How The Desire Map Transformed My Goals (and increased my revenue and happiness)
Let me take you on a journey back to 2012. I had just launched my business and honestly, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was aimless. I had big goals and dreams and no clue how I was going to accomplish them.
So I took the old, torturous, outdated route of making goals that I always had:
I will make 100K by the end of the year.
I will have a waitlist of clients.
I will pay in full a trip to Costa Rica - no credit card.
I will start a savings account
Buy a new computer
Meet Oprah (because who doesn’t want to meet Oprah?!)
6 months later I had made 5K. I was horrified, scared and so embarrassed. It looked so easy for everyone else and here I was struggling to keep my business afloat only 6 months in. I thought that I could just hang up my shingle, throw up a website and whammy!! I’d be in business!
It was pretty pathetic how desperate I was. I desperately wanted to have a successful business, I mean my whole family were entrepreneurs, it couldn’t be that hard could it? I wanted to prove it to myself (and everyone else) that I could be a successful business owner and I could do it all on my own.
Well, I was in business alright, but my business was failing. To make matters worse, I was taking my stress out on my partner expecting him to pick up all my failing pieces, listen to me vent day in and day out about how stressed I was and throw myself pity parties on the daily.
It was around this time that I started to take more shifts at my sister’s coffee shop because lord knows I was not paying the bills with my business. Working at the coffee shop was fun, but I was embarrassed. I felt like I went crawling back to an easy job because I couldn’t make my business work. I kept feeling like easy does not equal successful.
And in my warped world, if it was easy, it wasn’t good. If you wanted to be successful you had to struggle. It had to be hard, you had to hustle, burnout and feel on the brink of sanity at all times - that was what being successful felt like.
One night as I was sitting in my cozy little apartment with popcorn ceilings and a stove from 1974 doodling around on my website, I came across The Desire Map and my whole entire world turned upside down.
The Desire Map went against everything that I had ever been taught about success. It bucked against all the traditional ways of running a business and designing your life, and oh-my-god did it feel so free! And holy shit - it felt easy.
At first I was completely cynical. I was like “this is way too good to be true. There’s no way this actually works for people. Nobody is running their business this way."
But deep down it made so much sense. Something - everything! - about this way of designing your life and your goals based on how you want to feel felt right.
In a nutshell this is how The Desire Map process and theory works:
It’s not the goal that you desire, it’s the feeling you believe you will receive once you achieve that goal. So instead of making some haphazard goal you feel like you should want, first decide how you want to feel then design you goals (and essentially your life) around that.
IS THAT GENIUS OR WHAT?!
I had no idea I was making my goals so damn hard on myself for so many years. I had no idea I was subscribing to such an outdated and masculine way of doing things - a method we’ve been taught by the racist patriarchy: “go hard or go home! Hustle! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Focus on the numbers! Listen to ME, don’t listen to your intuition! Live in scarcity so you keep buying and not thinking you’re enough!”
Maybe this is the way you’ve been doing things, too? Burning the candle at both ends? Feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by your goals and desperate to achieve them because then you’ll finally be happy dammit!!
Achieving your goals doesn’t make you happy, YOU make you happy. Deciding how you want to live your days makes you happy. Deciding who you want to be makes you happy.
Flash forward to today (and in the midst of a pandemic nonetheless):
I use The Desire Map to guide every decision I make - personal and professional.
I am in flow with my creativity and my business feels fun and easy. No more overwhelm!!
I make more money with more ease than I ever have.
I live a simple, yet fulfilling life that feels so good.
I do less and less of what I don’t want to do - and feel completely guilt-free.
I don’t need to “have it all” because I have everything I want.
I allow myself to go after what I really want, and I feel inspired every day of my life.
I’m more at peace.
I have so much more fun!!
I rarely compare myself to others because when you feel good, you don’t need to.
I have more mental and energetic space to live the life that feels so fucking good - no apologies.
Goals shouldn’t feel hard all the time. Having big goals doesn’t mean you don’t work your ass off - it just means you joyously work your ass off.
There is a different way of running your business, getting healthy and reaching your goals that doesn’t require hustle, strain, burnout and pushing yourself far beyond your limits. As a matter of fact, it’s time to rebel against the old way of doing things and intentionally choose something different, something that’s inspirational and, dare I say, easy.
Do you have big goals but want to feel really fucking good in the process of achieving them (there is no other way by the way) apply to the Manifest Your Best Life 30 Day Program and let’s get this happiness party started.