[22] Being There Now: Embracing the Journey to Your Goal

Melissa Janson discusses the importance of embracing the journey and being present in the moment while working towards our goals. She emphasizes the need to find joy in the process of personal and professional growth, set meaningful goals, visualize success, practice gratitude, overcome impatience, celebrate milestones, and learn from challenges. Melissa encourages listeners to recognize their own power and capability in creating a life they love.

Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:00 - (Melissa Janson): Welcome to My Life is a Saturday, the podcast that helps you live your best life by embracing a Saturday mindset. I'm your host, Melissa Janson, and each week I'll be sharing my experiences and interviewing guests who have learned how to make the most out of every day. From tips on how to develop a positive mindset to ideas for living a more fulfilling life, we'll cover it all. So get ready to let go of your worries, embrace your passions, and live life to the fullest.

0:00:26 - (Melissa Janson): Ready to dive in? Let's go ahead. Holy shit. Welcome back to yet another episode of My Life Saturday podcast, episode 22. This is such a dreamy reality that I've created, and I am so grateful that you tune in every week and listen to the episodes. I've got about eight to twelve of you that listen religiously, and I really appreciate it. I love that we have these moments together and that you're with me on this journey. So thank you.

0:01:04 - (Melissa Janson): Today's episode, we're going to talk about being there now, embracing the journey to where it is that you want to go as we work on creating a life that feels like a never ending Saturday. As we work towards those goals in our relationship or finding a partner, or creating a family, buying a house, paying off debt, getting a better job, whatever your big goal is that when you are driving in your car, just zoning out, getting to where you're going, your mind starts talking about why isn't it that you're there now.

0:01:43 - (Melissa Janson): And sometimes you can get really down on yourself. I know I can. Some of my biggest thought spirals happen when I'm in my car, zoning out about the place that it is that I want to go. That big goal that's on the horizon that I'm working towards that isn't here yet, and I'd want to be there now. So, as we're going to talk about today, I'm going to give you a few tangible, tactical, tactical steps to help you enjoy the journey from where it is that you are right now to where it is that you want to go.

0:02:22 - (Melissa Janson): A side note of this something that just popped into my brain is last month I went to Empower Her live. And if you're not familiar, the Empower Her podcast is a great podcast hosted by Keisha Get, Mary and she talks all about having a life that's good, but wanting great and not being afraid to go after that, which I really resonate with. And she hosted a conference, a personal development motivational conference, and one of the speakers had us do this exercise where we reframed a regret that we had or something that a rejection that we had into something that was supportive and positive for us instead of like the negative narrative that we had in our mind.

0:03:10 - (Melissa Janson): And mine was a relationship that ended. I had a relationship end in the beginning of this year and it really hurt. And I still dream about this person. I still think about them. They were a big part of my life for a long time and the relationship ended pretty suddenly and I'm still not entirely positive as to what I did or what happened that led to the fallout of that relationship. So that was the rejection that I was refocusing and what I came up with refocusing it as is that simply the place that I'm going in my life, the direction that my life is headed and where it is that I'm going.

0:03:57 - (Melissa Janson): The journey is too long and my light is too bright for that person to continue on with me. And when I reframed into that idea that the journey that I'm on is too far for them and the light that I have is going to be too bright for them, it really gave me an empowered perspective of this rejection that I faced. And although it doesn't keep the dreams away and it doesn't answer any of the questions that I have about why our relationship ended, it gives me a place of empowerment to go to when I'm feeling down about that and about that relationship being over.

0:04:49 - (Melissa Janson): So how does this connect back to being there now and embracing the journey? Well, the big journey that I'm on is taking me somewhere that is very unfamiliar to the people in my life, that I've had in my life up until this point. And keeping in mind that the journey may be too long and my light may become too bright for some people, helps me move through the mundane, the days of doubt and confusion and feeling like the journey from where I am to where I want to be is, like, way too long and wishing that time to move faster.

0:05:37 - (Melissa Janson): So we're going to remember that as we dive into being there now. This idea of wanting to be already at the goal and skipping over all of the time between who you are now and who you have to be to be there now. The first thing that I want us to start doing as we are focusing on enjoying the now, being there now and embracing the journey, is to well, embrace the journey. Finding joy in the process of personal and professional. Growth of progress towards the big goal of realizing that each day is a day closer to someday than it was yesterday and that you are qualifying yourself as you move through each moment towards what it is that you want to be.

0:06:39 - (Melissa Janson): Let's say that your goal is losing weight and you want to lose I'll use me as an example. I want to lose 60 pounds. And each day, honestly, it feels like, fuck it, that's never going to come. I don't know how I'm going to lose 60 pounds. It feels like the weight never the scale never moves. And if it does move, it moves up. But that mindset is just going to make the days between today and someday feel so long and so full of doubt and negative self talk.

0:07:14 - (Melissa Janson): And easily. It's easy to move into those spirals of shame or guilt or fuck it mentality because it just seems like so far away from how to get to my goal and that every choice that I make doesn't seem to make an impact when the reality of the situation is that every small decision that you're making daily is either taking you closer to someday being a reality or it's taking you further away or it's keeping you in the same exact spot.

0:07:49 - (Melissa Janson): So imagine if I'm working on losing weight and every day midday I get the fuck it mentality and I go off the deep end with my favorite snack and I never see the scale move up or down and I just stay consistently the same. Even though I put in some work, I'm not going to see the progress towards the end goal that I want to be seeing and I may easily get discouraged. All of that to say enjoying the journey, like embracing the journey, is also being aware that progress towards your goal, whatever your goal is, is not going to be linear. It's not going to be a straight to the goal path, one that would be super fucking boring if every goal that we went after was just like, we decided to do it and it happened and there were no challenges and there were no setbacks.

0:08:50 - (Melissa Janson): Like, imagine life where you just got everything that you wanted. It sounds great right now, but in those stepbacks in, the tango of reaching a goal is where you build character. It's where you grow into the person that's meant to have the outcome that you're desiring. And in the idea of weight loss, what if I just woke up today and I decided I wanted to lose 60 pounds and everything happened perfectly?

0:09:20 - (Melissa Janson): Every food decision and movement decision that I made, every intermingirl takedown, everything went completely perfectly for the next let's see if I lose a pound a week for the next 60 weeks and I got to that goal. The pride and accomplishment and sense of like, I fucking did it, that I think we all are looking for when we reach a goal is not going to be there because I didn't have to do anything to work for it.

0:09:55 - (Melissa Janson): I was 100% perfect the entire time. It's so unrealistic when you lay it out like that, it feels comical. It makes me want to laugh at it. But that's also the approach that I would take to a lot of my goals sometimes is like, if it's not perfect, I'm not going to do it. That's a bunch of bullshit, babe. Hitting a goal, working towards a goal, is like a two step, like a tango. It's a couple of steps forward, maybe a step back, maybe ten steps back, and then you work your way forward again. It's like the stock market.

0:10:29 - (Melissa Janson): When you look at the stock market in a week, it's up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, and it's like, damn, it's like plummeting and then going up. But if you zoom out and look at it from a macro scale, 1020, 30, 40, 50 years, the stock market trends upward. You're trending upward towards your goal every day. With every decision you make, even the decisions that set you back a little bit, that take you further from the goal, those build character, those are the things that you're going to look back on and be like, I fucking made it.

0:11:04 - (Melissa Janson): I did it. I overcame that. And that and that. Don't get me wrong. While you're in the middle of it, while you're in the middle of these challenges and the setbacks and the obstacles and the things that you have to overcome on your way to where it is that you want to be, it's not going to feel like, fuck, yeah, you're not going to be out there like, whoo, give me some more obstacles. I want to feel proud of myself.

0:11:31 - (Melissa Janson): That's typically not the attitude that we have when we're going for these big goals and setbacks and hurdles show up. But if you can start training your mind to recognize setbacks and obstacles as character building moments, as moments where you can make yourself proud or prove to yourself that you can do it, over time, you will start to build an attitude of resilience and grit and confidence that you are able to overcome and that you are closing the gap between where it is that you are now and where it is that you want to be.

0:12:12 - (Melissa Janson): I think I've gone on, like, 14 tangents since we started this episode twelve minutes ago. But I want you to understand that embracing the journey is also embracing the failures, the setbacks, the character building moments. It's about embracing the mindset that you are not yet who it is that you need to be to have the end goal, and that every decision that you're making is moving you closer. Even if in the moment it moves you two steps back, you're still moving closer, you're still trending upwards, you're still excelling, you're closing the gap.

0:12:56 - (Melissa Janson): The second thing that I want to talk about when we talk about being there now, embracing the journey, is setting goals with purpose. It is important that you set clear and meaningful goals that inspire you and keep you motivated. No longer are the days where we're just fucking deciding that we want to have two kids in a white picket fence and be better than the Joneses, because that's what people told us. No, we're deciding on goals for our life that are meaningful to us.

0:13:27 - (Melissa Janson): Losing 60 pounds, that's meaningful to me. I've been working on it. It's important to me to feel more confident in my body. I don't know if 60 pounds is exactly what I want, but I think back to when I weighed 60 pounds less and I liked it. I liked how I felt. But I'm willing to be flexible on that goal with the more meat of that goal being feeling confident and comfortable in my body. Setting goals that inspire you are going to help you stay motivated. They're going to help you move through that two step tango setback stage.

0:14:04 - (Melissa Janson): They're going to help you continue to trend upwards towards closing the gap. If you have a goal where you want to pay off debt, great. So do I. And why do we want to pay off debt though? I want to pay off my debt. Cool. That's great. But why do you want to pay off your debt? What is the feeling or the financial leverage that you're looking for when you pay off your debt? What is that big goal at the end of paying off your debt that you are motivated by? Because I don't think any of us are motivated by paying off our debt.

0:14:41 - (Melissa Janson): Are you motivated by having 600 extra dollars every month or 1400 extra dollars every month because you don't have to pay credit cards? Are you looking forward to being able to live without this thought about debt? That was not a good example. Are you looking forward to living life on your own terms? Are you looking forward to financial freedom? What is it that's inspiring you about that goal? And let's get more specific on our goals so that the space between where we are now and where it is that we want to go inspires us instead of makes us fucking scared.

0:15:19 - (Melissa Janson): A side note on money and debt while we're here, I highly recommend if you haven't yet read Rich as Fuck by Amanda Francis. It's a fantastic book. It talks about the energetics of money. It's not a budgeting book, you're not going to read it in a Dave Ramsey book. He gives you step by step process to pay off your debt and save money. It's not that. It talks about the mindset and energetics of money and really how money is energy and how we can use that idea to change our relationship with money, to change the way that it shows up in our lives, to change the way that we view debt and to create more of it.

0:15:59 - (Melissa Janson): Especially, I think that the majority of my listeners are women. When women are given financial opportunities, financial prosperity, when we have a lot of money, we do good things with our money. We put it back into the communities we support, causes that are meaningful to us and we are much more generous with our money than our counterparts. So if you haven't read that book, I highly recommend reading that book. I love it. There's also a journal that you can buy. There's journal prompts at the end of every chapter because it is like you're working on your beliefs, you're working on your attitudes towards money.

0:16:35 - (Melissa Janson): And you can easily write those in a notebook. But if you're somebody who likes to have the questions already right there, the journal is a great option too. You can find it on Amazon. I should make an Amazon storefront. I don't know how to do that, but maybe I'll figure it out. Okay, the next thing that I want us to talk about as we're on this, being there now, embracing the journey, is the power of visualization.

0:17:03 - (Melissa Janson): When you visualize your desired future, it helps you stay motivated while recognizing the beauty in your current situation. If you haven't ever had a visualization session or practice in your life, I would highly recommend starting one. It doesn't need to be like elaborate and long and it can literally be a timer for two minutes. And you just sit and get into the feeling of already having what it is that your goal is.

0:17:33 - (Melissa Janson): Sit and get into the feeling of being 60 pounds lighter or being debt free or finding your partner. Really allow your imagination to soar. And if you are dealing with a very wild and untamed intermingle, it may be challenging the first few times that you sit down to do this, to allow yourself to go there, to go to the most high vibration, like it's happening spot. Because you may catch yourself having thoughts of doubt or realistic thoughts and you can't see me, but I just did quotes around realistic. Because honestly, being realistic is just choosing what form of reality you want to commit yourself to. But I think we could do that in another podcast episode.

0:18:31 - (Melissa Janson): Sitting down, putting your timer for two minutes and visualizing when you're there, when you're where it is that you're wanting to go, that end goal. What does it feel like? Who's with you? What do you see? What do you smell? What does your body feel like? What is it that you're doing with your day? What is it that the thoughts that you're thinking, how proud is it that you are of yourself? Really feel it. And a lot of times you'll get like a visceral feeling. Like your body, you can feel your heart rate increase, you can feel like joy and these high vibe emotions come out.

0:19:14 - (Melissa Janson): And you're going to sit in that with two minutes. And in those two minutes anything is possible. Every good that could be good, every wonderful, joyous, pride filled. I don't know where I'm going with this sentence, but all of the things that could be good are good and they're yours. In that moment. I want you to get into the practice of visualizing it. Start with like once a week. We don't need to go from zero to 100. You don't need to be visualizing for like 30 minutes every day for the next 90 days.

0:19:52 - (Melissa Janson): No, start with once a week for two minutes or every other day for two minutes or while you're brushing your teeth, visualize your end goal. Visualize you being there. Don't allow your intermingle to naysay or negate or bring in realistic, again in quotes, ideas of like, you can't do it. Be aware if those things come up and we can work through them. But this time, this two minutes of visualization is just for you in detail.

0:20:26 - (Melissa Janson): Visualizing life as it's going to be. Okay, next, gratitude, baby. We got to have gratitude, and in gratitude, shift the focus from what's lacking to appreciating what we have in the present moment. Let's go back to the debt example. We're going to start a gratitude practice around what we have versus what's lacking in the moment, and we're talking about our debt. Damn, I'm fucking grateful I can pay my minimum payments.

0:20:58 - (Melissa Janson): Damn, I'm grateful that I had those credit cards to support me in these times that I needed the support. Damn, I'm grateful that I have so many credit cards. I mean, that's great, right? I have a lot of them. It means I'm trusted by the credit bureaus. All of these gratefuls could go positive or negative, but you really want to stick in the positive and appreciate what it is that you have in the present moment, even if it feels like you don't have a lot.

0:21:27 - (Melissa Janson): If we're talking about gratitude around weight loss, man, I am so grateful that I am now aware of where it is that I want to go and I'm making a conscious effort to get there. Damn, I'm really grateful for the water that I have to drink every day that's clean and fresh, man. I'm really grateful that I'm learning to love, broccoli. It can be simple things. And I think that's somewhere that we get caught up sometimes with gratitude is thinking that it has to be, like, this huge and profound thing that we're so grateful for and, like, no bitch right now. I'm grateful that I have this microphone that makes it a little bit clearer, the audio a little bit clearer when I'm talking to you.

0:22:12 - (Melissa Janson): I'm grateful that I've got this sweet ass scrunchie that's like velvet that my best friend got me because I'm being the maid of honor in her wedding, and it's so soft and it makes my hair feel so good, like it doesn't get tangled or anything. Super grateful for that. Gratitude can be about the small things. When it's about the small and the mundane things, it's really when I'm in a gratitude practice and I'm writing down these little mundane moments that I'm super grateful for, because after all, I'm on a spinning rock in middle of nothing and everything all at once.

0:22:45 - (Melissa Janson): Sometimes I get, like, prickles all over my body, and I don't know why I get prickles, but I take it as a sign that I'm on the right path and that the universe is also thanking me for acknowledging all of the beauty and seeking out moments of beauty within my day. So what we're going to do is we're going to start a gratitude practice. Literally. You can just write down three things that you're grateful for right now in this moment related to your goal.

0:23:13 - (Melissa Janson): And I gave you some great examples. I think the next thing is we're going to overcome impatience. Impatience hinders the progress of getting to where you want to go. When you cultivate patience and persistence, it allows you the opportunity to enjoy the moment. It allows you the opportunity to find things to be grateful for in that two step tangle of setbacks. It allows you to be grateful that you're always trending upwards to your goals.

0:23:45 - (Melissa Janson): It allows you the opportunity, maybe 1 second, not the opportunity to overcome impatience. A couple of great things to do. One, practice gratitude. Gratitude for where it is that you are right now, for the things that are aligning in your life right now when it goes in terms of going towards your goal. Two, practice visualization. Visualize becoming the person that has achieved the goal. The reason that you don't have a goal, the thing that you're set out for right now is because you're not the person that can handle it.

0:24:20 - (Melissa Janson): Girl, imagine if tomorrow you woke up and you had no debt. That sounds super fucking awesome, like not going to lie. But also you still have the same exact spending habits. You still have the same exact mindset around money. You still have everything in you that led you to being in that space. And just because you have reached that goal doesn't mean that it's going to become the goal again. Likely because we haven't developed into a person that can handle having no debt.

0:24:55 - (Melissa Janson): Let's just put it out there that's truly what it is. So instead of becoming impatient that we haven't gotten to that goal yet, we can practice the power of visualization, of becoming the person that is able to handle that goal. And we can be grateful of the mundane things right now that are happening in our life that are keeping us centered and grounded. We can be grateful for the time that it's taking to get to the goal.

0:25:25 - (Melissa Janson): Okay, overcome impatience. I have two more and then I feel like this episode is quite a rambling tangent, but I hope that you're following along. Sometimes when I'm just talking to my microphone, to myself, my brain, it goes. And I hope that you'll have a ticket to this madness. Okay, the next step in being there now, embracing the journey towards the big thing that you want in life, your big goal, is to celebrate the milestones. Girl, celebrate everything, every small thing. Let's celebrate it. Let's hype it up. Let's get you into a vibration that aligns higher with the end goal.

0:26:14 - (Melissa Janson): It's so important to recognize and celebrate your achievements, no matter how small they are. Because it builds confidence and it gives you an opportunity to appreciate progress and it allows you an anchor into the present, and it's a little piece of the puzzle in getting you there. If we go again, we're losing 60 pounds, right? And if I don't ever celebrate the fact that I lost, like, half a fucking pound or that I actually hit my water goal or that I did work out three times this week, I'm never going to get positive. Dopamine hits in this journey to getting to where I want to go, and instead it's going to be like, oh, fuck, I only lost half a pound.

0:27:03 - (Melissa Janson): Bitch, that's so much more than you lost last week. It's so much more than you've lost in the past. That's so good. And, okay, maybe I gained five pounds and then the next week I lost half a pound. Fuck, yeah. We're trending downwards. You have to learn how to find the hype in the mundane. Moments in the little things that are creating are compounding to create the journey towards your end. Goal celebrations are not just for birthdays and weddings and babies.

0:27:36 - (Melissa Janson): They are for every moment of every day. Think about how much more fun life would be if we just celebrated all of the shit. And when I say all of the shit, I actually mean, like, even the shitty moments, we're like, yes, life is happening to us. Sick. Gag me, but give me a second too. Really think into that. If we were able to take challenges and obstacles and be excited that we get to experience humanness, it's kind of fucking great in my opinion.

0:28:11 - (Melissa Janson): It never feels like that in the moment. So that's where the gag me comes in. Like, oh, this bitch is on her. Like, woo. Life's great. But truly, even in the worst, you're still alive. And to me, that's great. Okay, burp burp. Next. And finally, we're going to learn from our challenges, explore how setbacks and challenges can be valuable lessons in the journey towards your goal. Every single obstacle, challenge, hurdle, setback that we come across is character development. It is the plot twist that we've been waiting for to develop into the person that can handle the success that we're looking for in our goal, the person that we're becoming at the end when we achieve our goal.

0:29:05 - (Melissa Janson): When you really harness the opportunity to learn from the challenges of life and the challenges of going after a goal and the setbacks that happen, you develop into, obviously, somebody who can handle what's to come. But you also get that opportunity to get into the juice of life, right? Because life would be so fucking boring if we just woke up and there was never a challenge and we never had like, have you ever read a book?

0:29:37 - (Melissa Janson): I just read one recently where I finished the book and I was like, I'm not even sure what the conflict was in the book. Nothing happened to the character that seemed monumental. There was no climax to the book, and it was honestly, like it was good writing, but it's kind of boring. And it left me just with more questions than answers and I'm not even sure what the book was about. Truthfully. Oh, my God.

0:30:08 - (Melissa Janson): So when we're able to allow ourselves the opportunity to learn from challenges and to let challenges be the juicy goodness of life, it was really going to transform the way that you approach any goal, any challenge, any opportunity. It's going to change the way that you move through your life because it's going to build confidence that you are somebody who can overcome anything. And if there's one thing that I know about you is that you have overcome everything that's come in your path prior to this moment and you have it within you to overcome everything that's going to happen after this. Moment.

0:30:47 - (Melissa Janson): You are way more incredible, way more powerful, way more determined, way more capable of creating a life that feels like a Saturday than you are giving yourself credit for. Than you have ever given yourself credit for. And the person that you're wanting to become, the person that has achieved those goals that you have for your life, even no matter how big and audacious, she is waiting for you and she is cheering you on and she is ready for you to get on board and enjoy the journey to becoming her.

0:31:28 - (Melissa Janson): I think this is a great place to end this episode. I absolutely adore you. I love you so much. And as much as the future version of you is cheering you on and loving you from there, I'm loving you from right here. You got this, girlfriend. Share those big goals with me on Instagram. Slide into my DMs. I'd love to hear them and to be able to support you in real time as you go after. And that's it. Remember, babe, you're on a spinning rock in the middle of nothing and everything all at once. You're here for a purpose and a reason, and you have everything inside of you to create a life that you love to live.

0:32:08 - (Melissa Janson): I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to My Life is a Saturday. I hope you enjoyed this episode and are feeling inspired to live your best life. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with your friends. You can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook at My Life is a Saturday for more fun and inspiration. Remember, life is short, so let's make the most out of every day.