How to Create the Life You Want

and I thought I really loved it until I got to the end and when I've always had this feeling about The Wizard of Oz that the characters in all had what they were looking for they had it already yeah and there it was you know I had never actually gone out and you know researched what people are saying about the Wizard of Oz I just had feel you know they all had it and the Cowardly Lion had courage and the Scarecrow Had a Brain but uh so at the end of the story your book I mean you bring that up and it's like you have what you need to get where you want to go and so uh how do we what are your suggestions when someone comes to you and they say you know basically how do I create the life that I really want what are your what starts to come to mind for you first yeah so I mean I think what you just the point you just made about The Wizard of Oz really gets to one of the like biggest themes of the book which is that we already there's a lot of power and control that we already have and we unknowingly give it away and don't own the power that we already have so freely trying to figure out well okay um kind of coming back to the basics of what do I really want for myself when you say create the life you want the first step is well what do you want and that Clarity is sounds so simple but oftentimes and I've worked with I've been coaching for a long time and sometimes that question is not that easy for people to answer and the reason that it's not easy for them to answer is because they might have a sense of what they wanted like so like if you took them back to their younger self they would maybe more easily be able to answer that question but then as time goes by they have so many considerations about what's going to get in the way of achieving that success that they can't even think it anymore so the first step is to allow yourself to have Ambitions to have dreams that would make you feel so proud excited to get up and get out of bed in the morning so that's the first step is just the definition of what success looks like a year from today not 10 years from today not even five years but one year from today um and that you know that ability to dream is step one and then this the second step is to but before you go there you know I hear you on this and you know like one year yeah my attention span uh isn't a year long so I but I do need a Target and I know in the book what you're doing is you're going to distill this down to like daily what can I listen if you can't take action on your vision today then uh you need a new vision right something's wrong here something's not working but what I find is when I ask people what they want the first thing out of their mouth is what they don't want right and I love that you know I love that process because you have to I think you have to kind of go through that a little and I guess you're noticing it as well yeah no 100 you know and I think sometimes people um spend too much time complaining about what they don't want or articulating what they don't want okay I think you know if you're a coach to have empathy for people and give them the opportunity to share that but at the end of the day you got to start be able to articulate what you do want and say it with great specificity and one of the examples in the book um we talked we kind of used the example of John F Kennedy's man on the moon speech from 1962 as a really great example of what it sounds like listening to somebody articulate a vision for the future and what's notable about Kennedy's speech is he talks about what it's going to look like to put a man on the moon as if it's already happened he says it was so much um specificity and he uses so many great analogies and adjectives you know for anybody you know listening to this I think going back and listening to the man on a moon speech you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you listen to it but he paints a picture that's so tangible that somebody else listening to it they can see it too which is again why it's called a vision right so you can see it and so the first step is like well what does it look like and not vague and not intangible but tangible even if you don't know how and again that therein lies the challenge because people get very tripped up by I don't know all the steps to make that happen

happen I can't even believe that it's possible you know and that's tricky for people to be able to say things or articulate you know something in the future that is that they don't know how it's going to happen but again there's so much power in that so that's the first talk to me uh talk to me for a second about turning that conversation you know because uh sometimes it depends on if it's a you know just a one-time conversation somebody wants to have or it's an engagement but uh some I give myself permission to interrupted you know it's because they'll talk about what they don't want until the cows come home so you say uh you interrupt them and say let me make sure I understand you know this you know that's a challenge this is the challenge yep yep so what do you want and I think sometimes asking it uh you know two or three times you got to do it I'm just curious how your how you turn the conversation uh toward the future yeah you know the more prescriptive that you can be about what you're asking people to think about and answer the better okay so sometimes it's not about telling somebody to stop it's more here's what I want you to do and our vision exercise which is really the Cornerstone of you know it's one of the key foundations of our work and our book we ask people these seven questions and we say no answer these questions and uh for example the first question is it's a year from today what are you known for yeah and that would be that you would feel so great about if you'd love to be known this way even if you're not currently known this way and I'm going to give you an example of this that I think a lot of people are going to relate to so you know I will attest that and I'm guilty of this that years ago if you had interviewed people in my life and said tell me about Wendy one of the key things they would say is oh she's really busy she's got a lot on her plate career three children you know all the stuff um and they would say she's got lots going on and she's they might say a lot of good things but one of the big things and maybe even one of the first things was she's really busy and I think when I was really honest with myself you know and I did this exercise for the first time I had to be honest that like if I if I ask people what I'm known for they're gonna say she's really busy and I said that's not okay with me I don't want to be known that way and so I said well how would I like to be known and you know and I forced myself to say well what would I really like to be known for and I had to answer that question uh I'd like to be known as patient I would uh as somebody who's a good listener and who cares about the people in their life that matter things like that and so that's what I wrote down and I wrote down what difference it would make if I was known that way right because it's one thing to just put the words out there but then it's another thing to say well my relationships would be deeper they would be richer if I was known that way people would trust me more they would want to spend time with me right my family my co-work colleagues people I care about so that's all seven questions they're all slightly different but they're like that right so that's how you separate out all the things you don't want versus oh well here's what I really do want and I didn't know what I was going to have to do specifically to be known as patient present a good listener you know all of that stuff but I knew it's what I wanted and it forced me to say I'm going to start here and then I'll work backwards from there yes I love that approach and what I hear you saying really is sometimes the don't want uh it can be a platform for the do want yeah you got to get that out you know what I mean uh I don't like this I don't want that blah blah and then it's like okay it's a new one so I interrupted you were gonna go and I didn't want you to run through all the stuff because I'm way too curious just to go quickly through them but uh the Second Step you're ready to give me so if somebody's going to change their life in a year First Step figure out what you want seconds so the second step is believing that it's possible and um I think you know that sounds also so obvious but oftentimes you know we're dragging around our preconceived notions of what I've never did that before probably isn't going to happen in the future right and so we sometimes we give people these like we give people this we say to people your vision is going to be bold there's going to be things in your

vision that are Bold and the definition of bold is that it's might be feelings it feels slightly uncomfortable maybe you've never done it before or maybe you tried it in the past and you failed but you believe that it could be possible you don't necessarily know all the ways that it will happen but the belief that it is possible is the second step and um you know I think that for most people if they challenge the limiting beliefs they have about themselves about the world about other people they're more likely and then we go give people an exercise on doing that on challenging those beliefs they're more likely to believe that it's possible and we you know we say to people your actions in the present are directly correlated to the Future you see as possible right so if you believe something's possible in the future you're going to be consistent with that in the present and you're going to do things in the present that are gonna help you get there right and I always use this example about my son because he like through his life has been the poster child of this so my son is um now 18 years old and I mentioned to you he's going to go off and play college baseball but when my son was like seven or eight he would say to me and he's always been really into sports and he would say Mom I don't know if I'm going to be in the NFL or the MLB because I am so good at baseball I'm so good football right and of course like I would chuckle but he genuinely believed that was possible for himself and so he was that was his whole life like he was out there on a field playing all the time and you know we all were like that when we were seven or eight right we were you know the world was sort of wide open we could be whatever we wanted to be people would ask you what you want to be or you could say anything and then you hit Middle School in high school and things happen to you and then all of a sudden you start to you know be much more limited in what you can see for yourself in the future so when I say the second step is you know believing that whatever it is you're articulating for yourself in the future is possible you it's not as easy as it sounds and yet it makes an enormous difference to go through that process and challenge the beliefs that we sometimes hold on to very tightly and yet they really hold us back uh I don't know very many most people I know have a loud inner critic and you know that voice in the head that is always you know complaining about you to you yeah and uh how does one shift from the doubts not everybody's like your son right I'm so awesome it's going to be a fight between the NFL and the major league with you know at seven or eight that's fine but you know later on we get start to learn maybe I'm not all that and there's a lot of great people out there yeah so now we start self-doubt comes in like you're saying how do we shift what are your suggestions on shifting before you say anything I just have to tell you now I maybe this is going to be bad I don't know but um self-belief all about it what I don't like and I hope I don't be I'm not offensive here I don't like people asking kids you know what do you want to be when you grow up and leaving out what seems to be the most important part like oh you could be anything you want but nobody talks about what it takes to get what you want yeah you know what I mean and so I think instead of asking kids you know focusing on well you can hey you could be president of the United States that's bullcrap you know how many kids that we're talking to are going to be president of the United States yeah you know so but I think we could ask them what are you willing to work for yeah give yourself to I think that's an excellent distinction um between you know doing something that's maybe really lights you up feels really bold might feel a little uncomfortable but it's kind of within the realm of possibility versus fantasy and I you know and I think it's all kind of like the pendulum of many people are stuck in like the status quo of all that's possible is today right then I think what you're talking about is like don't encourage children to be all the way on the other end of the fa of the Spectrum in a fantasy without even thinking through what that's going to require of them but then there's this Zone in the middle and we call that sort of like bold uncomfortable but possible

and yes it's going to take work in every single case um and you know right after writing your bold vision is writing your plan you know coming up with your plan and we give people a very prescriptive approach to you know work back from the outcomes to what are the steps to do what do you got to do now and I think sometimes people are just lacking that structure we have an excellent structure that helps people with that but I think your question about the inner critics is a really good question because it's one of the key blockers for people um you know we often get in our own way and um you know one of the things I like to to tell people is um I ask people you know what are some of the most important relationships that you have in your life and people will talk about their parents and their maybe their manager or you know their spouse or whatever and then they always leave out what I believe to be the most important relationship you'll ever have in your lifetime which is the one with yourself and it's so important that it requires nurturing and it requires attention and often we you know leave it out and we don't do that so I think you know your question of what how do you deal with that critical voice that's always there I mean the first step is listening to what it's saying not listening like I'm gonna do something about it but acknowledging yeah here's what it says okay and we ask we actually give people this exercise in our book where we have people actually write it down because some even though it might feel a little bit uncomfortable to do that in our program we even sometimes have people read it to another person because that's like really acknowledging what it says is the first step to sort of saying to yourself is this really true is this really me because when you do read it out loud I think the first reaction many and we've done this with so many hundreds of thousands of people their first reaction is yeah this is a little bit ridiculous this isn't really true because when you think about the kinds of language that critical inner voice often says it's you know it's usually very extreme I always do this I never do that and when you really look at it just passionately not in the weakest moment but in a very you know uh rational moment you get to sort of challenge the real truth in it and is this really true and oftentimes the answer is usually not this is usually not true and that is a good step and then you know there's lots of other things to be done ongoingly but I mean that small step in and of itself seems to make a massive difference to so many people yeah I found the same thing that just writing down for two three days whatever comes to mind when you hear the inner critic just write it down that's it don't even worry about changing it just write it down and say oh that's what it that's what my inner critic's saying that is the thing that helps people uh kind of get freed up so you dabbled in uh step three I think and that is uh you know what do you want right and do you know do you what do you think is possible do you think it's possible now we gotta start getting the plan you know I think you're you started dabbling a bit there yeah talk to me about uh changing my life in a year and developing that plan yeah well I think first thing solve is where in my life am I reactive and intentional and when people are honest with themselves about that and we give lots of examples we tell lots of stories about this in the book to really bring it to life when people are honest with themselves about where they're being reactive and they really look at okay where is this happening and what is the cost of this Behavior to me it gives them access to say okay how can I be more intentional right so it could be that you're somebody who you know every time you say you're going to um you know committing to certain actions you're gonna wake up early and you know hit the gym and then you know your alarm you're going to bed too late because you're checking your email until one o'clock in the morning or you're scrolling social media or just like watching Netflix until too late and you know you're doing it and yet doing it and then the alarm goes off and you're too tired because you didn't get enough sleep that's a tip very classic reactive Behavior or it could be something like every time your client says X you always react and why it's almost like something happens and you just are like on autopilot and there's usually

not a lot of thought behind reactive behavior and oftentimes it's areas where we're complaining about things in our life so starting with where am I being reactive where could I be more intentional and what will that take is a great place to start in terms of you know kind of things that you want to start doing just globally um in your life and then you know I think after that it's really like going starting with the Finish okay what does success look like a year from today yeah and then what is that going to take what am I going to have to do in the next 90 days to achieve to start to move the needle in that outcome and sometimes I think people get overwhelmed like you know if you if one of the things in your um in your bold Vision has to do with you know making a radical change in how you work or a relationship with somebody that's really important to you you're not gonna do it all in one day you know you're not even going to do it all in three months you have a whole year to do it but the question is what are a few things I can do now that are going to start to inch me towards the outcome and I think doing that with rigor and discipline and doing it with consistency always makes a difference and I think sometimes we just don't even think about that like what could that sort of dashboard if you will for my life look like and so we give people the structure to really do that thinking and write those things down and then stay on track yes how far out should uh should we try to plan uh when you think of you know because I love the uh basically uh reverse engineer your life think about you know where you wind up in a year less reverse engine what are the increments to getting there how far out when you're doing that do you think makes most sense well we usually recommend 90 days because 90 days first of all there's a lot of research on habit formation tons has been written about it there's best-selling books about habit formation and it takes about two to three months to create a new habit so and a lot of what's in people's plans some of it are just one-off actions like go have a conversation with this person do this research you know make this singular change but a lot of what's in people's 90-day action plans is Habitual actions right do this every week do this three times a week speak to these people every week you know to call do this research every week right or somebody who wants to write a book write for 20 minutes every day so these types of habits take about two to three months and so we often recommend people have a 90-day action plan and we give them a recommendation on how to structure it and how to keep updating it right so it's something you know it's like you're looking at it all the time and you're updating it every few months with new things to do and the feedback we've gotten from people we've worked with who've done this is oftentimes they're getting way more done than what they perceived to be impossible three months earlier so a lot of people have said to us a year later we go back and we're like tell us you know how has this made a difference like tell us about your vision how'd you do and you know invariably there's things that they say I put that in there it didn't happen maybe it wasn't even a priority anymore a year later but then what they also say is I wish I had put more in there gone bigger I wish I had been Bolder because they did more than they thought they were going to do and some of it is just being intentional you know with it yes that's great that's brilliant it's just beautiful uh I can think of conversations I've had with uh people and they're excited about I want to do this I'm going to do that or you know whatever somebody's gonna I'm gonna start a bit I'm gonna do whatever and when you when I know them a little bit you know when you listen and you talk about it a little bit and then you say something like hmm what I wonder if you're aiming a little low you know what I mean or I think you might have more in you than that are you playing it safe yeah which is not a great coaching question but you know what I'm saying it's and then they start they sit back and they like well maybe I am playing it safe and maybe you know what I mean yeah and the fact that you said that to them is part of what has them say well if he thinks I am then maybe I am I think one of the things we tell people one of the reasons why our power principle says declare a bold vision and share it is this the concept of sharing it and the massive benefit of telling somebody else what we're aspiring to do even if it feels

uncomfortable right and we all know that it feels very vulnerable to share bold Ambitions because we're afraid people are going to judge us or you know we feel like we're on the hook or we might fail publicly but the benefit of doing that is just enormous I mean we all know that there's you know we're much more likely to accomplish something just by writing it down in fact the number is 42 more likely just by writing it down but then if you tell somebody what you're going to accomplish and you ask them to stay connected to it hold you accountable you're twice as likely to make it happen just by telling somebody so that is the thing that we always encourage people to do is don't just write it down and keep it a secret you know share it with anybody who might be able to support you the other thing too is that people sort of start showing up and helping you which is always awesome to get that yeah absolutely beautiful I you know I in this whole I like to think of it as bring the outside in and you know going it alone this whole little Lone Ranger thing you know that's just for the birds it's like nuts it's like and I'm an introvert and you know I live so much of my life basically that way you know and it's like that's just that's small living that you know and no offense to introverts I'm just saying we got to have people in our world so very powerful yeah I don't think even you know this introvert out because it doesn't mean you need to get up on a big stage and this could be that you tell your significant other or just maybe you have this dialogue with just your manager you know the other thing I would just say about this that's been so powerful is when we do this work with teams at organizations having a team do this exercise together the vision part and also the planning part and even looking at the limiting beliefs and all that other stuff it's so powerful because one of the things we know about human beings myself included you know guilty is charged we all tend to be risk-averse right we don't want to think big and I think especially when it comes to work stuff we want to look good we want to deliver what we say we're going to deliver the last thing we want to do is put some bold and ambition out there and then a year later failure nobody wants that and yet yet when people are playing it safe and being playing small there has an outsized impact on organizations culture and business growth so this exercise has been so powerful when a whole team does this together and everybody feels permission to think big play big dream big it's energizing people end up accomplishing more than they would have and when they do fail I think collectively it's made safer in a group environment that it's okay not to accomplish everything you set out for yourself I mean Lisa and I had that we were going to write a book for years in our vision and it didn't happen it happened when we were ready for it to happen but you know sometimes you put stuff in there and it doesn't happen that's okay so um what do you want you gotta believe it's possible get a plan together in 90 days you know work backwards get a 90-day plan sure what's a chair what's the fourth thing I need to do to change my life in a year yeah well we have we spend there's a whole chapter in the book um and actually sequentially we put that chapter pretty early in the book because it's so profound and that chapter is called choose A New Perspective and it's about the stories that we tell ourselves very similarly to limiting beliefs but oftentimes these stories become so real to us and this is when remember when we started with the Wizard of Oz and giving away our power and oftentimes this is why we do it because we make up stories about other people and about circumstances and about Dynamics and groups of people and situations and we believe so wholeheartedly that they're true and our brain is great at helping us to continue to reinforce their truth because they collect evidence for these stories and you know until we kind of come up with a way first of all the motivation to challenge them is recognizing the cost that they have in your life right so we talk a lot

about that in the book and give a lot of examples I share a very profound one about my relationship with my son but it's applicable to any area of your life and then you know then the question is okay once you are motivated to say okay maybe this is just a story and not a fact then what how do you find another perspective to take on as we give people a very prescriptive approach to doing that and that has been game changing for so many people um who you know if you think about like where's all the suffering in people's lives a lot of it has to do with the stories they're telling themselves you know so it's like if you're looking for more peace less suffering choosing A New Perspective is a shortcut to helping to create more peace and less suffering all right so that's you know very short version of what we spend a lot more time on in the book I don't know if there's anything in there that you want to improve deeper on but um but that's a big that's a biggie yes well I was fat like I told you at the beginning love the book uh just I think it's fantastic and I was struck by uh in uh Power principle four says use language of action which goes back to your communicate your intentions and you know all of that kind of stuff but I don't think we realize how important that the Talk part is the other thing the principle five stop talking and get curious well I mean curiosity is the lack of curiosity is what's wrong with the world if you ask me right I mean we need some curiosity in the world you know yeah how do you help people yes get curious yes so before we go to curiosity I just want to say one using language of action that I think is like a quick get for people and so powerful and I think one of the issues is that people like all of language is kind of like sort of a blur to people and when you start to unpack how different types of speaking can create different types of results and impacts with people then you gain so much power over language that's when language can become your friend when it can really help you to achieve things that are important to you and one of the distinctions we make is language that we call is um on the field versus language that's in the stance and we talk about you know and we give this metaphor of being at a football game and we talk about how if you're in a football game and you're in The Stance and you're a fan there's certain types of language that people are using in the stands things like cheering booing educating analyzing critiquing all of that language has some value right it has some value but it's not literally making any impact on what's happening on the field right so it's kind of like all happening in the stands over there and then there's this the action that's happening on the field and then so putting the football game aside for a moment the question then is well what actually does move things forward in life what are the things that create action in life and forward momentum and we kind of share some of the things we have asked to change to be those types of language one of them is figuring out what the desired outcome is of a conversation so often people go into conversations without a clue on when it's over what will have been accomplished and defined not just as you know what they want the other person to do but how they want to leave people feeling and believing and that's the key to having influence which is what you need if you have bold aspirations you need to be able to communicate with influence so I think setting desired outcomes huge and simple once you learn how to do it and then the other thing is actually making recommendations and making requests and so often people are just not doing that they're kind of in circles like talking in circles I mean so many people complain about meetings and they never go anywhere and we've wasted so much time and we give people a lot of coaching on how to make a good recommendation making requests versus just hoping for the best asking people to do things sounds so easy but it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable to make requests so that's a little bit about when we say unpacking language and like distinctions in how people speak and how it can be so powerful um so I wanted to start with that before going to the other piece of it which is

the piece about listening and being curious which I agree curiosity is extremely underrated and something that most of us have to really work hard not to lose but the good news is if you just put your attention on it anyone can generate curiosity at will by saying to yourself like I am going to find something to be interested in and I'm going to go from there and then the brain does this really interesting thing which is it starts to automatically get curious about more and more so once you start that wheel turning it's like a snowball rolling down a hill in a good way um so that's you know a little bit about curiosity and you know why it's so important is because without it you're mostly not listening I don't mean you Dan I mean Lee Collective we mostly not listening we're mostly just thinking about what we want to say or thinking about um something completely unrelated to the conversation which either checked out completely up in our head over here um or just like formulating our reply that's a big one right like someone's talking and you're just like formulating your reply versus being present um and curious and listening and so that's you know a thing that I think many of us it's so simple um it's a great reminder and it is um unlocks trust and it unlocks depth in relationship and collaboration um and connection and all of that goodness which is so essential in great leadership and in relationships in general so you know we spend a fair amount of time on that and the impact of that and also the impact of listening um in helping leaders to be better coaches um versus telling people what to do often what we find ourselves thinking that's our job right oh I have to solve everybody's problem I have to tell everybody what to do I have to have all the answers and you know obviously that's not realistic no it's one of the big self-defeating behaviors in the leadership world is thinking you got to show up with the answers and tell people what to do and it's like oh my please get over that yeah well and it's habit forming that's the other thing too is sometimes it's unconscious it's an unconscious reflex and um we you know we do this exercise sometimes in our workshops with people where we give them a chance to um we call this the training wheels exercise because it's like the precursor to any kind of coaching and in the training wheels exercise your job is one person there's two people in the exercise one person is the listener and then the other person's job is to share about something in their life that is exciting to them something that's like giving them some sort of energy or interesting or engaging in their life so they could talk about their new puppy or a movie they saw or it doesn't matter whatever it is and then the listener job is just to listen maybe ask a few questions not interrupt not take them on a tangent not make it about yourself and we have people do it for about two and a half minutes and the feedback we get is that people are like it was torturous like I kept wanting to interrupt I can't I cannot believe how to the extent to which if you had not told me not to interrupt I would have interrupted 10 times but then they realized what they got out of it because they listened and didn't interrupt is that they learned so much more than they would have um if they hadn't done that and they just I think realized the extent to which they've been depriving themselves of other people's thinking and ideas and thought by not doing that um and that's just the training wheels exercise yeah it's a I know exactly what you're talking about her it's incredible so uh the book is fast forward and uh you're teaching us how to change our lives in a year and uh uh I think it is just absolutely fantastic uh love every bit of it and it's useful for in the family useful in business useful for coaches useful for entrepreneurs I can't think of anybody who can get some use from this so thanks for sending it and uh thanks for your conversation today yeah Dan thank you so much for having me