Have you ever wondered how you’ve got to where you are today? Maybe you’re making loads of progress and achieving amazing thing or maybe you feel totally stuck, like you’re going round and round in circles, not getting to where you want to get to.
A few years ago I remember having a sinking feeling when I asked myself, ‘how did I get here?’ – I felt stuck, lost and confused. I thought I was having a quarter life crisis.
Fast-forward to now and I asked myself the same question, “how did I get here?” – I have just won an award, had dinner sat next to Prince Andrew, had a massive picture of my face on one of the most prestigious building in London, have a network of over 30,000 women, have created a magazine read by thousands of women every single month.
Nothing else changed in my life, I didn’t suddenly have an epiphany, I didn’t suddenly come into loads of money, I didn’t suddenly meet someone who helped me to change my life. But I did learn 2 amazing lessons that changed everything.
Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be sharing these ideas with you. I truly believe that if you apply them, amazing things will happen in your life too.
In the video above, I share my story about what happened before I set up the Female Entrepreneur Association, which you might want to watch before you read on.
How to get what you want: Part One
This might seem obvious, but in order to get what you want you have to know what it is that you want. The problem most people make with this (myself included) is that they know what material things they want; they know what car they’d like to drive, what house they might want, what watch they want. They know they want to be successful. But this isn’t enough, this isn’t what I’m talking about, this isn’t going to help you, although it’s a good start.
When I started my first business I wanted to be successful, but I had no idea what that meant. I knew I wanted to make lots of money, so I could buy a nice car, but so what?! When I had the money and bought the nice car it was a good moment, but in the grand scheme of things I felt totally unfulfilled, because that wasn’t what I really wanted in life, that was just something I wanted to have.
For years I couldn’t understand how I’d managed to build a really successful business, but felt so unhappy. Then I figure out that it was because I had never bothered to really consider what my dream was in life – what I actually wanted to achieve (not just have).
I read a book called The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and in one of the chapters he says something like “Imagine walking into a dark room. All of your friends and family are sat down. As you walk down the centre of the room you see a box and as you get to the front of the room you realise that you’re in it. It’s your funeral.” He goes on to say, “what kind of things do you want the people to be saying about the kind of person you were, about the kind of life you lived and about the kind of things you achieved.”
I realised as I read that chapter that I’d got it all wrong – the money, the watch, the car were all nice, but they aren’t what my life is about. So I had to figure out what I did want my life to be about.
I sat down and I asked myself, “what kind of person do I want to be?” and “what do I want to achieve in my life?”
Knowing what kind of person I wanted to be was fairly straight forward. I knew I wanted be kind, generous and have integrity. I knew I wanted to be the person that had the guts to try and make amazing things happen in life, no matter how scary it was. I knew I wanted to be happy. I wrote everything down and then I made a commitment with myself to become that person.
Knowing what I wanted to achieve in life was a completely different ball game. If I’m being completely honest, it is one of the hardest questions I’ve ever asked myself. It wasn’t something I figured out immediately, it took time, because when I first asked myself that question I just didn’t know the answer.
It was the second lesson I learnt that helped me to really do figure it out and I’ll share that with you next week!
Knowing what you truly want in life and what kind of person you want to be will help you to stay on track, it will help you to achieve amazing things and live an amazing life. Make time to ask yourself these questions every month. I do.
Carrie xx
