This is episode 210 and today we are diving into a juicy topic that’s going to hit home for a lot of you and that is asserting yourself when it comes to your goals and your strongest personal and professional desires. So if you’ve ever felt anger and frustration and resentment towards the people in your life because they’re standing in the way of your dreams, this episode is for you. But this isn’t about blaming them, it’s about taking ownership, communicating clearly and leading yourself in a way that invites support instead of resistance and arguments and tension and all of those things. So grab a cup of tea, get comfy or grab your headphones and the leash for your dog and let’s do this.

If you want to do things differently but need some help making it happen then tune in for your weekly dose of coaching from me, Maisie Hill, Master Life Coach and author of Period Power. Welcome to The Maisie Hill Experience.

Hi everyone, welcome back to the podcast or welcome if it’s your first time. It’s great to have you here. Have you ever felt like the people in your life just don’t get it? Like they are standing in the way of your dreams? But, here’s my question for you. Have you actually even told them what those dreams are?

This episode is maybe going to ring some bells for some of you. It certainly has for me as I’ve been preparing it because we have a tendency to kind of get lost, simmering in frustration whilst expecting others to read our mind. That is something that we all tend to do.

So I want you to think about your goals and your dreams, whatever they may be, as a map for an adventure that you’re planning on going on. And before you’ve set off or done anything, you will, I’m sure, have already considered multiple potential destinations for you to go off to. You will have decided on one of those, you will have done some research, you’ve planned how you’re going to get there, you’ve considered obstacles, things that might go wrong and basically poured over every detail in your mind several times.

So by this point, you are already in an intimate relationship with your goal. Before you’ve even gone off and taken any action, you’re already in that intimate relationship, even if it’s in the early stages and it’s just a seed of an idea that’s only just beginning to germinate within you and you’re just nurturing it bit by bit.

So, you have this grand plan of some kind, fantastic, I’m here for it. But as you go to initiate said plan, you run into issues and that might be time, the demands of others, endless emails, childcare issues, parenting negotiations, financial decisions. Your mum wants to go shopping with you and just the stuff of life. Before you know it, you’re feeling angry or frustrated at least and experiencing a festering resentment towards others because of how they limit your ability to pursue your goals and dreams. They don’t get it. They’re unsupportive. It’s unfair. You’re always the one taking care of them and prioritizing what they want and no one ever thinks about you, that kind of narrative.

But have you shared your dreams with them? Have you actually rolled out your map and let other people see it? Think about it. If you’ve never said, here’s where I want to go, here’s why it matters to me, here’s my plan, then how can they possibly know that’s what you have in mind? You’re literally expecting them to read your mind.

You may not have it all planned out, that’s okay. You could just say to them, here’s what I’ve got in mind. I don’t really have a plan yet, but I wanted you to know that I have this in mind as a thing that I will be doing.

Yet, so many of us stew in resentment, feeling like they are the ones holding us back, or interfering, or just not supporting us enough. Meanwhile, they’re completely in the dark. We haven’t even given them a legitimate chance to respond, but we’ve already assigned all this meaning to the things. We’ve created this all up, usually in our imagination, and make it mean all these kinds of things. Usually in the realm of they don’t care, they don’t respect you, they don’t love you and you know it’s uncomfortable to realize this isn’t it?

If you’re squirming as you’re listening I get it okay and I do think that there is something in this that is part of being someone who is forward-thinking and identifies with being a visionary and someone who is either a leader in some capacity or you’re just very strong on leading yourself in your life. Because there is that tendency to end up so far in front of those around you, that you forget to check if other people are actually there with you, or at least aware of what you’re up to.

I hold my hands up and admit that this is something I continue to work on, but at least I have the awareness that I do this and I take responsibility for that. Which means I don’t take issues with any of my team or with my loved ones, okay? Literally, as soon as I wonder about something that according to me should have been done, I realise what an unreasonable thought that is because I haven’t communicated anything to anyone, so how would they know that that was the thing that needed to be done?

Which means I can then drop that frustration, I can get back to what matters, actually communicate with people and a useful way of doing things. So in doing that, I save myself from hours of being annoyed or potentially days. I also save other people from any potential unreasonable behaviour from me as a result of my unmanaged mind and feelings.

So instead, it just happens in a matter of moments, because I’ve practised recognising this pattern and then I go, okay, that is a ridiculous expectation to have someone and then I just drop it. It’s literally moments, and it saves so much inner turmoil, friction with other people, and all sorts of issues.

You might be listening to this and some of it’s resonating with you, but you might also be like, well, you know, but I don’t yell at anyone and I don’t berate people over e-mail. I’m not mean. I’m a nice person. I’m a good person. Okay, cool. I’m sure you are, but even if you aren’t openly hostile towards them, and you’re very innocent in all this and definitely don’t do what I’ve described, I invite you to evaluate, just possibly, if you do it inside your head, are you having a go at them internally?

Okay, you’re not yelling at them, it’s not coming out your mouth, but is it coming out of your mind? Even if it’s just rattling around inside you. Are you having imaginary arguments with them about how unsupportive they are and how they’re holding you back and they just don’t understand your dreams?

By the way, they probably have a sense that this is what’s going on. Even if you’re not saying it out loud, they might be picking up on the tension. They might not know where it’s coming from. Even if they don’t consciously notice that, I’m going to call it passive aggressive energy, is draining you. It’s taking up mental and emotional bandwidth. It’s taking up physical energy and all of those things you could be using to actually work on your goals. Those things that apparently really matter to you.

The people in your life can’t support what they don’t know exists. The clearer and more grounded you are in what you want, the easier it is to invite others into that vision. But resentment isn’t even the real obstacle here. It’s a distraction from the real obstacle, which is taking responsibility for what you want and communicating it clearly.

But if the idea of taking responsibility feels crap to you because you’re accustomed to blaming criticising yourself rather than taking responsibility, and then you combine that tendency to blame and criticise yourself with the righteousness that comes from feeling resentment and being right about something, then it makes sense that this is a point of tension and stuckness.

Let’s go back to your vision and your journey towards your goals. Think of that as an expedition. You all know I’m very keen on using the idea of adventures in my work. That’s all my sagittariusness in my chart.

So, your journey towards your goals is like an expedition, okay? And you’re preparing to set off, but there’s this weight tied to your leg and that weight is all this resentment. It’s heavy, it’s dragging you down, and it’s kind of moving your focus from your inner compass, your inner sense of knowing, it’s shifting the energy and focus from that to the weight and the issues.

This weight is definitely not part of your gear, it’s just accumulated debris that you have picked up along the way. Instead of dragging it along with you, you could just cut the rope and just let it go. Think about the energy that you’ll save by doing that, by letting go of that frustration and resentment. That’s just going to free you up, it’s going to fuel your expedition. Think about how great that will feel.

That is heavy. It’s not nice to carry around, but we get very invested in it and needing to be right. That can hold us back from letting it go. The energy that you spend stewing is energy you could be using to move forward. It costs you energy to stay invested in being stuck and it is a choice to do that. You could just choose not to. The quicker that you get at recognising this and moving through it, the easier it gets because then it’s just something that you practice doing.

So if this is really resonating for you, and you’re like, oh yeah, I’m really prone to doing that, then that’s just like a habitual pattern that you have picked up along the way, and then repeat it. So now you just need to do this that I’m laying out for you now, and start doing it. And it might feel a bit awkward and like uncomfortable to be responsible like this, but the more you do it, the more practice you get at it, the easier it comes until it’s just a blip that you notice, you move through it, and you move on.

Hey, it doesn’t have to be anything more than that. It doesn’t have to become a whole narrative like, oh my God, look at the weight. Oh, I didn’t know it was even there, and now Maisie’s told me it’s there, and oh God, and you’re just, you’re putting more energy into it, okay? You can literally just cut that rope and set off doing the thing that you want to do.

Taking responsibility for what you want is a beautiful thing. So is patience with others. So, think about how long it took you to fully get on board with your goal. Maybe you’re not even fully on board with it yet. Maybe you’re still kind of like working with it and getting to know it. You’re not fully committed. That’s fine. But how long did it take for you to have the idea to maybe wrestle with it a bit, to accept it and then to let it germinate inside you to nourish it into something tangible that you are now actively working on.

So I’m guessing that in that process you maybe had to wrestle with self-doubt, with logistics of some kind, with carving out time and money and mental focus to make it happen, maybe even fear before deciding to go for it. So, you needed that time, why wouldn’t your loved ones need some time too?

Because if you’re expecting your boss, or I mean your boss might not be your loved one, but if you’re expecting your boss or your significant other or family members, best mates to instantly accept your goal, your plan and be fully on board in all the ways that you want, then I’d suggest that you’re setting them and yourself up for failure by doing it this way.

As I said, I get it. When you’ve got to that place where you are ready to go for it and there’s a helpful impatience bubbling up in you, the kind of helpful impatience that gets you taking action, that impatience can end up actually being misdirected towards other people. Those ones that are in the dark and clueless, but, you know, it’s easier to blame them and say that they’re slowing you down.

Especially if you’ve had a plan to do something for, I don’t know, three months or so, but you’ve been putting off the conversation with them for that entire time, and then the event that you want to go to or the thing that you want to do is in two weeks’ time. Then, you know, it’s not too late to have the conversation, but don’t harass them into a plan just because you haven’t been responsible enough for yourself and your plan and you haven’t communicated it earlier.

All those other opportunities that you know, and I’m describing my experience here, all the times when I know I could have spoken up and had this conversation earlier, right? But for some reason or not, I chose not to. And then so now we’re like, it’s all urgent. When we do this, it is on us. It’s not on them.

And when we invite people into our vision and we have these conversations early, then we create space for the conversation. It’s not harassed and we are able to lead the conversation with what we want. And we get to invite the other people in our lives into that vision and in the places where it’s appropriate to figure things out together.

Right? So there’s to be some things that I’m doing in the spring that involve me going away and I’ve had that conversation with Paul and with Nelson about what it will mean for me to do these things, for the time it will take for me traveling and being away, what about their plans, how do they feel about it, what are their thoughts, how do we figure this out together so that it’s like a win win or win, win, win because there’s the three of us.

So taking responsibility for what you want is so powerful. It’s you saying this is my dream and I’m going to lead myself in making it happen because when we take the time to communicate our visions with others, we give them a chance, right? And then however they respond is however they respond, then we can look at that. But we need to give them a chance to begin with rather than just kind of dropping it on them last minute and then getting annoyed at them for however they respond.

So, things that we can ask them. It’s like, this is my plan, this is what I want to do. Not sure how it’s all going to shake out or shake up. What’s the phrase? How it’s all going to shake out yet. But what do you think? Have you got any concerns, any suggestions? Is there anything I’m not seeing here that you can like highlight for me? What can we set up so that I can do this?

Okay, you’re not asking permission, you’re not being apologetic, you’re not dismissing and kind of minimizing what you want. You are honoring your vision and what you want and you’re also considering other people.

Now, other people will then have their thoughts about what you’re doing, those sorts of their business, they might choose to share some of them out loud with you, you can work with those. I’ve got other resources for that.

Okay, folks, if this episode resonated with you, take a moment to reflect on one conversation that you need to have this week about your goals. And if you want to share, comment over on the Instagram post for this episode, you can also DM me or just tag me on Instagram, I would love to hear about it. And I’ll be back next week. I will catch you then.

Hey, if you love listening to this podcast then come and check out my membership, The Flow Collective, where you get my best resources and all the coaching you need to transform your inner and outer life. Sign up to the waitlist at theflowcollective.co/join, and I’ll see you in the community.