External Goals Require Internal Shifts

Every big external goal requires an internal shift in who we are.

Last week I was speaking with a new client about a big professional goal she's been stagnant with for over a year. Everyone she talks with who has already achieved this goal for themselves talks about it as a transformational experience.

Achieving tough goals is easier under these conditions:

• the goal fits with whom we already know ourselves to be

• we're free and willing to take actions in the face of challenging circumstances

• we're courageous and bold enough to ignore the inner and outer critics

• we're more passionate about or committed to the result than we are to the status quo

Each of those conditions is an internal condition.

The most potent path to achieving the results we’re after is to experience a shift in who we are in life. It's to experience a shift in who we know ourselves to be.

In other words, our big external goals require internal shifts in who we are.

In the face of criticism (from the inside or outside).

In the face of resignation and cynicism.

In the face of lethargy and exhaustion.

In the face fear.

In the face of how we've come to view ourselves.

In the face of how we've come to view others.

In the face of how we've come to view life and the world.

In the face of all our circumstances.

We're not actually interested in results for their own sake. We're interested in results because of who they allow us to be, who they say that we are, who we will know ourselves to be.

Try this: pick a goal that you haven't been experiencing much or any success around achieving. Now ask yourself this question: what's the internal shift that needs to happen to see those external results?

That's where we can go to work - on the internal shift. The external shifts will inevitably follow.

One important point about that internal shift, though - we see everything from our current perspective, our conditioned, trained, adopted, and limited perspective. Bring someone else into conversation with you about it - they'll likely see something you don't.

We can always sit ourselves down with an artist versed in the art of transformational experience (like a life coach) - we will see things we didn't see before, and new openings for being and acting will call us forth.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️