In this lesson, Anna shares a story of how she made a commitment to launch her dream that will help you get into the right mindset to launch your dream career too!
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How to Commit To Your Goals?
This is a non-negotiable.
It would be nice to reach this goal. It would be nice to do this. My dream is this…
That will work for someone else but not for me…
I don’t have the time.
I don’t have the experience.
But my life wasn’t always happy and my career hasn’t always been good. This is us in 2010 on a vacation from work for a wedding in Seattle. This was a pivotal trip for me and I’ll tell you why in a sec.. I worked myself hard and had a lot of stress and was overwhelmed in my corporate consulting job. I dreaded Mondays. After the 2008 recession my exciting job turned into a miserable job as there were layoffs, decreased budgets and a lot more stress doing 4 people’s jobs all by myself.
I really hated my work but I needed my paycheck to pay off the cars, the mortgage, the furniture. It was crazy. But I knew I had more potential and more purpose in my life than to sit in a cubicle all day crunching numbers and being yelled at by bosses and clients. I just couldn’t find the time and we were drowning in debt. I wanted the status of working at a big fancy consulting firm but inside I was miserable. My husband and I had tried for a year to have a baby and we weren’t getting pregnant so I kept thinking about how my work life was not going to be good for when I was a mom someday. I literally worked from sun up to sun down. I wanted to be a mom. I felt like there was no way out. Literally sometimes I would go to my car and cry during my lunch break. I didn’t know what I was good at. I didn’t know what my dream job even was.
My breakthrough and epiphany came at my rock bottom. In a hospital at midnight after that wedding in Seattle, I had just found out I was pregnant and was literally the happiest I had ever been. Until I was no longer pregnant. I had my 1st miscarriage and when the doctor told me, I said the most irrational thing ever. “I hate my job and I need to quit.”
THIS WAS MY COMMITMENT. THIS WAS MY NON-NEGOTIABLE.
Why the heck was I talking about work when I just lost a baby. It was the breakthrough I needed to realize this path is wrong and I needed a change. For a lot of you, you are having a wake up call right now. I want you to realize something.
I created a New opportunity and a new plan for my life: because I knew there had to be some reason, some purpose to these unexpected and hard life events.. I knew I needed to make more impact so I just focused on helping someone everyday. I discovered I love teaching, can you tell? So I decided, Let’s do more of that. I went on a journey to discover more of myself and what career fulfillment was for me.
I literally had a point of no return on that hospital bed. I wasn’t going back to my old way of life and staying stuck. Although I was grieving for my first lost baby, I made a decision to make a change and keep moving forward. It felt so good to finally be on the right path of my dreams and actually taking action towards my goals!
Today my husband and I run our business with an incredible team. I get to spend time with my kids and work on my passions too. We can travel and see family when we want to. I get to do what I love. I am more confident and more successful because I know my passions and strengths and am working in this every single day.
Now you may not have had a rock bottom moment like I did in a hospital. You also may not even hate your job. But you may feel like you are never going to reach your full potential. You may be worried that you are no longer challenged in your current role and you are starting to feel stuck. You may be realizing that you aren’t making enough to support your family currently and you have no idea what steps to take next. You are a big confused mess. You may have just been furloughed or laid off. Maybe your business isn’t working as well as you had hoped right now.
Welcome back to dream career launch pad. In this lesson we’re going to talk about commitment. This is a big one. We have so much great stuff coming for you. So much ahead. I’m excited for you to get your hands on it, but none of it is going to help you if you don’t make a commitment, make a mental commitment that you want to make change happen in your life and you want a new career.
Every morning I read my commitment. Last podcast we talked about your one thing. I read what my one thing is every day. I have decided that ____ by ___date. I will have ___.
Not I believe I can but I WILL.
I can and I will. Not an option to fail. Might take longer. Might have pivots. But it will happen no matter what.
Opportunities come. People come into your community. Books come. All of a sudden you have a plan.
If you can make that mental commitment, then you can proceed and then you can actually change your life with what I’m about to share with you in Love Your Career Formula. But if you don’t make that commitment, all this stuff is just going to be content. It’s good. It’s going to be great to learn. It’s going to be great for you to grow, but you’re not going to make the change that you want to make and that I know you can make an impact and have that wonderful career that I know you want to have.
So that’s why this lesson is so important. And I’ve struggled with this as well. I will tell you, there were many, many years that I had this dream of creating a planner. I wanted to create a physical planner for years and years and years. I had this dream, but I never fully committed. I never thought it was possible for me to create a physical product and to sell it and people would actually buy it. And I had to tell my mastermind group, which is a group of four women and me and we meet every other week. And I told them about this dream, which was super scary to tell someone about a goal. And I told them and they immediately were like, you should totally do that. People would buy it. You should totally make a planner. And all of a sudden I made the commitment that I would do that.
They asked me on the call like, okay, when are you going to get it done by? What are the steps that you need to take? And they held me accountable and they made me make a commitment. And for a lot of you guys, you know I did make this planner the create your future 90 day planner. It became a physical product. Many of you probably use it to create your 90 day plans, but I wanted to tell you the backstory of it and it didn’t happen for years and years. It didn’t happen until I actually made a commitment and let me tell you how fast things happened. Once I made that commitment, I had that planner in my hands in 60 days! 60 days. That’s all it took is two months. When I made the commitment, then I listed out all the steps and I just started going down those steps.
It was fun. It was exciting because I was in it and it was going to happen and I will tell you once you make the commitment and you take that first step, all the other steps become so much clearer. For me, I was so scared because I had no idea what the step was so I had to just Google it. I had to ask a friend where to start. They pointed me in the right direction. I sent an email to a printer and the rest was history. Things just moved so fast once I made the commitment and took that first step. So it could just be even as simple as googling something like I did and I was off running. So there’s three things that I want you to focus on when it comes to making a commitment. They’re super simple, super easy.
Make a mental commitment to launch your dream career no matter what.
Make a contract with yourself. Sign it and date it. I commit to finding my dream career. Find someone to keep you accountable.
Find a way. “If I am committed, there is always a way.” -Tony Robbins
Find an accountability partner.
Contract with yourself:
I,______, understand that I am under- taking a journey to launch my dream career or business.
I commit myself to the duration of this launch.
I,______, commit to making time for my goals, stepping outside my comfort zone, showing up where I can to get support and asking questions.
I,______, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with as I begin the process of launching my dream career.
I,______, commit myself to excellent self-care, adequate sleep, diet, exercise and pampering for the duration of my dream career launch.
Signature:
Date:
My accountability partner is_______. How are you feeling so far? Write your thoughts below.
My mastermind group reassured me when I said I wanted to create a planner. They would not let me fail. It was happening no matter what.
Now, tell yourself you are AWESOME! Great work so far!
