The Shape vs. the Soul of Ambition

Do you ever judge yourself for the way you are today vs. the way you once were? Do you worry in advance about what it will mean if you don’t achieve something by a certain age, or you lose the progress you made in some area? If you blame yourself for every misstep, this episode is for you. Because the shape of our ambition is not the same thing as the soul of it.

 Episode Highlights:

01:14    The shape of my ambition is a term I came up with to refer to my idea of my body and what I think I want it to be vs. what it is, and what I remember it being vs. what it actually was

01:35    I want to love myself and I want to love my body, but sometimes I just don’t

03:06    I’m lonely for a version of myself that I have come to understand never existed

04:05    It wasn’t until my parents gave me my childhood health records a few years ago that I realized that I hadn’t even reached my full height when I was 17 and 107lbs. I had been making a completely unrealistic weight loss goal based on a false idea of who and how I was then

05:30    It is somewhat horrifying to recognize that I have been holding on to some very unrealistic and false assumptions about health and what I should aim for

05:50    So what is it about that era of my life that I am so desperate to re-achieve? Asking this question opens up realistic possibilities to accomplish the true goal underneath the desire for my weight loss

06:20    For a long time, I thought that in order to achieve a goal I would have to restrict or deny myself something, and so achieving goals was hard and full of sacrifice

06:35    The truth is that the time of my life I so want to emulate was all about play, joy, and connection. There was no loss or restriction at all!

07:09    What do I believe about my ability to wake up energized at 42 vs the way I felt about waking up energized at 22?

08:53    Someone who can do the splits doesn’t just one day do a split – they got to that place by practicing every day until it was possible and then easy for them to do so

09:17    What I’m actually asking myself when I ask who I want to become is really about how I want to practice and what experiences do I want to have more frequently

09:39    We need to allow ourselves to have or do something poorly before we do it well

10:14    The person who I was and who I want to be is someone who flopped on her face frequently but never gave up and kept trying

10:44    It’s important to find the people in your life who are really supportive of who you are becoming and what you want to achieve. It gives you so much strength to keep going after you flop on your face

11:30    Don’t carry just a small tiny candle for yourself, be with people who are stoking a bonfire for you

13:29    What do we really need on our journey to achieve our goals? We need to find the support for our journey and make sure it’s there for us when we need it when times get tough

14:26    I enjoy making my goals just difficult enough now that they are challenging for me but doable in small chunks

15:23    I like helping people welcome a sense of peace into the setback stages of our lives and make peace with the process so that we enjoy the journey as well as the successes along the way

16:43    Be determined and look at why you want the goal you have so that y