Do you believe you can have what you want? A gift to get you closer from a Martha Beck coach.

As a Martha Beck coach since 2003, I have never for one moment regretted becoming a certified life coach. Recently, I had the honor of watching a Zoom meeting with Martha & our community of Martha Beck coaches, also called Wayfinder Coaches.

Her answer to the first question from a fellow Martha Beck coach blew my mind so much that I listened to it a few times and took copious notes. The question was about reconciling longing with loving what is from Byron Katie’s work. Here’s what Martha said:

 

“I believe that longing is knowing you’re meant to have a thing without believing you can have it.

Longing is a signal that there’s something the higher self is trying to tell us about our future and that we can depend on, rely on, we can totally expect to feel the way we long to feel.
That sense of separation from what is meant to be is the problem. You can go straight from longing to believing and then open yourself to any way that feeling state wants to happen.

Will it always come the way we think it will?

It will come through learning to trust the Universe. Notice the longing is not for a thing, but for the feeling state that the thing will bring. You are definitely meant to have that feeling state. Circumstances form around that to validate it.

When there’s a joyful idea and a trust that it will happen, [these] replace longing. But if you’re not there yet, longing is a wonderful signal telling you what wants to happen in your life and your job is to learn to trust it’s coming.

Likely, in a very different way than you expect, but it’s coming.”
-Martha Beck

We often put our deepest longings on the back burner, ESPECIALLY when we don’t believe they can happen, are not sure they will happen, or don’t see exactly HOW to get there.

“Manifesting means rolling up your sleeves, working as hard as you can, and letting magic fill in the gaps.”
-Martha Beck

 

This is especially hard when you’ve tried and tried and it hasn’t worked yet. It’s easier to try from a place of pure hope and naivete than it is from hard-won experience and “failure.”

And failure can be fuel.

“The only way you succeed in life is by failing and failing well.” ~Michelle Obama

 

“There are secret opportunities hidden inside every failure.” ~Sophia Amoruso

One thing that’s been coming up with clients, and of course myself as well (that’s how it works), is short-term vs. long-term goals.

You can have a goal, a vision, or a dream, but if you don’t believe it can happen, you may be spinning your wheels or running on the hamster wheel of the expectations of others, but not putting intentional effort into what you want.

It sounds simple, but it requires that you take those actions leading to long-term goals in the midst of what you have going on today, tomorrow, next week, etc. Often tasks that lead to long-term goals get put on the back burner due to short-term and daily demands…or habits that distract you from them, like spending more time than you’d like on social media(relatable huh?).

It’s easy to say what you want to have accomplished in 1 year or 5 years. But to make it happen, you need to:

1) clarify your vision and goals,
2) break down the steps you need to take to get there,
3) prioritize taking consistent action toward your long-term goals
4) create a timeline with accountability, structure, and/or support to be consistent and create momentum,
5) believe it can happen.

This means you need to consistently mix in action steps that move you toward your long-term goals, not just your short-term goals.

This is why #4 above, creating a timeline with accountability, structure, and support, is imperative. Otherwise, you forget about the long-term goals or you stress about them without taking clear steps toward them.

Examples of Short-Term Goals:
Implement current marketing strategy in 2-3 hours per week
Research, find, & hire a new accountant
Send content to my social media manager
Organize my studio
Follow up with leads weekly

Examples of Long-Term Goals:
Optimize business systems (sales, marketing, admin, hiring, organization, etc.)
Create a new product or service
Research and implement strategies to grow my audience
Write a book
Teach retreat abroad
Take a week-long training in my field in a warm place in winter

For example, you want to write a book, but your current client load, projects, and administrative tasks take up all of your work time, so you’re not making progress.

What do you do?

Acknowledge that writing a book takes time. It’s a long-term project.
Understand what your goal is really about.

Short-term goals can be connected to long-term goals. For example, if your goal is to have 10K Instagram followers, a weekly goal of spending 5 hours creating and posting content would support the long-term goal.

In addition to training as a Martha Beck coach, I also became a Best Year Yet Certified Coach in 2017. The processes I learned from this system support clients to hold both short-term and long-term goals while taking action to create them over a year. This very powerful process that has even been used for teams to climb Mt. Everest begins with your vision and uses a system of planning and accountability to make it happen. If the process can support a team to climb Mt. Everest, it can get you to your vision.

Take a moment and reflect on what you would need to believe to prioritize long-term goals and create your vision.

What would you be saying yes to?
What would you need to say no to?

Stretch into believing you can have what you want. Receive this 10-minute visualization as a gift to practice being in your desired feeling state. This unique version of the Future Self tool I learned as a Martha Beck coach 21 years ago, can really shift your feeling state into belief.