“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” – Marcus Aurelius

Halfway through the second day of the REV Real Estate Success Conference, my parents, Jarrod and I decided to take a longer lunch break and scoot over to the Pike Place Market for lunch. My mind was already racing as I tried to hold on to and filter through everything I was learning at the conference. Too much information coupled with unlimited coffee had me sitting in my chair buzzing. Being an Activator, one of the hardest things for me to do is to learn without being able to immediately act and apply. I am hungry for action. Seeing that there was still a lot to learn, we decided to head outside the conference for a mental health break and fresh air. After eating the most amazing fresh crab salad I’ve ever had, I looked at the schedule and read “Keynote: Dr. Fred Grosse – Black Belt of the Mind.” I had never heard of the speaker nor did I really have any idea what he was speaking on, but something inside me said GET BACK NOW. Thank you intuition because his talk was my second life changing moment during the conference.

I immediately scheduled an Uber, found the waitress, paid the check and flew back to Bellevue, a 30 minute drive from where we had lunch in Seattle. Somehow we only missed the very beginning of his talk, thank goodness. As I got settled into my chair the first thing Dr. Fred Grosse said was, “What would you do with your life if you only had 180 days left to live?” Powerful, right? I sighed a bit of relief knowing the stress to get back was worth it! Everyone starting scribbling down what they would do. My response? Travel, teach spin :), serve others, spend time with family and friends, eat amazing food, write a book. Write a book? Weird. I didn’t even know that was in me! What other goals/dreams/desires am I holding on to that have yet to surface into my consciousness?

He then proceeded to say, “Your heart is where the still small voice lives. Create a dialogue with your soul partner. What is inside of you? What kills you? Do you lack a sense of purpose? How is your health? Are you doing the things you love? Start expanding how long you’re going to be here will full purpose.” Wow. He could have just dropped the mic and walked off the stage at that point. I was hooked. The same still small voice that told me to get back in time to hear his talk, is the same voice he says to start directing the course of your life. Why should we be healthy? So we can live a longer, more purposeful life. Why should we do the things we love? So we can use our strengths to better serve others in a more purposeful way.

Side note, I have always loved thinking about the meaning of life :). No, really. I obsess over it. What is my purpose? Why am I here? Ah, I love it. But it wasn’t until I heard this talk that I was able to start going after my purpose in a more effective way. Let me explain. The next action item was to quickly write down 15 goals for the next 14 months, to be completed by Dec. 2016. There wasn’t any time to think about what to write. Personal, professional, spiritual, whatever came to mind, we wrote it down. I was able to think of 15 goals and again some of them surprised me. This was getting really fun! Then we had to mark them in priority with 10s, 9s, 8s, etc. It didn’t have to be in order. They just needed to be individually prioritized. I marked five 10s, one 9, five 8s, and four 7s. That was already a wake up call. How many times did I say I had goals or things that were important to me and then finished the day/week/year and hadn’t come close to accomplishing them? Too many times. Which is funny because I love goals. I am very goal driven, but I have so many potential goals that I don’t prioritize them and they don’t get the attention they need to get completed.

Grosse says, “The important part is clearing the slate to get to what’s important, but first you must define what’s important. Do this everyday. If you don’t focus on achieving your goals, you aren’t achieving your purpose in life.” Boom. That hit the nail on the head for me. As soon as the conference was over that day, Jarrod and I walked down the street and bought goal journals. We spent the rest of the night writing down our goals, putting numbers of importance next to them and devising plans on how to achieve them. Just sharing our goals with one another was powerful. Think about it, if there were goals on there that I didn’t even know I wanted to achieve, how in the world could he know I wanted it and how could he have ever supported me? We even switched journals and put a star next to the 6 things we thought were important for the other person. This was Jarrod’s idea and I LOVED it. Sometimes it’s hard to focus on what is important when you have so many things you want to accomplish. Jarrod knows me better sometimes than I know myself, so seeing what he thought I wanted to accomplish gave me a lot of clarity to let go of some as I focused on others.

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“Create a sphere that supports you.” Dr. Grosse knows the importance of not only accountability, but having a support network. Big hairy audacious goals are hard to achieve without a plan and a support group to help you get there. Externalize your goals and start to implement them. Visualize what it looks like after you have achieved your goal. How have you changed? Who would you have had to become in order to achieve that goal?* I LOVED that question. SO powerful. Then, what are the steps you would have had to take and who is around you helping you make it happen? It’s not enough to think about the end result, we have to identify the process behind it. The journey is what changes us and fulfills us, not so much the achievement of the goal.

But I’m SO busy!! I cannot tell you how many times I’m running around “busy.” Friends ask how your day was and you say, “ohhhh it was SO busy.” But then you look at your list and you didn’t get ANYTHING done that you wanted to. How is that possible?! Because we are not being purposeful. Everyone is in chaos mode most of the time. We are responding to outside stimulus instead of making things happen. Are we spending our time at work on money making activities or on menial tasks? The purpose of money is to make money so that you can do what you want to do and create wealth to live off of passively for the rest of your life. Remember that water takes the form of wherever it is poured.  We need to create our own ideal structure so we have time for purposeful activities and also rest/self-care.

Dr. Grosse also advises us to not just focus on yearly goals, but to create a list of 10s that you would do on a daily basis to make your heart sing. This could be working out, drinking coffee, quality time with your spouse, walking your dog, etc. Anything at all that if you did it daily you would be happy. I LOVE that. Win your life by winning your day :). Then think of your list of things you could do every two weeks or once a month that would make you happy. Write it down. What about every six months? A year? Create a page  in your journal for your list of daily, weekly, monthly, half a year, and yearly things you want to do purposefully to make you happy! In the rest of the journal, spend 3 minutes a day writing down your goals and action items to get your 10s accomplished with different deadlines. Create a separate list in your journal of just your 10s for the rest of the year (Dec. 2016) that you can keep adding to and coming back to. Start creating more focused time. The clock is running, how are we going to make the most of one year?

This may seem overwhelming. At first, it kinda is. But don’t think about it, just start writing down your goals and prioritizing each one with a number. You’ll be surprised how effortlessly they start to flow out. Don’t carry any judgment with them, just write them down. Dr. Grosse says each of us has 10,000 goals inside us at any given time! WOW! I can’t wait to start exploring the goals in my subconscious. But let’s just start with 15. Once you get going it really is SO empowering. It is empowering to realize that we are in control of what we put into our mouth and how we spend our day. We can create a life of health and vitality and purposeful action or we can flow through life with other people’s currents guiding us and taking us where they want us to go. It’s our choice.

Today’s Daily Affirmation: I am purposeful in my actions. My life has meaning. I am here to serve. I am living my life to the fullest. I embody the life of my dreams. I am capable. I am enthusiastic. I choose to be happy. I choose to grow. I am light. I am love. I am whole.