sgreat. That's great. Well, I would love to hear from our listeners. What, whatcontradictions are you? And what, what do you like about that?

Arthur  07:34

That's agood one.

Dia Bondi 07:35

I wouldlove to hear that. If you could call us with our number. Again, it's341-333-2997. You can just call,

Arthur  07:42

you cancall us anytime at that number. You can also subscribe and rate and review thepodcast. And there's a way to contact us via email to right,

Dia Bondi 07:54

correct.You can go to just Hello at dia bondi.com. If you send us a note there and tellus who are you as a contradiction? And what do you like about that? And howdoes that serve you? And I'd love to actually hear a handful of those. Andmaybe we'll cut them together or read them on a future episode. So we'll belooking for that both in our email and in our, in our voicemail box.

Arthur  08:13

Oh,yeah, that'll be really fun.

Dia Bondi 08:14

I can'twait. Today, I want to talk about goals themselves. And then I want to talkabout how to you know, your goals are sort of right for you, particularly ifyou're at the beginning of sort of wanting to identify a few of them. Andwhether their goals for this year for your life or for the next quarter forwhatever. And then lastly, like I want to talk a little bit about sometimeswhat are the two action or goals can require or what feel like requires someconfidence. What you can do, when you look at something that I often see is alie we tell ourselves is that we need confidence before we can act and anactually, it's the opposite. So those are the three things I want to talk abouttoday. And this this episode is especially for those of you listening who aremaybe like maybe your your you're kind of on cruise control for a while oryou've you've leveled up a handful of years ago, or you made a big change awhile ago, a while back and you're kind of ready for something new, but you'renot quite sure what it might be yet. You're ready for a change or you're readyfor something bigger or something smaller. And you're just kind of at thebeginning of that itching feeling of like, what might my next set of goals be?I found myself in this exact same position. handful of years ago, I put myselfon a working sabbatical. And during that time, I did a lot of different thingsthat worked out a lot. I slept a lot. I walk my kids to school every day. And Ireally actually my goal for that 18 months was to actually not do anything, nottry to create new goals, not force it but instead to just listen for them. Andyou know, I had a few small adventures. That was when I went to auctioneeringschool. I just I wouldn't call Play, but I did a lot of just moving my body anda lot of listening. So that the next sort of set of goals that emerged for methat I heard, you know, that kind of popped up in landscape of my life that Icould notice. I knew weren't because I muscled it, I knew that they were gonna,that they were the right goals, because they were they, because they emergedfrom me not because I forced them out of myself. So I want to offer, you know,how we can think about getting on getting on to listening for and articulatingand sort of committing to a new set of goals. Now around that same thing, I wantto say that, you know, it's really, it's really easy. In fact, naming thispodcast was a little bit. You know, I wanted to say that this podcast is a bigpodcasts for women with goals, meaning women who want who know what they want,or want something for themselves. And it's very easy for us to automaticallythink that when that goals means ambition, and you know, Episode One, I talkedabout, like what is achievement, and our goals don't always have to look likewhat we think of as classic achievement. In fact, when we had Shasta Nelson onour friendship expert, our, in our last episode, there was a moment, at the endof our, at the end of our conversation, where she said something like, we weretalking about friendships, and how they, how they can help you reach yourgoals, even when those friends don't necessarily care about your goals. And shewas like, you know, we don't always have friendships that are tied to usreaching our goals, you know, sometimes you just want to relax, and I was like,yeah, and one of one of our goals is just have a place to relax. Like, that's agoal for you to be able to point at something and say, that is a place where Ican be quiet with myself, that is a place where I don't have to perform. Andthat is an important component in my life. And, and one of my goals is to havethat and maintain it and in cultivate it and keep it keep it a hidey hole formyself, you know? So how do we know when we look at all of the different kindsof goals that can exist for us? How do we know? Those are really right for you?Well, I want to talk a little bit for a second about this next subject, whichis, you know, how do you actually identify some goals around this question ofhow do I know my goals, ones that are emerging for me that I'm seeing areright, is to not think of your goals as having to be something that's perfect.That is something that you can put on a spreadsheet and measure and you know,that it has some sort of sort of that it's really the business side of thehouse, you know, that it has this sort of hard formality or a hardened form.And it can be not perfect that way, what I'm looking for, in my, you know,establishing my own goals, and also, you know, in conversation with you aboutyours is to go for go Don't go for right, go for resonant. You know, this isabout what is resonant for you. And so as as I was looking a handful of yearsago, when I took my self imposed working sabbatical, and I was looking for whatis resonant for me now, because my 10 year, my 10 years earlier than thatmoment itself, would have had a set of goals that were resonant for for thattime in my life, but not now. And I had to kind of upgrade myself or update ina reboot myself to say what matters to me now what's resonant to me now, whatmatters to Who am I now? And what do I care about? And one really powerful toolin letting those goals emerge, show up for me. So I could notice that, wow,that wouldn't have never been interesting to me 10 years ago, but it's actuallyit's actually interesting, it's resonant for me was to do Julia Cameron'sartists way, book and journal to read it and do all of the activities in thatjournal made a huge difference to me and helping me get back into relationshipwith the current version of myself. Not maybe even not even back intorelationship, but to get into relationship with the current version of myself,and to start to notice what is resonant for me. So that was a huge, a hugetool. That was a huge tool for me. And so if you have a chance to go find thatbook, and and that is an interesting activity for you to do journaling aroundthat and you like the sort of the format of a format of a workbook. That is afantastic a fantastic tool. short of that. There's a little sort of four stepsyou could take to identify a handful of goals and then notice what's what'sresonant about them first, you can and you can do this with, you know, post itnotes, you can do it on notes on your phone, you can you can journalelectronically, somewhere You can write it out long form whatever format makesthe most sense to you. You want to make you step one is really to make a biglist a big exhaustive list of like, what? It's not actually what do you want todo? But what do you want more of? What do you want more of in your life? inyour relationships in your work? And your joy? In what do you want more of anevery answer you write down or you take note of is the right answer. You canmake an exhaustive list they all get to be you can say yes to everything thatshows up to every idea you have. Because you don't have to make any decisionsabout them yet, it's just an inventory. And then you can go to the second stepand do the opposite. It's funny, we were talking earlier about opposites todaythat you know that that there's beauty in like these tension, there's in thetension of opposites that we have in our lives. And so step two is actuallyexactly that, where you're after you ask yourself, what do I want more of, youcan now make a list of what do I want less of, you know, I want less, I wantless exhaustion. that's legit, I want a less crowded calendar, I want less, Iwant fewer plans, and more openness. So what might you want less of and you canmake a nice exhaustive list. If you only have two or three things on the list.That's fine, too. All your answers are right. And then once you've once you'vemade these lists of what you want more of and what do I want less of, you cannow look at them, and just scan them and ask yourself, which of these on theselists, maybe maybe only one tied to the first step or maybe all of them tied tothe second step? Or maybe you have someone on both sides, what do I want moreof or what do I want less of which ones of those are most resonant. Andwherever resonance lives for you. If it's like, you get that little jump inyour stomach, or you can feel yourself relax a little bit when you when youlook at how you've articulated what you want more of or a thing that you wantless of what looks interesting to you, which ones are you most curious about?That's a good way to sort of detect resonance. And if you identify which one ofthose lists might be resonant, you can circle them, highlight them, grab them,and hold on to them, you can write out, you can journal around them and sort ofpaint a picture of what it looks like to have more or less of the thing thatyou've identified is resonant. And to sort of narrow in on one or two on eitherside, or just one or two or just one, that that you can identify as somethingthat has maybe some goals inside of it. And then the fourth step is still notto do anything with it. It's still just to be with it and ask this question,what is it for me to fall in love with this goal? What is it for me to fall inlove with this thing that even has a little tiny spark of resonance for me, andlet it have a place in my thoughts in my heart in my day, you know, in my mind,the letters have a seat at the table might not be eating anything yet, but justto have a seat at the table in my awareness. So these four steps are, arereally, they can be fun, they can be quiet, they can be a conversation withfriends, they can be just time by yourself in your hidey hole. But these foursteps can start to help you see and let something emerge. That might be animportant goal for you. And the next phase of your life. If the phases the nextfive years, the next two years, the next quarter. So yes, I'm actually not evengoing to give you anything to do with it except to ask this question. And inthe coaching model that I use, we think of it as like an inquiry, what is itfor me to fall in love with that goal? Now, some of you may have identified agoal that actually has a real clear action path. Maybe somebody maybe one ofyou is written down, what do I want more of I want more authority at work. Iwant to be director someday. And maybe it's really clear and concrete. And allof a sudden, there's like a very clear action path for you. But that feels likeJim ilas call that we got earlier in in our episodes feels like an opportunityand a risk to really go for it. You know that there's some there's a drawtoward it. But it also has has, does have that sort of fiery risky feeling likeyou want it but you need some you need something to help you make it happen.And so often the thing I hear not just in the work I do with women and askingbut also with my 20 years of communications work and maybe even especiallyright there because I'm working with people to help them step on stage andreally truly speak from the heart and as as they who they truly are in the contextof most often of high stakes business audiences that There's an assumption thatin order to get into action toward that goal, or an assumption that for me totake that stage, which is such as taking a stage is like a just beautifulmetaphor for, you know, when we want to level up in our lives, we want topursue something new, we want to take a risk, we want to stretch. And we makeourselves a little bit vulnerable on the stage. And when we stretch in ourlives, there's a little vulnerability in that as well, that we assume that weneed confidence to actually take action, I'll take that stage, once I haveenough confidence, I'll pursue that role, once I have enough confidence, inorder to do it, like confidence is a prerequisite to acting on moving towardthat particular goal, or taking that risk or leaning into that stretch. And ina lot of cases, in so many cases, that's a trap. So much so that actually, Iwrote an op ed that will list in the, in the show notes that I published onAdweek, 360. About this very thing, the confidence trap, we trap ourselvesthinking we need the confidence to act when in fact, action doesn't requireconfidence, it requires a plan. It requires having a sense of control, or whatyou can control so that you can get into action. And actually confidence existson the other side of taking action. It is an outcome of action. So I want toinvite folks, for those of you who did the four step process of like, what do Iwant more of in my life? In my job and my work and my creative self? What do Iwant less of which one's most resonant for me? And then what does it mean forme to fall in love with it. And for those of you who might be noticing thatsomething that is easy to start to see a path toward action on, but you assumeyou need confidence in order to act just just trust that if you put together aplan, and you can act, confidence is actually just on the other side. And wecan talk about some planning in another episode. But today was really aboutwhat do we think about goals? When I do I judge my goals? Number one, do Ijudge my goals and say they're wrong, because they don't look shiny, becausethey don't look a certain way. They're not tied to sort of classic ideas ofambition. Your Goals are personal, they're 100% yours, and you can let thememerge with a four step plan around, you know, what do I want more of and lessof? What's really resonant for me? And then how do I fall in love with thoseenough to be able to stand up for them for give them a seat at my table in mylife to bring them into my hidey hole. And then lastly, if there are actionsthat you can see that you could take to move toward them, and those actionsfeel like they require confidence. They don't always they require a plan andconfidence is right on the other side. fractioning that plan?

Arthur  22:51

Youknow, the the little exercise that you're talking about? Having people do thatreminds me of those days that we spent at the clock factory doing mind maps,

Dia Bondi 23:01

right,we did those on Fridays or something right? We had Mind Map Friday? Yeah,

Arthur  23:04

Fridaywas mind mapping day. And were Yeah, I mean, we did a lot of things like thatexercise, in the mind map kind of formula.

Dia Bondi 23:14

Yeah, Imean, I remember those mind mapping days were days where we would like quietlymosers, sir, three, or four or five of us in the shoot space doing them, and wewould be quiet and just do them quietly, and then stand back and like look atthose mind maps and say, what do I see in my own mind map? What am I noticing?Is there a theme here? Which which ones you know which pieces on this mind mapare are pointing me toward something new, and just letting that show itself toyou instead of muscling it.

Arthur  23:44

Right?And also getting the feedback from each other? where you're like, Well, youknow, what I'm really seeing in your mind map is this

Dia Bondi 23:51

and itwasn't a lot of evaluation. I love it that you bring this up because part ofthis exercise, you know, when we look at especially Step three, when you'reasking yourself, you know which of these things that I'm seeing that I'velisted here, however you've done that, or is most resonant is to really becareful not to judge it right? To let yourself be like, wow, this really simplething has so much resonance for me, I thought that I thought that that wassomething I didn't care about anymore or something, when in fact it's it's gotit's got a lot of sparkle to it for you and not judge that

Arthur  24:23

I have atendency to edit as I go and self edit and and these types of exercises helpyou just like free associate and just write what you know comes to your mindfirst without any judgment without editing and I always find it really helpful.

Dia Bondi 24:36

Yeah.And you know, you can use these kinds of exercises all over the place. This onefor today is really, I think it's about like when you're in a place whereyou're asking now what you know now what's important to me. Now, what do I wantto do? What do I want to have? What is my What's next? And you don't have ananswer of like, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I got I'm super clear onmy goals. This is just a place to start to get back To start listening toyourself,

Arthur  25:01

thanks.Well, I think that's another good one. Another one in the can. That's right.All right,

25:06

everybody.

Arthur  25:06

We'llsee you next time. Bye.

25:12

ThisPodcast is a production of Dia Bondi Communications, scored MCs and produced bybaby as you can like, share rate and subscribe at Apple podcasts, Googlepodcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. If you wouldlike my mom de Bondi to answer any questions about how to make your next bigmove, call us and leave your question at 341-333-2997 Thanks for listening

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