273: Starting with the End in Mind

Extraordinary is a choice. Take that in, soak it up because the hustle grind repeat mantra that society’s been touting for decades. It added all wrong. I’m Tanya Dalton. I’m a seven figure. Entrepreneur bestselling author, speaker, mom, and rule breaker. I’m here to help you live to your fullest potential. That’s what this podcast is all about. The Intentional Advantage is doing life on our own terms,

defying the status quo and seeing ourselves outside of the tidy definitions societies make for us, it’s intentionally choosing to step back away from the chaotic rush of your every days and choosing, choosing to see that it’s your world and it’s filled with opportunities. Let’s challenge the bedrock beliefs that so many have wholeheartedly trusted because we were told they were truths. Let’s have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

Let’s choose to be extraordinary. Hello. Hello everyone. And welcome to the Intentional Advantage podcast. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. This is episode 273. This is our second episode in our season on purposeful productivity. And I have to say I loved y’all’s responses to the last episode of productivity with purpose, because I think so often we’re so busy doing,

doing the things that we think makes us productive. That we’re not really being Intentional. We’re not being purposeful. We’re not asking ourselves, wait, what am I even doing? Why am I doing it? And wait a minute, where am I even going? That’s a big question. And that’s one of the things we’re gonna focus in on today. That where question,

where are you going after all? If you’re working hard, we wanna know where it is. You’re gonna end up. So we’re gonna be talking about starting with the end in mind, but here’s the big problem. How do I start with the end in mind? If I don’t have any idea what the end is, what do you do? If you don’t have vision,

if you’re feeling really uncertain, how can you be strategic? If you don’t know where it is you’re wanting to go. And I think this is one of the big problems I see, time and time again, people will say, well, how do I set goals? If I don’t know what I want, that’s what we’re diving into because truly we need the vision so we can be strategic so we can be purposeful.

So we can be truly productive. I want you to feel like you have doubled your productivity without thinking, gosh, I was busy all day. What did I even do? There’s nothing worse than feeling exhausted and overwhelmed because you’ve worked hard all day, but you feel like you’ve spun in circles. So that’s what we’re gonna dive into today. We’re gonna talk about how to start with the end in mind,

even if you don’t know what, what that looks like. You know, we have talked about starting with the end in mind in the past, and this is definitely not a new productivity trick or habit or idea. Stephen Covey talks about that in his seven habits of highly effective leaders. Habit. Number two is began with the end in mind, which is fabulous.

But if you don’t know what the end looks like, it does make it difficult. And again, this is why we set the wrong goals. Why we end up feeling like we’re living life on repeat, you know, midlife comes around and we look around and we’re like, wait, what am I doing? Why, where am I? We find that we’ve been living other people’s dreams.

If we don’t have vision, we end up borrowing it from other people. A lot of times, it’s our parents. And I love my parents. My parents are listening to this podcast episode right now. Hi mom and dad. But we do really work hard to live up to our parents’ expectations. What they dream of us being when we grow up,

you know how I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve spoken to who tell me I’m a doctor or I’m a lawyer and it’s really not what I’m passionate about, but it’s what I thought I was supposed to do. And there are a lot of people who talk about the term, killing your parents. Sometimes you have to kill your parents to be able to move forward.

I think it’s a little harsh, but I get it. So let’s dive into that just for a second. What people mean when they say that is you have to walk away from the expectations of others, especially your parents, because it can feel really hard to move against the things that they want for you. The things that they believe though, the way that you were raised,

if you wanna go back and listen to someone who I think has done a beautiful job of living life on their own terms, go back and listen to the episode with Nikki Nakiyama. Who’s a Michelin star chef. I can’t remember what episode it is off the top of my head. I’ll put a link in the show notes, but she talks about how different her lifestyle is as a Japanese woman,

really pushing against those, not just, you know, norms of her family, but also the societal norms of living and being Japanese. So it is difficult sometimes to go against the trends, to go against the stream, to do things differently, getting rid of expectation and obligation, but that’s what we have to do to live a life on our own terms.

And it does us no good to check the boxes of what makes our parents happy or other people in our world. Happy if we’re not truly finding passion and joy in what we are doing. And the truth is passion and joy and purpose. Isn’t always found somewhere else. So often is found right here in the work you’re already doing. We just lose sight of it.

And I am definitely doing a show later this season, talking about how you find your purpose and work, how you find your meaning in the job that you do. That’s for a later episode today, it’s really about what does that vision look like, right? And I want you to ask yourself this question when you were a kid. And I talk about the idea and on purpose,

my, my second book, right? I talk about the idea that when we were a kid, the options were limitless. Anything was possible. And in fact, everything was possible when we were a kid. But did someone say to you at some point in your life, you can be anything you want or were you told you’ll grow out of those dreams?

Yeah, we all dream big as a kid, but you’ll grow out of that. That’s really frustrating. And the truth is we don’t have to grow out of the big dreams, but this is what we have a tendency to do. We live our life on other people’s terms, or we look around looking at what everybody else is doing that we think is successful.

Looking left, looking right, going, oh, she’s doing amazing things over here. Or I love the way this person is scaling the ladder, or I like the way that person’s running their business. I should do what they’re doing back in episode 249. We really talked about why we don’t often set the right goals for ourselves. That episode is called setting the right goals for you.

Because a lot of times we are setting goals based off of what everybody else is doing, or we don’t really realize what’s possible. I think that’s a big one too. I think so often our dreams get squashed because we’ve not seen it done before. And because we haven’t seen it before we think, well, I guess if nobody else has done it,

it can’t be done. It’s actually funny because I had a conversation yesterday. I was speaking with a young woman over at high point university at high point university. I’m part of their business program. I’m in a, a mentorship program where the students can reach out and I help mentor them. I will give them advice. I, they can interview me and do all kinds of things like that.

You know, I’ll look over their profiles, their LinkedIn profiles or their resumes and give them advice. So I was having a conversation with this woman and she said to me yesterday, she said, this conversation has shifted so much for me. She said in my life, I have never met another, like a woman’s CEO. I’ve never met somebody. Who’s running their own business,

doing things on their own terms, who is a woman. She’s like, I saw my dad do it. My dad runs a very successful business. All of his friends who are running businesses are men. And I go out and I look at models for who I can look at and there’s, I just don’t see them, or I see them and they seem really far away and I never get to really meet them to talk to them.

She’s like, I totally see that this is possible for me. That’s one of the reasons why I do programs like that mentorship program for those women in the business school, because I think it’s really important to see what is possible. There is a sliver of space between the life you dreamed of and the life you’ve got. And sometimes your happiness lies right there.

It’s just having the vision to be able to see that it is possible, that you can make it happen, that you can align your goals to get to that beautiful vision that you have for this bright, beautiful tomorrow. Without purpose goals are just guesses. We’re just looking around what everybody else is doing. And we just make guesses about what it is we’re supposed to be doing instead of really having that bigger purpose,

having that bigger vision. And I think this is the thing that people get confused. They get the idea of goals, motivation, and vision all mixed up. So I wanna dive into that idea. And there’s an old story that’s been told. I don’t know, probably thousands of times in thousands of different ways, about three stone cutters who are working on a Boulder.

I think this story showcases the difference between goals, motivation, and purpose. So let’s just dive into the story because I think it’ll, it’ll flush it all out for you. So a person goes up to a stone cutter, who’s working on a giant piece of rock and they say to them, you know, what are you doing? And this stone cutter replies kind of irritated,

cuz they’re in the middle of doing their work. Clearly I am chipping away at a big hunk of stone to make it into a block. Okay. Well, you know what that is. That’s a goal. You’re taking a big hun of stone. You’re turning it into a block. It’s a vehicle to get you here to there, right? That’s a goal.

So that first person is just setting goals approaching though, the second stone cutter, same person says, same question. Hey, what are you doing? The second stone cutter looks up and proudly says, I’m earning a living. I’m gonna take care of my family with the money I’m making by, by creating this block, ah, right there, that person is motivated.

They’re focusing in on the motivation. The why behind what they’re doing, the first person was the what second person was the why? Right then moving on to the third stone cutter, the guy, same person says, Hey, what are you doing? This third stone cutter. He looks up and he says, Ugh, stasis shining with just excitement for what he does.

He says, I’m building a cathedral. That is vision. Purpose is not a goal. It’s a goal with motivation and vision. It’s understanding the what and the why of what you are doing and getting to that big, beautiful cathedral. So here he is cutting a piece of stone, but he knows the end result is gonna be so much bigger than them,

right? And that’s what we’re looking for. You have heard me talk about cathedrals in the past on this podcast. That’s a big part of what we talk about in on purpose. Having that cathedral that we’re looking forward to. But I wanna remind you of that purpose is not a goal. It’s a goal with motivation and vision together. Why, what,

how all of it to get, where you want to go. This feeling of satisfaction, this feeling of purpose and Intentional living only happens when we understand the vision of what we’re doing and how it ties in with the big picture. So here’s the question for you after we listen to that story, which one of those three stone masons do you think ghost home at night and feels amazing about the work that he’s creating?

It’s a no brainer, right? It’s the third one, the one who has the motivation and the goal with the vision. So often we’re checking a thousand things off our to-do list, running here, running there, chasing our tail, chasing busy, slipping into bed at night, feeling unsatisfied, unsuccessful thinking, ah, should have gotten more done. Am I right?

Oh, that’s the worst feeling in the world to feel like you’ve done work all day long for what? When you have vision, when you understand the purpose behind what you do with the vision and the motivation and the goals all aligned together. That’s when we go to bed at night and that’s when we feel amazing. Ugh. I love that feeling when you go to bed at night and you think today was a great day.

Today was amazing. And that’s a question I want you to stop and ask yourself right now. When was the last time you went to bed and thought today was amazing. I feel so good about what I did. I am amazing because if it’s been more than a day or two, that is too long, this is why we want to have vision.

This is why we wanna know where it is we’re going. This is why we wanna find meaning in our lives, in our work. And as I mentioned earlier, we are gonna be diving into finding meaning in your work later on in this season. But that’s the thing I want you to think about. If we are talking about purposeful productivity productivity with purpose,

it means we’re doing work that matters tying in our work from today because it impacts our future and the future of others. Ugh, that’s the beauty of purposeful productivity. It’s that infinite impact we talked about on that last episode it’s impacts your life, but it also impacts the lives of others. That third stone cutter, he’s building a cathedral, definitely something that I truly believe in that whole idea of cathedral thinking I got into that in episode 279 talked about cathedral thinking.

So we, I can dive deeper into that with you. If you go listen to that episode and I’ll put the link in the show note, so don’t worry, but you could also revisit it in the book on purpose in my book because we dive really deep into it. But cathedral thinking is dreaming planning and creating blueprints that reach far into the future.

So I wanna talk more about how we can figure out what our vision looks like. How do we start with the end in mind? How do we figure out what that vision looks like at all? We’re gonna talk about our cathedrals in just a minute. Let’s first take a quick mid episode break. I have something really exciting that I am pulling together for a small select group of people.

This is the first time I’m offering it. And it’s the only time I’m gonna offer it all year long. You see what we’re talking about today? This idea of vision, that’s the secret to my success in business. That’s what allowed me to scale to seven figures in less than 18 months. That’s what’s allowed me to grow a thriving business while having a thriving,

personal life as well, because I think both are important. It is all about the vision, because then when you have the vision, you’re able to make true strategic decisions. So often in our businesses, we’re making guesses and that’s why we end up feeling like we’re spinning in circles. So I do visionary strategy sessions. One-on-one with people all the time,

but I’m gonna be opening it up right now for a very small select group of people to work directly with me, live creating the vision of where it is. You wanna go in 20, 23 and beyond we’re gonna be workshopping your business. So you are gonna walk away with an action plan, knowing what you wanna focus in on where you wanna lean in your business for the next 12 to 18 months and beyond.

Because when you have the vision, it really is about setting that big legacy work for yourself. Go ahead and head to Tanya dalton.com/ 2023. If this is something that excites you, because this is a small group, spaces are limited. If this is something, this idea of being strategic with your business, if that gets you excited, you’re not gonna wanna wait because as I said,

I’m not offering this throughout the year. When you go to Tanya dalton.com/ 2023, you’re gonna see just a video on that page where I explain it because it’s not a bunch of fancy sales copy. It’s not a bunch of fancy things. It’s really at the heart about me helping you step into your greatness in your business to make the difference. I know you were designed to make so head to Tanya dalton.com/

2023. Right now, if you wanna get strategic with your business, all right, let’s get back into that idea of creating the vision for your life, creating the vision for yourself. We wanna start with the end in mind, but we need to know what that end looks like. So let’s get some clarity on what it does look like. So I wanna start by getting clear on a few things.

Yes, you can have more than one vision. I know that’s the number one question people are wondering right now because people often ask me when it comes to cathedrals. And when I talk about non purpose, can you have more than one apps? A freaking literally of course you can. You are more than just one aspect of a person. I think so often we think of ourselves as you know,

just who we are at work or who we are at home or what role we play. You’re so much more than a worker bee. On the last episode, episode 272, where we talked about productivity with purpose, I touched really briefly on the six pillars of you. So I wanna dive a little bit deeper into that today because there are six aspects to you.

Some could argue, there were even more, I think six is a very workable number. So let’s dive into that because what we’re looking for is the holistic you, the, every part of you, not just who you are when you punch the clock from nine to five. So yes, there is the financial you, which are things like money, revenue,

titles, status, possessions, those types of things. That’s the first pillar. Second pillar is relational relationships with other people. People like your family, your friends, yourself, maybe other coworkers or colleagues, people at the same level of business as you, then we have the third pillar, which is physical your body, your diet, your sleep, fuel nourishment,

movement, breathing. All of those things. Fourth pillar is spiritual, which is tying into a higher purpose, a higher calling. You might call it God or the universe or source or the divine, seeing something bigger than the big picture we can see as humans, really that connection to who you are beyond this life. And then we get to the fifth pillar,

which is recreational. Yeah. Recreational is important. Hobbies, passion, projects, entertainment, things you do outside of work because you know why, cuz you love it cuz you want to cause you can. Recreational would also includes self-care and all those activities that really take care of you. And then our six filler is the emotional part of you, your feelings,

the things that trigger you, that cause reactions, your, your hot buttons, your emotions. I want you to think about those six pillars. I’m gonna go back through. ’em really quickly. Financial, relational, physical, spiritual, recreational, and emotional. When you think about you, aren’t you more than just the status, the title, the success,

what everybody else sees. This is peeling back, all those layers. It’s like an orange. It’s getting that peeling off and getting to the juicy parts. The parts of you that really provide that feeling. That sentiment of meaning. If we’re gonna talk about productivity with purpose, we need to get to the heart of you and what you want. Financial,

relational, physical, spiritual, recreational, and emotional. So I want you to look at those six pillars of you. I want you to list them out. Don’t worry about taking notes right now. Especially if you’re driving the car, please don’t please. Don’t be making notes in your notes app. What I want you to do is just go to the show notes,

Tanya, Tanya, dalton.com. You can find the show notes from today’s show. I’ll have all those pillars listed out for you. Okay? List those pillars though, out on a sheet of paper. And I want you to think about how do you want to feel for each of those six? How do you want to feel about each of those areas of yourself now?

Here’s what I wanna tell you. This is my, this is my one big ground rule. This is honestly my ground rule for life. Do not use the word. Good. I hate the word. Good. I do. I banned it from meetings. I banned it from family conversations because you know what good tells me? Good is good for nothing. It tells me nothing.

Right? I want you to get super specific. I want you to dive into how do you want to feel in these different areas of your life? I’m curious if you watched the Brené Brown limited series, I think it was on HBO. It was for Atlas of the heart. And that’s what it’s called again. I’ll put a link to this in the show notes,

Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart. She talked about the nuances of different emotional words. Oh my God. It was so powerful to really think about it. It really made me think we’ve talked about, and there’s a whole chapter where I talk about words, half power, right? Words are incredibly powerful. So if we’re gonna use words, let’s get specific.

How do you wanna feel when you get towards the end of your life? How do you wanna feel in those six areas of six pillars of you? Do you wanna feel content? Do you wanna feel powerful? Do you wanna feel connected? Do you wanna feel tapped into wonder and a, do you wanna feel self trust, relief, tranquility? Oh,

I like that word tranquility. Right? This is how nerdy I am. I actually bought an emotion wheel to keep at the house so that we could use better words. When we argue words have power arguing needs to lead to understanding that’s the purpose behind arguing, right? So if it’s gonna lead to understanding, we need to use the right words to express how we feel that allows people in.

So I want you to think about what words do you really wanna use? Please avoid the word. Good, please. Don’t use the word. Good. Dive deeper into what it is you want. I want you to write down the feelings. You wanna have the emotions and then just allow yourself to dream big. You might remember I did a video quite a while back and I’m gonna bring this idea back in a later episode when we talk about prioritizing our days.

But we need to focus in on the emotions, how we wanna feel, right? What does it look like inside when we get to the end of our life or when we’re talking about prioritizing the end of our day, you know? So let’s take one of those pillars. Let’s take the physical pillar because I think that’s an easy one for us to talk about.

And for you to start with, what does it mean for you to have that physical pillar at the end of your life? What kind of feeling do you want? Do you want, do you wanna have, do you wanna feel flexible? Do you wanna feel strong, able bodied? You can even use terms like not using a Walker, right? Or what is it you wanna feel physically?

I don’t want you to filter out what you’re thinking. Just write it all down. One of the things I like to do with an activity like this is setting a timer. You know how I love to use containers. We talk about containers a lot on the show. So set yourself a container, set a timer for two minutes or five minutes or 10 minutes,

whatever you can give to yourself. Okay? So give yourself a container of time and then just write down. This is what I think I wanna feel. Don’t worry about what it is or what you’re writing down. After the timer goes off, then you can filter. Then you can go through and you can start combining, oh, these two are kind of connected.

Circle. The ones that align with you. You may have more than one. I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, for me, when I think about the physical pillar, it’s definitely a combination for my physical pillar. I know I want to have a strong core. I wanna have flexible feet and I wanna be focused on balance. So I know that seems really weird.

But honestly, when I started thinking about life and how I wanna be, I didn’t wanna use a Walker. I didn’t wanna be shuffling my feet when I got older or I should say when I get older, cuz I’m not older yet. That’s not happening for a long time. But when I get older, I know that I want to have really good balance so I can stand and I can walk without a Walker.

That’s important to me and I know flexible feet. The reason why people shuffle their feet. When you see old people shuffling their feet, it’s because they’ve lost the flexibility in their feet. I want to stand upright with my shoulders, back with my head, looking up at the world around me that I’m lucky enough to live in. So I knew I wanted to have flexible feet.

I knew I wanted to have balance. I’m not focused in on big muscles. I’m not interested in having like big muscles when I get older. So what is it you want knowing how I feel about what I want in my physical pillar. I do feed exercises. I do balance exercises, Pilates, which you guys heard about in my, in my email that I sent out a few weeks ago,

that helps me with my strong core. So you can see how it’s helping me make decisions for the day that are going to bear fruit in the future. Right? So here’s the thing. When you’re combining and coming up with ideas, it’s easy to say, well, I want all of this. All right, you can be anything, but you can’t be everything.

Think about what matters most to you. What matters most to me is being able to walk really easily, feeling really strong in my core because that’s really important for my ridiculously ancient back that I’ve got. It’s important for me for being able to look forward and really feel like I’m active well into my nineties and beyond. Right? Think about what works for you.

Now you may have a ton of ideas or you may only have a few. Neither is good. Either is bad. Remember we’re getting rid of good. Anyways. If you’re feeling stuck, I want you to use your past as a springboard. If you’re feeling really stuck, episode 2 56, that’s there. That’s your lifeline. Okay. That episode is called.

Why right now is the right time. We talk about using regret to build resilience. Use that to get you moving forward. And then just start to think about who am I in these six areas, go through each one of those six pillars. Start to think about who it is you wanna be. What’s that feeling that you want. That’ll give you an idea of the activities to do today.

That gets you to that feeling. Kind of like me with doing the foot feet exercises and working on my balance. Okay. What I want you to do is I want you to figure out what it is you want. Don’t try to be everything don’t hide behind being multi passionate. At some point on the show, we’ll probably need to walk through my multi passionate exercise that we do in on purpose.

But that’s what I want you to focus in on for today. I want you to focus in on what do I want the end to look like for me in all six of those areas of your life, because then we can set our goals with impact. We can align what we’re doing with that big, beautiful vision that we have for tomorrow. All right.

That’s what I want you to think about. And here’s the thing. Vision doesn’t have to be perfect. The truth of the matter is this five year plans don’t work. I don’t believe in five year plans. I believe in five and 10 and even 20 year visions. When we plan everything out perfectly, there’s no flexibility. There’s no grace for when we get off track and yes,

we will get off track because we are humans and it happens. But 5, 10, 20 year visions, ah, that gives you so much confidence in having productivity with purpose for really knowing the work that matters today, to get you to that life you want. That’s what I’m dreaming of for you. Now, if you enjoy today’s show, if you felt like, gosh,

this was really helpful. First of all, go visit the show notes because the show notes has all six of those pillars listed out. I’ll kind of walk back through this activity. That’s one of the new things that’s on the new website that I just rolled out is that’s a little spot. That’s like action items to take. So you’ll know what to do next.

All right. So go to the show notes at Tanya dalton.com. If today felt like it helped you today to give you an idea of how you can find vision. Do me a favor, take a screenshot, just snap, a quick picture, text it to a friend or two or five and say, Hey, listen to this episode. That’s how we get the word out.

That’s how we get the messages of this podcast out to more women. I don’t know about you, but it’s kind of like that conversation I had with that young girl from high point that we talked about earlier, we need more people doing this work. We need more people modeling what’s possible. So get people around. You create that synergy so you can make life happen for you.

This is one of the best things you can do for me to support me in the show, take a screenshot and send it to your friends and say, Hey, listen to this episode. And if you’re a business owner and you’re wanting to get strategic with your business to really create a vision and align your goals to that big vision you have for what your business is gonna do for you.

Make sure you go to Tanya dalton.com/ 2023. Find out more information about the 2023 strategic planning circle. Again, this is gonna be a small group. You are gonna be working directly with me. We’re gonna be live. We’re gonna be shopping your business. It’s not gonna be a bunch of training videos to watch. We’re gonna be working together to help you create the vision of where you wanna go in 20, 23 and beyond.

So go check that out now because there is a very limited number of spots available. All right. Today was a lot of fun. I hope it’s getting you thinking about your purposeful productivity. I hope it’s getting you to think about the actions you’re taking today and how they truly matter how they’re gonna lead you and guide you to that life you truly dream about because truly when you have vision,

when you understand where it is, you wanna go, you can go anywhere. And that that’s the Intentional Advantage. Thanks so much for joining me today. Quick question though, before you go, do you like prizes? When you leave a rating and review of the Intentional Advantage podcast, you’ll be entered to win my life changing course, multiplying your time.

Simply leave the review and then send me an email at hello, Tanya dalton.com with a screenshot. I choose one winner at the end of every month. So go ahead. Do it right now. Just a quick comment with what you loved about this episode or the show in general and a rating and send it our way. Not gonna lie by stars is my favorite,

but I’d love to hear what you think of the show. And if that’s not enough of an incentive for you to win the multiplying your time course, I have to tell you reviews are the number one thing that supports this podcast in me, it’s the best way to spread the word and get business tips and strategies to all those other women out there who need it.

So there you go. Two great reasons for you to go and leave a review right now. So go ahead and do it, send that screenshot my way, because I wanna give you a free course and thanks again for listening today. I’ll be back next Tuesday and I’ll plan to see you then.

 

**The Intentional Advantage is a top productivity podcast for women. With a female host, this podcast is life-changing for women in corporate spaces and entrepreneurs. This transcript is created by AI, so please excuse any typos, misspellings and grammar mistakes.

Tanya Dalton is one of the best woman motivational speakers on the topic of productivity and time management. As a female productivity expert, she is able to share strategies and tips on finding balance, time management and creating healthy habits.