How To Make An Impact (Pt 2): Want What You Want

There's a sticky note on your mirror.

Maybe you wrote it last week. Maybe you've been carrying it for years without ever writing it down. The place you're not willing to end up. The woman you refuse to become.

And all week, it's been catching your eye.

If this is your first time here, let me catch you up. There's a distance between who you are right now and who you're meant to become. 

I call it the chasm. You cross it on a bridge, built one plank at a time, with a plank being nothing more than a set of Tiny Brave Steps. 

The first plank (you did this last week) is naming what you don't want. 

Not your goals. Not a five-year plan. 

The future you won't accept. That refusal is the push that gets you onto the bridge. But a push can only take you so far. 

This week, we lay the second plank. And you've already built most of it without knowing.

Turn the line around

I love this part because it turns on a light most of us struggle to turn on. 

Every refusal you've ever made is a want standing with its back to you. The no and the want are the same truth, facing opposite directions. You've been reading the line on your mirror from one side. Turn it around.

Like this:

I don’t want to disappear into everyone else's needs. Turn it around: I want to stand up for my own needs, too.

I don’t want to fade away into the sunset of my life  Turn it around: I want to make a difference in a way that becomes my legacy.

I don’t want to just keep smiling as though things that hurt me don’t hurt. Turn it around: I want to say what I really feel and still feel loved.

Do you see it? When you feel shy or unworthy to actually say what you want - or even think about saying it - do it this way. 

First what you don’t want. Then what you want is the flipside.

Why the want went quiet

Notice something about those pairs.

The ‘what you don’t want’ is blunt. Fierce, even. You can say it with your chin up. That’s good.

The want underneath feels way different. Like your heart talking. Saying it out loud makes you visible. First of all to yourself. You need to see it so you feel what’s scary about it and wake up your courage to take a stand for yourself.

Our experience with this isn’t all good. How many times have tried to tell someone what you wanted and were shut down?

As a child. In school. On a sports team or with friends.

In a relationship. 

The danger we all face is making the shutdown mean that we don’t matter. We’re wrong. Or not important.

So we learn over time to bury the wants.

And that's where Fred comes in. At Tiny Brave Steps we pull fear out of our heads and give it a body: a small dragon who's lost most of his fire, more worried companion than anything.. 

Fred has been by your side through everything. He keeps the record of every time you said a want out loud, and it got talked over, postponed, or used against you. 

So when you turn your "don't want" around and the want shows its face, watch him put on his glasses and start reading those files. His warning: “Careful. Remember what happened last time. Safer to stay silent.”

He's not trying to keep you small on purpose. He's protecting you so you don’t have to feel what you felt before. He thinks that means staying safely in your comfort zone.

The question that turned me around

You may remember the aunt I loved dearly, the one who shrank a little more each year and died with all her gifts still inside her. She was my motivation for saying, “I don’t want to have that happen to me.” 

For a long time, that one thing was all I had. And it pushed me to get out there and do my best to make my life different. But it wasn't enough.

One day I took a step back from myself and asked myself the other question. “If I don't want to disappear, then who do I want to be?”

Once I started letting the ideas flow onto a page, the answer came easier than any goal I'd ever set. 

• I want to be a woman who knows herself well. 

• Who stands up strong and tall. 

• Who keeps learning who she is and what she has to offer 

• And do this right up until the day she dies.

I make these lists often and remind myself of them every time I run into a roadblock. 

I remind myself often that I don’t just need to protect my gifts from disappearing. I need to take responsibility for them.

I've now sat with many women in my Courageous Leadership Groups the moment their own line turns around. And it's beautiful every time.

The shoulders drop. The eyes light up. Because the want was never missing. So many of us simply don't know we're allowed to say it out loud.

Your Tiny Brave Step

Take your line from last week. If you don't have one yet, finish this sentence first: "I don’t want to end up..."

Now turn it around. 

If I don't want that, then what do I want?

Write the want the way you'd say it to someone who loves you. Tender is allowed. Unreasonable is allowed. You don't have to justify it or shrink it into something sensible.

Then the brave part. Actually say it out loud. Once to yourself, in your own voice, so your ears hear it. And once, this week, to one person you trust.

Yes, Fred will warn you about all the times you’ve done this before, and you only got hurt or disappointed, but that’s ok. It's his job in your brain. You want to grow, so thank him for trying to protect you. Ask him to go over there in the corner and eat a cookie while you figure this out.

And then say it anyway. With conviction.

Bridges Are Built Here

This September, inside Courageous Leadership Spaces, we walk all eight planks together.

It's the paid membership side of Tiny Brave Steps, and it's a workspace, not a competition. We meet every other week on Zoom. You do this kind of work beside other women building their own bridges toward Horizons they dream of reaching.

And then you take it into your own leadership, your own business, your own life, because this is all about you.

From Not Enough to Brave Enough, one Tiny Brave Step at a time.

And if you need somewhere to talk it through, personally, privately, the Tiny Brave Steps Generator is free and ready. Copy and paste this in: Take my "I'm not willing to..." line and help me turn it around, so I can hear the want that's been hiding inside it.

The “don’t want” got you onto the bridge.

The “what I DO want” is what is going to carry you across.