The Identity Shift: Your Secret Weapon to Achieving Goals

Melanie Mishler: 00:01

Welcome to the Magnetic Creator podcast. I'm your host, Melanie Mishler, and each week we have intimate conversations about the things that matter most in life. My superpower is helping you remember who you truly are. A powerful, magical creator. I give you proven tools to help you get unstuck and manifest a life that sets your heart on fucking fire. Are you ready? Let's go. Hi friend, and welcome back.

Last week on the show, we talked about how our habits and also our non habits can either move us towards or away from our goals. And if you listen to that episode, we talked about how something like 80 % of people ditch their big New Year's resolutions by mid January. And I find that is such an astonishing number. It's just so high.

So this week, I wanted to keep talking more about goals. It's a topic that's really been coming up a lot in conversation this week, both at home with my clients, and it's just kind of been on the forefront of my mind. So I thought we'd explore it a little bit more. And this week, one of the reasons that we were talking about goals at home was because Andy and I watched a really good movie called Britney Runs a Marathon. I think we saw it on Amazon Prime, but if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

I thought it was so good and really speaks to the heart of what happens when we set out and achieve big goals for ourselves. And I'll just kind of give you the quick download, but basically in this movie, the main character, Brittany, she's a young woman who is living a very unhealthy lifestyle. She's overweight, drinking, smoking, all the things. And she has a wake up call from a doctor who tells her she needs to lose weight.

And friend, I can relate because my doctor just told me the same shit and it is not a really pleasant conversation to have. But anyway, she gets this wake up call from the doctor and she can't afford to join a gym. So she decides to start to try and run. And she literally starts off with trying to run one single block around where she lives.

Melanie Mishler: 02:09

And then slowly she becomes a runner and eventually she creates this goal to run a marathon, which is a huge goal because she had not been a runner before that. And in the movie, we see that by the time she finally reaches her goal, by the time she actually runs the marathon, she has become a completely different person. Her priorities have changed. Her habits have changed. But most importantly,

her complete identity has changed. She turns into a person who's quote, a serious runner. She's someone who quote, trains. She takes care of her body and her nutrition needs differently, which is completely different from the person she was before she started down this path. And I found this movie so inspiring because I think when we're setting big goals and visions for our lives,

The one question we often forget to ask ourselves is, who is the person I need to be to create this vision of myself? And it doesn't matter what the goal is that you have, you will be a different person by the time you reach it. For instance, let's just say you have a goal of becoming debt -free.

Maybe right now you make a decent income, but you're always overspending, buying shit you don't need, using your credit card and stuff like that. Well, if that's the case, then the goal of being debt free is not just about paying off debt. It's actually a complete identity shift into someone who doesn't do debt.

and someone who doesn't spend beyond their means. In the process of reaching that goal, the way you see money, the way you spend money, the way you think about money will actually change very, very drastically. And trust me, Andy and I did this several years ago. We did the whole Dave Ramsey no debt. And it was the most interesting process to see how our thoughts and beliefs about spending money changed during that process.

Melanie Mishler: 04:15

Another example was last week I was talking about my client who had a dream to write a book, but she literally never sat down and made time to write. Well, in order to reach the goal of writing her book, she has to actually become a writer. She has to be someone who writes. And that's more than just a little habit. It's actually a complete identity shift.

Now that might sound daunting, but that transition happens in tiny little steps over time. Just like in this movie, Brittany didn't go from out of shape couch potato to running a marathon overnight. It started with her being willing to just try, just try to run one block.

She slowly becomes a runner. And for any of our goals, it's a transition that happens slowly for most of us. It's almost like as if a fog is lifting. If you've ever been driving through fog and then it finally just kind of slowly fades away. That's kind of how that transition happens for most of us. Okay, I want to talk about one other reason that we have a tendency to give up on our goals so easily. Specifically, those resolution type goals.

Sometimes we set goals that are more of a to -do list. And this actually happened to me last week. I was chatting with my friend and she was doing this 10 minutes of yoga a day challenge for the month of April. And I just kind of said, yeah, I'll do that. That sounds like fun. I love yoga. And while I love yoga, the truth is I have not been actively doing yoga for several years now. So.

After a few days, my friend so kindly asked, like, how's it going? And I had to admit that I'd only done yoga three out of the seven days, even though it was the easiest, like it was so easy to do 10 minutes of yoga a day. She even said, you could just do Shavasana.

Melanie Mishler: 06:03

And like, Shavasana is my jam. So there was really no excuse for why I hadn't done the yoga. But this is really common and it's what happens to most people's New Year's resolution. They set goals that are more of to -do lists and more of task lists. Things like exercise every day or drink less or lose weight. There is no clearly defined vision or goal. It's just kind of this vague...

task to check off. And here's the thing. This is not true just about goal setting. This goes hand in hand with manifestation. I see this a lot in the manifestation community where teachers will say things like, you just have to envision it. You just have to think about what you want and then poof, it will come.

And friend, that is not how manifestation works. And I want to say, thank God it doesn't work that way because how many shitty thoughts do you have every day? And if that's how manifestation worked, then all those shitty things would just be coming to us nonstop without any control. There's a process of becoming and it's a process of alignment and tuning in almost like tuning a radio where we're tuning in to the person that we have to be in order to achieve.

or in order to receive a manifestation.

let me give you another example of manifesting. And I think this is helpful because I oftentimes I see people use the words manifesting and manifestation and goal setting kind of interchangeably. They'll say things like, I want to manifest a business that makes over 200 ,000 or I have a goal to build my business over 200 ,000. And those are same, same, but different, kind of the same, not really, but I'm going to use them as similar in this example because.

Melanie Mishler: 07:50

If you're someone who's making, say, $30 ,000 a year, and you set a goal to build your business to $200 ,000 or above, the person who has manifested and built that business, they are doing completely different things than the person who's making $30 ,000 in their business. They believe different things.

They show up in a completely different way. And Steven Pressfield talks about this in his book, Turning Pro. It's such a great little read. I recommend you pick it up and read it. It's one of my favorites, but it's all about who we become when we get serious about going after what we want. And he talks about going from being an amateur to a pro, and it's such a great example. So when you set goals for yourself, the first thing is to make sure you're not creating just a huge to -do list.

Let's make sure you have a clear goal. Now there will be a lot of little tiny things to do that will get us to that goal, but we don't want the actual goal to be the to -do list. That's not a goal. That's a task list. It's not inspiring. The second thing is to ask yourself, who is the person I need to be in order to reach this goal, in order to manifest this thing? What kind of person do I need to become? And then start finding micro moments.

when you can become this now. In the movie, Brittany needed to become a runner. She needed to not just become a runner, but she needed to become a serious runner. And so she started by being willing to just put on her shoes and try and run around the block. That's how she started. It was really simple, but that doesn't mean it was easy for her. It was actually really challenging for her to take those first steps. And that's the case for most of us.

But then it becomes almost like this accumulation of small little wins that starts moving us in the direction of our goals and gets us some momentum. And that's how it is when we manifest. That's how it is when we reach a goal. It's this gentle becoming of who we are. It's not hard and fast. And let me tell you, I'm the kind of person who loves and wants instant gratification. I'm the kind of person who wants to go to the gym three times and see a transformed body. Sadly, that's not the way it works.

Melanie Mishler: 10:04

But again, sadly and thankfully, because we don't want our shitty thoughts to just manifest into reality without any effort. So friend, get clear on what you want to create and then think about what it's going to feel like inside your body once you've reached that goal. Who is the person you need to become in order to create it? Once you're clear on that, then it's just taking the next tiny steps in the direction of your goal.

I want you to remember, big goals are achieved by small, tiny steps. All right, friend, I hope you enjoyed today and I will see you next week.