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From Big Goals To Small Steps with Emi Kirschner
I am excited to have a show to talk about big goals and how to keep yourself on track and keep yourself from getting overwhelmed with those big goals. I have Emi Kirschner and I’m so excited to have her. We have been interviewing back and forth for the last couple of years because we have similar mindsets and ways of looking at things. I am excited to get your perspective on this. I’m going to allow you to introduce yourself. Tells us little bit about your background and why this topic is important to you?
I’m so excited to be here too mostly because you’re my friend and we totally have aligning mindsets. We think and achieved things very similarly. I’m honored to be here. Thank you. I am a speaker, a coach, author and Creator of the Tribe of Leaders Membership Community. It’s a place for entrepreneurs to come together and have support, accountability and achieve big goals. Why that’s important to me is that I know there are so many people out there who have these big dreams and big visions. As soon as they start to map out or even think about, “How do I achieve that?” they freeze. One of the things I love doing with my clients is helping them get clarity around that big vision and then back it all the way out to what they can start doing right now without feeling overwhelmed, confused or that it’s too much and how to help them move forward with ease so that their vision and their big dream can be reality.
It comes from you being a big thinker that you can help others to not think big but to act in accordance. Let’s start there. Let’s say somebody is afraid to think big. That they’ve always set the bar where it’s relatively easy. They don’t have to stretch themselves. How do you help somebody to think bigger?
For the audience, you can continue to ask yourself questions, “What’s next?” When you start to feel like you’re going to throw up, that’s a great indicator of you’ve reached a place where not only are you stretched but it’s a big goal or a big dream. I’m going to use those words interchangeably. That’s not a bad thing. Having that feeling, “What if I accomplished this? What if this happened?” Being a little uncomfortable with that is a great thing. I love being in that space not all the time but it creates a fascination and a curiosity of like, “What can I do to get there?”
If you don’t think to the point where it’s uncomfortable, then it’s not big enough. It has to be uncomfortable for it to be big. Somebody once asked me the question, “What would you like to achieve, but you would fear the most?” It was something along that line. The question was, “What would scare you to death?” That’s an interesting way to think about it. It’s about asking questions to see what that could look like. If money didn’t matter and you weren’t worried about what you were going to earn from it, what would you do? How big would you go if you took fear out of it? There was no such thing as failure or fear. What would be your ultimate-ultimate?
One of the questions you can ask yourself is, “What would be the next bigger thing? What would be even bigger?” At some point, you’re getting at world-changing stuff. It’s huge and it’s so much fun to play with.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s a big goal for you?
I have a couple of big goals. I’m taking on a physical challenge. My intention and goal will be to ride at the City to Shore MS 150. I’m mapping out what I need to do now to start with that. I have a Peloton bike and my goal is to ride 30 miles and do it in three ten-mile increments.
It’s working your way backwards. If you work your way back, what do you need to do to get there? That’s what marathon runners do and whatnot. That makes a lot of sense.
I have plenty of time. Some of the research I did was you could train for it in three or four months. I know my schedule is busy. I also have an old knee injury that I’m not sure how that’s going to play into my training. I’m going to have to take that into account and build more slowly than somebody who does not have an old knee injury. That’s one of them. The second one is with my membership community. It’s growing and expanding that. My intention is to have 600 members in it and then always just contributing. I haven’t figured out quite how to measure this but contributing to moving, helping and motivating a million entrepreneurs in the next four and a half years. Those are my three big things and move to Philly. For those of you who don’t follow me or don’t know me, I live out in the suburbs about an hour outside of Philly. It’s been my intention for the last three years to move. My son’s finally graduating.
Let’s talk about overwhelm because that can set in for a lot of people. They set these big goals and they’re excited about it. When they think about doing something, they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to do it. They go into that freak out mode.
What I see happen with all of my clients and people, in general, is you set this gigantic goal. You’re comfortable with being uncomfortable and then you don’t think about how you’re going to achieve it. Maybe you start taking some action. You do something and the perfect analogy is the person who must lose 50 pounds for instance. They’re like, “I’m going to lose weight this year. I’m going to get healthy.” When it doesn’t happen in three weeks, they get frustrated.
That is so huge because we’re such instant gratification freaks like, “Show me now or else it’s not going to happen.”
To set big goals, ask what is even bigger. Click To Tweet
They lost a little bit and then they gained a pound back because they’re weighing themselves all the time. They’re not factoring in that it can change on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. Having an increase isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s some point with weight loss if you’re working out where the weights becoming muscle and you may have some fluctuation and an increase. Overall, you’ve lost inches and you’re feeling better so it’s how you are measuring too.
It’s how are you measuring because some measurements are not going to be as effective as others.
The two big things here are start breaking things down into small little pieces. It doesn’t have to be every day but put it and do it week over week, then allow there to be some ups and downs. That’s where growth comes from. If we were all succeeding every moment of the day, we get dull.
Who wants to go see that movie where everything’s great?
As much as we all want to have only positive, amazing experiences all of the time, some of my best learning experiences, the things that I’ve gained the most out of, have been the failures. The places that I haven’t done well and I’ve made mistakes. I don’t look at anything anymore as failure. They’re learning experiences.
I call it feedback.
I’m taking in information.
Big Goals: If we were all succeeding every moment of the day, we’d get dull.
There are studies that have proven that going through difficult times and big challenges create greater resiliency. It’s making us stronger mentally because we’ve found our way through it.
That’s so important because the more resilient that you are, the more you can take on, create and achieve even bigger goals.
Your fear factor isn’t there because you can bounce back if things don’t go your way.
The interesting thing about fear and failure is it’s only what you’re defining in your mind. It’s how you’re measuring it and you’re assigning some meaning to it.
I believe that too but there are a lot of people listening who go, “That’s a bunch of BS. That’s just positive, positive, positive. I don’t believe that.” What do you say to those people?
Try practicing it and that may sound silly but you have nothing to lose by trying to shift the dialogue that’s in your head.
What do I do when it comes up and goes, “Penny, you don’t have the authority, the skills, the power. You’re too young, too old or whatever.”
“It’s the end of the world. Everything has now blown up.”
What do you tell the person? How do I manage all of those voices? If those voices are strong for me and tell me that I’m not good enough and I’m not worthy, how do I manage that? I have this big goal but I feel inside I’m not worthy for it.
One of the exercises I love to have my clients do is called my I Am list. I start with having them write fifteen to twenty different things that they are or they like about themselves. It’s amazing what comes out of those lists. They’re all very different and very personal. It is a great way to help you reframe what’s going on in your head of all the amazing things that you are. If you write this list and you get to that fifteen to twenty, add to it every six months. I rewrote mine and I’m up to 55 or 60 and I hadn’t done it in a while. I usually do a lot of this stuff quarterly and it had been longer than that. I was like, “I’m really cool.” It’s that reframing that helps you train your brain into having and experiencing more positivity. At some point, it’s that place where you’re shifting a little bit where the positivity is becoming more natural to you. You’re experiencing things in a different way so the want-want becomes lesser. The other pieces are just acknowledged that the want-want part is going to be there and it’s not accurate.
Going through difficult times and big challenges create greater resiliency. Click To Tweet
You accept it and let it roll over you like in meditation when noise comes around. You hear it and you let it go. I like that I Am list especially we’re looking at a New Year and being able to remind ourselves. We’re so quick to say what’s in the gap, what we don’t have, what we didn’t do or what’s missing? How great is that when we could take a moment and remind ourselves of all that we do have, all the blessings that are in our lives, all the wonderful characteristics that we do have about us and so forth. That is powerful to start the year that way. As to setting the frame for the New Year so that you can then link into why you’re worthy of that big vision, big goal and how come you’re going to achieve it.
If you’re feeling stuck with that like you don’t have anything coming to you, go ask five of your friends what they like about you or how they see you. It is always amazing to have that feedback because their perception of you is very different than the want-want in your head. We were talking about hair and how different people see us, it’s the same thing. I cut my hair short and I’m still getting used to it. Everybody loves it. The perception is people have loved the change that I’ve made, which is great and eventually I’ll get used to it too. It’s the same thing in quieting that noise.
We talked about big goals. We talked about overwhelm and confusion. Once I have this plan and this map, the last point that we could talk about is consistency. Lots of people set a plan and they do get that far but the day-to-day comes in and they don’t follow through with the plan that they set. What’s one powerful tip that you could offer to help around consistency?
Big Goals: Regardless of who you are and what you’re doing, it’s your life and you got to make choices.
One is set priorities. What are your real priorities for the year, month, week and for the day? Regardless of who you are and what you’re doing, it’s your life and you get to make choices. You get to prioritize what’s important to you. That may sound like, “No, I have a job and a boss and all these obligations. I have kids.” You have a choice about how much time you spend on Facebook, Instagram or the minutes that you’re waiting in line in the grocery store just as much as you do at your job or with your kids and what are you doing with that time. “Is it effective? Is it helping you perform better? Are you feeling satisfied?” If you’re not, where can we make some of those shifts? My second piece is put everything in your calendar. The story of overwhelm and confusion is just that. We don’t take steps to eliminate the confusion and the overwhelm by putting things on our calendar, by seeing how much time we have available to us to do certain things. When you do that, it’s amazing how free it is.
The plan isn’t complete until it’s scheduled.
I used to be a chronic over-planner. I was the worst-case scenario and I thought I could do probably six months’ worth of stuff in a day. I was very resistant to scheduling stuff. I love seeing the open space in my calendar but then it pretty much got eaten up with a little bit of something over here, something over there and whatever. I wasn’t using it effectively to get the things that were most important to be done and then I feel overwhelmed because it’s last second. I don’t want to be all jammed up. I presume most people don’t.
That is what ends up happening. There’s more stress because you’re keeping it in your head or you’ve got this big to-do list that you’re looking at. By planning and scheduling it in your calendar, it’s creating more accountability. It’s making sure that your priorities are clearly scheduled and everything else that needs to get done will get done. It always does and if it doesn’t, then it wasn’t a priority and you didn’t make time for it. That’s the way that it goes.
We make time for the things that are important to us.
I was at an event and I remember somebody saying in realization that I said, “If I were to offer you concert tickets right now to your favorite concert, your favorite musician but you already had a fully booked day, what would you do?” They’re like, “I’ll reschedule. I’ll find a way to move everything around,” so they can go to their favorite concert or whatever. That could be a football game or whatever it is that matters to somebody. They’ll figure it out.
A plan isn't complete until it's scheduled. Click To Tweet
I would too and then I book in the travel time.
Those are the tips for success, thinking big, dealing with overwhelm and then also staying consistent. Is there anything else that you wanted to share with the audience?
Just a little bit about tracking, measuring and more detail. It’s so important to do that because that can help you be more consistent. If you know what you have done, you know how long it takes and how many times you need to do whatever activity it is, then you can make smarter decisions. You can pivot more quickly because there are going to be bumps in the road. Life is not a flat line. I wish sometimes it was but it isn’t. If you know how long things take and you’re estimating and you’re giving yourself time to do that and measure any goal with how far along are you? Is it taking longer for you to get to that place than not? Don’t judge yourself around whether you’re succeeding or not. Look at it as that information, that feedback that we talked about, move forward and make adjustments. I like to think about it like a train when you’ve got all these cars and somewhere along the train, there’s a kink in between one of the trains and it’s keeping you from moving forward. As you unkink everything, you get to move forward faster.
People don’t like to track. I hear this from a lot of salespeople is they want to be out with the people. They don’t want to be tracking the information, but it’s in that information that tells you what’s working and what’s not working. We think in our head that we’re making a certain level of progress but until we look at the facts and figures, a lot of times there’s a mismatch to what the tracking is telling us and to what we think in our head. That’s an important point. I’m glad that you brought that up.
A lot of my people to say that tracking takes so long and they don’t like doing the data entry. The time that you invest in that is going to save you so much more time with everything else that you’re doing. You’ll close more sales, have more progress, make more money, lose more weight or whatever it is you want to insert as the end goal when you’re tracking.
How can people get in touch with you? How can they learn more about your community?
The best way is to reach out to me through the TribeofLeaders.com. That shares everything about the membership community. Then you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram @Emi.Kirschner. I look forward to connecting with everybody.
Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom.
You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. It was great to be with you.
Thank you all for being here because without you, we wouldn’t have a show. You were given some tips that you can put immediately into practice. We heard from Emi that you can ask yourself some simple questions or whatever goals that you’ve set for this year. Ask yourself that question of, “What’s even bigger?” Push yourself until you’re outside of your comfort zone. Secondly, get yourself in a state of mind with that I Am list. Write down at least fifteen things that, “I am,” and what comes after that. You can realize all the different facets of you and all that you bring to the table in accomplishing your goals whatever they might be and many more things that were discussed. At the minimum, do those things to start out and then see where that takes you. Getting yourself then into a plan, getting it scheduled and making sure that you’ve got some means of tracking and measuring your success. Thank you all and we’ll see you in the next episode.
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About Emi Kirschner
Emi Kirschner, speaker, coach, and author masterfully combines her deep intuitive abilities with her analytical sense to help creative entrepreneurs double and triple their revenue.Committed to impacting 1 million entrepreneurs over the next 5 years, Emi shares the leadership skills necessary to help you to confidently step into the CEO role in your business. She is known for giving meaningful tools, not just theory, to implement marketing, sales and operational strategies that result in increased profitability and more freedom in the rest of their lives.
She is the co-author of Get Results: Learn the Fast Track to Success in Life and Business, a handy guide for anyone who wants to increase their performance.
Emi lives outside of Philadelphia with her two teenage boys and two dogs. A foodie and beach lover, Emi plans her extensive travel around where she will eat and can wear flip flops.