Welcome to the Get Your Goal podcast, the place where ambitious, deep thinking women chart their own course- exploring the mindset, emotions, and daily practices that help you get your goal your way by being unapologetically you. I'm your host Pahla B, master certified life and goal coach and creator of the
Daily 3 journaling framework. On this podcast, you'll learn to navigate your unique path to success by using the most powerful tool in your kit, your own internal compass. Ready for the adventure? Let's go. Hello, friend. Today we have a little bit of an advanced concept with the question, "what do you
want?" Now I know that question actually sounds really simple, which is why you might be confused. Like why would I need a PhD to understand that question? And I promise you do not actually need a PhD though if you have one, congratulations to you. I barely made it out of college with my BS degree, which yes, 30 years [00:01:00] later, I'm still laughing about that BS joke.
Anyways, anyways, the reason that today is I'm calling today an advanced concept, is that here on the podcast, I love to have all different kinds of content. I love to have content that is really geared for somebody who is brand new to journaling, brand new to goal-getting, brand new to like me and my world.
And I also like to have episodes like this one that requires, let's call it, homework. And what I mean by that is simply that you will do better with this episode if you have, at the very least, a passing familiarity with the Daily 3 journaling framework. It's incredibly easy to get that familiarity.
The masterclass to learn all about it is both free and not very long. It's only 23 minutes. You can watch or listen to it on one and a half times speed and get all the way up to haha speed with what I'm talking about today. The, [00:02:00] the content today, the episode today, it is really geared towards understanding some of the nuances of the Daily 3.
The thing about the Daily 3 is that it is an incredibly flexible, specifically goal getting journaling framework that helps you get your goal. And during the masterclass, I explain it in one way. It is the the basis of, okay, here's why and how this is specifically for goal getting as opposed to journaling that's like good for mental health or helping you feel better, or just kind of letting you get it all out of your system.
Those kinds of journaling. Fantastic. Very good for you. I am not complaining or telling you not to do that kind of journaling. But the Daily 3 really specifically rewires your brain for the success of getting your very specific goal. It serves a very specific purpose. [00:03:00] And because it rewire your brain,
it does not need to be used in like only one very rigid way with rules. It actually is so flexible that it works with you and with the way your brain works and with your very specific socialization and the experiences that you've had with you, very particularly. I mean that is, that is in my opinion, the best part about the Daily 3 is how very flexible it is.
It is designed literally for you to work with it and manipulate it and change it and enjoy it in your way. So today we're talking about one of the nuances of how to use it your way as opposed to only thinking about it the way that I present it in the masterclass. So we are talking today about one part of the daily [00:04:00] three, which is, in my opinion, the first part, but you can, again, make it work for you.
You can do future self journaling any way you want to. The essence of future self journaling is asking yourself this question of what do you want? And I'm actually even before we get into the, the real meat of the topic, I'm actually gonna give you more homework. Here's, I have this really old episode. Um, oh gosh, how old is it?
It's so old that it remembers, what was that? The match game. I think that's what it was. Anyways. Anyways, you're not gonna look it up chronologically. It doesn't matter. You are gonna scroll back quite a bit if you want to find it. Or there might be a search function in your podcast app. It was called Goal Language and I think it was from either 2019 or 2020.
I do not have any recollection of exactly what year I recorded it. But this is an episode from lo, those many years ago where I actually talk about the [00:05:00] word want. At the time I was really of the school of thought that there are words that make you feel a certain way. I have long since changed my mind on that, that you personally are your own version of you.
So in that episode I talk a lot about how you wanna be careful, cautious of using specific words when you are talking about your goal, because I mean, the essence of that episode, if you don't wanna go listen to it, really is that what you ask for or what you think is what you create. And I stand by that firmly.
What I don't stand by nearly as much is that there are specific words that universally feel good or feel bad. That is simply not true, and I have long since walked away from even, even pretending like that sort of a thing could be useful for you. Your body actually has all of the [00:06:00] information for you about whether or not the specific words that you use are
let's call it good for you or bad for you. AKA taking you to your goal or not taking you to your goal. I personally have really come around on the word want. I like it now in a way that I didn't at the time. When I was recording that podcast, my, my kind of argument about the word want was based on my own mindset blocks.
What a surprise. I mean, here's the thing about anybody who tells you any kind of strategy. What they are telling you is you are getting access to their mindset blocks and their mindset super highways. My mindset block at the time was anytime I talked about what I was wanting, there was like a really quiet parenthetical, a very subconscious, parenthetical in the back of my mind at the back of every one of those sentences that was, yeah, but you can't have it. Anytime
I said, I want X, Y, or Z, I was [00:07:00] very subconsciously telling myself that it wasn't available to me. Now, I actually do not have that parenthetical anymore. I have brought it forward with metacognitive journaling, which is not what we're talking about today, but that is the, the second part of the Daily 3 that...
actually, you know what? We are gonna talk about that a little bit because what you find here in future self can really help inform what you do next in your metacognitive journaling. We're gonna get to that in a couple of minutes. Here's what I'm saying about the word want. You may or may not feel good
when you tell yourself something that you want. There are other ways to ask this question that might actually elicit, let's call it a better answer from you. Some of the, the variations on this theme might be, what do I desire? Or you might like to, I'm gonna say narrow it down a little bit or clarify it a little bit by adding, [00:08:00] um, a second part of it, saying, what do I want to create?
The essence of the question, uh, for future self is what is my goal? But I will tell you. Interestingly. Even though, even though the word goal is right there in my brand, I love having goals. I love setting and smashing goals. I am a goal getting girl. There is something about that word goal that actually stays in my brain. That I can think about my goals all day, every day, twice on Sunday.
And that feels lovely, but it also doesn't feel... Well, it doesn't feel anything other than intellectual. It feels like it feels like a thought. Do with that sentence what you will. It feels like an intellectual puzzle more than a feelings practice. And my friend, make no mistake, the Daily 3 and specifically future self journaling, although specifically all three of them,
future self journaling, metacognitive [00:09:00] journaling, and success journaling. They're all a feelings practice. The mechanism that helps you rewire your brain with the Daily 3 is that you don't just think this stuff. You don't just write it down in your journal and keep it all in your head. You let it move into your body.
You allow it to be a feelings practice. With that word want, if that feels tight or constrictive or doomed or with that, you know, that subconscious parenthetical of, but I can't have, then massage the language to help you elicit some feeling of openness, expansion, possibility. When you are future self journaling, the point of future self journaling is to be [00:10:00] able to imagine, to picture, to both think and feel the possibility of your goal. To put yourself in your imagination
in that time where you have created your goal for yourself, like past tense, created the goal already. Allowing your brain to see it and your body to feel it is the mechanism that brings it to you. And what I really wanna talk about today here we are already 10 minutes in and let's finally get to the meat of what I wanna talk to you about.
The thing about future self journaling that I want to normalize for you and explain to you and help you move through, is that it is not the way your brain will work automatically and efficiently. And again, that really is what we're doing here. We are rewiring your brain [00:11:00] away from its regular biases of, well, I can only create in the future what I have already created in the past.
That your brain will try very hard not to predict a future that is actually different from what you already have. And further to that, because of my, my favorite thing, negativity bias, it will actually start to predict that if you go too far afield of what you currently have, that it will all be terrible.
It will be awful. You won't like it at all. Nothing to see here. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Uhuh. I have no idea what the transcription is gonna say there. I think it's probably going to just leave it blank, but I made a noise that we make when we're saying no. Anyways. Anyways, knowing that [00:12:00] your brain has both this predictive formula that it's always working with, meaning that it will always try to predict the future based on your past,
and it has negativity bias, it really is your job here while you are asking yourself this question of what do I want to notice when your imagination starts to turn on you. And here's what I mean. So many, many years ago when I was truly focused on being a YouTuber and growing my YouTube audience and, and really
was focused on that being my business model. Which by the way, in case you are new around here, I am not focusing on YouTube at all anymore. That was a, a business model that really worked for me at a time when, well, at a time when I had that to learn about myself. I here, let me take a whole side journey and tell you a little bit [00:13:00] about my goals, both past and present.
When I first started working on YouTube, it really was a business model that satisfied a part of me that felt deeply unlikable, and also, I'm gonna say unmarketable. What I've learned in my business now, and what I've learned about myself as somebody who identifies as a person who has money blocks, the YouTube business model allowed me to create a a huge audience.
And if you do know me from YouTube, hi, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me over there and sticking with me here. It's been quite a journey for both of us. That business model allowed me to be in business without ever directly marketing myself or my skills [00:14:00] or my services, and to put it baldly, asking for money. I allowed YouTube to split the money with me.
I asked my audience to actually pay me in a very oblique way by watching ads instead of, instead of exchanging value directly with me. At the time, that was literally the only way I could be in business. I had a lot of mindset blocks about the value of what I bring to the table, the value of what I do. And the only way to exchange value was by splitting it with a, a huge corporation and never directly approaching that conversation of, Hey, I have something of value, and you
personally might like to exchange value with me. That is the essence of business, by the way, for my business-minded friends. At the time, [00:15:00] that business model helped me really well, first of all, identify my money blocks, identify what I was thinking about myself, my worth as a human being, my worth as a business woman, my my value, my
money blocks about not wanting to exchange value. I learned so much about myself. And in fact, I learned so much about myself that I realized over the course of spending many years on YouTube trying to build this business that was actually very much in alignment with my money blocks as opposed to in alignment with me.
I learned that that's not actually what I want, that I had this goal of, you know, I want a million subscribers and this is where I'm going with the, this is where I'm going with the meat of this podcast. I had this goal of a million subscribers and every time I tried to imagine it, all I could imagine [00:16:00] was all of the, the difficult parts
about being on YouTube, the difficult parts about being on, in, you know, online business at all. Just what I would picture when I was thinking about having a million subscribers was the amount of work it would take to respond to all of the comments and how many of the comments would be like trolls or bots, or
men making gross comments about my bare feet or, or things like that. Like, like that was where my brain went. It was like every single thing that feels even a tiny bit bad here at, you know, 10,000 subscribers. Well, that's gonna be, gosh, why did I even start this sentence? Is that a hundred times worse to go from
that many subscribers to a million subscriber, whatever it is, whatever factor of 10 that is, I've already forgotten what I said. Anyways, my brain could not move away from thinking that having a million [00:17:00] subscribers was going to be terrible. It was so hard for me to picture that feeling good. This is what your brain will do to you.
Whether, whether or not your goal is to have a million subscribers on YouTube or not. Your brain will magnify all of the parts that feel lousy right now. Your brain will tell you that being at your goal weight is going to be even harder than getting there. Your brain will tell you that having a book out in the world and you know, trying to promote it or get it published or having it in the hands of readers is going to
be even harder than writing it. Your brain will tell you that having a business is going to be a million times worse than this part here where you are dreaming about your business and wanting to get it started. Your brain automatically and efficiently will offer you the worst case scenario. It is your job, and [00:18:00] it is why I offer you the tool of the Daily 3,
to interrupt that. To ask yourself as many times as it takes and in whatever language it takes, using the words that help you, on purpose, intentionally evoke that feeling of openness and expansion and possibility, satisfaction, happiness, joy. Your brain will not want to imagine your future as being anything other than what you have already created, and in fact, 10 times worse than what you have already created.
This is your brain's job. Your brain's job is to keep you the same. And your job as the observer of your brain is to notice when it's doing that, [00:19:00] and interrupt it. The Daily 3, all by itself is merely a tool. It can help you interrupt your brain and rewire it for success. But all by itself, it doesn't do anything.
You are the user of the tool. You are the observer, the interrupter, the director, the one who says, Hey, I see you over there trying to tell me that all my comments are gonna be from trolls, and let's imagine a better case scenario. When you observe and interrupt and intentionally direct your brain again and again and again for as long as you can.
Because let me tell you something. When I first started future self journaling, I mean back in whatever it was, 2019, 2020, when I made that first... [00:20:00] Oh, you know what? Okay. The goal language thing was not actually a direct conversation about future self journaling, but I do have another episode that came out, oh gosh, within a couple of weeks, or at most, a couple of months, right after that episode where I talked about getting motivation from your future self.
There's, there was a lot going on in my brain at that time. I think I had first really started considering becoming a life coach right around that time. It was 2019 when I discovered the, the Life Coach School podcast and really started getting into that metacognitive journaling and understanding myself, and really seeing the, the cognitive behavioral therapy model of, you know, your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, and your actions create your results, which are a direct reflection of your original thought.
What you think is what you create. In any event, that is, that is why at the time I was talking [00:21:00] a lot about goal language and what you think is what you create, and here's how to use your future self in order to feel motivated right now. I talked a big game and it took me years, years to really hone in on how to use future self.
It it was the, it was the, the basis of me even creating the Daily 3. Future self journaling was so hard for me that I asked myself, what is the, the minimum viable product here? Like, how can I make this so simple that I could actually do it every day? I know I want to rewire my brain. I know the mechanism of rewiring my brain is imagining and feeling that future where I have the thing that I want, but it's so hard to be able to do that.
My brain keeps wanting to predict that it'll be exactly like everything is now and or it'll be worse. This is [00:22:00] why, during the masterclass, I posit to you that you can future self journal for as little as one minute a day and actually get something from it. It actually does not take a lot. What it takes from you is that spark of intentionality, the desire, the wanting, the direction, the interruption.
Your decision to observe and interrupt and direct your brain again and again towards what you want, to ask your brain again and again with whatever question actually evokes that feeling of openness for you. That is the mechanism that rewires your brain. It's not about how long it takes. It's not about being able to sit with it for a long time.
It's about asking yourself to do it and then doing it. [00:23:00] For as little as one minute a day. And here's what I will tell you, as you practice it it doesn't get easier. You get better. You get better at watching your brain go from that expansive, open, full of possibilities feeling, and then gently and ever so slightly until all of a sudden you can't deny it anymore,
bring you down to this of feeling very contracted and yucky, and that's gonna suck if I get my goal. Watching your brain do that every single day or however often you're doing future self journaling right now. Every single time you future self journal, watching your brain do that, you will get better and faster at noticing, observing, interrupting, and redirecting.
That's the real work here of not just the Daily 3, but, but you [00:24:00] getting your goal. It is the act of observing your brain, understanding both what you want and the mechanism of getting it, and knowing that your brain's not gonna go there all by itself. You, you will be the intentional director of your goal.
Knowing that, knowing that your brain is going to do this, like automatically and efficiently, I think, I mean, and this is the reason why I brought this podcast to you today. I think that knowing that that's going to happen and normalizing it for you here and telling you, yep, my brain does it too, is one of the things that can really be helpful to you. Because
when I first started discovering this stuff, I will tell you that I really like, I spent a long time [00:25:00] judging and shaming myself for doing it, quote unquote wrong. I really thought that future self journaling was supposed to be easy, that everybody could do it, and that I was the problem. It was me, and that's why I, that's why I let it linger
for years. I just thought it was me that I was not good at this kind of stuff. This is actually why I created not just this specifically, but this kind of thing where, where you personally might think to yourself, oh my gosh, I must be doing something wrong. This is why I created the Get Your Goal membership.
You have the opportunity to see other women exactly like you. Ambitious, overthinking, deep thinking women, exactly like you... don't mind me selling it like this, but you're gonna see them struggling with the same things you struggle with. It will become so obvious to you that it's not you. It's all of us.
We are all [00:26:00] in this together and we can all do this work. Being able to see other women who are both at your exact stage of getting their goal and a little bit further along and a lot further along can really help you see the progress of, okay, this is where my brain is right now, this is where I am right now,
I can see that even with just a little bit of this work, I could be over here. And then with more nuance, more understanding, more doing this my way, I can see where I'm going. It will become so much easier and more obvious to you when you surround yourself with other women doing the same thing as you.
And by that I don't necessarily mean getting the same goal. Because my friend, every goal is the same goal. It requires of you this rewiring of your brain. It's not about the strategy, it's [00:27:00] about you finding your beautiful, unique way, working with your brain, your body, your thoughts, your feelings, getting your goal.
We are all essentially the same. We are all on the same journey. And being inside the membership, I'm not gonna tell you, oh, it'll be so much faster. Or. I mean, it will be, there is, there is a speed element to it, but honestly for me, the thing that being inside a membership and watching other women do this work too, there's such a relief to it.
It's not just you. My friends, my friends. Here's the essence of what we are talking about today. You can have what you want and the mechanism of having what you want. One of the mechanisms of having what you want is being able [00:28:00] to imagine it. Your future self calls you forward when you can imagine her and feel the feelings of having your goal. You will be the intentional director of your imagination.
I really hope that this was helpful for you today to get you a little bit more of not just the big picture, but also the nuances of the small picture. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you again soon. No matter where you are on your goal getting journey, I'm here to help. Get started by watching the free Daily 3 masterclass to learn the simple journaling framework that rewires your brain for success.
Move forward with confidence at your pace with one of my goal specific guided journaling experiences. And when you're ready for immersive exploration with fellow travelers just like you, [00:29:00] you belong in the Get Your Goal membership. Find it all, and join the adventure at getyourgoal.com
