Future Focus and Goal Shame

“Why do you need to articulate your future potential as part of your negotiation strategy?” I address this question and explain the importance of future focus for you, for your negotiation, and for your leadership. 

I share my updates for 2018 “Wild and Improbable” Goals and how I am dealing with the shame of not yet having achieved my ambitious goals.

Thriving is not about being “happy-happy-joy-joy” 100% of the time. 

In order to thrive, you need to embrace the pain of growing and the sting of rejection and shame. 

To learn more about my small group mastermind, go towww.jamieleecoach.com

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 42 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee.

How are you?

Today is kind of a gray day here in New York City and I was just commiserating with some of my virtual coworkers. I have a group of wonderful ladies with whom we cowork virtually and we were just commiserating how it’s the kind of day that we’d rather crawl back into bed or turn on Netflix and eat junk food all day.

But instead, here we are. Working. Creating content. Making our dreams come true.

Yesterday, I gave a webinar for a women’s group and I was asked the question, “Why is it important for you to articulate your future potential as part of your negotiation strategy?”

And I thought that was a really interesting question because it seemed almost too obvious an answer to me.

When you think about the fact that you’re negotiating so that you can create a new agreement going forward - in other words, this new agreement will create a new way of doing things from here on out, right? You’re creating a new agreement for the future - you want to influence your negotiation counterpart, whether that’s your boss, a potentially new employer or a client that there is something more coming their way in terms of value in the future.

So you want to articulate your future potential so that they are motivated to change the status quo, to create a new agreement moving forward for the future, right?

And I think this is so important to think about for us who are wanting to become bolder, braver, and better paid in the future because, in negotiation, we want to create a future focus and in order to do that, we have to create future focus for ourselves and that means we first need to be clear on what we want for ourselves in the future.

What do we desire to be different in the future?

What do you desire to be different in the future?

It’s something that I’m thinking a lot about recently because, as you know, as you may know, I am doing a small group mastermind to help and support women who want to create powerful intentions for 2019 and set some wild and improbable goals.

The reason why we set wild and improbable goals is not to set ourselves up for failure but it is to create desire, create momentum, create stretch goals that would help us become more, become bigger, become bolder, become braver.

And so today I thought it would be instructive to share with you some of my wild and improbable goals that I set for myself in late 2017, give you an update, how did I do and what I am learning, and how I am growing from this process.

So, on December 21, 2017, I created some wild and improbable goals and the first thing that I thought of was that I would have doubled my income by the end of 2018.

And I had a very specific number. I thought that I would have earned more than $184,000 and I imagined that this amount of money would make me feel deeply grateful and awed by the contribution I was able to make in the past year.

And I will tell you that I have not gotten there yet and I want to talk to you more about that in a minute.

The other wild and improbable goals I have set for myself is that I have helped another woman or women double her income too and she and I would feel really awesome and proud of the work we have done together to make this possible.

I’m still working towards that goal, the year’s not over yet.

I also imagined that I would have traveled to Japan, Singapore and to the Pacific Northwest. I was very specific in my goal thing, here. And I imagined that I would have had a lot of fun conversing in Japanese with native Japanese speakers in Japan and that this would feel so amazing to see my life partner embrace his family in Singapore.

He has family who is from America but moved there for work purposes. And I imagined that I would experience emotions I didn’t know I had when I embraced by Auntie-hood.

And it’s been true. It’s been amazing to become an Auntie and experience all this pure love for this new and tiny human being.

And I also imagined that I would fall in love with the Pacific Northwest all over again.

It’s kind of funny to read these goals out loud because some of them came true. I did go to Japan. I did speak with native Japanese speakers. I did see my life partner reunite with his family in Singapore and that was so wonderful and in fact, we’re going back. We’re going back to Japan and Singapore, so the goal has been achieved twice, well, by the end of 2018 it will have.

And I did not go to the Pacific Northwest. I went to Arizona. I went to Alabama. I went to these places I hadn’t been to before and I loved that.

Another goal I had set for myself is to write and publish blogs and video posts consistently and that I would have made my dream come true of being a consistent, reliable content producer, that I am in the “flow” more often than not, and this would have helped me getting really close to finishing my book and that this feels just right.

I am not yet close to finishing my book but I have produced a lot of content on the podcast, newsletter, webinars, public speaking engagements and yeah, it feels right. It feels just right.

The book is coming.

And then I had this very specific, concrete vision that by the end of the year, I would “have slightly longer hair than I had in December 2017,” (December 2017 I had cut my hair really short) “and my arms are toned and my body is fit. I feel healthy and I’m close to wrapping up a big project, something that makes the best of who I am and where I come from and all that I can do.”

“I have people whom I admire and people who are helping me get to the finish line. I feel like Zen master boss lady of a company that’s on the up and up and I feel calm, confident, and in the moment.”

“2019 is already set up to blow the roof off of any remaining misgivings, doubt or old thought patterns that hold me back from showing up in the world in even bigger, bolder, and braver ways.”

So that’s what I wrote in December 2017 and it kind of gives me the chills to see that I had such a specific and vivid vision for how 2018 would end and having that very vivid vision motivated me to produce a lot of content, to teach, to set up a new business, to create a new podcast, to do webinars and to grow my hair and to start training in Aikido.

I haven’t talked about that on this podcast but I decided in the middle of the year that I really wanted to become better at Aikido and Aikido has elements of Zen. It’s inspired by Zen, so I’m working towards that vision of becoming the Zen master boss lady.

When I said “Zen master boss lady”, it was more to evoke a feeling in me and for me the feelings that I wanted to create in myself was the biggest motivator in doing a lot of the things that I did this year.

Another thing that’s really amazing is that I realized that once I had the vision, making it come true was so much easier for me. It just came more naturally and I do have people who are supporting this business and whom I do admire, whom I really appreciate, and when I think about those people, like the person who’s transcribing this podcast, I’m like woah, I had this vision and it came true it’s like woah, that’s really cool and amazing!

But at the same time, I had these really ambitious goals and I have not achieved them yet and so I do feel shame about it.

When I think about the fact that I haven’t yet doubled my income or haven’t yet doubled somebody else’s income just yet, I have these thoughts that in spite of all the things that have been accomplished so far and in spite of all the things I will accomplish in the next two months, I have the thought that oh, I haven’t done enough.

And maybe that means I’m not good enough.

And that could also mean that I’m a failure or that I don’t know what I’m doing.

It’s only human!

I should say, I’m only human. And it’s only natural, it’s only normal for me to experience this shame as anyone else might do.

And I want to talk to you about that shame today because I’m going through it right now and this year, I recognize that the things that the shame would actually have me do are not constructive, are not the types of actions that would help me become the Zen master boss lady that I’ve envisioned I will eventually become.

I can still continue to believe in this vision. I can still continue to work towards them. I can still achieve them. It might not be the end of 2018, it might be the end of 2022, but I can still work towards them but if I let the shame and that sense of powerlessness take over, then what I would easily do are the things that my body really wants me to do.

Just avoid any sort of risk.

Avoid taking further, positive action.

And instead maybe go back to bed, go back to the couch, eat a box of cookies, or a whole bag of Doritos and watch Netflix.

And I have to tell you that today, because it is a gray and cold day here in New York City, that temptation is particularly strong and I’ve talked about the 3-A trap in the past. The trap of avoiding conflict, the trap of accommodating and the trap of attacking people because the resentment just boils over, right? In other words, hiding, giving in and giving in to that sense of resentment.

That’s the kind of action that giving into this feeling of shame would have me do.

And I recognize as Dr. Wayne Dyer says that the feeling of resentment is never justified. It comes from believing the thoughts that are created through default thinking.

So, how do I work through this? How could you work through something like this if you are also experiencing goal shame?

What I’m doing differently this year is telling myself that I may want to move towards this discomfort. I may want to move towards the shame. I may want to move towards the feeling of powerlessness and the weariness that it creates in my body.

In other words, I may want to accept negative emotions. I may want to move towards them and allow them to be in my body instead of reacting against them by resorting to avoidance, accommodation and attacking other people.

This might sound counterintuitive because when you hear “born to thrive,” Jamie believes we’re all born to thrive, it might sounds like I think that we’re all destined to become happy-happy-joy-joy 100% of the time but no, that’s not the human experience.

The human experience is that we feel negative emotion 50% of the time.

Half the time we will feel good and and half the time we may feel bad. And the sooner we can accept the balance of emotion in the human experience the sooner we can work through the negative emotions, deal with them and work our way back to feeling better.

I think it’s so important to accept that in order to thrive, you need to embrace the pain of growing. You need to embrace the sting of rejection, the sting of shame, the sting of hearing no, the sting of things not going the way you actually thought they would go.

And I’m inspired today by this Winston Churchill quote: “Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

The road to success is paved with failure. The way to become bolder, braver, and better paid is to continue taking action even when you hear no. Even when you feel ashamed.

And in order to do that, first, you have to allow yourself to feel the shame instead of reacting or rejecting that shame.

I’ve been thinking about what does it really mean to become bolder, braver and better paid? Why did I pick those particular words and I took some time to think about all the other emotions or the qualities that are associated with becoming bolder, braver, and better paid.

And so, for me, the word bold means powerful, firm, self-esteemed, strong, assertive, proud, courageous, determined, risky, thick-skinned, decisive, individual, unpopular, iconoclastic, confident, moxy, fearless.

And the word brave, for me, conjures up these other sets of emotions: vulnerable - which, if you are familiar with the works of Dr. Brene Brown, you would know that to become vulnerable, you have to first open yourself up to shame. Brave also conjures up feelings of nervousness, anxiety, determined, motivated, afraid but doing it anyway, hopeful and optimistic in spite of the odds.

So, as we near the end of 2019, I welcome you to consider what is a compelling vision you can create for yourself for the end of 2019?

And if you are feeling the mix of emotions around what has been accomplished, what has not yet been accomplished for 2018, I invite you to explore those emotions and allow them. They’re just vibrations in the body.

Thank you and I will talk to you soon.

Your Future Potential

What is your future potential? What are you doing about it? There are three types of responses to this question: 1. Avoid thinking about your future potential out of fear of disappointment 2. Define your present and future by your past 3. Own your future and embrace that path to actualizing your future potential is paved with failure. In this episode I share what it means to have future potential, how to take action to fulfill your future potential, and examples from my life and from my coaching practice. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to the episode 26 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee. My mission is to help ambitious people become bolder, braver and better paid.

Recently I’ve been focused on doing one-on-one coaching deep dives with my clients to help them lead a thriving life and career because I believe we’re all born to thrive.

In this process, I’m learning that one of the things that sets my ideal clients apart from others is that they are excited, they are motivated by their future potential.

So, I’m curious.

What is your future potential?

What is the future you want to create?

Or in other words, what’s your dream?

When I ask this question, I typically get three types of responses.

The first type is they actively avoid their future potential out of fear of disappointment. They say, “You know, it’s overwhelming to me to think about my future potential because when I start thinking about what I want to create in the future, my mind automatically goes to how it can all go wrong and I have evidence from my past to prove it will go wrong because it has gone wrong. That experience was so painful. I don’t think I can live with that disappointment ever again. So I’d rather not think about it. I’d rather stick to what I’m familiar with. Sure. I know I’ll get the same predictable results, the same-old-same-old. But you know what? I’d rather live with that than risk the status quo.”

Familiar with this type? They’re not very happy. But they’re getting by. And they want to stay that way and so they do.

The second type of response is the most common. They define their present and their future by their past. They say, “You know, in the past, I have done x, y, and z. So I can probably do x, y, and z in the future. I see myself as a person who does x, y, and z.”

And when I’m helping my clients with their unique value proposition statement as part of their negotiation strategy, we work on articulating their contributions and accomplishments, but often the emphasis is on past contributions and accomplishments only.

If you are curious about this process, I encourage you to check out episodes 8, 9 and 10 on how to articulate your unique value, which, I want to add, is not defined by your past contributions only.

There is tremendous value in your future potential if you can articulate it in a compelling way.

So, the last type, number three. This type, they own it. They own their future potential. They embrace that failure is not a barrier, but the path to creating the future that they want.

They say, “I want to make a positive impact in the world. In the future, I want to lead and I’m starting now by leading by my example and in my actions. I’m already contributing now but in the future, I will contribute in a bigger way and that possibility excites me. And for this future, I’m willing to be courageous today. I’m willing to be brave today. I’m willing to be generous because I will create abundance that benefits others. I’m committed to taking small, tiny steps every day to make that future a reality. Sure, I make plenty of mistakes and I fail often because I’m only human but I own my mistakes and I learn from my failures. I am learning by doing and failing is the best way to learn.”

This type, they articulate their future potential. They’re going to contribute more value, they’re going to lead, they’re going to make a positive impact. They take consistent and committed action to realize their future potential. This is my ideal client.

Here’s the thing about your future potential: it can be big. It can be audacious. Or it can be small. It can be specific. It can be anything you want. It can be anything that you can imagine.

I have a client who wants to become COO of an established tech company.

I have another client who wants to start her own consulting business and have more freedom to enjoy time with her family.

I have another client who wants to lead an international business that benefits third world countries.

I have another client who wants to create abundance so that she can become a patron of the arts. And I want to create a million-dollar coaching practice that creates exponential results for my clients.

Our future potential is our dream. It’s our desire for a bigger, bolder future that motivates us today to take action, to speak up, to brave uncomfortable asks. Our future potential drives our actions in the now.

But of course, by definition, the future has not arrived yet. By definition, whatever it is that we want in the future is impossible until the very moment it happens. So, until the very moment it happens, your future potential is just a thought. It’s a very powerful thought.

And this blew my mind when it dawned on me that your future potential only exists in the mind of those who believe in it and who can perceive it.

What you think of your future creates your future.

And that’s because your thought creates emotions that inspire action that generates results.

So, let me give you some concrete examples from my own life. When I was a kindergartener in South Korea - I was born in South Korea - my kindergarten teacher asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. And I gave this a thought and I realized I wanted to become a teacher or a writer and this thought of becoming a teacher or writer as an adult generated feelings of desire to learn and to grow and I followed through on that by reading a ton of books as a young kid and the result is that my dream has come true.

Now I teach and I coach adults on how to communicate and lead so that they can thrive. Every day I’m writing something to propel my coaching business, to prepare the podcast episodes like this one or to communicate or to prepare for my talks.

When I was maybe around 6 or 7, my father decided to emigrate the family to America. And he had a dream. He dreamed that his daughters would get an American education which is top notch and to become fluent in English. He believed that the ability to speak English would be the key that unlocks our future potential in America.

So, he had the desire for a better future for his daughters and he followed through on that by taking action, by moving us here and by working incredibly hard. My parents hardly took a vacation. I don’t think they ever took a vacation when I was a kid.

And you know what? His dream came true!

Now, three sisters, all of us, are fluent in English and some other languages and we are all college educated. We are all gainfully employed and we are all happy, functioning adults, and we all make more money than our parents did as immigrant shopkeepers.

Yeah, it’s real. It really moves me to think about that.

And when I was a high school student, by that time, my parents got a divorce, and I was living with my mother. So she was, by then, raising the three of us by herself as a single mom while running a small business and she wanted me to win scholarships to pay for my college education. She had a thought that Jamie can do it! So she sat me down and she told me she could pay exactly $2,000 per year for my college education.

She trusted I would figure it out. She trusted I would make it work. She trusted in my future potential.

And her dream came true! I applied to and I got into Smith College and I got a full ride my first year. You know, it probably helped that I came from a single-parent family with two other sisters and I worked incredibly hard as well and in the subsequent years, my mom paid just about $2,000 and the rest was covered by college grants. So, her dream came true.

And when I was younger, I see that my future potential was dreamed up. It was simply dreamed up by me and by my parents. And we worked hard to realize that potential because they believed in my future potential. They made huge sacrifices. They moved the family across the world. They worked really, really hard. And they did everything in their power to help actualize that dream, to help actualize my potential.

And I imagine that as you are listening to this, you can relate to my story. Even if you are not an immigrant from Asia, even if you didn’t go to college on scholarships, there was a part of you that dreamt of your future as a kid. There were people and adults along the way who believed in your future potential and they helped you get where you are today.

When we’re young, we dream. We plan for the future. We work towards it. But once we become adults, a lot of us stop dreaming of our future potential and we just start living by default. We just start living by defining our present and future by our past.

It was the same case for me.  For many years after college, it was very hard for me to imagine my future potential in a way that felt good, in a way that felt exciting, in a way that motivated me to do better, to show up, to brave uncomfortable conversations.

And now I realize that was because I had become so comfortable and familiar with school and its rules and regulations were the first 17 years of my most formative years. I knew school. I did school well. I identified as a student by my past whose future potential was become a better student.

And in the 10+ years since college and until now, I went through a period of time where I didn’t feel like I had a future potential because I couldn’t dare dream of something impossible, something that hadn’t yet happened in my life.

It was hard for me to dream of a future that was not defined by my past. And now, I’m in my mid-thirties, I’m still very young, and I’m reclaiming my future. My future need not be defined by my past or even by my present, because it’s just whatever I can imagine. It’s whatever desire, whatever I can dream of.

And I know that, from experience, what I dream of, what I can imagine, is my future potential and I have the ability to actualize that future potential.

So, I choose to believe in my future.

I choose to practice thinking in a way that generates this feeling of excitement, motivation and desire, because I know that this feeling of excitement, motivation, and desire will lead me to taking action, lead me to taking risks, lead me to creating podcasts like this one and that I trust it can make the kind of impact that I can imagine.

In other words, my future potential, my dream, drives me to create a bolder, braver and bigger tomorrow.

My future potential drives me to work hard to create that million-dollar coaching practice that creates exponential results for my clients.

It will be impossible until the moment it happens. It will be impossible at the moment I see a million dollars in my account or whatever, but I know that if I can dream it, I can do it.

So, what is your dream?

How will you make your future potential a reality?

I’d love for you to sit with that, think about it, dream about it, journal about it. Something magical happens when you write your dreams and goals down and there’s tons of research to support this as well.

Tell me about it! Feel free to reach out. I’m jamie@jamieleecoach.com and I’m really excited to hear about your exciting future potential and what awesome action you take today to help make that a reality. I know that your future potential has the power to create your future and that your future potential has the power to help you lead a thriving life and career. Talk to you soon. Bye!