Ignite Your Transformation

Key Takeaways for the Reader (from the article):

• Shift from Lower to Higher Brain: Understand how to transcend primal tension's pull (apathy, boredom, criticism) and activate your higher brain's capacity for creation.
  
• Define Your Vision: Learn the importance of "picking your star" and gaining internal clarity on what you truly want, regardless of external validation.
  
• Master Actionable Goal Setting: Discover how to break down your aspirations into specific, measurable, and time-bound "do goals" that propel you forward.
  
• Embrace Imperfection: Understand why "B-minus work" is more effective than waiting for perfection, and how it accelerates progress and inspiration.
  
• Overcome Inertia: Utilize practical techniques like the "Five-Second Rule" to jumpstart action and maintain momentum toward your goals.
  
• Experience Transformative Outcomes: Realize how consistent action, self-belief, and connection lead to profound personal growth and fulfillment.
  

So today we're going to talk about igniting our transformation. In the last couple of episodes, we've gone over very foundational ideas and tools. The first of which was the CTFAR model, where we learned what drives how we feel and how that influences our actions. And then we learned about primal tension, which is the pull of the lower brain, and how it likes to just keep us in the comfortable zone, keep us safe, and not do anything too flashy because we're supposed to conserve energy, according to our lower brain's directive. Just keep us safe and comfy, and then pursue pleasure when we're bored. That's our lower brain's gig. So these tools and realities really help set us up for success when we're aware of them, so that as we go to create something in our life, make changes in our life, we kind of know what the challenges are and what tools we can utilize to make it easier for us.

Whenever we endeavor to do any kind of project, like build a house, for example, we kind of need to know the terrain and what we're up against, and it really helps to have some tools. An important reminder right now: the pull of our lower brain, or primal tension, has some fundamental outcomes that we find ourselves dealing with: apathy, boredom, and criticism. And I promised in the last episode that I was going to explain how we move from apathy, boredom, and criticism into action, belief, and connection. That is today's episode.

The Higher Brain's Call

This is the calling of the higher brain, essentially, the calling of our higher selves, urging us to take control of our lives. Instead of life happening to us, which so often it can feel like if we're not careful—that it's all just happening to us, we don't have any choice in the matter—it feels much better to be making the choices ourselves and charting a path forward for ourselves, despite what's going on around us.

We know that in the Doctrine and Covenants we are told, "We are agents unto ourselves." This is a major, major part of the whole big plan of salvation that God has laid out for us, that he's explained to us. It's all about making your own choices and being who you want to be, and that those choices do have outcomes, and they do make an impact, they do have an effect on our experience and certainly on the experience of others in the world at large.

So our overarching imperative is to choose something that we're going to pursue, craft a plan on how we're going to achieve that, and then take the action, execute the plan to move forward with it. And spoiler alert: it's going to be uncomfortable, but it's also going to be exciting and fulfilling as we move through it. And we've all done this before. These are essential reminders for us, and it really helps to drown out, get rid of the noise. There's so much noise coming at us all the time. We want to cut through that and just dial in on what the path forward actually is and the things that we need to believe in order to pull that off, the feelings that we want to have to actually pull us through that.

Pick Your Star

I really like the analogy of picking a star. Pick your star. What is it that you're going to focus on right now? And then how are you going to get there, and then taking the action to actually move forward. It's been said that our seafaring brothers and sisters, when they ventured out into the unknown waters, picked a star, and they prayed, and then they went. Pick a star, pray, and go.

What does picking that star do for us? It's a distinction that we have made for our brain, telling us what is important. If we give our brains a task, then we are going to be able to focus our energy and vibe into that thing and figure out how to pull that off. We've all done this multiple times in our lives. We've picked something and went for it, and somehow or another, things were able to get us along the journey, and even if the outcome wasn't necessarily what we originally thought it would be, we still became something different in the process. We expanded our understanding, we expanded our abilities, and we developed new horizons for ourselves and learned things that we otherwise would not have learned.

So in the coaching world, it's very much about a future-focused idea. Granted, the future hasn't happened yet, but we're living in the future, according to the past, right? We're looking to that. We're not too concerned about the past in the world of coaching. It can be somewhat useful if you've documented decisions that were made and outcomes that those decisions made. But we're really looking forward to what does the future hold? What are we going to create for our future self and the future of others? And it gives us something compelling to look forward to. And at the end of it all, it's not a complicated process.

We just need to know a few things: What do we want? Why do we want it? And how are we going to achieve it? That's really all.

When my wife and I visited Hawaii three years ago, it planted the seed in our mind that, "Hey, we actually would like to live there. Let's kick that around. Let's open up some possibilities." Life coach Brooke Castillo calls it a possibility drop. Do a possibility drop for yourself. No one else can really do that for us; it's something that we have to do for ourselves. And what's fascinating is it doesn't matter if the whole world believes in that thing for you or not, because if you don't believe it, that's really the only thing that affects this. If you are going to take action or not, it depends on if you believe it or not, right?
Perhaps you were approached multiple times in your life by people when you were younger or maybe even recently: "Hey, you'd be really good at this! Did you ever play basketball? You're really tall. Seem like you have a good build for that," or "Volleyball, do you ever do that? Oh, you'd be so good at this, that, or the other thing." It doesn't really matter what they think you'd be good at if you don't want to do that or don't believe in that thing or don't want that thing. It doesn't matter if the whole world wants it, right? Really, the only thing that matters is if you want that.

So when it comes down to making a decision about what we're going to pursue, sometimes we look to the outside world to validate our decision. You may find some people to do that for you, but it may well be few, so I would suggest don't even worry about it and don't waste your time looking for outside validation on what you have chosen to do. Pick your thing that you want to pursue and go for it. Decide who you want to be and how you want to show up, and just go. Pick your star, pray, and go.

Embracing Imperfection and Action

And as we go through this process, be prepared for a lack of inspiration at times. Don't wait around for inspiration to spur you on because the inspiration comes during the movement, during the action of experimenting, making the choices, doing the things. That's when the ideas start to spark and start to develop.

There's not necessarily a perfect thing to select. That is a very personal choice. It could be you want to show up differently in a relationship than you have been. Reflect on that as a possibility. Maybe it's an educational pursuit that you want to work towards. Perhaps it's a creative pursuit that you'd like to do. Maybe you want to learn painting or sculpting, or write some music, some poetry. You want to write a book. You want to start a garden. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be impressive to other people. Remember, this is not about what other people are going to think about it. It is what you feel compelled to do; your higher brain is calling you to become, to create. So what is that thing? You might get outside validation about it. That's fun. That's great. But remember, we don't have control over whether or not other people are going to be enamored by what we're up to. Most people will never learn about it. It's a big world. Most people will never learn of you. Most people will never know you. Most people will never see what you're doing. But you will. A few other people will, and certainly God will.

Setting Do Goals and Harvesting Time

So once we have picked our star, we need to create a set of subgoals, and these are all do goals. By do goals, I mean these are tangible actions that we take that are measurable. And we want these things to be time-bound. As we set our overarching star that we're picking, we're going to give ourselves 30- to 60-day milestones, and then what are we going to do each week or even each day to pursue us to those milestones, to propel us towards those milestones?

And let me be clear: we have to write down every single thing that we can think of that needs to be accomplished in order to do what we want to do, in order to pursue what we want to pursue. And we don't have to have all the answers, but we'll definitely be able to come up with some. And as we check those things off the list, as we take those actions and make those decisions and execute on those do goals, the path will reveal itself as we go, but we really only need to know what the next step is, and that we just keep moving.

And when we put these action items down, we're going to calendar them. We're going to pick a specific day, a specific time, and a specific duration. And we are going to be very specific about what we are seeking to accomplish. You're not just going to say, "I'm going to work on XYZ." Like if you're writing a book, you're not just going to say, "Work on my book." You're going to make it easier on your brain and say specifically, "I'm going to write or create the outline for this part of the story." When you sit down, say you give yourself an hour to work on that thing, and you only give yourself two options for that hour: "I am either going to work on this thing that I have picked, or I will stare out the window and do nothing." Those are your two options for that hour. Nothing else will be happening. There's no scrolling on your phone, there's nothing at all but you and your do goal, or you sit and look out the window and do nothing. And probably you're going to pick just do the thing.

And remember, it's the movement. It's the action itself that creates inspiration. Inspiration doesn't create action. Action creates inspiration. And then they can start to feed. But if you're just sitting there waiting for inspiration to fill you up like a wellspring of amazingness, not going to happen. It's the action that spurs the inspiration on how to handle the thing you're working on and what the next steps are. But I like to call this harvesting time. We all have the same amount of time in the day. It's there and available to us. What are we going to do with it? How are we going to harvest that time? What will we have to show for it when all is said and done? How much enjoyment are we going to have someday when we have to make an accounting for our time on Earth?

I truly believe that we will be making an accounting of our time, and how much enjoyment do we expect to have when we do our little show and tell session someday? What kind of relationships did we nurture? What did we do with our talents? How did we develop ourselves? Like, what were we able to learn and figure out, and what did we enjoy and get excited about? I don't think that God will say to us someday, "Well, you could have done a lot better with your time there, son, daughter. Look at all these missed opportunities you had." You'll just sit there and listen and let us do the talking, I think, by and large. And how much we enjoy that interaction is really going to be up to us. So pursuing our star really is all about harvesting time.

Overcoming Inertia and Embracing B-Minus Work

What if we're having a difficult time actually getting moving? Like, let's say we've got the plan set up and we've calendared those items, those do goals. How do you get off the couch? How do you get off of your favorite social media thing or off of your favorite TV show and actually pursue the thing? How do you actually execute on it? There's a great life hack, for lack of a better term, that the motivational speaker Mel Robbins created. She calls it the Five-Second Rule. You basically count down like you decide, "Okay, I'm going to count down from five and then I'm just going to jump into this thing." Five, four, three, two, one, go, blast off! And you ignite that engine, and you just hop into the thing that you're going to do. I've used that to get myself out of bed in the morning. I've used that to get myself to record podcasts. I've used that to make important phone calls, to engage with my do goals. So many decisions had to be made when Brittany and I were pursuing the ideal of moving to Hawaii, and the Five-Second Rule was very useful.

Another tip that I really love is the idea of B-minus work. Because sometimes when we're looking to create something or engage in something, we think to ourselves, "Well, it's got to be perfect. I have to have the perfect plan. When I do the thing, it has to be just perfect. It's got to be perfect, or it's just not worth doing." That is a trick of your lower brain because your lower brain knows that if you can spend time making it perfect, then you get to delay taking action. You get to delay putting out the product, the final thing, and your brain gets to conserve energy. Your brain's going to want you to wait until it can be perfect. Don't fall for it.

If you waited to go on a date until you had the perfect date in mind, if you were wanting to get married and you waited for the perfect plan for that, the perfect way to propose, the perfect this, the perfect that, you're never going to actually do it because there is no such thing as a perfect plan. If I waited around until I felt like I had a perfect podcast to put out there, I would never put out a podcast. If I waited to have a perfect website before I published my website, I would never have a website. If I waited until I had a perfect novel before I published it, I would never have published my novel.

You know what a perfect novel is? A novel that you've published. You know what a perfect marriage proposal is? A marriage proposal that you've actually proposed. A perfect date is the perfect date that you actually went on. The perfect prayer is the prayer you actually gave. The perfect job interview is the job interview that actually happened, right? I've had some weird job interviews over the years, and you don't want all the job interviews to work out, right? No. What's the perfect way to live in Hawaii? However, you can get there. Don't wait around for the perfect thing. I feel like it worked out pretty perfectly for us, but we were open to many different outcomes.

B-minus work. I love that because it really takes the pressure off, you know? I mean, even the... I like iPhones, right? But you know what? There are things about the layout and such; I considered it not to be perfect. That's okay though, 'cause it not being perfect seems to be good enough because I think Apple has a lot of money and a lot of people use their stuff, and it's not perfect. Every single car you've ever driven, it wasn't perfect, but you know what? It was good enough, and they actually got it out to market. I think we have an underdeveloped sense of what perfection is. When we're told "be therefore perfect," I'm not sure we understand what that word means. We use it a lot. We keep using that word, but I don't think it means what we think it means.

So pick your not-perfect star. Say your not-perfect prayer. Develop your not-perfect plan and execute on your plan in your not-perfect way, and then be amazed at how well the journey goes. There's always going to be trials and unforeseen things that happen along the way. But go for it anyway. Go for the B-minus. Do it. B-minus work is so much better than not turning it in.

Action, Belief, Connection

And through the process of all this, we emerge out of the cocoon that the lower brain wants us to be in, which creates apathy, boredom, and criticism. And we move into the action and the belief and the connection. It's connection with ourselves, it's connection with our higher brain's calling, it's connection with other people. It's belief in ourselves, it's belief in the world at large, it's belief in other people. And it is what makes the world go 'round: action, belief, and connection. And it is a transformation, to be sure, and a transformation that we get to experience over and over and over again.

Ignite your transformation. Pick your star, pray, and go.