Episode #39: In this week’s episode, I share three powerful questions that can help us reach our goals and projects more quickly and easily. I also share two of my favorite books this year.

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Show Transcript:

Lupe Prado

Hi, this is Lupe Prado. I am a career and life coach, and you’re listening to Paid Vocation. In this podcast, I’ll be sharing real stories of people who are doing work they love to help you find work that you love, whether that’s a new role at your current company, switching careers completely, or starting a business.

And if you’re already doing work that you love, this podcast will be a place that you can come back to feel supported and uplifted. Thank you so much for listening.

Welcome to episode 39 of Paid Vocation. This week on the podcast, I thought I’d do something a little bit different and shared three questions that have been really helpful for me when thinking about my goals or projects. The first question is how can I let this be easy? I first heard this concept from one of my favorite people to follow, Susie Moore.

Susie is one of the most positive people I know, and also one of the most successful. She says, “Let it be easy.” When I first heard that phrase, I thought, wow, I do tend to make things harder than they need to be. And the phrase, “let it be easy,” suggests that there’s always an easier way. When I think of it, it always looks like a burden off my shoulders in both my personal and professional life.

Even as I brainstormed what I wanted to say for this episode, I was thinking I should re-read a book that I read recently. It’s Called Effortless by Greg McKeown which I highly recommend by the way. And then I thought that rereading Effortless would be more work, and the whole book is about asking ourselves, how can we make things more effortless?

The author, Greg McKeown shares, what if instead we consider the possibility that the reason something feels hard is that we haven’t yet found the easier way to do it? So I invite you to think about a goal or a project that you’re working on and ask yourself, how can I let this be easy? There’s usually an easier way.

Question number two, who could help me with this goal? Another recent book that I really enjoyed was called Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. In this book, the author suggests that the reason that goals can feel hard is that we are trying to figure out how to achieve them by ourselves. A better way to achieve our goals is to ask ourselves, who can help me with this goal?

For example, when starting this podcast I was feeling so overwhelmed by all the technical aspects of creating a podcast. When someone in my podcast group suggested we hire a podcast editor, I decided to go for it and hire my podcast editor, Anne.  If it had not been for Anne and her amazing team, I would not have a podcast today.

Anne and her team were the “who” that helped me reach my goal. And for Anne and her company, it was an opportunity to continue growing her company. When we ask the question “Who?”, it’s a win for both parties. So when thinking about your goals or projects, instead of asking, how can I achieve this goal? I invite you to ask yourself, who could help me reach my goal?

And the final question that I wanted to share with you is this, who are the five people in my life whose opinions and advice I value the most? I like to ask this question to myself and to my coaching clients because sometimes as we think about a goal, we are paralyzed by what others will think of us. We think thoughts like everyone will judge me. When we think about the five people whose opinions we value and respect the most, we realize that those five people are usually the ones that are cheering for us and our goals anyway.

Last year, I took Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead training, and during this training, we were asked to write the name of these people within one-inch by one-inch squares. We could write as many names as fit in that square. What I realized was that the people that fit that description were a pretty small group of people. Another way to think about judgment and the thought of everyone will judge me is to get clear on who everyone is. Write down the names of specific people that you believe will judge you, and that usually helps us still better because usually, we realize there really aren’t a lot of people in that bucket either. 

So as a final thought, please know that when thinking about our goals, the person whose opinion matters the most is you. 

Thank you so much for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

Thank you so much for listening to this show. I hope that you found the episode helpful. And if you liked the show, please subscribe and don’t forget to rate and review. I’d also love to connect on Instagram. Send me a DM, I’m @lupepradocoaching. I’ll talk to you soon.