Gaining Emotional Clarity to Attain Prosperity in All That You Aspire to Accomplish
Every goal you have is really an external cover.
A cover for what?
For the true feelings you wish to achieve and feel.
For example, you may have a weight-loss goal and tell yourself that your goal is to lose 20 pounds…
But in reality, you want to experience the feelings of confidence, control, certainty, and inner calm, and to feel sexy, strong, and energized!
And this remains true whether you’re trying to los weight, make more money, find a romantic partner, etc: it’s all about chasing a collection of feelings.
In today’s episode, listen in as Paul discusses how gaining clarity on the emotional state we’re seeking BEFORE setting a goal or focusing on a habit is a game changer when it comes to not only setting the right goals, but accelerating progress toward what we really are aspiring to attain.
When you’re clear on the emotions you’re seeking to experience, you’ll be better prepared to appropriately align the action steps necessary to make those feelings a reality.
Episode Highlights
- We all have a default operating state that is either negative, neutral, or positive. Understanding yours helps you to understand why you set the goals you do; this knowledge is powerful to set better goals and gain better clarity on why you set them.
- Before setting a tangible, external goal, it’s invaluable to write down at least three adjectives that describe how you want to feel (feelings you assume accomplishing that goal will bring about)
- When you’re clear on the emotions you’re seeking to experience, you’ll be better prepared to appropriately align the action steps necessary to make those feelings a reality.
Episode Resources
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Transcript
Paul Salter:
Joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, confidence, certainty, awe, elevation, contentment. And of course, anger, frustration, sadness, bitterness, guilt, regret. Feelings, our emotional state, incredibly powerful when it comes to driving behavior and helping us attain the goals that we so desire.
Welcome back the ladies and gentlemen to the 5% Way Podcast. My name is Paul Salter. I am your host, registered dietician. And today I am enjoyed by my wonderful two co-hosts, Mr. Alvin Salter, my dog, and Mr. Boo Salter, my cat, because as soon as I started hit record, they got eerily close to me and are sitting within three feet of one another, which is pretty rare, they coexist well, and within five feet of me and it’s very tight quarters unnecessarily so. And sadly, it’s just me running the show today as our wonderful co-host of the 5% Way Podcast Miss Micheala Barsotti is continuing to finish up her holiday travels, enjoying her time with family and friends to the fullest.
But I’m really excited to be here and happy and really looking forward to talking about… This general topic falls under the umbrella of ours can called emotional intelligence, which in, our layman’s terms, really boils down to emotional awareness and emotional management. And today I want to share a strategy that has been incredibly impactful in my own personal journey when it comes to helping me gain clarity on what I want to achieve, what goals I want to go after. It’s been incredibly powerful in helping me identify the action steps, the habits, or the goals even to set, and ultimately it’s been a powerful accelerator when it comes to reaching that goal, that temporary end destination before seeking the next one.
And every thing we do, we seek, and we desire is rooted in a feeling, an emotional state, a collection of feelings. And the example that I want to begin with here, just to really give you a parallel or an opportunity to latch on to something relatable is your scale based goal. You don’t really care about weighing 145 pounds on the scale. Sure, there’s a little bit of an ego involvement when it comes to seeing those numbers for whatever reason, based on your childhood conditioning, your environment, how and who and when and why you interact with the fitness industry and diet culture as a whole. But the truth is that scale number is just a mask or a bandaid, or just really a facade. I think that might be the best word related to what you truly are after and aspire to attain.
You see so many of us set weight loss goals that are rooted in a goal, based in a feeling of how we used to feel in the past. And what I mean is sure, you might have been ecstatic to see 145 pounds on the scale in the past, and this is a very arbitrary example. And now maybe you’re 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds away and the reason you latch onto that number in particular has nothing to do with that number. It’s just three random digits thrown together on a clunk metal or generated by clunk metal. But what you’re really after are the collective feelings that you associate with that time in your life when this scale did show with that number, because the chances are, there was a hell of a lot of confidence, control, serenity, joy, gratitude, discipline, grit, pride, interest, all so many positive emotions were surrounding you inside and out when you did weigh that number previously on the scale. So it makes sense that you are attracted to that number.
And ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that the last 18 months of my life, I’ve been really studying the simple prompt and question, journaling endlessly about it, who do I need to become to, blank? Whether it’s setting a big audacious goal for myself, who do I need to become to be the best husband, father, coach leader, teammate, son, brother. Or who do I need to become to grow the 5% community, run a better mile time, achieve this look, learn this skill. And I’ve spent a lot of time trying to examine not only the thoughts, the self talk, the beliefs, and the habits of those who have achieved what it is I’m aspiring, but I’ve begun to look inward to gain clarity on what needs to change in my mind to become said person or to adapt those characteristics I just described.
And what I’ve just recently discovered after about 18 months of beginning to tackle this, is that I’ve been missing an incredibly valuable, complimentary piece of the equation. And that piece of the equation is how do I want to feel? You see, there is a collection of feelings behind the facade that I convince myself I am really trying to attain. Someone who is the best husband, the best father, coach, son, brother, role model, neighbor, community member, activist, whatever it may be. You see he, or she, whatever you have cultivated as a vision of him or her in your mind, you are cultivating that vision because it’s related to how you want to feel. You want to feel like you are a better, fill in the blank. You are confident of stepping in the role, fill in the blank. You want to feel a sense of confidence, control, certainty, pride, accomplishment, and just downright state of all, after you do achieve your goal.
You see everything we are doing, aspiring and seeking and chasing is rooted in feelings. And as this episode airs incredibly timely, which of course is intentional, as we look here at the turn of the new year, it’s December 30th, 2021 as I record this episode, or 29th, it’ll be published on the 30th. And we’re at the end of the year, this is the prime time to reassess what’s transpired this past year, the prime time to re assess how you’re going to make this coming year different.
And what I encourage you to do to ensure that the goals you set for yourself, the habits you decide to dedicate your time, energy, and effort to is to gain clarity on what emotional state you want to operate at as a default in the near future. What feelings do you want to experience as the new norm moving into the future? And the chances are, because this is why we set new goals and attempt to build new habits. A lot of our default emotional state or feelings might be rooted in neutrality, and for some of us listening, rooted in negativity. Maybe the default operating network is slightly biased towards anxiety, guilt, regret, feeling like a failure, inconsistency, uncertainty, inner chaos, and turmoil. That’s why we do seek to change our behaviors, to change our mindset.
It’s to transform the emotional state we are living in. You see, everything is rooted in changing feelings. And I encourage you before you go down the rabbit hole, setting goals, get clear on how you want to feel. How do you want to feel in your work life, your professional life, your pursuits, your purpose on this earth. How do you want to feel in your romantic relationship? How do you want to feel in your friendships and your familial role in life? How do you want to feel in your own body with your own thoughts, physically, energetically, your mental wellbeing. What are adjectives that come to mind? And I encourage you, because this is exact what I fucking did. Google list of positive emotions. It’s that simple. Start gravitating towards these. Reviewing these lists. You’ll find quick list of dozens and dozens, positivepsychology.com I believe is the one that jump started my rabbit hole outline in preparation for this episode.
Just start reviewing these emotions, which ones resonate with you, which one are you gravitating towards? And, funny enough, this just came into my mind. You see this time of year, especially all those people who post, what do they call it? Word searches on social media, and they say something along the lines of the three words you see most are the theme of your year. Go peruse those. See what emotions are in your ether, which ones are interacting most with your reticular activating system, your RAS. And that’s going to help you determine what emotional state you are seeking right now in your life. What emotional state collection of feelings you need most in your life right now.
And I do quickly want to apologize for Alvin snoring in the background. Clearly I am boring him, but I digress.
So here’s where things get really powerful and really kind of Xs and Os here. When you have your adjectives, your feelings, so whether you want to feel a sense of calm, serenity, inner peace, no more chaos and turmoil, whether turmoil, excuse me, whether you want to feel a sense of confidence, pride and accomplishment, maybe it’s joy and gratitude. This helps you to reverse engineer and align the appropriate actions to achieve these goals, and the reason I think this is important is because this time of year, there are so many goals. Millions of people set the same fucking goals every single year, drink more water, get more sleep, exercise more, read more, get organized, stop smoking, et cetera. And these are wonderful things to pursue, but you want to make sure that you’re only taking on a very small handful of new task, habits, or goals.
And probably most importantly, for the majority of you listening, myself included, before you take on any new goals or habits, your goals should be rooted in refining your current habits because it’s the simplicity and the basics done over and over that drive to true progress, lasting change, and a transformation to our feelings and emotional state. But the reason I share some of those common examples is because we’re all exposed to them this time of year. And for example, if you learn after the fact, that what you’re really chasing right now in your life is just gratitude, you can drink fucking three gallons of water all day, every day, and completely transform your hydration habits and it’ll lead to some positive changes, but it’s probably not going to bring you the feeling of gratitude that you’re looking for. That’s why it’s intentional that we gain clarity on what we want to feel, what our emotional state default desire is, so we can best pair our actions and our new habits, goals, and focus to align with bringing us that said collection of feelings.
And once you gain the clarity and you choose your habit or your goal to focus on, a really great thing happens, this is where we get to ascend to a perpetual cycle of positivity. Because as you be begin to prioritize and double down on those select few goals that are going to bring you more energy or better clarity, better organization and prioritization skills, you’re going to find that through consistent execution, you create space with your time, energetically and emotionally, to take on another or skill, goal, or habit, which further enhances this beautiful synergistic effect of the feeling you originally were seeking to begin with. And it just flourishes and flourishes. And that is incredibly powerful and incredibly rewarding. And the only thing you need to do different in your goal setting process, is before you set your goals and determine where you want to make improvements in your life, what you want to focus on, gain clarity on how you want to feel. Like real clarity.
And I suggest two, maybe three adjectives to set the theme, not even for the year for Q1, the next three months, 12 or 13 weeks, whatever it may be. Gain clarity on two or three adjectives you really want to feel and embody and demonstrate on a daily basis and align those one to three goals, habits, action, steps appropriately to make those feelings come to fruition a hell of a lot sooner because you’re taking methodical intentional action and you’re taking massive action one day at a time. And as I scroll through my notes here, I believe that’s all I wanted to share.
The last thing I’ll share actually to reiterate just the power of emotions is, like I joked, but I’m dead serious is I recorded this episode this morning. It’s now 1:17 PM Eastern Time as I record it now, I just kind of felt meh about it. There was some lingering regret that I wasn’t organized enough. I wasn’t enthusiastic enough. I wasn’t clear and concise in my verbiage and my conversation. You see me accentuating my pronunciation of each word and I felt I could do better. And it lingered with me for a bit. And I’m admittedly my own harshest critic, but I wanted to do better. I wanted to feel better about my performance, my work. So I fucking redid it, and here we are 15 minutes into this episode and I can already tell it’s 10 times better than the one this morning.
But the power of emotion here is, think about it like this. Every single day, you have a gajillion number of thoughts, just continuing to go in and out your brain all throughout the entire brain atmosphere or in environment. But there’s a select few that always stay with you. Why? Because they’re not even thoughts. They’re beliefs. In order for a thought to become elevated to a belief, and a belief is something that has a dramatic influence, incredible sway and impact into shaping our actions, our results, outcomes, identity, and reality, and in order for a thought to become elevated to a belief it needs to have a powerful emotion attached to it. And you can see this example in your own world in a matter of seconds. Think of some of the things you believe in. Automatically, you might start feeling it in your body. You might feel your blood pressure or your blood flow change. You might feel some pain, tingling, and tightness in your chest, the pit of your stomach, and your throat, et cetera. You might have this urge to stand up and shout. You might feel your heart rate elevating, that adrenaline flowing through your brain, or through your body, excuse me, and through your brain, I guess. That’s where I’m at today.
Beliefs are powerful. They drive massive action. And it’s all because of the pairing of a thought and emotion. So gain clarity on the emotional state you are truly seeking and let that be the guiding light, the influencing factor to accelerate the alignment of your actions that need to happen to make those feelings come to fruition and to live your fucking best life.
And ladies and gentlemen, that is all I’ve got for you today on the 5% Way Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Micheala and I sincerely appreciate it. We hope you are enjoying the new direction of the show and we would love to have hear from you. Send us a DM on Instagram, always linked in our show notes, reach out to us, tell us what you like, what you want to see more of, less of, don’t like, whatever it may be, we are here to serve you, and we sincerely appreciate you making the time to listen.
And if you did find this episode in particular valuable, share it with a friend, leave us a genuine, honest rating and review on iTunes, Apple podcast, wherever you listen to your podcast, because that only helps us spread our messaging, our values, our beliefs, our emotion to other like-minded people to help transform the lives of others, which is why we are here. So thank you again for listening. Have a fantastic rest of your day and we’ll catch you in the next episode.