Shannon Kaiser take listeners on an inspirational journey as she shares three easy tips to make change stick.
The Awakened & Aligned Podcast with Shannon Kaiser
Mini Speech - Make Change Stick
the name of Gadabout. She loves to travel. And she writes about what she traveled. She is on the threshold of publishing her book. Please help me welcome Shannon Geissner. Thank you. Woo! We made it! Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Hello fellow Toastmasters and honored guests. My name is Shannon Keiser. It is New Year. It's much like you said, Phyllis. How awesome. This is my favorite time of year because we have an opportunity to take a moment and look back at the year before. We have a chance to think about the things that worked really well for us, the highlights. Perhaps there were things that happened in your year. Last year, things you didn't expect. And it set your life on a whole new path. Maybe there were some low lights, some things that we're not so proud of. Usually, that's when I look at those things and I start to think of what didn't I do so well, and in the spirit of self-improvement, I want to enter into the new year, feeling even more alive, more charged, and make sure I don't make those mistakes again. That's usually when New Year's resolutions enter the sea. Let me ask you guys, how many of you have made New Year's resolutions before? Yeah. Me too. Okay. How many of you have made New Year's resolutions? And it's okay. And maybe one of them didn't come true. Right? That's even more of us. And that is the spirit of New Year's resolutions. In all honesty, they're really good to kind of focus on the future. But what happens is we're looking at something that didn't work for us and we're kind of carrying that negative energy into the new year, thinking that we're going to resolve it. I started something two years ago called intentions a little bit, a lot like resolutions, but slightly different because an intention focuses on a positive and you're setting forth into the new year ready to take charge and attack the new year with a positive energy. I wrote an article this week and it's called "Path of the Best Year of Your Life." I'm going to share with you guys tips today on how you can implement just simple, simple steps to really make 2012 the best year of your life. But it goes beyond that. Not just one year for the rest of your life. Imagine every single year being better than the last. It's possible. The first thing is to focus on what you want. Simple. It sounds simple. But the truth is most of us spend a lot of time focusing on what we don't want. We have this racket that goes on in our head and it says, "I don't want to be broke anymore. I don't want to be fat. I don't want to work at this company. I don't want it. I just keep going and going." And we don't know how to stop it because we're so clear that we know what we don't want, which is okay, as Oprah says. If you know what you don't want, it will get you to what you want faster. But the difference is if you're focusing on what you don't want and you know what you don't want, those are different. The difference is to not focus on it. Use it as a guiding stepping stone to get to where you want to go. I did this two years ago. The thing on my resolution list for five, ten years was, "I want a new job. I don't like my job." It wasn't until I said, "I want to be a travel writer. Did things change for me?" Instantly switched. I started meeting people in the travel writing industry. I started to get articles published in travel magazines just by shifting my mind slightly to focus on what I want. The second thing is to do one thing every day that your future self will thank you for. I absolutely love this one because sometimes when we have goals, they're so lofty. I want to lose so much weight. I can't stand my job. Whatever it is, it weighs down on us. It's very hard to move forward. It's almost impossible. But when we break it up into baby steps, when we really focus one day at a time, it's much easier to make a bigger difference in our life. Imagine your future self out there waving at you saying, "Come on, it's really great out here. It's all fun and you have everything you want." That is so possible for all of you guys. Just baby steps one day at a time. Maybe you have a health goal. Maybe you want to lose weight. Did you work out today? If you didn't, it's okay. Did you drink more water? It's one thing. The trick here is to not beat yourself up for the things you don't do. It's to simply honor yourself and celebrate the things that you are doing. The next one, this is my favorite, is to follow your heart. This is so important because I live the majority of my life living from up here, this racket in my head. It was telling me you should do this. You shouldn't do this. People tell you you should do this. You need to go to grad school. You need to do this. But I never asked myself, Shannon, what do you really want? It wasn't until I really did that and I let my heart speak. I found out that I truly do have these dreams and they're really possible. You guys can make your dreams come true. It's absolutely possible. We all have this little pulse. For me, it was yelling at me because I was ignoring it. It was like a little kid banging on the pots and pans, you know? And it was like, "Listen to me. You don't belong here." It took a while, but I stepped into the future me. And you guys can do that too. You truly can have the best year of your life and the best life by simply focusing on what you want. Do one thing every day that your future self is going to give you a giant hug for and to follow your heart. I'm doing a workshop in two weeks called Happy New Year, Happy New You. And would you believe that it's actually going to be here and I'd like to invite all of you guys to come and celebrate 2012. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Shannon. My gosh, I'm great words for starting the new