Bloom Your Mind podcast

Ep 193: Take Your Goals Seriously, Not Yourself

0:00
25:18
Rewind 15 seconds
Fast Forward 15 seconds

What if you could be 100% committed to your biggest goal and still not take yourself, or the goal, so seriously?

Marie opens this episode with a birthday: her daughter just turned 14, and the party featured a mocktail hour, a spa night, karaoke, and a surprise visit from “spa technicians” (one of them Marie’s mom). She also shares a gift idea for the person in your life who is impossible to shop for: a natal chart reading. It was a huge hit.

Then she shares some good news from inside the Moxie Mastermind. The ten women in the cohort just finished their future vision visualizations, and as soon as they did, a few of them started seeing pieces of those visions show up in real life.

From there, Marie digs into the question underneath it all: how do you hold your goals like a marriage or a mortgage, and still have your days feel like the best party you’ve ever thrown?

What you’ll learn in this episode:

  • How to hold a goal as your most important work and stay fully committed to it without letting it swallow your joy
  • The story of Tal Ben-Shahar, who won the Israeli national squash championship at sixteen, expected it to bring him peace, and felt it fade in about a day (and why that led him to name the arrival fallacy)
  • Why we hit a goal and immediately want the next one, and what the classic hedonic adaptation research says about the thrill wearing off
  • Why we make our own rules and then hold them against ourselves: how a fun idea quietly turns into an obligation, and why you’re allowed to change your mind about something you invented
  • What the self-concordance research shows about why you pursue a goal mattering as much as what the goal is, and why well-being builds during the striving instead of waiting at the finish line
  • A new retro question to add to your weekly review: “Am I enjoying this, and do I still want it?”
  • How women have been socialized around productivity and efficiency, and what one coaching client’s 12-hour training day teaches about “we do it this way because everyone does”
  • What the violinist research and a century-old factory study suggest about rest, recovery, and why your best work doesn’t come from your longest hours
  • Why a busy calendar isn’t the same as burnout, and how to ask yourself “says who?” about being behind on something you invented
  • The Host Check-In: a five-minute weekly practice for treating your week like a party you’re hosting, including Marie’s “plenty of time” shower trick

Mentioned in this episode:

  • Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar and the arrival fallacy
  • The 1978 study “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims: Is Happiness Relative?” (Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman)
  • The self-concordance model by Kennon Sheldon and Andrew Elliot
  • Anders Ericsson’s study of elite violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music
  • John Pencavel’s research on working hours and output
  • The Time Whispering course
  • The Moxie Mastermind and the future vision visualization process (more on this in an upcoming episode)

How to connect with Marie:

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

More episodes from "Bloom Your Mind"