There are a few notable tributaries that led to the river that is now Build Your Big, but today I wanna talk about this journaling exercise from To Be Magnetic’s The Pathway called The Authentic Code, which posits a series of questions around how authentically you’re showing up in your life (I’ll post some of them👇🏼 so you can try it for yourself).
I’ve done this exercise multiple times…and I don’t know if it was the phase of the moon or what, but when I did it again back in August, it really hit on a different level. I did the whole thing, then sat back and realized that all of my big goals and dreams? They were nowhere to be found in most of the answers 😬. How I was spending my time and my energy from day-to-day in no way reflected the things I claimed to care most about doing or being or having.
Everything I’ve done since then has been in service of changing that bummer summer moment. Now, if you did one of those “A Day in the Life of __” that we’re seeing all over TikTok (“A day in the life of your friendly neighborhood embezzler”…“A day in the life of that girl who just sits and stares at you while you’re both getting pedicures”), you would absolutely see me working towards the things I care most about accomplishing in life 🏆
But that didn’t happen right away! I still had at least two more months left of f*cking around and finding out! And I will tell you all about that in these newsletters!!!
Anyway, here’s what I want you to do: Try out this journaling exercise, and just see if the answers line up with what you think or feel are your biggest passions or ambitions. It’s not meant to be a “haha, gotcha! Looks like you’re not actually doing ANYTHING you keep talking such a big game about doing, sport-o!!” exercise…that’s what it was for me, but for you, maybe it wakes you up to the fact that you think you should be focusing on your podcast, but what you’ve always been obsessed with and wish you could do is design and write for video games 💡
If you do find your answers incongruent with your biggest goals and dreams, then I invite you to join us for the Build Your Big daily work sprints this week (every morning at 8 AM CST, via Zoom). Maybe even just show up and use that time to get some clarity on how to make sure that, if you did this exercise again 6 months from now, ALL of your answers would back up your biggest goals and dreams ✨
Here’s the exercise, with some changes so that, again, we’re not committing copyright crimes. List your top 4 for every question and be ruthlessly honest with yourself:
What do you spend most of your time and energy on?
In your day-to-day life, when nobody is watching, what are you most likely to do?
What do you spend most of your money on?
When you think of wanting money, what do you really want to use it for?
What is most organized in your life? (From your calendar to your environment, to your bank, to your social life, etc?)
Where are you most reliable in your life? (To whom? To what? When?)
What do you spend most of your time thinking about?
In social settings, what do you find yourself wanting to talk about most? What topics light you up? What could you literally talk about all day long?
Think of your ideal day. What are the top four things you’d make sure to do?
If you were to treat yourself to something special today (with zero financial constraints), what would you do?
Think about your Pinterest boards, screenshots on your phone, and saved articles, etc. What do you find yourself saving the most? What subjects, people, things, experiences, tips, and tools?
What do you love to learn about most? What do most often you find yourself researching just for funsies?
Think back to childhood. What were the things you loved, cared about, or wanted to do most as a kid?
When you’re dreaming about the future, what sort of things do you visualize the most?
What are your long-term goals and dreams? What accomplishments do you hope to achieve in this lifetime?
What makes you feel the most alive? What hobbies, accomplishments, past-times, or passions bring you the most joy?
Body Adventures with AC 💪🏼
This week on Body Adventures with AC, I’ll be dropping all the nitty-gritty details of where I’m at and where I plan to go 🎯. You can opt in to Body Adventures posts here(you are not automatically subscribed to it!)…I’ll also start dropping paid subscriber + Close Friends content on the regular this week, so if you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber now is the best time to sign up so you don’t miss ANYTHING. It’s my goal to have an absolute BLAST shedding 120 pounds of fat from my bodacious bod, and hopefully that inspires you to mentally approach a Big that traditionally tends to sound and feel very lame and painful into one of the best experiences of your life.
That’s it for me - thanks so much for being here, and I hope you have an amazing week 🤞🏼💜
-AC