Who's on Your Ship? - Episode: 024
Who's coming with you? This is one of the most important questions we all forget to ask. On this podcast, we uncover why you need more than just goals and processes to achieve success. Plus, I'm throwing in a handy worksheet to help you identify your roadmap.
We're shining a light on our inner saboteurs. Those sneaky voices that keep us stuck and stop us from achieving our goals. We take control by recognizing these voices and replacing them with a supportive mindset that propels us towards success.
Roll up your sleeves and join us as we delve into actionable strategies to kick start your quest towards your dreams.
WHAT YOU WANT WORKSHEET - https://www.tommygcoaching.com/ep024want
Speaker 1
This is the Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up everybody. Episode number 24.
Speaker 1
It is August, kind of the middle of August, and back to school is coming up. Summers. The schedules are unpredictable, kind of all over the place change from week to week with different camps, and we can look forward to going back to school because there's a little more normalcy, there's a little more of a routine that we can get into, which is awesome, and I think a lot of us will say, when school gets back in, I'm going to start doing XYZ. When school gets back in, then my routine will be enough for me to try out that new thing that I've been meaning to do. And maybe part of that's true that when we do have more of a set schedule that we're able to start that thing that we've wanted to do. However, we're going to start doing it. However, I want to be careful about basing our actions and when we're going to start going after a goal on external events and our external schedule and calendars and schools and things like that, because they really don't affect us. What's going to change when we start taking action are our thoughts and our emotions. So if we're telling ourselves that summer's really busy and we're feeling a little scattered with summer, then yeah, we're not going to start new things, but the school year is going to start and something's going to come up. I mean, kindergarten starts for my daughter tomorrow and she came down with a fever last night and it freaking sucks. She's not going to get to go to her first day of kindergarten because she has a fever. And just saying that, right now I feel sad and disappointed and I know that, no matter what, something's going to come up and we'll set these arbitrary dates, that then we'll start going after a goal. But something else always shows up. There's no perfect moment to start going after a goal and making the changes that you want to make.
Speaker 1
All right, so this episode, use this episode to start now, to start strategizing, to pick a goal and put some process into place to start moving forward Now. You might be listening so far in this podcast and be like, all right, here we go, goals, blah, blah, blah. I know about goal setting, I've done it before, but stick with me because if you listen to the last episode, thinking about our future is really powerful and it's really important to guys because we can get lost in our day to day. Like our life used to have new things going on all the time. We had the flexibility to travel, to try different adventures and play intramural sports, and now our day gets pretty packed with the responsibilities that we have and it becomes pretty predictable and we're in, we're pumped about our role as a dad, our role as a husband, employee, business owner whatever it is. We're ready to show up for it. But at the same time, when life becomes really predictable and we get stuck in this day to day, we start to lose a sense of who we are, who we are as an individual, who we are as a man, and we forget what we're made of, we forget what we're capable of creating and if we're not going after something new, it doesn't feel great. And having a goal gets us ready to go on a new journey, to create some new things in our life, and it doesn't have to be huge, but just small. Daily changes are going to bring more excitement into our daily life and we'll start to be able to use our skills and start to unlock that potential that's inside of us and start feeling like more excited about life and let go of kind of that rut of the day to day.
Speaker 1
Now there's debates. You'll hear people talk about what's more important Should you have a goal or should you focus on the day to day processes and habits? And I love James Clear's approach to this and, just like in a lot of things, it's not an either or it's both. And James Clear he's the author of the book Atomic Habits, which is an awesome book, one of the game changing books in my life, and he's the habit guy. And he also says you need goals, not just daily habits. And he paints this picture of a boat. And for a boat to set off and go to its destination, it needs to set its rudder on the right course, and that's your goal. You decide where you want to go, you set your rudder and now the ship's pointed in the right direction and the oars, those are your processes, those are what's going to be powering you forward day to day and getting you over the ocean and towards your goal.
Speaker 1
Now some guys, a lot of guys actually will say that they don't know what they want. I don't know what goals to set, but they do know that they have more in them, that they're not being their best self and that's showing up in behaviors and habits and health, and so they know that they want more, but they're not sure what they want. And that's an awesome place to start. And if you're there, here's what you do you stop and you think about it, because you do know what you want. You just haven't thought about it in a while.
Speaker 1
And I have this worksheet that I'll link to in the show notes and it's called what Do you Want? And you just take 10 minutes to go through this worksheet and there's a couple little steps to it. You read the directions on it. I'm not going to get into it right now, but this worksheet is going to get you to the place to figure out what you want, because that's the first step is to pick a goal, and this could be a health goal, it could be a fitness goal, it could be a weight goal, maybe it's something in your career, like finding a new job that's more fulfilling, or the business that you run, or the current job that you have how can I make it more efficient so that it aligns with life outside of work and I have more time. It could be a relationship goal to have a better relationship with my wife, a better relationship with my kids. We got to set that goal and get really clear on what success looks like. All right, so we pick a goal and our rudder is set. So we're sailing across the ocean on our journey to our goal and we know where the destination is. Can't see it yet, but we know where the destination is and we set our rudder and now we're going to move to the oars.
Speaker 1
How are we going to power our ship forward? And that's our processes and our habits. What are we going to need to change about our day to day, about our monthly processes that are going to power this ship across the ocean? And if we're talking about health goals, it could be your process of what you're going to eat and when you're going to eat, like. When are you going to plan your meals? Are you going to meal prep on Sunday In your career. The processes and habits could be actually setting up SOPs so you can pass off tasks and delegate more, or is it setting parameters on meetings to avoid the unproductive meetings that just kind of drag on. The processes and the habits are what's going to keep driving you forward in relationships. It could be the weekly date nights or morning coffees, or signing up for couples counseling or reading a book together. These are the steps that are going to get you to the destination. It's going to move your ship.
Speaker 1
So, now that the ship is on course with the goal and the oars are in position, what you need to do next is assemble your crew, and when I say crew, I mean your inner monologue, those voices that we have in our head, those voices that we have in our heart. We all have these, and a lot of our current crew is filled with people that wanna throw a mutiny on the boat saboteurs. And the first thing we do when we're assembling our crew is take inventory of who's there right now, and these are people that you think about, like the voices are. I wonder what they would say. Like maybe it's your dad. Maybe, when you were in your 20s, starting your career, your dad told you that you weren't doing a good job and you weren't making the right decisions. And that voice is still in your head and today you're pushing, telling yourself that you're not doing it right. I gotta do better. I gotta prove myself. That voice, that dad voice from your mid-20s like he's gotta go Right, you can't stay on the boat. We wanna get him off the boat before we go on our journey to a goal.
Speaker 1
And it could be an old coach or an old boss that's in your head. Sometimes it's you at a younger age telling you about the mistakes that you've made or how you don't try hard enough. These voices are all trying to sabotage the ship and when we keep them on the ship, the ship might start off towards the goal, but then it veers and it doesn't wanna take on the storm and it turns and it comes back and it stays stuck. It just throws down an anchor and it doesn't go anywhere. Our crew is also made up of stowaways. Maybe we don't know.
Speaker 1
These people are on the boat. They kind of are sneaky and quiet and those could be like the people that we care about their opinion too much. What are our neighbors gonna say? What is our best friend going to say? What's our parents gonna say? What are our kids going to think? I wanna make sure I'm clear here that the voices in our head, our inner monologue, aren't actually what these other people would say about us. Given the opportunity to speak about us, our dad probably wouldn't tell us that we're not successful. Well, maybe he would, but probably not. He'd probably look at you and tell you hey, you've been doing a good job, you're doing a good job as a dad. That was a moment, but it's stuck with us and it's still in our head.
Speaker 1
So these thoughts of self-doubt, of self-sabotage, aren't what the other people are actually thinking. It's what we anticipate. They are thinking, and these are thoughts in our head, our optional thoughts. So they gotta go and we can't just throw them overboard. We gotta talk to them, we gotta ease them off the boat. And it just looks like, hey, we've been doing a good job, but I got this new goal ahead of me and you're not part of this crew, you're not gonna help us get there, so you're gonna hang out on the dock and we're gonna get going.
Speaker 1
And then, once you take inventory of the crew that you currently have and you get rid of the unhelpful ones, you go to find the right crew. And this is like that scene in Armageddon where they find out about the meteor coming to crush Earth and they figure out the plan to go to the meteor, fly there, drill into the meteor and then blow it up. And now they just need to assemble the crew and it's an awesome scene montage of them going to pick up this rag tag group of guys that are gonna hop on a spaceship and go blow up a meteor. Like that's pretty much what we're doing when we're assembling our crew. We have this goal to go after and hop on a ship and we wanna find the people that are gonna champion us, the people who believe in us, and we can look outside of ourselves and we can say, all right, who's already achieved what I have achieved. What do I see in them that I wanna take with me?
Speaker 1
And the interesting thing is is it's really not about those other people. When you see attributes in other people that you wanna bring on your ship, that's inner wisdom in yourself. And when you're on your boat and the oars are moving forward and the storm comes, then you turn to your other crew members. Like for me it's kind of funny, but like one of my crew members is Spider-Man, spider-man, he's on my crew because what he keeps things light, he keeps things fun. And when shit gets hard and when I'm really taking life too seriously, like what would Spider-Man do here. And it just puts a smile on my face and it lets me handle things a little bit more lightly. So that's one example.
Speaker 1
One of the dudes that I'm working with is high up in his company and he just sees that he's putting out fires a lot and the executive team will kind of have something that needs to happen and he'll hop on it right away and he wants to prioritize more. So that ask him like who do you know that's really good at prioritizing? Who do you know that you look up to? Because they can say no in a tactful way without being an asshole, and they stay focused on what's important to them. And he had this one dude. It's not a guy at the company, but he had a guy like come to mind right away. And we looked at the attributes that that guy has and those attributes are already in us. If we can see the positive things in other people, that means that we have it in ourselves.
Recognizing Sabotaging Voices and Achieving Goals
Speaker 1
And so I asked him what is that person that you look up to that's already doing the goal that you want to go towards? What does he believe about himself? And in this case it was. He believes in his team, he trusts that his team can handle things and he doesn't have to take on too much Like boom, that's gold. Because now my client knows that if he wants to sail his ship forward, he's going to need that guy on his boat because when another fire that needs to put out, he can assess it and call on that inner wisdom, call on that crew member to tell him like listen, this isn't part of our priorities, this isn't going to drive our ship forward. We have to trust our team to take on this task. So when you're confused, when you want to give up, you need people on your boat to pick you up and drive you forward and give you some direction.
Speaker 1
And oftentimes we let our saboteurs drive the ship, we let them throw a mutiny and we get lost, or we turn back and we lose control and we don't go towards our goal. And this is all happening in our head and it's the reason why some people achieve everything they go after and others quit and don't get there. We need to get really good at recognizing the sabotaging voices and really start listening and pulling out that inner wisdom, those voices that are telling us you got this, keep going, you can do whatever you set your sights on. I got no doubt that if you put your mind to it, you can keep going. Those are the voices we want. Those are the crew members on our ship.
Speaker 1
All right, so there's no perfect time to start going after a goal. If we're telling ourselves it's next week or the beginning of the month or when things slow down, we're just making excuses. So define a goal, set your course, set your rudder, position the oars and assemble your crew. Do some mental inventory, do some emotional inventory. Get the people off the boat that are holding you back and get new mindsets, new crew members that are gonna power you forward it. All right, that's what I got for you guys this week. Have an awesome week. Leave a review, leave a rating. I gotta throw that in at the end because more guys are getting back to us. More guys are telling us that they're enjoying it, that they're making changes in their life, and that's really cool and I wanna keep this movement going. So reviews, ratings, help the organic search in the interweb Later, guys.
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