The Power Of Knowing What You Don't Want

This week we are going to change things up. I usually encourage you to spend your time thinking about things that you want to do, things you want to learn, and things you want to implement; however, I am going to switch it up a little and talk about why you need to think about what you don’t want.

What? Why? Won’t that put me in a bad mindset space?

I know it sounds crazy, but let me walk you through an exercise I learned over the last couple of months that has been incredibly impactful for me. It was a complete revelation to me when I recognized how much I was out of alignment with my passion and purpose.

To be clear, I am talking about making sure that we are making choices in our lives that are in alignment with the things we do want.

A few months ago, I was on a call in my coaching program during an all-day workshop. One of the exercises that we went through at the beginning was very different from what I am used to. 

Instead of kicking things off by thinking about our vision, goals, life, etc, and what we wanted… my coach threw us a curveball and told us to take some time, put pen to paper and think about the things that are feeling heavy to us right now. What are the things that were feeling hard? What are the things that are taking energy away from us? And I have to tell you, it jarred me a little bit.

One of the things I love about interacting with other women in the entrepreneurial space and being a part of mindset communities is that we stay so positively focused.  This exercise was hard but I knew she would not have asked us to do this if it were not valuable. 

I wasn’t sure if tapping into that perceived “negative place” would be beneficial to me at the moment because I always try to keep a more positive view. But as I sat and thought through it, I recognized there were things in my life that I was doing that was feeling very burdensome and very heavy, both personal and in business.

Going through that exercise really made me recognize that there were some things that I was doing that I really did not enjoy.  Somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to say yes to things that I should not have.  They were not in alignment with my vision for my life.

I knew instantly that I needed to make some changes.  

I remember about 25 years ago I joined a gym. I was living near my parents at the time and my mom decided she would join too.  I could tell she was miserable and hated going to the gym with me. She finally discovered when it comes to health and fitness, her passion was swimming. Working out at the gym felt burdensome to her because it didn’t match up with her desires. When she finally let that go and realized she loved swimming, she hit the pool and still goes to this day. 

Her goal was still the same, but the path to get there felt heavy and hard because it wasn’t in alignment with her passions.

You have to try this exercise for yourself. Stop wasting time doing things you don’t want to! 

I would love to hear from any of you that are reading this. What is something that you are starting to realize that you don’t want in your life? Are you ready to put a plan in place to go ahead and get rid of that?

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