Courtesy / Cassie Crosby
Cassie Crosby, Iterata Solutions
Updated: May 31, 2023
How to consciously create your desired future
By Cassie Crosby, Iterata Solutions
My career took a left turn in the summer of 2020. I’d been serving in the Army for 23 years and I was on a well-worn path, leading me toward one of the most important milestones in a successful Army officer’s career. I had the opportunity to take on more responsibility but it would come with another move, another deployment, and another long separation from my family.
Frankly, I was burned out but I felt stuck, barreling toward a future that I wasn’t even sure I wanted, and I had no idea where to even begin to find my way out of it.
Thankfully, I had the opportunity to work with a professional coach through a new Army coaching program. My coach asked me one question that changed my life: “What do you want?”
This question was one of the most difficult I’ve ever had to answer. I had to identify and strip away the stories I was telling myself about what I “should” do, and be honest about where my current trajectory was taking me and whether it was what I really wanted. I ultimately decided to retire from the Army and pursue my passion, coaching and developing leaders, and my future became more mine to define than it ever had been before.
But I quickly found myself stuck in familiar patterns and learned it takes more than a major life change to find your way out of the spin. No matter where you are in your life, you have to be intentional about what you want and where you’re going and align your behavior and actions with your values and what’s most important to you. You have to lead yourself or life ends up leading you.
Whether you’re feeling stuck, struggling to get results, or finding it impossible to make time for yourself, you can chart your own path by making conscious decisions every day to create the future you hope for. Here are some strategies to help get you out of the spin and be intentional in your leadership, your business, and your life.
Lead yourself first. The ability to lead yourself is the most important leadership skill. The ability to be the person you want to be regardless of your situation requires self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-control. Self-awareness is our lens to our emotions and our beliefs and how they influence our behavior and decision-making. Through self-regulation we reduce the frequency and intensity of our impulses by managing our stress and paying attention to our energy and recovery needs. Using self-control, we inhibit our impulses, preventing us from exhibiting counterproductive behaviors, hurting others, or sabotaging our success. Nobody wants the word “disgraced” in front of their title.
Own your story. Our realities and our possibilities are shaped by the stories we tell ourselves. We have to learn to recognize our stories, admit that we could be wrong and consider other options. We can explore our stories by determining whether they’re really true, and if you believe them, how you can know for sure. You can determine what’s true by whether you have facts to prove your assertions. When you lack facts, ask yourself what would happen if you chose to believe something else. You can then move past the parts of your story that are holding you back by choosing the next steps that align with who you are and what you want. You get to choose the story, so choose wisely.
Be a boss. Stop waiting for permission to take the next step or to make the next decision. You have agency. The only person you’re waiting for is you.
Trust your gut. Your instincts are strong. They got you to where you’re at today.
Gain clarity from action. Your GPS doesn’t start talking until you start driving, and the same is true in our lives. Sometimes it takes figuring out what we don’t want to figure out what we do.
Speak your truth. If something doesn’t feel right, speak up. When you’re misaligned with your values, you can feel it; it eats at you. Don’t let it eat you alive.
The future really is yours to create. You don’t have to wait for a major life change to become the leader and the person you want to be. You can start today by using these strategies and making the decisions day-by-day to be the boss of your desired future.
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