Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 189 today, and we're a month out from Christmas about there probably four weeks, five weeks or so and I can't believe we're coming so close to the end of the year, which excites me but scares me at the same time, because then it'll be 2025. And a few weeks ago we spoke about basically how to start to level yourself up before you get into the new year and before we even get into this episode, I want to remind you what can you do today that's going to get you closer to where you want to be, and don't delay that starting point. I just want to challenge you on that, and it's actually really relevant for today's episode, because today's episode we're talking about another question, and the question is what is a question that I ask myself on a regular basis that is aligned with my goals or that keeps me aligned to my goals, right? This is a really great question. It's going to be very personal, it's going to be different for you, but I want to ask you the same question, but I'm going to take you through how I'm feeling, how I'm vibing with it and you know some of the things that I do that encompass all of this to help me stay onto my goals or stay aligned to my goals. So that's today's episode. We're going to dive into that now. We'll roll the intro and we'll get into it. So this is the question what is a question that I, on a regular basis, ask myself to stay aligned with my goals? And you know, I guess you know we're going to do a bit of a self-inquiry here of myself to help me give you some insight or inspiration or understanding of what I'm doing. And it really comes down to one thing, and it's exactly what I started this episode with Am I doing the one thing today that is going to get me closer to where I want to be? Now, that's a very broad statement in the sense of, or question, because sometimes we don't know where we want to be going, right.

But now the key thing here is, if we take a step back, is we need to understand and have a great reflection and understanding of, or self-awareness of, what do we actually want? What are we working towards? Is it in the short term, medium term, long term, and there's going to be a variety of tiers around this. There's going to be this level of what do I want to achieve this month. There's going to be what do I want to achieve this year? But be this level of what do I want to achieve this month. There's going to be what do I want to achieve this year? But where am I working towards over the next?

You know, two to five years, even 10 years, and I knew not at this detail, but I knew 10 years ago that what I'm doing now is what I wanted to be doing, in the sense of I wanted to have my own business. I wanted to be working for myself. I did not want to be working for someone else. I just didn't know what that looked like and I made decisions and steps and I took chances and I took a chance on myself to make that happen. And here we are. The reality is that's changed in so many different ways over that period of time. Now, in the shorter term, there's things that I want and there's things that I still struggle with in terms of I'm not doing the things. That's going to get me there. I keep putting them off, but there's other areas where I am, you know, religiously on top of it in terms of no, no, no, if I don't do this, no one else is going to do it. It's not going to get me to where I want to be. So how can we bring this into perspective that might make you think a little differently, or might challenge you or give you some fresh perspective, because maybe you're struggling with this.

I think the first thing is intentional living. Right and intentional living, or doing with intent, basically means putting our focus on things that we genuinely really want to achieve and we're doing something with the intention to get something from it. And some people, you know this might be. You know having an agenda right, but essentially, you know, why do we work out? Are you working out for the right reasons or the wrong reasons? Are you just doing it to fit in like a trend, or are you doing it because you want to be a healthier version of yourself? You want to be a better version of yourself, and intentional living comes down to what works for you, with your own focus and your own mentality. That is going to get you your best results. Right and your own mentality that is going to get you your best results right Doing with intention, doing with intent. You did this because you wanted a certain outcome and you were intending to get that outcome. So that's really key. If you can do that, then keeping yourself accountable and keeping yourself aligned to your goals is going to be a lot more easier, because you know what you're doing is done with intent.

I guess the parallel of this. It's not really a contrary, but in aid of this we have a purpose-driven life right when we're able to understand what we want. What is our purpose? What are we living our life for? What are we trying to achieve? It will have a huge emphasis on our daily actions and how we perform and how do we create that fulfilling life that we live. So if I'm asking myself, how do I, you know, if I'm asking myself something that's going to keep me aligned, I'm asking is this going to give me the fulfillment and the purpose that I want? Is this going to give me the intentions that I want? Coming back to the original point, and then the other thing is well, we can have the purpose-driven life, we can have the intentional living, but there also needs to be a bit of level, of a goal-setting process before we can keep ourselves even accountable to even hitting a goal.

Now, I'm not going to do this episode on how to set goals and things like that, but at the end of the day, it's not a one-time activity, it's something that's going to be fluid, it's something that's going to be on a regular basis. You should be reviewing it, you should be reviewing your performance against that and you should be obviously checking in and making sure that you know things are ticking in the right direction. But I think that happens on a daily basis anyway, if you're moving forwards towards your dreams. Because if you're wanting to exercise and you did not exercise today, it's going to be pretty obvious and you're going to know it because you're going to be guilty about it. So there's a few other things that I think from my headspace that I guess, when it comes to, you know, asking myself, you know, is this going to get me closer to where I want to be? Is making sure you do have a level of clarity and focus and I kind of already touched this already about what you want.

But obviously you can't know exactly what everything's going to look like. But when you're trying to navigate through life, there's a lot of distractions, there's a lot of side quests that pops up, there's a lot of things that will seek your attention. So, if you're trying to stay focused and seek clarity in trying to achieve your results that you want, I think something that you need to be really mindful of is making sure you're staying true to your values, staying true to what you want and being willing to set yourself up to have that clarity and focus, because if you're putting yourself in positions that's not going to enable that, then how are you going to be able to achieve it right? And it comes down to the environment you're working in. It comes back to the friction points you're dealing with all these different things. I mean, I guess, if your headspace isn't right, if you're telling yourself you can't even do this, how are you going to stay focused right? So you really need to take that into account, which then brings me to another point, which is like self-awareness and I do this a lot Like I question myself, I have a lot of doubt and I do struggle with imposter syndrome all the time, and usually I struggle with imposter syndrome when I'm getting into deeper water, because I've never been there before. I don't know if this is going to work, being self-aware of that and understanding well, I just got to work through it. Is it aligning with my values? Is this going to get me closer to where I want to be? Does this fall in alignment to my goals? Well then, it's probably something to continue to dabble in, or test the waters in to see if it's going to work.

With this, though, there are a lot of challenges. I think number one is staying consistent. That's a huge pain point At the moment, and this has been going on for the last 12 weeks. I am not able to run at the moment, and it is frustrating the heck out of me. I've got to go see an MRI, get my back checked, and I have been putting that off because I do not want to have to deal with it. I'm scared to have to deal with it, and every time it's just pushing the.

It makes it very hard to then get consistent with, you know, doing exercises or you know, building my way back to where I was, when I don't have a path forward because I'm not taking the path forward. So, if you want to stay consistent, you need to give yourself the ability and make it easy to stay consistent. You know, if you do have a busy life, how are you finding the spot in your life that's going to make this as easy as possible? Maybe it's the first thing you do in the morning so that it's done. Or if you don't do this the right way, it will lead to misleading alignment to your goals or it starts to tap into some hate-love kind of relationships. The other pain point, or the struggle I think that becomes common with all this, is losing sight of your long-term goals.

Sometimes we can get so stuck on things for the wrong reasons, whether it's money, whether it's fame, whether it's influence, whether it's power. But make sure you check on a regular basis of why are you doing this? Why are you doing this for the five-year plan, why are you doing this for the 10-year plan and how does that all play out now? Because five years ago it's probably looked different. Now that it is five years past, it's going to be different again. Making sure you are checking in with those demands and requirements and what life looks like, because your life will change. New people come and go. Relationships, your values, what's happening, all these different things evolve and change in your life. You're the only one that can control that in terms of where you want to take the narrative. So, with that in mind, there's a couple of, I guess, other angles that I think we can tackle, which is checking in with yourself on a regular basis.

If you're trying to make regular progress, being consistent about doing something today that's going to get you closer to where you want to be, you need to have some way to be able to self-reflect, some way to daily check in to make sure that you are seeing that progress. For me, a lot of my stuff that I'm trying to build is related to my business, which is going to set me up for long-term success. I track that like I can see things, I can track things and I know if I'm hitting targets or not. And then, when I'm not, what can I do to motivate myself? Or I become motivated to push myself, to find ways to continue to make the changes required. Which leads me to another point, which is be willing to make you know small adjustments, because they are powerful.

When you make small adjustments over a long period of time and be consistent with them, they turn into really great progress because you're doing a small tweak and it's just consistent when you try to do too much too quickly, you just burn out and it's not possible. So that's another thing to take into account, right? But I think, at the end of the day, the question for me is you know, is this going to get me closer to where I want to be? Is this going to get me closer to the goals that I have? Is this going to keep me aligned to where I want to be? When you know what you want and I've done episodes on this before when you know what you want, it provides clarity for you to be able to be free in making decisions to getting you to where you want to be, because when you know what you want, you know what needs to be done.

You need to do the thing that's going to get you closer to it, and it gives you confidence, it gives you power and it gives you control in making that happen, and it enables you to be consistent when there is friction, there is something that's stopping you from doing it. I'm not talking about fear. I'm not talking about having to grow. I'm talking about maybe you just don't like it and you're doing it for the wrong reasons. So make sure whatever it is that you're trying to get closer to is fulfilling, purposeful and aligns with your values and aligns with your identity and your core and who you want to be, but also the better version of yourself, because if there's something that you're doing that is bad, like not good for you, there's no amount of good things that are going to then just outweigh that. The only thing you can do is stop doing the thing that isn't good for you and then continue to do more good, right?

Well, I think it was on the Diver CEO podcast. He had some doctor on there. He was talking about if you've got water and you fill it with piss excuse my language if you fill it with piss, there's no amount of sugar that you can put in that that's going to remove. It's just not going to go away. It's always going to be there. It will sugarcoat it, but the bad stuff's still in there. The only way for it to not have it in there is it has to be taken out, right. You can't coat it, you can't cover it up. It's always going to be there and that's the same with your life. Get rid of the crap, get rid of the stuff you don't want and then continue to build on top of the things that you do want and that is going to do good and get you closer to where you want to be. That's it. Appreciate you being here.

If you do enjoy did or do enjoy these episodes, I would appreciate. If you can, you know one, leave a comment, hit, subscribe If you're here on the YouTube, if you are listening, you know, make sure you do leave a review or rate the podcast. It does really help the podcast grow. But the biggest challenge that I'll ask you to do is, if you enjoyed this and it resonated with you and you think someone else can benefit from this, share it with them, share it with someone, share it with one person or share it to your feed, I don't care.

Please share the episode or share the podcast, because my job, my role, my dream is to be able to help others further their lifestyles and I think the best way to do that is to have it come from more and more people who are being impacted by hearing these episodes. Now, I don't have it all figured out, but what I do know is, as I'm trying to further my lifestyle, I know that can benefit other people and if you felt the benefit today, please, please, share it. It would mean the absolute world to me and it will help the podcast. Appreciate you being here. You have a wonderful day, cheers.