138: Shared Future Goals (The Daily Experiment) 💚

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The Your Empty Nest Coach Podcast, Episode 138

FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00

Christine: Hi, I’m Coach Christine. This is my podcast, it’s the Your Empty Nest Coach Podcast, and we’re on episode #138.  If you are new here, know that I tend to use terms I’ve used in prior episodes - should you feel a bit lost when this happens, I invite you to use my show notes for a list of earlier episodes to get caught up! High-level, I’m all about coaching you to become the CEO of Your Life and in my world, CEO stands for Conscious Effective Olympian. You’ll do this by leveling-up 

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your life in small increments - those small wins add up to big changes.

I appreciate that you pressed play on this episode today. Here we go…

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00:00:44

Quick reminders: You’ll find the answer to all of your questions, where I’ve been and more on my website: YourEmptyNestCoach.com. I love feedback on the episodes and if you enjoy this, don’t forget to subscribe or follow in your favorite podcast player. SupaPass, who powers our online community, (that’s coming soon) is our fabulous episode sponsor. 

00:01:07

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My Lessons Learned 

What have I learned recently? 

Shared future-goals are super fun! In my last episode I talked about knowing where you are heading without being set on how you get there. With our personal move, hubby and I have been discussing what is next for us… how soon is retirement in our future? What does that even look like for us? And those things. I’ll be honest, walks are our best time to communicate, and he’s been doing some fun research. 

Both of us know our full-time day job work isn’t something we can walk away from any time soon due to the need to catch up on our nest egg, our current commitments and those things, but we came up with a super fun and adventurous plan for our retirement together: one that will take many years of research and planning to pull off in a way we will be comfortable. I will say, it is incredible how much more meaningful our full-time work became now that we have this fun adventure to work toward. 

We discussed on one walk how without that plan, it does feel a bit like a hamster wheel - you begin to wonder, “Where is the end?” - I mean the answer definitely could be, “well, there isn’t one.” That’s fun, and yes, that’s sarcasm; but not knowing what the end COULD look like can be defeating… 

But then… add in some dreaming and planning into the mix and you may begin to see the strong possibility of making something happen that invigorates you, that gives you a reason why you do what you do - at least for now. 

00:02:41

On another walk, we also discussed that this plan totally might change the more research we do, and that’s okay. The research is half the fun. I talk about this often when I’m coaching clients and talking in my podcast about your future-self: once you discover who they are - you can use them as your GPS for your life. You let them guide you and then you do research. You try living in the idea of that future-life possibility by deeply (ever so deeply) using your imagination -  in excruciating detail - and do that for some time - to play out how it might really look for you. It is only then, that you can begin to ask questions such as: 

• Do I like that lifestyle? 

• Does the lifestyle allow me to keep the things I love about my current life?

• Am I willing to give up what I’ll need to give up to get there?

• Am I willing to give up who I’ll need to give up in my life to get there?

• Do I like my sleeping and waking hours? 

• Do I have the same support group around me or a different one and is that okay?

• Do I like how much free time I have?

• Was the work to get there worth the benefits?

00:03:57

Many of my clients do this work and do find that the “dream” that they thought they wanted, is actually a bit of a drag in one way or another. It is then that they get to decide if they wanna scrap that dream completely or maybe adjust it a bit. 

This future-you dreaming is powerful and incredibly important, my friend. 

I’ve been doing this stuff for years on my own, you can’t just ask someone to join you and expect them to be on board when they are so entrenched in details of where their life is now. It takes work to get to this point where you can dream again. But over time, if you keep doing it, sometimes things will shift in your life, and those others in your life that weren’t able to dream might start to be able to dream, too. I will tell you, I’m having a blast listening to my husband's ideas, his excitement and dreams. 

Right now, some of these dreams we are super aligned together with - a couple we’re a little bit off but we have many years to figure it out together. 

00:05:02

And then let’s be real for a minute, with life we might not have all these future years that we think we have together - sucky things happen in life that you don’t expect but what excites me is that by dreaming we aren’t wasting this time being miserable where we are. What fun is that? 

We are dreaming for the future in a way that allows us almost the opportunity to live in it now and should we discover what we want that future - we can then begin to plan for it.

I’ve also mentioned this before - think about the moment you book a vacation. Yeah, remember those? For me, that vacation begins the moment I mentally decide we’re going on vacation because the planning really is part of the vacation. Have you experienced that? 

In this segment I leave you with - where could you be dreaming more? It’s super fun!

00:06:02

And with that - I’ll be back tomorrow talking about what’s in your life’s toolbox, where I’ve been and finding the funny.

Be sure to check your feed every day for the next week or so, and DEFINITELY let me know what you think of these new shorter episodes, my empty nest friend. 

It is Monday, and yes, even on Mondays You Are Amazing!

Talk tomorrow!

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00:06:24

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