32 - Live the Life you Crave PT 2

Be the Anchor – Strategies and Support for Small Business Owners

Last episode, I introduced part one of this series on living the life that you crave. I gave you background on what that means and really did deep dive into my tagline, “live the life you crave”. If you haven’t listened to Episode 31, take a quick moment now to listen and come back when you’re finished. Now, in part two, I’m going to talk about actually living that life. There are six steps I’ll share about how to create the life that you crave and then go about living it.

I sometimes think about what will be said about my life when I’m gone. What impact did I have? Did I give back? Was my life one that was well lived? I believe our lives are about impact and purpose, fulfilling the reason we’re here. It’s not all about business, but about what differences we can make through our lives and businesses. So in taking action to live the life you crave, my steps are very focused on actually living and not just reaching financial goals. These steps apply even if you’re struggling, if you’re not in a successful place or if you haven’t yet found your dream or goal but are just realizing you want something new: that is your dream. Change is your dream. Moving past struggle is the life you crave at the moment.

The six steps ask you to look back at where you’ve already been to recognize the obstacles you’ve already overcome. They demand that you acknowledge your dreams and goals that are about more than just fiscal milestones. They teach you to understand that when you reach a mushroom cloud of expansion, your business will become something bigger than yourself. What is the journey that you’re on? How far have you already come? What are you learning and appreciating along the way? These are key questions to focus on as you work at living the life that you crave.

Key Moments

05:21 Step one is to look back. Look at how far you’ve already come.

11:07 Step three is asking how your dreams and goals appear. Where are you heading?

18:42 When your journey becomes bigger than you, how many other lives will you impact and enrich?

• Process over progress means living the action of getting to your destination; enjoying the journey
• How do you live in the moments that lead you to your goal instead of just staring down the goal?
• Let yourself have an experience that pinpoints what you really crave

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Contact Kari Lotzien | Be the Anchor:

• Website: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Facebook: BeTheAnchorLtd
• Instagram: BeTheAnchor.ca
• Linkedin: Be-The-Anchor-Ltd

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Transcript:

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor.

Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Hello my friends. Welcome back. This is part two in the series Live the Life You Crave. Now, if you didn't listen to the last episode, episode 31, I give you the background and we really dive deep into this phrase 'live the life you crave', which is the tagline of my business. I invite you to just reflect on that. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back, have a quick listen, and then come back to this one, because now we're going to dig into how do you go about living the life that you crave? I'm going to talk about six steps, key ways that you can move towards truly creating the life that you crave and then living it. When I talk about living the life that you crave, I want to just review that I am talking about craving as the combined feeling of some destination, goal, project that feels like it has an energy of its own, that you are being pulled towards it, and that in the pursuit of that thing, you are becoming a better version of yourself. And likely you are also creating a ripple effect on those around you that are making your industry, your family, your community better in some way.

Kari Lotzien: [00:01:59] The craving is also linked to need. I believe that when we crave something, it is closely tied to not only a desire, but there is a need for what we want to feel, appreciated, valued, we need to feel a sense of belonging. We need to feel a sense of value, that we are truly giving back. I think that when you live a life that you crave, what happens is you have this sense that your life was well lived. I think it is bigger than us, and I think that many of us can think back to a time where we've gone to a celebration of life or something like that, and you see the true celebration that, man, that was a life well lived. That person had an impact. And it doesn't have to be a global worldwide impact where they changed, you know, the face of their industry. They can have such an incredible impact on very few people, you know, people who dedicate their lives to helping the homeless or to being an incredible teacher or giving their life to others through service, whether that is in healthcare, education, psychology, whatever it is.

Kari Lotzien: [00:03:13] I feel like there are times, and it's not tied to an industry either, I want to point that out, that's really clear. I think that there are humans in this world who have just had an incredible impact on others, and sometimes they're not even seen or celebrated or you don't fully recognize it until sometimes their life ends, and then you see the impact that they were able to have. Now, maybe that sounds morbid. And here we are, three minutes into the episode of Living the Life That You Crave and I'm talking about death. But, I don't know, maybe I'm crazy and I'm curious to know what you guys think about this too, I do think about what people are going to say about me at my funeral. Is that weird? If it's weird, maybe let me know and I won't talk about it anymore. But I do think about that. I think about what would people say about me? What is the impact that I've had? How did I treat people? That matters to me even though I won't be there, maybe, depending on what you believe, I kind of think I'll be able to still hear what they're saying about me. But I think when we live the life that we crave, it becomes like we're fulfilling our purpose of why we were here. And that doesn't have to be big and extravagant. It can be very small, but we feel like we're making a difference. I think our life is not just about business, but it's about all aspects of how we are using the life that we have been given in business, in community, in relationships, in our own health. And I think in terms of living it, what I'm talking about is the action piece. Are you living? Are you taking action on that life that you crave right now, how does it feel? So as we unpack these next six steps together, this is the how. How are you going to move towards that? I think in the six steps this helps, I believe, my clients, this is what helps myself in looking back and saying, okay, how do I stay on this track? When I get on track, what pulls me back on that road that I want to be on when maybe I faltered? Or maybe things are really hard? These are the six steps that I believe have real power.

Kari Lotzien: [00:05:21] Number one, look back. Now, when I thought about these six steps, I want to share with you a little bit of a story that a few years back I was going through an exceptionally hard time and I felt like I had no direction. I didn't know what the right choice was in many areas of my life. I felt like things were just messy and hard, and I just could not get clear. And the messaging that I kept hearing is I couldn't even hear my own voice. It was so noisy, I could hear all the shoulds, right? All the voices of people saying, you should do this, you should do that, you could do this, you could do that. But I couldn't hear my own. So I decided, kind of decided, kind of felt pulled to take time and just leave it all behind. So I went away and I did kind of like a mini, I don't know, vision quest, let's just call it that. It sounds fancy and exciting, but I went away and I was by myself, completely by myself, for eight days, completely alone. And then I spent significant amounts of time in the vehicle traveling completely by myself. Now other people were around. I was not in the middle of a forest with wildlife. I'm not that kind of a girl. I was at an Airbnb by myself. I ate dinner by myself in a restaurant. So, I mean, it was a pretty bougie vision quest, but I digress. While I was doing this, I did a lot of hiking and this is where these steps came to me. So the first step in looking back is I would go on hikes and you know when things get really tough on a hike and you're thinking, oh my gosh, how am I not at the top yet? How have I not reached the summit yet? This is brutal. How far am I? The power and the energy that I would find when I simply turned around and looked at where I came from. How many times are you pursuing something in your life and it's hard and you're not there yet. You're looking for the destination, you're trying to get to it, and it still seems so far away. I invite you to look back at where you started and give yourself credit for how far you've come already. Right now, at this moment in time, look how far you've come. Because what I know is that just appreciating that, seeing the obstacles you've already overcome, seeing the amount of progress you've already made, gives you energy to keep going. When you turn around again, and you look for that summit, that destination, and moving forward, I think it gives you this renewed energy. And what is really cool about that is it's based on data. This is not affirmations. This is not believing in yourself. This is not trying to do unconscious programming. When you turn around and you just acknowledge all of the progress you've already made, this is data that said, this is all the things I did before, I can likely keep making progress on this journey. So that's number one. Look back.

Kari Lotzien: [00:08:31] Number two, think about what obstacles have you already overcome? Now I want you to, like, dig into this. Let those voices be heard. So remember when I said to you that when I was taking this like little mini bougie vision quest, it was because I couldn't hear my own voice anymore? When I did this little activity, and I thought about the obstacles that I overcame, a lot of those obstacles were the shoulds. It was people telling me that this was a crazy idea, that it was never going to happen. It was times where I didn't believe in myself, where I questioned my own knowledge. Like, do I even have the ability to do this? Do I have the experience? Do I have the backing, financially or otherwise? How many people are telling me that they don't support me, that they think I should be doing something else? Financially, right, some of us did not grow up with backing or the ability to really pursue the highest levels of education or to have that, you know, start-up funding for our brand new business, because that's just not where we came from. When you think about your life in pursuit of whatever life you're moving towards, what obstacles have you overcome on the way to get there? And let yourself go into it, because I think, again, there are times where we're like, oh, well, I don't like to think about the hard things. I don't like to think about the things that have been maybe not as pretty, or I don't want to feel like I'm blaming others for holding me back in my pursuit. I just want to stay focused on my vision and my goals and my dreams. But I think in acknowledging the obstacles that you've already overcome, what you're doing is you're actually acknowledging your own resilience. You're saying, this thing that I crave, that seems to be like pulling me towards it, is bigger than the doubts, the financial situation, where I came from, how I grew up, the education that I had. It's bigger than that, and I have found a way to overcome these obstacles on my path. Again, what this is, is it's data that is showing your resilience. I think again, this fuels that fire in the pursuit of moving towards that thing you crave.

Kari Lotzien: [00:11:07] Number three. Ask yourself, how do your dreams and goals appear? In this one I think that goals and dreams have been given a bad rap, because I feel like there's this sense that, oh, suddenly, like, we're going to have a dream or we'll suddenly have a vision or someone will say something to us and suddenly we know that, oh, this is the life that I am supposed to be leading. Here's my dream, here's my goal, here's my vision. And now I just need to figure out how to get to it. When I see it like that, I feel like it comes with glitters and it's like got rainbows around it and it's all like, beautiful. I don't think all dreams show up like that. And when I look at my own life, when I look at the life for a lot of my clients who have really done incredible things, their dreams didn't come in glitter and rainbows and like this vision of, oh, look how beautiful it will be. Many, many, many, many times those goals and dreams came in the form of I can't do this anymore. I cannot continue on this path. I can't take this one more day. So their dream or their vision might have shown up in they are drowning in bills that they can't pay, that maybe their house is at risk of being foreclosed on. Maybe the insurance and the utility companies are threatening to shut off their power. Maybe they can't afford to put groceries on the table and they are using places like the food bank. There are times where people get so frustrated with the current situation that they are in abusive relationships, lack of someone else seeing their value. So maybe they're in a job that they just know they're so unappreciated and it's really not going anywhere. And that little voice in their head says, I can't do this one more day. There has to be a better way. Just know that is a dream and a vision. That is a dream and a goal.

Kari Lotzien: [00:13:21] It doesn't have to come packaged with a shiny bow on it. It can come in terms of frustration and anger and resentment, like, just know that it's still that sense of craving. There's something more for me and I feel pulled to do something about it. I have to live differently. I have to take action on this. So just let's acknowledge that. I think this is a big one, I really do because too many people feel like that frustration is what holds them back or what sinks them. And what I know from countless people that I have worked with, I think we're drawn to that, right? The stories of people who overcome incredible turmoil in their lives, trauma and abuse, and they come from nothing. Many people living on the streets who go on to do amazing things. I really think that when you have hard times, it's like the elastic band that pulls you back and it's like you feel like you're starting below zero with no money, no education, no anything. But I now know how many stories I've heard, this is the proof, the data that I see over and over again, people who have that kind of pull back, when they start moving towards the direction of whatever it is that they're craving, it's like a slingshot. When that elastic starts moving forward, they go so much further. Because there's a drive to that and a passion that I don't know that we get on the other end when things are easier. Now I wish, I wish I was wrong in this because I wish that in my own life I could say, well, when things get easier that I'll create that flywheel and then things will just get better and better and better. And I think that eventually it hits that. But I think we all have to come through these pieces of obstacles and resilience and turmoil and frustration that almost creates that slingshot effect to move us forward in creating the life that we crave. So if you're in the pits of despair right now and you just cannot see your way out of it and you are drowning in bills, do not think that this episode is not for you, because it's maybe more for you than it is for anyone. I'm talking to you. You are right where you need to be and you can use that as fuel.

[00:15:55] Gillian is an incredible entrepreneur who is going through a time of scaling her very successful business. When she offered to record a testimonial about her experience with the Anchored Leadership Academy to go on my podcast, I was so honored. Have a listen to what she had to say. My name is Gillian and I just finished the Anchored Leadership program with Kari Lotzien. I'm a financial planner. I've owned a practice for eight years. And I'd hit a space of exponential growth. Everything was going great, but I always struggled with the management of team, how to hire, how to fire, how to have those yucky conversations. And that was a huge takeaway from the Anchored Leadership, where I got tools and practice as to how to implement those things into my business so I can continue to grow and continue to thrive. It was an exceptional experience that I would highly recommend to any business owner who is looking to push through their discomfort to that next level of success. In the Anchored Leadership Academy, we combine weekly live sessions for one hour that focus on a key area of leadership, and then participants have the ability to work through all of the content in the modules between sessions. This allows a nice balance between accountability for really busy entrepreneurs to keep moving forward with the program and get it done, while also having the ability to flex their time a little bit and make it work for them. An added bonus: all participants get lifetime access to the videos, the audio, all of the resources in the course so you can keep coming back to it again and again when it applies to that specific time in your business. If this sounds like an interesting thing to you, click the link in the show notes, book an inquiry call, and let's see if the Anchored Leadership Academy is right for you at this stage of business. Thanks so much. Back to the show.

Kari Lotzien: [00:17:57] Okay. Number four, once you have acknowledged the data that has said, look at what has gotten me where I am right now, and you've got the data to show it. Where I think that we then, it turns into this mushroom cloud, and I think what truly gives so many of my clients, the people that I just adore hearing their stories, is every single time that vision, that life that they crave, every single time when I see it mushroom cloud and turn into something beyond what they could even imagine, the secret sauce is that it becomes bigger than them. The next thing I want you to do is ask whose life will change as I begin to live the life I crave. It might be your showcasing for your kids that they don't have to grow up the way that you did. Maybe you are changing the industry for someone else. Maybe you are giving hope to the clients or the customers that you work with. Maybe you are changing the face of how you're able to give back to your community, or support a charity that you believe in. Or maybe this frees up your time so that you can show that you can have an incredibly successful business and travel the world and have an incredible, really nourishing life. And maybe then when you go to different countries, you support other entrepreneurs in their small businesses who are just trying to make a go of it themselves. I always, I think the fuel that really causes these dreams to ignite is when it becomes bigger than ourselves and every single person, every single business that I have seen that's gone on to do really incredible things, it is always bigger than the success of the owner and is definitely bigger than financial gain. The more people that you can impact, the more change that you can make. The more that you can see beyond your own personal benefit, the more this will completely take off. It's like adding fuel to your fire. So I want you to acknowledge whose life changes as you begin to live the life you crave. Make it bigger than yourself.

Kari Lotzien: [00:20:21] Number five, measure process over progress. Okay, now what does this mean? So if you have a goal, I think it is really easy for us to say, okay, when I hit these milestones, so if I'm trying to earn seven figures in my business, you might break it down and say, okay, I need to earn 100,000 by this point in the year, and I need to earn this much by this point in the year. And then we mark our success or our journey through meeting those objectives and goals. Here's why I'm not a fan of that. I think it is one point that we want to measure or be aware of, but it can't be the driving force. When you talk about living the life that you crave, living it, the action of it is based in the process. Right? So we hear things like, you know, the magic is in the journey. Well, it absolutely is. Because if you're not enjoying the journey and the process along the way in how you're achieving the life that you crave, you will never get there. And the risk in this is we hear multi-billionaires who get to that point in their life and say, okay, I've been just upping my financial goal over and over and over again. And I keep meeting them. I keep hitting those targets and doesn't feel any different.

Kari Lotzien: [00:21:48] I'm still alone. I'm still sad. I'm still not having any fun in my life. It's a really sad moment when you hear someone who has this list of accolades of things they've done in their life, and inside they feel very unsatisfied and they still feel alone. This is where when I talked in part one of really looking at all of the different parts of your life and what creates the life that you crave, a very small sliver has to do with actually financial goals or how much body mass do you have? Right? Like when I talk about living the life you crave and if you're measuring your progress towards the life you crave, that I'm going to lose 20 pounds by this point next year, and then you measure every pound that you lose. And now you're 20 pounds lighter, but you're still not having any fun. And your life didn't change. When I talk about the life you crave, you don't crave losing 20 pounds. You crave maybe the ability to go and hike with your family. Maybe you crave the ability to go and run around with your grandkids and play soccer, and not feel like your knees are going to break. When you are living it, when you are measuring process, process says, okay, I'm going to do this and on the journey, on the journey to losing 20 pounds, I'm going to have a ten minute dance party in the kitchen three times a week. I'm going to take my kids to the park a couple times a week, and I'm going to play with them.

Kari Lotzien: [00:23:26] I'm not going to sit on the side and watch. I'm going to maybe join that pickleball program that's running in my community, and I'm going to do that a couple of times a week. Do you see how now it's really easy for me to say, okay, well, did I have a dance party three times a week? Process. Did I join that pickleball organization? Process. Did I play with my grandkids, did I join them playing soccer? Whatever that is, that's process. That says I'm enjoying the journey that is likely getting me closer to my health goal. They have to connect. So measure the process. Measure did you actually do the thing that you think will get you closer to your goal? In business this might look like, did you make those sales calls or are you just frustrated that you haven't met that financial objective yet? You can't measure making the financial objective, because there may be so many other factors in how you achieve that goal. The same with health, really. There are so many other factors that are outside of your control that by measuring your progress only towards the acquisition or how far away you are from that specific destination, you are going to feel so frustrated because very quickly, you'll realize that so many things are out of your control and you'll lose that process piece of it. But if you measure the process, you will naturally see you're getting closer and closer to your goal. So you focus on the process. You focus on what are the things, the activities that I'm going to do that I think will lead me there? And you track that, you focus on that in the data.

Kari Lotzien: [00:25:11] And last, this is a really big one. I'm going to come back to my story. So when I took my little bougie vision quest and I did a lot of hiking, I had an experience where I spent all day hiking and by myself completely. I actually didn't see one other person. Luckily, I also didn't see one other animal, so, I digress. That whole day I was completely by myself. And when I finally got to the destination, when I got to the summit and it was breathtaking, it absolutely took my breath away. What I could see is this cliff that overlooked the ocean. And in that moment it was like the world just went silent. I couldn't hear any more of those you should do this, you should do that. But I felt this sense of clarity that I don't know that I've ever felt before. It brought me to my knees. I got incredibly emotional. And I ended up having an experience. Now, if you believe in something bigger than yourself, you could say that was a higher power, that was God, whatever that was. If that feels right to you, you follow that. If it doesn't, I'm going to ask you, create the experiences that allow you to hear your own voice. And if that means you need to go spend some time by yourself for a while, if you need to go walk in nature, for me, that works beautifully. I feel like things are quieter, things are slower when I'm in nature and it allows me to just sort my own thoughts. That's the path. That's the process that I take to hear it.

Kari Lotzien: [00:27:11] For you, it might be something completely different. It might be going for a run, it might be reading great poetry, it might be listening to beautiful music. Whatever it is, doesn't matter, but I want you to see can you find your own voice? And when you find it, whether you write it, whether you record a video for yourself, I want you to give yourself a message of reassurance, of being on the right track, of self compassion to give yourself a boost. Some of the things that I've done over the years, so I did, when I reached that summit and I was overlooking the ocean, the message that came to me is that on that journey, on the journey that day, there's so many times I didn't know where I was going. It was one of those really weird paths that sometimes it felt like the path just disappeared and I didn't know where I was anymore. And I would take just a few more steps. And it was like the path appeared and there were some times where it was kind of funny, but I would actually turn completely 360 degrees and I would just keep pivoting and then all of a sudden it was like, then I could see the trail, but when I was following it, it was, all of a sudden it disappeared. And the messages that I got from myself were these last five steps. That when you're in doubt and you're tired, look back and see how far you came. Acknowledge all of the obstacles that you overcame. There was moments that day that were really hard, and I just kept moving over those obstacles, just like I have in my life. And they will look different for every single one of us. I recognized that sometimes dreams and goals for me that day, the message I got was sometimes dreams and goals look like letting go. Sometimes dreams and goals look like giving up and walking away and knowing when it's time to move on. And in that day, and in that moment when I could hear my own voice, it told me, stop always measuring in terms of the destination. Because there will be days where you don't get there. But if you didn't enjoy the journey along the way and you didn't pause and notice the beauty that was in the process to getting exactly where you are right now, this loses its power, and you will not see the same beauty, and you will not have that same sense of accomplishment when you reach the end goal if you didn't stop and pause and acknowledge the process that got you here.

Kari Lotzien: [00:30:01] So this series in Living the Life That You Crave, is my personal sharing in when I was able to take that time to just hear my own voice, these were the steps that came back to me. And when I sat today thinking about what I was going to record for my podcast episode, I felt the need that I want to share this with you. Because when it became bigger than me, when I recognized that part of my journey and my process in what I want in my life is how can I share these little tidbits and messages with others who are also trying to create and live the life that they crave? And as I share this, it becomes bigger than me. And my hope is that when I plant these seeds, these thoughts with you, and then you make your dream, your vision, bigger than you that this creates a ripple effect where we truly can change the way that we are showing up in the world. I know that sounds huge and it sounds overwhelming, but I truly believe that when more of us live this way and we live this way with intention, we have more power than we will ever recognize.

Kari Lotzien: [00:31:25] Now as I wrap up today, I want to come back to no matter where you are, no matter what your journey looks like right now, at this moment in time, living the life you crave is available to you. It is available through action and support and love. And knowing that part of that craving is not just linked to an egoic desire to attain more in your life. It is part of your human evolution that will allow you to be even better than you are right now, and it is a need. Just like that infant that craves touch, it is integral to their development. It is not, it is not a desire, it's not just a want, it is absolutely part of who they will become. This is the message I want to leave you with today. I love you all so much. I'd love to hear your thoughts on part one and part two of this series in Living the Life You Crave. I'd love to hear your feedback on this episode. Any thoughts that you have, feel free to drop me an email, follow the link in the show notes. Always be sure to sign up for my newsletter, because if you want to have more conversation, if you want to get into a webinar or a workshop with me, that is absolutely the best way to find out what I'm up to. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.

Kari Lotzien: [00:33:00] Please know that this podcast is meant for entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitution for medical or professional mental health advice. If you require support, please do reach out. Thanks so much.