[00:00:00] Welcome to the Business Miracles podcast. I'm Heather Dominick, founder of www.businessmiracles.com and author of the book Different: The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution found at www.differentthebook.com. Since 2010, I've been training Highly Sensitive Entrepreneurs and Leaders from around the globe to work less while making more impact and income by doing things differently. I'm so glad you joined me. Listen in and get ready. Get ready for a shift in the way you view yourself, your work, your life. A business miracle.
[00:00:39] This is A Course in Business Miracles podcast episode 157 Intuitive Goal Setting. In this podcast episode, I'm sharing how to use the powerful combination of science based research partnered with your highly sensitive strength of intuition so you can consistently set and reach doable goals that will give you an ongoing boost to your systolic blood pressure, keep you motivated, and have you able to take consistent action.
[00:01:14] We are here to give attention to setting a considerably huge goal.
So once upon a time there was a daddy long-leg spider and a caterpillar. And the daddy long-leg spider and the caterpillar we're taking a walk together, enjoying the day, feeling the sun, light breeze. And the daddy long-leg spider turns to the caterpillar and says, "My gosh, you have a lot of legs. How do you ever decide which leg to start walking with?" And the caterpillar paused, took that in, stopped, sat down and thought about it, and thought about it, and thought some more about it, and tried thinking just a little bit more and then thought some more about it and then thought some more about it until the caterpillar never walked again.
Breath in and let it out. Intellect alone can only get us so far and sometimes when we try to rely on the intellect alone, it can actually stop us in our tracks. Different: The Highly Sensitive Leadership Revolution, page 77, magnitude versus littleness. Though being of service is one of our greatest motivators as highly sensitive entrepreneurs and highly sensitive leaders, and is thoroughly rewarding, it takes a fierce diligence commitment. We must be consistently engaged in the process of shifting from untrained to trained and creating rather than only coping. This is why magnitude versus littleness, a teaching that traces its origin to the spiritual and psychological curriculum of a Course in Miracles is a foundation training in the Business Miracles Highly Sensitive Leadership training program for entrepreneurs.
Back in the early 2000s, when I was first exposed to the coaching industry, there was a phrase I heard a lot: "Play a bigger game." I'm sure it's a phrase still used by a lot of coaches. Every time I heard this phrase, it didn't sit well with me. At the time, I thought this was because there was something wrong with me. I thought, "Oh, there's all this talk of playing a bigger game and all it does is make me want to run and hide. What's wrong with me?" Now I understand that as a highly sensitive person, I heard that phrase and my nervous system immediately interpreted it as pressure.
As Dr. Aaron states, highly sensitives don't just try to protect themselves from being overwhelmed, but they try to protect themselves from even the slightest possibility of becoming overwhelmed. Without understanding at the time what was happening with my nervous system, I figured there was something wrong with me if I wasn't out there playing a bigger game. Rather than this phrase motivating me, and I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that this is the intention, it plugged into my highly sensitive sense of feeling like I was not enough.
We always have a choice between the smaller socialized version of ourselves and the more magnanimous essential version of ourselves. Whatever choice we make will impact everything we do and all decisions we make. When I first connected with this teaching from a Course in Miracles, my response was, "Wait, what? What? Hold the phone, you mean I'm responsible for this? It isn't happening to me?"
As with everything, mindset management is an ongoing process. However, being able to consistently return to the teaching that I already have what I want and need as a core practice has provided a rock-solid foundation. I may slip off the rock, but I can always come back to the rock rather than feeling unmoored, untethered and completely adrift as I previously did. This is where we remember how Course in Miracles describes the Holy Spirit, that part within your mind that is automatically and naturally connected to your inner guidance, to your higher self, to the magic and the miracles of the universe at large. That part knows what your function is. You already have everything you need. Everything I desired that you desire, the value, the worth, the money, was already in me, is already in you because it is me. It is you. My magnitude is what's natural to me. Your magnitude is what's natural to you. What this means for us as highly sensitive leaders is to stop trying to be someone we are not and to instead tap deeply into our highly sensitive strengths and lead from this space.
My magnitude, your magnitude is within everything that is natural to us as highly sensitives. We are aware of subtleties in our surroundings, better at spotting errors and good at avoiding making errors. We are highly conscientious. We can concentrate deeply. We are vigilant, we are accurate. We can detect minor differences, we can process materials to deep levels of what psychologists call somatic memory, which references how our bodies will remember even what our minds may forget.
We also are often thinking about our own thinking. We can learn without being aware we've learned. We are deeply impacted by another person's moods and feelings, and when our nervous system is trained, we can use this to make sharp, accurate decisions quickly. We are specialists in fine motor movement. We are very good at holding still. We're more right-brained, less linear, and more creative in a synthesizing way. We are more sensitive to things in the air, able to imagine possibilities, able to be visionary, able to understand how complex life and death really are. We are the royal advisors, counselors, teachers, coaches, historians, healers, upholders of justice, creatives. We are the balance to the other 80%. Breathe in, and let it out.
So this section of different is a beautiful preface or pre-step to what it means to connect with a considerably huge goal. A considerably huge goal is not about goal setting or it's also not about not goal setting, but the way in which we set goals as highly sensitive entrepreneurs and leaders. For myself, when I was first starting off in business at the time where I was hearing throughout the coaching industry to play a bigger game and that phrase as I shared in the book didn't really support me. It did not motivate me. It actually worked against me. So at that time, not knowing that I was highly sensitive, I turned to a Course in Miracles for guidance. I didn't want the choice to only be either A, I play a bigger game; or B, I don't. I thought there must be a middle way. What does that look like? What does that sound like? What does that feel like for me? That's when I connected into the teaching of a Course in Miracles of magnitude versus littleness.
I used that teaching to begin the process of what eventually evolved into intuitive planning to connect in with my heart, to connect in with that part of the self that the course refers to as the Holy Spirit, asking for guidance of what was my more meant to look like. Rather than setting a goal from my head based on shoulds, based on comparison, based on pressure-induced coaching. Instead, where was my heart calling me to as my next step, my next level of evolvement, the experience of expansion, and using what I now understand to be our creative strength as highly sensitives. Ultimately we are here to create as human beings, highly sensitive or not. We can take a look at a history book, hopefully an accurate one, and we can see how human beings have evolved over the years, always engaged and motivated to create more.
So how then do we as highly sensitives take the research that really demonstrates the values of goal setting and adapt it to be able to be of service and support for our creation process as a person who has a highly sensitive nervous system? Well, first, it's actually really valuable to look at the research and really understand what that is, what the heck is being discovered when it comes to creating goals or setting goals. So for that, most recently I turned to The Neuroscience of Goals and Behavior change, a 2018 paper from the Consulting Psychology Journal. I really appreciated this paper because of the connection between goal setting and neuroscience and behavior change, because ultimately isn't that the point of setting a goal? Not to have a different end result, but to have a different behavior experience.
So according to this paper, setting goals are linked with higher motivation, with higher self-esteem, self-confidence and autonomy. A person who is focused and goal-oriented is likely to have a more positive approach towards life and perceive failures as temporary setbacks rather than personal shortcomings or personality problems. Self goals allow for self-evaluation and then increase in self-esteem, meaning the goal that you choose to set for yourself. Kind of like for the fun of it from a space of lightheartedness, optimism and play. Oh, wouldn't this be fun? Wouldn't this be interesting? Let's see what happens. To set that goal for yourself allows for then the process of self-evaluation. "Oh, how did I do? Did that work? What worked well? What didn't work so well? And what would I like to do differently as I continue on this process of my self goal?" And then increase self-esteem by being able to acknowledge small changes and improvements.
Also, according to the research, we don't need validation from others once we have achieved the goals we set for ourselves.
Another aspect of the research that I found super interesting and fascinating is that goal setting gives a boost to our systolic blood pressure, SBP, which makes us ready to take action. Amazing, right? You set a goal, your blood pressure changes, motivating you, supporting you, and feeling ready to take action. Super cool.
When the goal is tricky and yet achievable, so meaning just a little bit of a challenge but doable, the SBP gets an enhanced spike, and this part I loved from the research, that increases our zeal to act and achieve it. Literally the word used in a research paper and those of you who have been training with me for a while, you know that I really appreciate the word zeal. It is that motivation, it is that energy, it is that optimism. Now, impossible or challenging goals set by should or the ones that make us question our abilities are linked with low systolic thrust and they do not provide the spike for ready action. What? So literally by setting goals based on what you think you should be setting, setting goals based on comparison, setting goals because you're trying to people please will literally lower your blood pressure, slow you down, and have you feel like you're walking through mud. Therefore, not willing to take action.
So this is one research, but extensive studies have shown how neural connections and the brain activities activate motivation to set and achieve goals. All of this providing us with really valuable information to be in a space of both and, not either I set goals and hate the experience and don't achieve them and find reasons to beat up on myself and prove, "Wow, look, see something's wrong with me. I just can't do it the way that non highly sensitive can," or just don't set goals. "F that. I don't need this. I'm going to do my own thing. I'm a creative. I don't need structure," aka the highly sensitive rebel.
Rather than either or, we have the highly sensitive leader opportunity to create a both and. To use the power of the heart, our highly sensitive strength of intuition, to set a goal that feels like enough of a stretch but still doable in order to be able to give an ongoing boost to our systolic blood pressure, SBP. Which makes us ready to act, take action, to be on the resilience side of the resistance to resilience chart for highly sensitive entrepreneurs, accessing grace and grit, and recognizing the value of the process. I don't know about you, sounds pretty good to me. A way to be in a creative process, creating what it is that you feel called to create that you want for yourself.
When I first created the concept of considerably huge goal for myself, the considerably huge wasn't about make something big that would then lower that S BP. The considerably huge was a reminder for me of magnitude, again from the course. The energy of magnetism as a natural state of being and a reminder that whatever it is that my heart is guiding me to create, whatever it is that your heart is guiding you to create, according to the course, there is a realm with which it already exists. So that's why when the course says all you desire, all that you want, you already have.
Now there is the physical human experience of then living our way into that which already exists, but again, according to the course and just by the way, Albert Einstein, they're happening at the same time.
[00:20:14] Thank you for being a part of this Business Miracles podcast episode and for beginning to dip your toe into the journey of highly sensitive leadership training. If you are ready to truly use your sensitivities as strengths in all parts of your work and life, I invite you to connect for a one on one chat. You will experience being deeply listened to and together we'll get a sense of whether the Highly Sensitive Leadership Training Programs are the best next step for you and your highly sensitive journey at this time. Just go to www.claritycall.com to schedule a conversation. We so look forward to connecting with you. Talk to you soon!
