CP 004: Marie Forleo’s Question To Decide Whether To Pursue Something

Episode 004 – Deciding Whether To Pursue Something Or Not

Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number four!

So in today's episode I wanted to talk about something very important. Essentially, how do you know whether you're working on the right thing?
This episode is actually inspired by Marie Forleo. She has a book out called Everything Is Figureoutable and in this book she includes a section that says “Fear versus Intuition: How To Tell The Difference.”

Now that section title really spoke to me because personally I've always questioned myself as to whether I am working on the right thing and I'm sure you have as well, especially if you're an entrepreneur or somebody who's going after your goals.

So in this episode I'm going to review the exercise that Marie talks about that will answer that question for you. It's something very simple that you can do today and it I found it to be extremely effective.

So stick around. We have more coming up!

All right, so before we get into this episode, I just want to ask, if you have not already subscribed, please subscribe to the Creation Peak Show and if you're already a Creation Peak Tribe member, thank you so much. You are very, very appreciated!

So as I was thinking about today's episode, I realized that it's really good timing. The reason is that today is January 1st, 2020. Happy new year everybody! And during the new year, a lot of times we tend to think about what it is that we want to accomplish. What are our goals for this coming year? How do we want to improve ourselves, our improve our lives to better match our dreams and to in that pursuit. A lot of times we come up with ideas, things that will get us closer. Personally, when I come up with things that I want to do, I tend to have this overwhelming.

Sometimes it's like an anxiety, a fear, and I've found in my experience that when you're afraid to do something, a lot of times that's a good signal. It means you're on the right track. But what if it's your gut? What if it's your gut saying, no, this is wrong? How do we tell? So as I was reading the section in this book, I was thinking about how I'm really going to adopt this practice that I'll describe in just a bit for everything I do because it's so simple. And what I really like about it is it uses intuition and mindfulness. And I think a lot of times it's easy to just kind of dismiss intuition or not pay too much attention to it. But our inner voice really does have a lot of answers to our questions. And I think it's important to repeat this information because I think a lot of us have question.

In fact, before I even started the Creation Peak site and this podcast, I had my own questions as an entrepreneur and I found so many people asking this question about whether there were working on the right thing and how do you know this is a hurdle that you should overcome versus something that you should just walk away from.

So I'm going to go ahead and describe this exercise. If you're driving you definitely do not want to do this now, if you are doing something that requires your attention or any sort of physical activity, then I would hold off and relisten to this episode when you have some time to yourself.

So thinking about the question you have, whether you're having normal fear, which you have the opportunity to grow from, or whether the situation is not something that aligns with your soul and you should walk away.

This is where we're going to do the exercise and we're going to get the answer to this question.

So get into a comfortable seated or standing position that's quiet. Close your eyes and take a few deep full breaths. Marie suggests at least three. You want to be mindful of what you're doing. Be present now.

Ask yourself the following question and be sure to pay attention to the immediate response you get after asking yourself this question, here's the question.

Does saying yes to this, make me feel expansive or contracted?

As Marie states in the book, do you feel an openness, a lightness or do you feel a sense of heaviness and dread?

When I did this exercise myself, I actually asked myself a question that I had already felt a certain kind of way about and it was a really good response when I asked myself this question.

In fact, it surprised me because I almost felt like I was going to levitate. I felt so light, so free, just so amazing. And it was something that I wasn't expecting. And as an experiment, I tried this again with another question. I was already on the fence about it and I really wanted to know what the physical sensations were since, since I had had such a positive experience with that first question.

So I asked Marie's question in regards to something else and that also shocked me because I got an immediate stomach ache. I was really, really surprised by the physical sensations that I was having. So I'm not sure that everybody's going to have such a drastic physical sensation when you take this, uh, when you perform this exercise. But there is something else that you can do if you don't have quite such a direct intuitive response when you ask yourself this question.

I actually listened to a podcast by Marie Forleo and uh, just a side note, I will link all of these resources. Um, but in her podcast she said that if you want, you can actually have somebody help you with this. So what you can do is you can get into a comfortable position and have somebody that you trust, help you with this and ask you this question and then just respond. Don't think, just respond authentically as you feel and ask that person to listen to your voice, the tone of your voice, watch your face. Does body, uh, body language, all of that stuff. Because then they can come back to you and they can say, you know, when I asked you this question, you were, for example, light and happy and your expression, everything was flowing in a very positive way. Versus did you get a little bit tighter when you talked about it?
Did you feel like you were, um, down whatever it is. And that's also another option that you can do in order to get the answer to this very important question. And I wanted to mention something else. Um, Marie actually includes a list of questions in the same section and a couple of them really hit home for me when thinking about whether you should do something or not. Um, she has a bunch of questions, but here are a couple that really resonated.

One was do I really want to do this? Not should, but want to do that. That really got me.

And another one is if I had $20 million sitting in the bank, would I still do this? That one got to me as well because financial freedom is something that I am always working towards. And when thinking about the thing that made me feel light and happy and free, I thought about these questions and I could genuinely answer yes to both of them.

Hell yes, actually.

So the important thing is if you get the green light to go forward with something, then definitely take action, start writing down your ideas, just record things, make sure you have like a mobile device to record ideas as you're somewhere. I've noticed some of my best ideas have always come when I'm out and about and I didn't set out to brainstorm. If you like software like I do, there's always always a mind mapping software like MindMeister, things of that nature where you can really get your ideas down and then start to structure them, organize them, and be on your way.

I hope this helps you with whatever project you're pursuing and remember that if you have a dream or a desire to do anything and it brings you joy, it's definitely worth pursuing and you are good enough and you will achieve whatever it is that you're looking forward to. I'm rooting for you.

So if you would like to see all of the resources that I've made available for this episode, then you can go to creationpeak.com/new and you can go ahead and get all the show notes and everything I've mentioned in this episode.

Again, thank you so much for being here with me. It is an absolute pleasure to record this, and may you have a wonderful year!