Tag Archive for: goal setting

Spacious Presence: The Power of Self-Exploratory Writing

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spacious presenceIn life and work, when you feel depleted, overwhelmed, contracted, or lost, what you may be craving is connection—with yourself.

Whereas when you feel spacious in your presence and perception, you are more capable of holding the whole of life: the ups, the downs, the words and behavior of others, the changes of emotional weather within, and the ever-shifting waves of life.

You’re also able to act from a wider vantage point and feel more energetically centered at work and home. You are less reactive to circumstances, not allowing them to dictate your sense of yourself or the world. Instead, you are grounded in your inner truth.

One simple tool for returning to that truth is self-exploratory writing—a practice that invites clarity, emotional spaciousness, and inner alignment.

The Underrated Value of Simple Practices

The habits that serve wellbeing and inner harmony are so basic, so mundane, and so immediately available, we tend to overlook them—good sleep, anyone?—in search of a magic fix or a peak moment experience. Culturally, we undervalue what matters the most.

Burnout is a consequence of a culture, or internalized culture, that does not prioritize wellbeing. Managing burnout becomes a coping strategy. Within that context, self-alignment and self-care are the origin points of a woman who knows her innate value and that the paradigm won’t change unless how you regard yourself does.

Inner spaciousness can be cultivated through practices such as meditation, breathwork, mindfulness, contemplation, myofascial release, dance and movement practices, grounding—and reflective and expressive journaling.

Writing To Support Emotional Wellness

Author Natalie Goldberg wrote to the power of spontaneous writing to access your first thoughts: “The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what your mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.”

When we recognize that emotions are energy in motion, we can get curious about them on the page, which can also help clarify what motives are at play in decision-making. Exploring your feelings, especially the ones you often resist, can deepen your self-understanding, expand your emotional bandwidth and resilience, and point you toward aligned action with your values and intuitive knowing.

Reflective and expressive journaling, which focuses on what’s truly on your mind and heart, has been shown to increase emotional awareness and emotional wellness while enhancing your overall outlook. Ultimately, it becomes a practice in emotional intelligence.

Cultivating An Orientation of Gratitude

People who orient in gratitude experience lower levels of stress and depression and better relationships. With practice, you can improve your ability to tap into the state of gratitude, elevating your “set point” of perception.

Practicing gratitude enhances wellbeing—for example, supporting better rest, less inflammation, and peace of mind while reducing symptoms of anxiety or depression.

Writing to express gratitude can help shift attention away from rumination and heavy emotions, and train the brain to more readily access appreciation. Not only this, but the positive effects on mental wellbeing compound like interest, creating accumulating benefits over time.

Processing Complex Emotions

Writing can also help to unwind and process trauma caught in the body’s cellular memory.

When we feel safe, writing about traumatic events or emotional experiences can help to organize chaotic thoughts, release locked-up emotions, and facilitate mental clarity and resilience long term.

Expressive therapeutic writing has also been shown to support physical health and immune function across a range of conditions, while reducing stress, anxiety, and symptoms of PTSD.

Visioning Yourself in Growth

Expressive writing which focuses on self-reflection, gratitude, and imagining a positive future increases experiences of life satisfaction and happiness. In one study, people who journaled for 15 minutes a day felt significantly less anxiety, distress, and depressive symptoms.

When you uncover and explore a new insight on paper, remember a gift that’s gone dormant, or admit future visions or goals for yourself, you are bringing them into your awareness to galvanize energy towards them.

Neuroscience has found that when it comes to goals, people who very vividly describe or picture their goals on paper (men tend to do so more) are significantly (1.2-1.4 times) more likely to achieve those goals. Part of the reason is writing them down improves the biological encoding process by which your hippocampus drops a pin and says, remember this.

Creating Spaciousness Through Reflection

When you put what is inside on paper through reflective journaling, you create spaciousness—within yourself and between you and your thoughts. Often, you can discover how you truly feel through writing and increase your self-awareness.

When you are honest on the page and guided with revealing questions, you have the ability to externalize and explore the narrative, examine triggers, reveal thought and behavior patterns, recognize values, and reveal truths. Increasing your self-awareness, you can begin to see where you are locked into the past, or into thoughts and emotions, so you can come back to presence.

As Goldberg writes, “When you are present, the world is truly alive.”

Start Now: Five Prompts For Embodying Self-Respect

Why not start now? Here are five journaling prompts related to embodying self-respect that you can write to today.

  • What is one way you are keeping your word with yourself? How does it feel? What supports you to honor your intention?
  • What promise to yourself are you bending—or breaking? How does it feel?
  • What nurtures your sense of self that you regularly nourish?
  • What nurtures your sense of aliveness but you are not prioritizing it?
  • What is one thing you ache to give more attention and energy to? What are you doing instead that is a lower investment in your fulfillment?

In the practice of yoga, more than half the task is getting onto the mat. With expressive or reflective writing, more than half the task is getting onto the page.

So often, we stay stuck in the same mental and emotional energetic loops, but self-exploratory journaling in response to powerful questions can open new doors of awareness which allow us into more of ourselves—and more of our lives and our unique leadership.

Aimee Hansen is co-author of This Book Is a Retreat: 101 Soul-Nourishing Questions to Reconnect with Yourself to be released on August 22, 2025 (prior to that, available for pre-order), a co-creation with USA Today bestselling author, Marianne Richmond. She is the founder of Storyteller Within and has led the Journey Into Sacred Expression women’s retreat on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala for the past ten years. As a lover of the questions that open us, she’s inspired hundreds of women in writing their hearts into expansion.

(Guest Contribution: The opinions and views of guest contributions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com)

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How to Achieve What You Want Professionally in 2021

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Nicki GilmourIt is the time of year when professional women (and men) try to finish out the year at work. Reflecting upon and making meaning of an extraordinary year is no easy task as we look back at 2020. An executive coach can help you figure out what matters to you as we enter 2021. Flash forward a year from now, what story do you want to be telling about how your 2021 went? Achieve what you want professionally next year!

Working with a coach is a great way to accurately goal set and get clarity and not just rely on hope as a strategy. Executive coaching helps you behaviorally align to  achieve what you want, no matter what 2021 throws our way. Self- efficacy is a pretty interesting topic at a time when productivity hacks are definitely top of mind.

Promotion or Just a Better Version of Yourself?

Whether it is promotion, advancement, enjoyment, renewal, growth or balance and boundaries at work, most people have some thoughts about how they want 2021 to play out.  Coaching is a process but it is also very much a relationship between coach and ‘coachee’. It can be very intimate in the sense that both the coach and the client has to show up with honesty and vulnerability. Curiosity is important , but not for curiosity’s sake but rather to truly evoke true insights that the client can experience to help them further their leadership or career journey. Sometimes people know the questions and answers consciously and just need help with options. Sometimes people may not know the questions or answers that they need to solve for their challenges or mindset.

The What, The Why, The How and The When

Everyone who comes to coaching knows they want to change something. Or at the very least, the know they want to be a better version of their current selves at work, as a leader or an aspiring leader. Figuring out what you want to achieve, defining it and making sure it is really want you want is cemented by checking in on the ‘why’ you want it. This way we tap into understanding your motivation so we can leverage that to make it actually happen. Are you committed? If not, let’s find out why! And, find out what you really want.

The best way to succeed in 2021 is to clear the life long mental debris, and surface any lingering competing agendas that hunker down in your subconscious and tell you things like you don’t have time or you aren’t good enough which stops you from going after your goals.

More often than not, the subconscious sometimes heard in self-talk, drives the bus, so goal setting is futile if behaviors are not aligning with achieving those goals and your brain tricks you into rationalizing it all that everything is as it should be. Literally, coaching work we do here at theglasshammer is based on a methodology developed at Columbia university and further developed by our head coach. It encompasses adult learning theory, developmental psychology and our immunity to change, neuroscience, behavioral science, social or individual/organizational psychology known as I/O psychology and psycho-dynamic theory around groups and how they operate. In plain english? It boils down to two things:

  • Fear, shame or esteem issues might be sitting hidden in your subconscious paralyzing you from being your greatest version of your professional self.
  • Sometimes it is not about, the systems and dynamics are dysfunctional and you are bearing the brunt of it in your role mostly.  Also sometimes also there are traits in your identity or personality that accentuate issues or make you take up a role like the person who calls it for example.

In coaching, the co-creation of the “how to” begins with a serious look at context, where do you work and what are the organizational norms as these do vary depending on the team and workplace. How does work get done? What is rewarded and what gets tolerated that should be?

Coaching Leaders in Real Life

If you are a leader who struggles with followership after a very successful career built on getting things done, then it is a matter of looking at how work gets done around you.

EQ is about adapting. So, if despite your technical competence and generally mastery of skills, you just cannot get people onboard with the plan the way you want to see it executed, you may be left scratching your head.

Chances are you are not hearing people around you when they explicitly or infer things to you about the project and how they see their role in it. Not listening to feedback, everyday conversations, observations on how people act and react is probably part of what is going on there.

When talking about feedback, I am not referring to the once per year performance formal feedback review. The answers are always in front of you, even in passive aggressive “covert process” type teams and organizations where people seem to say yes but do what they want anyway.

Maybe, you are a manager whose peers and managers do not think you are ready for the next step. Again, what are you missing here? Is it a behavior of yours? Is it something you are or are not doing? What should you do more of, less of and maybe stop or start doing?

If you are a leader who needs to internalize that leadership identity, chances are you have “imposter syndrome” and you might be working very hard in the same way as you always have. Often people who have these tendencies of being “insecure overachievers” do not realize that the behaviors of large amounts of quality work output that got them so far, is not what is going to take them to the higher echelons of company management. Authenticity comes into play here as they struggle to shift identities as fear dictates so much around losing the identity of being the expert.

Cognitive understanding of what you need to do is one thing, behavioral change is another and it is very hard to do.  That is where a good coach  can come in to help you look at your options. Caveat emptor, buyer beware, there are millions of coaches out there as the industry is under-regulated, feel out the fit with a chemistry meet and ask for their methods and see if they are certified by the ICF at PCC level.

What should you expect? After a time, some people can start to reflect not just on action but in action and make behavioral choices in the meeting live time no longer beholden to the old ways that were not longer working for them. Real strategic insights and executive muscle can be built.

You get to be in the movie and watch the movie at the same time. Who wouldn’t want that?

To book an exploratory call with Nicki our founder and Head Coach select a time below

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How To Get Promoted

If getting promoted at work is on your goal list for the rest of the year, or part of early ruminations for a new year resolution for next year, how then can you do your best to achieve your goal?

How To Get PromotedHere are some things to consider:

1. Do you know what the formal promotional process is? Are you in it? What do you need to do criteria wise to get into it? Who drives it in your firm? What roles respectively do your boss(es) and HR play? What other stakeholders are important?

2. What job do you want? Do you want to take the next promotional step as defined by the company? If so, great, take time to understand the competencies needed to make the leap – both hard skills and behaviors. All jobs have tasks that we prefer over other tasks. Be honest with yourself, how strategically important are the tasks that you are avoiding and how will that impact you when being considered for the promotion?

3. If you do not want the linear next step, think about what you like doing, with who and why you enjoy it. This is a great way to distill what would be a good expansion of your role or even a lateral or a non-linear upward move to a different department. Then, work with your sponsor, boss and HR to craft your path.

4. Culturally, take a long hard look at what behaviors get rewarded at your firm. Do they equally get rewarded no matter what gender you are? What flies? What does not get tolerated? What grabs senior management’s attention? This is an important analysis to do as these data points are all keys to seeing what the future could look like so that you can proactively manage your career, every step of the way.

If you would like to work with an executive coach on navigating the terrain, schedule a free exploratory chat with Nicki Gilmour here.

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Career or Calling? The Importance of Setting Authentic Goals

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Image via Shutterstock

Guest contributed by Kim Forrester

Goal-setting is an obvious necessity for those who want to succeed and achieve. But what if you are seeking more than material success in your life and career? What if you also desire a sense of personal fulfilment; inspiration; purpose? If this is the case, it is vital that you choose goals that are not only challenging and rewarding. They must also be truly authentic.

According to Douglas Hall Ph.D. and Dawn Chandler Ph.D. of the Boston University School of Management, individuals with a strong sense of purpose in their career tend to benefit from enhanced meta-competencies; i.e. heightened self-awareness and greater adaptability. Subsequently, an individual with strong meta-competencies is able to learn other, more specific skills with greater ease.
This makes authentic goal-setting a powerful force in your career: an authentic goal not only appeals on a logical level (that is to say it looks like something worthy), it also resonates with who you are as an individual and injects an inherent sense of meaning and purpose into your daily work.

The greater truth of who you are

By its very definition an authentic goal is one that moves beyond social expectation and, instead, reflects a deeply personal and essentially unique understanding of your vision, your values and your greatest desires. There is no 7-Step-Plan to creating an authentic goal. What is required, is for you to become more aware of who you are.

If asked to describe your role in this world, many of you may say that you are a capable and ambitious woman; a committed team member and/or conscientious leader. A colleague, friend, daughter … perhaps a spouse or mother.

There are many words used to describe the concept of contributing in a truly meaningful way – you may know it as a vocation, calling, or ‘life purpose’ – but essentially they all stem from the same idea: you are a part of nature and, as such, you have inherent and inescapable instincts and abilities yearning to be expressed.

By defining and accomplishing more authentic goals, you not only enjoy the usual benefits of achievement (whether they be intellectual, fiscal, psychological or social) but you also nourish and reward your most fundamental essence – that intangible, natural sense of self.

Defining an authentic goal

Just as who you are, at a fundamental level, is often difficult to express in the conventional sense, defining your most authentic goals almost always requires the suspension of logic, reason and analysis. You are not going to ‘think’ your way to authenticity and you most certainly won’t find a blueprint for it anywhere ‘out there’.

If you are searching for more meaning in your career and life, it’s important to set goals that resonate with you authentically. You can do this by:

Switching off autopilot:

Every path to achievement that you have been told – every plan, process and formula for success – is simply a reflection of someone else’s story. And if we were all identical, living uniform, predictable lives, then your path to success could very well emulate someone else’s. But we are not identical and life is a complex tapestry of events, experiences and opportunities. In our logical society, it is easy to get stuck in the idea that the only way forward is the way it’s been done before, but you are unique, creative and capable. Let go of any concept of how things are supposed to work and carve your own path forward.

Trusting your intuition:

We have come to revere conscious decision-making as the highest form of thought; we are taught that logic and analysis will lead us to the best solution, every time. However, recent studies have suggested that we are, in fact, at the mercy of our unconscious brain. What this means for you, is that even the most ‘rational’ decision is being influenced by deeply-set, unconscious patterns and beliefs, including childhood memories and trauma, unhealthy behaviour patterns and deep rooted concepts of what you do, and do not, believe you are worthy of.

In contrast, researchers are beginning to understand the power of the ‘gut instinct’ and have discovered that unconscious urges and emotional prompts can actually increase the accuracy and confidence of decision making. It’s important to note that the vast majority of your physical and physiological processes are unconscious, so your body is a wonderful ally when seeking intuitive knowledge. It knows what’s good for us, and what’s not, so pay attention.

Listening to your language:

A little self-awareness around the words you use – out loud, and in your mind – can reveal a lot about your goals and your intent behind them. Listen to yourself. If you are doing something because you “should” or you “have to” then you are inviting in a sense of resistance and struggle; of obligation and disempowerment. Make sure you are choosing goals because you “want to”. If you want something, then it is an authentic desire and you will have the strength, resilience and creativity you need to achieve.

Kim Forrester is an award-winning author, educator and holistic wellness coach. She combines cutting-edge science with traditional spiritual teachings to inspire soulful living. Her book, Infinite Mind, explores the capabilities of the human mind and was awarded a Silver Medal in the 2017 Living Now Book Awards.

Disclaimer: The opinions and views of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

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