Yesterday’s Club session was the first for 2025, and it was enjoyable to connect back in with each other after the break.
We did a ‘MultiSeat’ format, which gave everyone a chance to share how the year has started for them, any wins or challenges that they were working with, as well as the opportunity to ask fellow Members for specific resources and contacts that will support their immediate progress.
We wrapped up the session with a look at our expected experience for 2025.
This is different to looking at goals or targets, where the focus is traditionally on specific business outcomes that we plan to achieve. In the case of expected experience, the opportunity is to discover what it is that we intend to experience or feel more of personally, as this is actually why people set business goals in the first place. They expect that the fulfilment of those goals will give them an expected personal experience.
For example, you may have a business goal to increase profit by a certain percentage or amount, or to reduce your work hours during 2025. If you ask yourself what feeling or experience achieving this will create for you, you might answer that this would allow you to experience more comfort, more freedom, more fulfilment, more enjoyment etc.
In other words, the actions we plan to take, as well as the goals and targets themselves, are likely based on what we believe those things will give us. Those who are wondering why, even though they set and achieve many of their goals each year, they aren’t personally as fulfilled as expected, will begin to appreciate the brilliance in this approach.
Having the understanding of what it is that you believe the goals will give you, and therefore what you value feeling more of in your internal or personal experience, (which will likely be similar to the examples above), you can refer to this feeling or experience as a navigation point for decisions and direction, enabling discernment of the options, actions and outcomes which move you towards that feeling or experience, and those which will likely move you further away.
Many have the belief that making more money or having more time will make them happier. This aligns with mainstreams expectations however isn’t completely true. Otherwise, the richest people in the world, and those who have the most time would be the happiest people in the world.
You might relate. Have you hit a financial, time or other goal and realised that you now want or need to achieve a bigger goal? If you checked in, you would notice that the motivator is to feel the feeling (expected internal or personal experience), that you only realised for a short while after hitting your previous goal.
Quite often the usual chosen pathways in business and life are not the most conducive to the expected personal experience you are intending to create.
It’s much easier with a clear, internal point of reference to work from and measure against.
