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Transcript

Choose the One (What It's Really Costing You to Have No Goal of Your Own) · Your Utmost Life

• 0:00
  Misty Celli: And then I chose one thing.
• 0:01
  Misty Celli: One clear, specific, bold thing, with a timeline attached to it, and a reason that was mine, not borrowed from someone else's highlight reel, not built to impress anyone, just mine.
• 0:12
  Misty Celli: And y'all, something shifted, not in my circumstances, but in me.
• 0:16
  Misty Celli: I became focused in a way I hadn't been in months, not grinding through the fog, focused, oriented, like a compass that finally stopped spinning.
• 0:24
  Misty Celli: I got interesting again to myself, to the people around me, because when you know what you're moving toward, you have something to say.
• 0:31
  Misty Celli: You stop cycling the same stale version of yourself and start becoming someone worth paying attention to.
• 0:37
  Misty Celli: I started waking up with that thing on my mind.
• 0:39
  Misty Celli: And for the first time in a long time, it wasn't dread waiting for me on the other side of consciousness.
• 0:45
  Misty Celli: It was direction.
• 0:46
  Misty Celli: I felt more like myself inside of two weeks than I had in the entire preceding season.
• 0:51
  Misty Celli: Not because I'd accomplished anything yet, not because anything had changed on paper, but because I had chosen something.
• 0:58
  Misty Celli: And it turns out that's where the version of you that you've been missing has been waiting all along.
• 1:03
  Misty Celli: Not at the finish line, at the moment of a decision.
• 1:07
  Misty Celli: If you've ever felt like you're living for everyone else and you're tired of feeling like you don't know who you are anymore, you catch yourself thinking, is this all there is even though you know you were made for more?
• 1:17
  Misty Celli: You're in the right place.
• 1:19
  Misty Celli: This podcast is where you learn the principles and strategic tools to rebuild a life that feels like yours again.
• 1:24
  Misty Celli: In your health, relationships, confidence, goals, and even the deeper parts of you like purpose, growth, love, and parenting.
• 1:29
  Misty Celli: This is where you begin the process of becoming your utmost self, not by accident, not by obligation, but by design.
• 1:35
  Misty Celli: Reclaiming a life that feels like yours again.
• 1:38
  Misty Celli: Welcome to your utmost life podcast.
• 1:40
  Misty Celli: Choosing one goal isn't a productivity strategy.
• 1:43
  Misty Celli: It's an identity act.
• 1:45
  Misty Celli: And most women I know are skipping it entirely.
• 1:48
  Misty Celli: Not because they're lazy, not because they don't care, but because no one has named what's actually happening when you can't seem to finish the thing that's meant for you.
• 1:55
  Misty Celli: So let me ask you something.
• 1:57
  Misty Celli: When was the last time you had one goal, one thing that was actually yours, and you finished it?
• 2:03
  Misty Celli: Not started it, finished it.
• 2:05
  Misty Celli: For a lot of the women I talk to, they have to think pretty far back.
• 2:08
  Misty Celli: And what I've lived and what I've watched is the absence of that one goal doesn't just mean a missed achievement.
• 2:15
  Misty Celli: It means a missed version of herself.
• 2:18
  Misty Celli: That's what we're getting into today.
• 2:20
  Misty Celli: This is choose the one, your bold goal for the next 12 weeks.
• 2:24
  Misty Celli: And this one is for the woman who is done, waiting to feel ready.
• 2:27
  Misty Celli: Stay with me.
• 2:28
  Misty Celli: Because if you are anything like the woman I'm thinking about as I record this, you came to this episode carrying something.
• 2:34
  Misty Celli: Maybe it's that feeling of being behind, that low hum of I should be further along by now.
• 2:40
  Misty Celli: And it's not dramatic feeling.
• 2:42
  Misty Celli: It doesn't always knock you over, but it's more like a background static.
• 2:46
  Misty Celli: You go about your day, you take care of everybody, you handle what's in front of you, and underneath all of it, there's this quiet voice that keeps saying, but what about you?
• 2:54
  Misty Celli: What are you actually building?
• 2:56
  Misty Celli: You can hear it when the house gets quiet and your brain starts running its late night inventory.
• 3:01
  Misty Celli: You can feel it in your chest on Sunday evening when the new week is about to start and you already know it's going to look exactly like the last one.
• 3:08
  Misty Celli: You can see it in the mirror sometimes, not in the way you look, but in the expression behind your eyes.
• 3:14
  Misty Celli: That look that says, I'm going through the motions, I'm not fully here.
• 3:18
  Misty Celli: And here's the thing I want you to hear before we go anywhere else today.
• 3:22
  Misty Celli: You have not failed at goal setting.
• 3:24
  Misty Celli: You have been living inside a structure that never had room for you.
• 3:28
  Misty Celli: You have been so busy managing everyone else's life, everyone else's needs, everyone else's urgency that your one thing, your thing, keeps getting placed at the bottom of the list.
• 3:38
  Misty Celli: And the bottom of the list never comes.
• 3:41
  Misty Celli: That is not a discipline problem.
• 3:42
  Misty Celli: That is a design problem.
• 3:44
  Misty Celli: And today we start to fix that.
• 3:46
  Misty Celli: Not by adding more, not by piling another thing into the already too much.
• 3:51
  Misty Celli: We're going to do something that feels almost counterintuitive for a woman who's been trying to do it all.
• 3:55
  Misty Celli: We're going to choose one thing, and the one thing is going to change how you see yourself, not in a year, in about 12 weeks.
• 4:02
  Misty Celli: I hear a version of this same conversation over and over, and I want to name it out loud because I think you've probably had it with yourself.
• 4:10
  Misty Celli: It goes something like this.
• 4:11
  Misty Celli: I know what I want to work on, but I also need to work on this other thing.
• 4:16
  Misty Celli: And if I just pick one, what happens to everything else?
• 4:19
  Misty Celli: I don't have the luxury of one goal.
• 4:22
  Misty Celli: My life doesn't work like that.
• 4:24
  Misty Celli: I have too much going on.
• 4:26
  Misty Celli: I'll focus when things calm down.
• 4:28
  Misty Celli: Sound familiar?
• 4:29
  Misty Celli: Or maybe it sounds more like, I can't pick just one thing because I've let so many things go now that they all feel urgent.
• 4:36
  Misty Celli: How do I choose when everything feels like it should be the first?
• 4:39
  Misty Celli: Here's what I want to say to that.
• 4:41
  Misty Celli: I know I have lived inside that loop, and I can tell you from the inside, that conversation, as reasonable as it sounds, is the very thing that keeps her stuck.
• 4:51
  Misty Celli: When everything else is the priority, nothing is.
• 4:54
  Misty Celli: When she's managing all the things equally, she's actually advancing none of them.
• 4:59
  Misty Celli: And the one thing that gets quietly set aside over and over again, the one thing that keeps not making the cut is her, her goal, her project, her one thing.
• 5:10
  Misty Celli: And y'all, that has a cost, a real one, not just to her ambition, but to her, to the version of her that shows up in her own life, in her own story, in her own skin.
• 5:21
  Misty Celli: We're talking about that today.
• 5:23
  Misty Celli: Let me get honest with you for a minute about what it actually costs to not choose the one.
• 5:28
  Misty Celli: And I want to be clear, I'm not talking about the achievement cost.
• 5:32
  Misty Celli: I'm not here to give you a productivity lecture.
• 5:34
  Misty Celli: I'm talking about what it costs her, the woman underneath the roles.
• 5:38
  Misty Celli: When she doesn't choose one goal, one clear, bold, specific thing she's working toward, a few things happen.
• 5:44
  Misty Celli: First, her energy has no anchor.
• 5:47
  Misty Celli: It disperses across everything and concentrates on nothing.
• 5:51
  Misty Celli: She's in motion constantly, but can't feel herself moving toward anything.
• 5:55
  Misty Celli: That feeling, that hamster wheel exhaustion where you did a hundred things today and still feel like you accomplished nothing, that's what goldlessness actually feels like in the body.
• 6:05
  Misty Celli: Second, she loses the thread of herself.
• 6:07
  Misty Celli: And I want to say this carefully because it's true and it matters.
• 6:10
  Misty Celli: A woman who is not working toward anything of her own starts to lose the plot of her own story.
• 6:16
  Misty Celli: Her identity becomes entirely reactive, defined by what she's responding to, manages, and what she fixes.
• 6:24
  Misty Celli: The proactive version of her, the woman who chooses and pursues and builds, she goes quiet.
• 6:30
  Misty Celli: She doesn't disappear, but she goes quiet.
• 6:33
  Misty Celli: Third, and this is the one that gets me.
• 6:35
  Misty Celli: Her family loses something too.
• 6:38
  Misty Celli: Because the woman who has no goal of her own doesn't just suffer privately.
• 6:42
  Misty Celli: Her restlessness, her flatness, her going through the motions, her people feel that.
• 6:47
  Misty Celli: They don't always know what they're feeling, but they feel it.
• 6:50
  Misty Celli: They want her, the version of her that's lit up, focused, and alive.
• 6:54
  Misty Celli: And when she's goalless, they don't get that version.
• 6:57
  Misty Celli: Nobody does.
• 6:58
  Misty Celli: Choosing one goal is not selfish.
• 7:00
  Misty Celli: It is the most generous thing she can do for the people who love her.
• 7:04
  Misty Celli: A woman who is working towards something is more present, not less, more patient, not less, more herself.
• 7:10
  Misty Celli: And that version of her is the one that everybody in her house is actually asking for, even if they don't know how to say it.
• 7:57
  Misty Celli: I want to tell you about a version of me that I'm not proud of, but that I think you might recognize.
• 8:02
  Misty Celli: There was a season in my life where I had no goal of my own.
• 8:06
  Misty Celli: Not because I didn't want one, but because I had convinced myself that the timing wasn't right, that there was too much going on, and that I would get to it once things settled down.
• 8:15
  Misty Celli: Things, as you might have gathered, did not settle.
• 8:17
  Misty Celli: And during that season, I was not my best self.
• 8:20
  Misty Celli: I want to be real about what actually looked like because it wasn't dramatic.
• 8:24
  Misty Celli: I didn't fall apart.
• 8:25
  Misty Celli: I was still doing the things, still showing up, still managing.
• 8:29
  Misty Celli: But I was flat.
• 8:31
  Misty Celli: There was no other word for it.
• 8:32
  Misty Celli: I was going through the motions of my life and I could feel it.
• 8:36
  Misty Celli: This low grade disconnection from myself, like I was watching my days happen rather than living them.
• 8:42
  Misty Celli: My focus was scattered.
• 8:43
  Misty Celli: I was busy but not energized.
• 8:45
  Misty Celli: And I became, I say this with love for myself, kind of boring.
• 8:49
  Misty Celli: Not to be mean, but the truth is that when I'm not working towards something, I have less to say, less spark, less of that thing that makes me me.
• 8:57
  Misty Celli: I could feel it, and honestly, so could my family.
• 9:00
  Misty Celli: And then I chose one thing.
• 9:02
  Misty Celli: One clear, specific, bold thing with a timeline attached to it and a reason that was mine.
• 9:08
  Misty Celli: And y'all, something shifted, not in my circumstances, but in me.
• 9:12
  Misty Celli: I became focused in a way I hadn't been in months.
• 9:15
  Misty Celli: I got interesting again to myself, to the people around me.
• 9:18
  Misty Celli: I started waking up with that thing on my mind, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn't dread.
• 9:23
  Misty Celli: It was direction.
• 9:24
  Misty Celli: I felt more like myself inside of two weeks than I had in the whole preceding season.
• 9:28
  Misty Celli: Not because I'd accomplished anything yet, but because I had chosen something.
• 9:32
  Misty Celli: And here's what I know to be true from that experience and every experience like it since.
• 9:37
  Misty Celli: The goal is not just the goal.
• 9:40
  Misty Celli: The goal is the proof that she still exists, that she is still a woman who is going somewhere.
• 9:46
  Misty Celli: Choosing the one thing is how she finds her own thread again.
• 9:49
  Misty Celli: The utmost woman doesn't hedge, she doesn't spread herself so thin that nothing ever moves.
• 9:55
  Misty Celli: She chooses, she commits, she builds, and in the building she returns to herself.
• 10:00
  Misty Celli: The one goal is not about the achievement, it is about the her that emerges in the pursuit of it.
• 10:07
  Misty Celli: I know a thought might be creeping in right now, and I want to name it because it's important.
• 10:11
  Misty Celli: The thought sounds like, Misty, that sounds great, but I genuinely don't know what my one goal is.
• 10:16
  Misty Celli: I have been so disconnected from what I want for so long that I couldn't even tell you.
• 10:21
  Misty Celli: Or, I've chosen goals before, I've set intentions, made plans, and then life happened and I dropped the ball.
• 10:26
  Misty Celli: What's different this time?
• 10:28
  Misty Celli: First, if you don't know what your one goal is, that disconnection from your own wants is not a permanent condition.
• 10:34
  Misty Celli: It is a symptom of a pattern called the identity eraser effect.
• 10:38
  Misty Celli: It is what happens when a woman has spent years prioritizing everything and everyone except herself.
• 10:43
  Misty Celli: Her own desires get quiet too.
• 10:45
  Misty Celli: They don't disappear, they just get quiet.
• 10:47
  Misty Celli: And the practice of choosing one thing, even imperfectly, even with uncertainty, is how she starts to hear herself again.
• 10:54
  Misty Celli: You don't wait until you're certain to choose.
• 10:57
  Misty Celli: You choose and the clarity comes in the choosing.
• 11:00
  Misty Celli: That's how this works.
• 11:01
  Misty Celli: Second, if you've tried before and the goal didn't survive contact with your actual life, here's what I want you to hear.
• 11:08
  Misty Celli: Past goals failed not because you lacked discipline.
• 11:11
  Misty Celli: They failed because they were sitting on top of a life that had no structure to hold them.
• 11:15
  Misty Celli: You put a goal into a calendar that had no protected space for it.
• 11:19
  Misty Celli: You made a commitment in a life that had no architecture to support it.
• 11:23
  Misty Celli: That's why the first step isn't goal setting.
• 11:25
  Misty Celli: It's foundation work.
• 11:26
  Misty Celli: Knowing who you are, what you're worth, and what your life is actually meant to hold.
• 11:31
  Misty Celli: Because once you know that, you can design a life that draws the woman you long to be out of you and builds a week that's structured to hold her.
• 11:38
  Misty Celli: The goal doesn't just sit in your journal, it lives in your week.
• 11:41
  Misty Celli: It has protected time, it has a rhythm that holds it.
• 11:44
  Misty Celli: And when life gets loud because it will, the structure doesn't let it fall.
• 11:48
  Misty Celli: A goal without structure is a wish.
• 11:50
  Misty Celli: A goal inside a protected rhythm is a promise she keeps to herself.
• 11:54
  Misty Celli: And here's what I need you to hear about the timing question.
• 11:57
  Misty Celli: I'll do this when things calm down.
• 11:59
  Misty Celli: I say this with full love.
• 12:00
  Misty Celli: The calm doesn't come first.
• 12:02
  Misty Celli: The structure creates the calm.
• 12:04
  Misty Celli: She cannot wait for the right season to start choosing herself.
• 12:07
  Misty Celli: The choosing is what creates the season she's waiting for.
• 12:10
  Misty Celli: Another year of waiting has a cost, and you've already paid enough of it.
• 12:14
  Misty Celli: Imagine, not a fantasy, not a reinvented life with different circumstances.
• 12:19
  Misty Celli: The same life, the same kitchen, the same kids, the same husband, the same schedule, but a different woman standing in it.
• 12:26
  Misty Celli: It's a Tuesday morning, not a perfect morning.
• 12:28
  Misty Celli: The dog's barking, the coffee's brewing, the day is already loading.
• 12:32
  Misty Celli: Before it fully starts, you have 15 minutes.
• 12:34
  Misty Celli: And in those 15 minutes, you sit down with that thing that is yours.
• 12:38
  Misty Celli: You already know exactly what you're working on.
• 12:41
  Misty Celli: You don't have to figure it out this morning.
• 12:43
  Misty Celli: It's already decided.
• 12:44
  Misty Celli: The decision was made weeks ago, and it has been sitting in your week protected, waiting for you every single day.
• 12:49
  Misty Celli: You open it, you work on it, and in those 15 minutes you feel specifically and deliberately awake.
• 12:55
  Misty Celli: Not in a performing way, not in a productivity guru way.
• 12:58
  Misty Celli: In this is mine and I'm doing it way.
• 13:01
  Misty Celli: You feel yourself in your own life.
• 13:03
  Misty Celli: And when you close it and the day begins, when the breakfast gets made and the work starts, you carry something with you.
• 13:09
  Misty Celli: A thread, a through line, something that says, I am a woman who's working towards something.
• 13:14
  Misty Celli: I am going somewhere.
• 13:15
  Misty Celli: I'm not just managing, I'm building.
• 13:17
  Misty Celli: Your family feels it, not because you tell them, because it's in the way you move through the house.
• 13:22
  Misty Celli: The way you're a little more patient because you're a little less empty.
• 13:26
  Misty Celli: The way you're more present because you're a little less resentful of the life you're in, because you are no longer living a life that has no room for you.
• 13:33
  Misty Celli: And 12 weeks from now, not someday, 12 weeks from now, you get to look at what you built, not what you almost started, what you finished, the thing that was yours, the thing that proved to you in the most tangible way possible that she is still in there.
• 13:47
  Misty Celli: That ache you've been carrying, it's quiet.
• 13:49
  Misty Celli: Not because life got easier, because you answered it.
• 13:52
  Misty Celli: You said, I hear you.
• 13:54
  Misty Celli: I'm here.
• 13:55
  Misty Celli: Let's go.
• 13:56
  Misty Celli: That is the woman you are working toward.
• 13:58
  Misty Celli: She is not new.
• 13:59
  Misty Celli: She is not someone you have to invent.
• 14:01
  Misty Celli: She has been there the whole time.
• 14:03
  Misty Celli: You are just able to let her back in.
• 14:05
  Misty Celli: Walk away today with not an idea but a decision.
• 14:09
  Misty Celli: Choose the one right now, not when things calm down, today, not someday.
• 14:14
  Misty Celli: One bold goal.
• 14:16
  Misty Celli: 12 weeks, yours.
• 14:17
  Misty Celli: And I want to give you the three things your goal has to have to be the right one.
• 14:21
  Misty Celli: Write these down if you can or find them in the show notes.
• 14:24
  Misty Celli: One, it has to be specific.
• 14:26
  Misty Celli: Not get healthier, not work on myself.
• 14:29
  Misty Celli: Something with a clear definition of done.
• 14:31
  Misty Celli: Key steps you'll take to accomplish it.
• 14:33
  Misty Celli: You'll know you finished it because there's an actual finish line.
• 14:36
  Misty Celli: If you can't describe what done looks like, it's not specific enough and it doesn't have the needle movers attached to it.
• 14:42
  Misty Celli: Two, it has to be yours.
• 14:44
  Misty Celli: Not the goal your mother would be proud of.
• 14:46
  Misty Celli: Not the goal that sounds right in conversation.
• 14:49
  Misty Celli: The one that when you think about it quietly, makes something in you lean forward.
• 14:53
  Misty Celli: That lean, that's her, the woman inside you, the one you are missing.
• 14:57
  Misty Celli: Trust it.
• 14:58
  Misty Celli: Three, it has to have protected slot in your week, not whenever I get to it.
• 15:02
  Misty Celli: A specific day, a specific time, a non-negotiable.
• 15:06
  Misty Celli: That protected slot is not a suggestion.
• 15:09
  Misty Celli: It is the structure that holds everything else up.
• 15:11
  Misty Celli: Without it, the goal doesn't survive the week.
• 15:14
  Misty Celli: Write down your one goal right now.
• 15:16
  Misty Celli: One sentence, specific, yours, with a 12-week deadline, and then say it out loud.
• 15:21
  Misty Celli: Say it to yourself.
• 15:22
  Misty Celli: Say it like you mean it because you do.
• 15:24
  Misty Celli: This is my one.
• 15:26
  Misty Celli: I choose it, I protect it, I build it.
• 15:28
  Misty Celli: That is the invisible mama getting quiet and the utmost woman choosing herself.
• 15:33
  Misty Celli: That is what it looks like when she stops waiting and starts building.
• 15:37
  Misty Celli: If you got something from today's episode, the best thing you can do for yourself and for this community of women is leave a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening on.
• 15:45
  Misty Celli: It takes under two minutes and it means more than you know.
• 15:48
  Misty Celli: Make sure you follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 15:52
  Misty Celli: And if you want to go deeper, the best place to stay connected with me is my email list.
• 15:56
  Misty Celli: That is where I share my best insights, my resources, and updates.
• 15:59
  Misty Celli: You won't hear anywhere else.
• 16:00
  Misty Celli: The link is in the show notes.
• 16:02
  Misty Celli: As you leave here today, carry with yourself this truth.
• 16:05
  Misty Celli: You are more than everyone's everything.
• 16:08
  Misty Celli: You are someone.
• 16:09
  Misty Celli: I'll see you next week.