Ep. 41: If You Really Could Do Anything, What Would You Do....?

When we're young we spend a lot of time thinking about the life we want...By the time we hit our 40's though most of us have more of a "I've made my bed, time to lie in it" mentality. How many times recently have your actually considered what you WANT to do, where you want to live, how you want to make money, who you want to spend your time with....And as soon as you start thinking about that, how quickly does your brain serve up all the reasons it's not possible for you?

In this episode we look at the 2 questions to ask yourself to break through that ceiling your brain has put on your possibilities, and how to start taking steps towards the life you actually want.

I am Stephanie Finigan. This is the I'm the Problem Podcast. I wanted to talk about something that's come up a couple times just in this past weekend, I asked a couple different friends the question that I'm about to ask, and it was kind of, it just kind of blew my mind how few of them actually had thought about it or had an answer. If we took away all the constraints, if we took away like the money and the time and the kids and the college expense, whatever it is that is boxing you in to where you are professionally or financially, if we took all of that away and everything was as you wanted it to be, What would you do if you could design your career if you could design your day -to -day? What would that look like?

I think about this all the time because I'm a coach and this is a lot of what I do as a coach. And it's also I help people figure out what that is and then help them get there. And I've had coaches and currently still have a coach that does that for me as well. So this is not foreign land to me to be walking in when I ask these questions. It's funny because then I step outside my personal development or coachy friends and get into a different place with people that aren't doing coach work or personal development work or whatnot in their day to day. And I realize like how rare it is that we actually do give our the opportunity to ask these questions.

Maybe it was something that wasn't modeled for us, maybe it's just something that we've just never thought of, or maybe it's like, well, I'll think about that later after I figure out, put out the fires right in front of me. So anyway, I got a lot of blank stares back at me and a lot of like, I don't know. And this happens to me with clients a lot actually, more than I would have expected when I first got into coaching. And again, it's not frequent that we get to have those conversations, kind of living in your imagination and imagining like what you want to be when you grow up and what you want your life to look like and all of that. That kind of ends. By the time we hit middle school, we were sort of grown out of being in our imagination, sadly. Kind of move on from there, and you're into teenage high school, onward to college, now I'm on a path.

And then, you know, if you are somebody that's gonna ask yourself those questions and keep questioning things and keep being willing to pivot and make changes in terms of the choices that you're making, you're probably outside the norm. So anyway, so it is a very interesting question to ask yourself. If you could take away all the constraints if you could do anything you want, what would you do? I'm going to recommend that you do this exercise, particularly if you're somebody who's drawing a blank when I ask that, right?

Or if immediately what happens, you're like, yeah, but the kids and the this and the that, it's like, nope, tell your brain, wiping the slate clean, what could this look like? If everything that I'm worried about, the kids, the money, the whatever, if that could all be worked out, what would I want? How would I be living my day -to -day? How would I be spending my time? If you ask yourself that, likely what's going to happen if you're not in the practice of doing this is you're going to probably get some answer that isn't necessarily the truth. If I say, what's your ideal day -to -day look like? It's like, oh, I would sleep until this time, or if I really had no constraints on me or whatever, I would just buy a house. on the beach and I would just do nothing I wouldn't work I wouldn't you know I'd sleep in and I'd go to the beach every day and I'd read books and and for those people that say that I say yes you know that's probably true For a while, I think a lot of us would, because frankly, I think a lot of us are burned out and exhausted. And so if we think about having the opportunity to do whatever we want, we jump immediately to something like sleeping, something that's restorative, because many of us are burned out and exhausted and running on absolute fumes.

And that could be true.

But I want you then to think, what's your second answer? If your first answer is something that's a little along the lines of feeling incredibly indulgent. So then say, OK, let's say I let myself do that for a year. I let myself do that for two years. I buy the beach house and I sit on the beach and I read my books and I sleep or whatever version that is for you. Okay, that's great for a year, two years.

At some point though, you're likely to get an itch. At some point, you're likely to get curious and interested about wanting to do something else, wanting to explore something else or try something else. What is that? What would that be? And I think about this a lot because as humans, we are pack animals, we are meant to exist in groups and with others. A lot of times what happens when we think about these things is after you get through the first layer, right, you get to the second layer question, all right, after I've relaxed on the beach for two years, it often goes back to some form of people and or service and what i mean by that is it's either I get a lot of people sort of saying like something about more time with their family more time with their friends like that's what I would do and I would buy a house so that like all my friends can come there on their vacations with their kids or I would you know travel around to see everybody or I would spend on you know so that my whole family can get together every summer and I also see a lot of service so a lot of I'd want to volunteer I'd want to to travel and see these new areas. I'd want to help out here. I'd want to start a business. I'd want to start a nonprofit. It doesn't always have to be some sort of like altruistic motive necessarily, but service as in wanting to create and put something out for others to experience. That's what I mean by service. Those are kind of two of the buckets that I often find people falling into.

So if you're somebody who can answer that question clearly, that's great for you. If you're somebody that can't, I'm going to encourage you to just to sit and think what would you do if you could wipe the slate clean and then notice if your first response is somewhat indulgent and that's okay. But then ask yourself, okay, after I did that for a year, after I did that for two years, then what would I do? And then if you're really stuck, ask yourself if leaning towards people or leaning towards something regarding service. something regarding creating and putting it out there for others to experience. Would either of those buckets appeal to you?

My guess is if you really can't come up with a vision yourself, if you take that path I just laid out, those should be some breadcrumbs that start to lead you towards what it is that you would really want to do. Now, why do we ask this question at all? We ask it because if you can imagine something for yourself, it means it's possible. Okay, and I know that that can seem very like ridiculous Instagram rah -rah crap, but it's actually very true that if you can envision something for yourself, that means it is actually possible. If you can see yourself there, if you can imagine it, you can make that happen. And oftentimes, what we find is the delta between where we are and where we want to be is closer than we thought it was.

So I've done other podcast episodes on this. Just for this one, I just want to encourage you to start to figure out what the answer to that question would be for you. And then what I'll say is, if it's not something you can do right now, You can't quit your job right now and start a business. You can't walk away from your family right now and travel around the world. And when I say can't, I mean, the reality is you could do any of those things. There are just consequences to all the actions.

But what I'm saying is if you're thinking about what you could be doing, it gives you a vision. It gives you something to sort of start to lean towards and then see, okay, what's What's one way I could do a little bit more of that in my life right now? Or what's one way I could lean a little more towards that? Or what's one way I could incorporate that a little bit more into my life? So if you have an idea to start a business, if that's what your ultimate vision would be, all right, maybe you just start to do a little market research. Who is out there doing what it is you're thinking about doing?

What might it look like if I was going to just start playing around, asking questions and having fun? Just do a little chat GPT and see what comes up. Maybe it's that you do want to spend more time with your family. What would that look like? Do you want to rent a house for your extended family to all to get together in the summer? That's great.

Okay. If you can't afford it now, all right, well, How many people are we talking about? Is there an opportunity that we could all do this and chip in together? If not, could I send a group text and say, hey guys, two summers from now, we're all going to do this. Who wants in? Like, could you just start leaning into something a little bit more right now?

Because the more you do that, the more actions you take in that direction and the more results you start to get, the more you're going to start to believe that it's possible for you. Whatever your blank slate vision is, you're going to start to believe that it's possible for you. And the more that you believe it's possible, the more that you have thoughts about telling you, okay, this is possible, the more actions you're going to take towards it and the more likely you are to actually get it as an actual result.

All right that's how that works I would love to see you guys do this for yourself so if you have any visions that you uh want to share if you have any blank slate ideas you want to share if you can see it very clearly for yourself but you're caught up in the how um or if you're still stuck and you just don't know how to answer this question I would love to hear from you. You can always reach out to me over instagram find me I'm happy to connect and talk you through some of the next steps so that you can get to wherever it is you really want to be.

Alright, I will catch you guys on the next one.