About seven years ago, my approach to goal setting with clients changed.

Let's face it: there are countless approaches to goal setting out there. Some are more effective than others, and truth be told, goal setting is entirely personal. However, I discovered that regardless of the technique a client chooses, neglecting these three crucial steps dramatically reduces the chances of achieving their goals:

Identify an intention.

This is the energy that you bring to the surface. It is the permission to pursue what you want. It is the mindset you can reach for when you feel your motivation waning. And when you have an intention, it makes it SO much easier to come up with goals that excite you and move you forward.

This was the focus of our Breathwork+ session, Your Intention.

Dream audaciously.

Dreams should capture the mind and engage the soul. We should get goosebumps and relish just how out of this world the dream feels.

We need to create big, audacious dreams. They are long-term and don't create any big and immediate changes (that our brain HATES). Our big, audacious dreams bring us happiness, infuse every breath with vitality, and captivate our minds with a purpose to strive for and dedicate ourselves to.

Build a vision.

Visions are your shorter-term stepping stone to your dream. They are intentionally articulated future states. Visions are thick with description because we make it real when we make it detailed.

Vision is our free breathwork experience this week. This integrative experience will employ guided affective imagery paired with breathwork to help you step deeply into the vision and come away with something magical.

To prepare you for Vision, our paired breathwork experience, let's focus on dreaming audaciously.

Where did our dreams go?

“Living the Dream”

Uttered, well, by basically everyone.

Our ability to dream diminished as we became acquainted with cold, hard reality. We begin to see life for all its constraints and negatives, so we stopped reaching for the stars. We know that, realistically, we aren’t going to be president. We aren’t going to be the scientist that cures cancer. Or, we are too “old” to go do that. And so we settle for mediocre dreams that aren’t really dreams at all.

They are more like dream husks.

And then we wonder why we fall out of love with our lives.

Why we can’t muster any motivation or excitement about what we are doing.

Why we burn out.

Why we never feel fulfilled.

That’s why we sarcastically utter - "living the dream," when someone asks us how we are doing. Because our dreams have been reduced to the drudgery of daily life.

And if that is our dream, how can we expect our life to change?

Short answer - it won’t.

Its why burnout is such an epidemic.

What is your audacious dream?

Dream big. There you go, all fixed. Just kidding, it's actually more challenging than that.

But maybe, just maybe, it's not ACTUALLY that hard. Because the only thing standing in the way of creating your big, audacious dream, is you. So today, let's practice breaking free from the constraints we've learned throughout our lives. Let's give ourselves permission to dream big and revel in the realm of the impossible.

QUICK TOOL

Take 15 minutes today to write down your big dream (or start it, at least). Ask yourself:

  • What feels impossible, but you want to do it anyway?
  • What something, in the future, feels exciting?
  • What is an idea that feels so big, but you are drawn to it anyway?
  • Who are you as an aspiration?
  • What big thing do you want to solve?
REFLECTION

After you have written down your dream (or at least your starting point), take 5 minutes to reflect:

  • What was hard about this practice?
  • What voice comes up? What is that voice saying? Where does that voice come from?
  • As you consider this experience, what insight have you gained?

Reflection is the key to integration.

Access Vision, our guided breathwork experience, OnDemand here or in the community app.