EP. 2: Getting Clear on What You Want
- odettecoronel
- Sep 30
- 19 min read
I know it sounds like this huge, daunting thing, designing your entire life, so let’s start with the basics. This is your life, so this process is going to take a lot of self-reflection. When designing your life, you have to ask yourself what you do want in your life, and what you don’t.
Getting clear on what you want can be as simple as just being honest with yourself. By identifying your core values and beliefs, you can take the first steps towards the life you didn’t even know you wanted. And as your life and relationship coach, we can do it together.
In this week’s episode, we're getting clear on what you want your life and your love to look like. You are allowed to change and evolve and grow, even if you don’t know what you want yet. In this episode, I’m going to be sharing some journal prompts that you can use to get clear on what you want, as well as sharing what I did to get clear on what I wanted when I first started designing my life.
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Transcript: Episode 2: Getting Clear on What You Want
Odette: it wasn't a forever thing, but it was a stepping stone, and it's what I wanted to do at the time. It helped me get closer to what I wanted my life to look like at the time.
Welcome to Life and Love by Design, the podcast that helps you create the life and the relationship that truly fulfills you. I'm your host, Odette Cornell, an accredited professional coach and LP practitioner and relationship mentor. And I've helped countless men, women, and couples who are feeling stuck in their lives or their relationships to stop living by default, to start taking ownership of their lives and start creating the life and the relationship that they truly wanna live.
Tune in every Wednesday where I'm gonna be sharing tools, tips, strategies, and conversations to help you design a life and a relationship that feels perfect for you. Because you don't have to settle. You get to define your own version of success, [00:01:00] and I'm here to guide you every step of the way. So let's dive in.
Abraham Lincoln once said, the best way to predict the future is to create it. But what if you don't know what it is that you wanna create? What if you have no idea what you want your future to look like? Welcome back to Life and Love by Design. I'm your host, OJE Cornell, and this is episode two where we're gonna talk about getting clear on what you want your life and your love to look like.
So in our last episode, I asked you a question. I asked you to pretend that you had a magic wand, and if you had that magic wand and you can create the life and love that you wanted, what would that look like? But for some people that's not that easy. Like we actually don't know. Sometimes we don't know what we want.
For most of us, you know, most of life, like we really didn't have to figure it out because we were in school and we just followed the next step. It was, you know, you go from kindergarten to to [00:02:00] elementary school, then to high school, then college. Then after college you get a job. Then some of us after. You get your job, you're following the steps that your career or your job has in store for you, and you work your way up the ladder.
For some of us, we just get married maybe to our high school sweetheart or our college sweetheart, and do you get married, you start a family and you just follow along to whatever life naturally throws at you. Maybe you buy a house and on and on, and there's nothing wrong with that. Totally fine if we do that, but what if you wanted to get really intentional about what it is that you wanted and what would really make you happy?
What would make you feel fulfilled? I remember years ago when I had so many plans, so many goals, so many ambitions. My husband and I had all these plans, and we were doing it. We were hustling, we were achieving things, and it was great. I remember that we had started a business. We got married, we already had our first daughter, [00:03:00] and I think we had even purchased our first home already.
And I remember I was working a lot of hours and I would dro wake up each morning, drop off my daughter at the sitter, spend the day working, and I did enjoy my job, by the way, but I would spend my day working. Then after work, I would rush, pick her up from the sitter, come home, make dinner, bath time. Put her to bed and then at that point I was exhausted.
Pretty much pass out at night and then wake up the next morning to do it all over again. And yes, you know, I was grateful I was achieving. I did have the life that up until then I, you know, I wanted, so that's great. But I noticed that I was just feeling exhausted and overwhelmed at the time, and I realized, wait a minute, is this what I really want?
Something is missing and I just didn't know what to do next. I knew I needed to make some kind of change or adjustment because that life just wasn't sustainable, but I wasn't sure what to do [00:04:00] next. So there were things that I had to do in order to figure that out. And by the way, this isn't the only time in my life when I have felt this, this hap.
It happens from time to time, and it's normal for this to happen to all of us at some point in our lives, sometimes many times. And. Life is about me being able to reflect and redirect and, and make changes when we need to. But I remember at the time I went through this little journey of, um, self discovery where I would kind of like reflect and ask myself some questions like, when am I truly happy?
Like, just paying attention to that. What am I truly happy? What lights me up? What energizes me? What part of my day do I feel most fulfilled or happiest or excited? Or what part of my day do I feel, uh, motivated? When do I feel proud of myself? All of these questions I would sort of ask myself and that would kind of help me figure out what was missing or [00:05:00] what I wanted more of.
And I also took time to think about which parts of my day drain me, which parts of my day do I just completely dread? What are those moments? Because I wanted to make sure that I did more of the stuff that was making me happy or was energizing me and less of the stuff that was draining me and just kind of making me feel miserable.
I also, at the time, I remember I started a practice of gratitude where I would, write down like at least three things that I was grateful for and. All of these things, you know, thinking about what I was grateful for, thinking about when I was happiest, thinking about when I was energized. All of those things led me to figure out what my core values are.
And one of my main core values was family and still is family. And spending time with my daughter, I remember thinking, God, there's nothing more important in the world than raising this child, spending [00:06:00] time with her and just, you know. Teaching her and just spending quality time together, watching her grow and just all of that.
I didn't wanna miss a thing, so that was an important value that I noticed. So asking myself these questions really helped me get more and more clear on what was really important to me and what truly matters to me, and what my values are and what I wanted my life to look like. So the more curious I got about myself, the more aware I became about these things about myself.
The more clear I became, you know, I also thought about what kind of person do I wanna be? Like what kind of mother do I wanna be? What kind of wife do I wanna be? What kind of employee do I wanna be? We also had our own business at the time, so what kind of business owner did I wanna be? All of those things I would ask myself and.
What that means is, do I wanna be the type of mother that is present for her child, or do I wanna [00:07:00] be the type of mother that is able to have, you know, quality time, but not quantity time? Again, there's nothing wrong with either, with either one. I just needed to get clear on what I wanted to do. What did I want my family to look like?
What do I want to my business to look like? Do I need to be the business owner that does everything and has to handle everything or can I. Hire the right team of people and delegate. What did I want my marriage to look like? Like how much time do we need to spend together? Are we doing things together as a team or are we going to live, you know, do things separately and individually, or do we wanna do things more interdependently?
I needed to get clear on that to see what kind of relationship I wanted to have. So that's a little bit of what I experienced just one of many times when I. I had to self-reflect and question what it is that I truly wanted. So I want you to take the time to do the same thing. Ask yourself these questions.
Really no one can answer [00:08:00] them for you. This is a journey that you have to take. You have to figure out for yourself what it is that you want, and if you don't know what you want, that's okay too. In the meantime, just do what you know. So it's, there's absolutely nothing wrong with, in the meantime, while you're figuring this out, you do work where you are currently employed or do what's easy, do what's, what's available to you If you have a degree in pharmacy and you're not sure if that was the right thing to do, but in the meantime you don't know what to do.
In the meantime, just work in pharmacy or if you're not sure if you wanna live where you're currently living forever. That's okay. You can live there in the meantime. So what normally happens when we're not thinking about these things or we're not intentional? And again, there's nothing wrong with this, but we normally just do what we learned in our family or what everyone else around us is doing, what our friends are doing.[00:09:00]
What the people in our town is, are, are doing what people in your community or church are doing. We just kind of do what everyone around us is doing. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but that can also lead us to live on autopilot. And if you are happy doing those things, and that's totally fine, but the point is to figure out, am I truly happy?
Is this really what I want? Because again, you wanna just be intentional with whatever you do with the way that you. Show up with the way that you speak, with the way that you interact with people. So if you don't know what to do, like in the meantime, just do something, even if it's not a forever thing.
Again, going back to my story at the time, I decided to make a little change and I decided that my, the job that I had at the time, because again, I was, even though I had my own business, my husband and I had our own business, I was still working and. That job was just taking too many hours away from my family and I decided,that I was gonna [00:10:00] take a huge pay cut and I got a different job that was a lot less hours and I was able to spend more time with my daughter.
And that wasn't a forever job, but it was the right thing for me to do at the time. And it. My real goal at the time and what I wanted my life to look like, my priority was to spend more time with my daughter, to spend more time with my family, to be able to even have time for my business. So that's what made sense for me at the time.
And again, it wasn't a forever thing, but it was a stepping stone, and it's what I wanted to do at the time. It helped me get closer to what I wanted my life to look like at the time. Remember, we're constantly changing. Life is changing. We're growing and evolving. So whatever you're doing today doesn't mean that it's forever.
So just do what you know. Do what is most easy for you or what's available for you at the time while you're figuring out if this is what you really want. Going back to asking [00:11:00] yourself those questions and reflecting on what you really want. I want you to also ask yourself, in addition to, when am I happiest?
When do I feel most fulfilled? When do I feel most energized? I want you to think about who you are and what your strengths are. What do people tell you that you're really good at? What kind of compliments do you get? Or what are your talents? What are things that you're good at? What are things that you're naturally good at?
Maybe you need to sharpen your skills at something and become better at it. Or maybe there's something that you're curious about and you wanna learn more about. You can even think about what are my weaknesses, or what are my triggers? Because maybe those things are getting in the way of the life that you want, they're kind of holding you back.
So you just wanna be aware of what those things are. And going back to your values, like I mentioned before, I, I tried to figure out what was most important to me, why I was doing the things that I was doing, and [00:12:00] working towards the thing that I was working towards. Family for me was very important. I want you to also think about your own values, what's most important to you, and also what are your beliefs?
What is it that you believe? Because we want the things that we believe to support us in what we do, and sometimes the things that we believe hold us back. You know, beliefs are things that we just kind of learn. We develop these beliefs that we learn them from our families or from different experiences that we have in life, and we just kind of think these things and we think 'em over and over again.
And before you know it, we believe it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. If it were true, every single human being in the world would agree on it and would believe it. But this is a belief that you've formed just based on your own experiences or your own. Teachings from your family or your environment, and I want you to think about, you know, is this belief useful?
For example, [00:13:00] if you're trying to, if you're trying to build your career and you're trying to work at a job and you need, you wanna make a lot of money, but you have a belief that making money is evil and that people that are rich are selfish and are evil. Then chances are you're gonna have trouble charging people for your services or asking for a raise, and that belief is gonna hold you back.
It's gonna get in your way. So that belief is not useful for you. So think about how can you reframe that belief? You can believe instead that, you know, money is just energy, it's just an exchange of energy. And good people can do good things with money. Evil people can do bad things with money. But good people can do good things with money.
It's not about the money. Money is neutral. So that's a belief you can adapt and that might be more useful. Or if you're dating and you're looking for your life partner and you really wanna, you know, settle down and, and get married and have kids and, and start your [00:14:00] life with a partner, but you have a belief that you know men are pigs and there's no good men out there, or all men cheat.
If you have that belief and you don't believe that that person exists, then how are you ever going to be able to attract a partner or find a partner to share your life with if you just, you don't believe that they exist? So that belief is an example of something that's just not useful, and I get it.
Maybe in your experience you have been cheated on in the past or the relationships around you are just not happy. But it doesn't mean that it's true for everyone and it's not useful to hold onto that belief. So again, you wanna try to reframe that belief. You wanna believe that your perfect partner is out there for you, that you're going to attract and find.
So again, you're gonna ask yourself what makes you happiest? When do you feel most energized? When do you feel most drained? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are your triggers? You wanna know those [00:15:00] things. You wanna get clear on your values. What's important to you? What matters to you?
What are your beliefs? Are your beliefs supporting you or are they getting in your way? The next thing that I want you to think about is. What resources do I already have? What opportunities do I have available to me? For example, your education is a resource. That's a resource that can help you with your network.
It can help you with get a better paying job. So that's a resource for you, your family, your friends, your network. Those are all resources that you have at your disposal, and that can also offer you different opportunities. So you wanna look at what's already available. To you and you wanna look at your environment, literally the people around you.
Sometimes where we spend time holds us back or really pulls us farther away from what we truly want. So you just wanna look at the people around you. You know how they say that [00:16:00] you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. That's really true. Look around and see who you spend your time with and say, is this really what I want?
Or is this something that's really keeping me stuck somewhere that I'm really not happy? So, for example, if everyone around you is smoking cigarettes or vaping or whatever, chances are that you probably do the same thing too, or you're gonna start doing it eventually if you spend enough time with them.
Or if you realize that you wanna start getting healthier, you wanna be more fit, but you realize that the people around you have fast food every day for lunch, and that's what's everyone does, and that's what you know, you end up doing as well. Maybe that's an environment that you wanna maybe spend. Less time with, or you wanna make a shift, or at least you wanna be aware of it so that you can intentionally not do things on autopilot and do things differently instead.
Or if you're in an environment where it's really toxic and everybody's just constantly critical [00:17:00] and negative, or constantly just watching news and things that are, that are just negative all day long and it's just bringing you down, then you wanna. Maybe move to a different environment or just spend less time in that environment if you can, because sometimes this is our families and we're kind of stuck there.
But if you can take ownership of what you can and spend less time in that environment and surround yourself with more positive media and positive content and just positive people. People that do help you feel more energized, more inspired, more motivated. Another thing that's really important for you to pay attention to and to notice are your behaviors and your habits.
What are the things that you're doing every day? And just ask yourself, you know, do I like that I'm doing these things? Am I, how do I feel when I do these things? Just stop for a moment and just really think about what do I, what does that feel like inside my body after I do this? Maybe there's a habit that [00:18:00] you've just kind of formed and you didn't even notice it and, and you don't like it.
You wanna change it, but you just, you never realize that you were even doing it. So what we do without thinking, and we just do on autopilot, becomes a habit. And sometimes we don't even notice that we're doing it. Like if you want to. Buy a house someday, let's just say, or save money or pay off your bills.
But you have a habit of every day, you know, going to Starbucks three times a day or going for fancy lunches every day, and it's just become a habit. It's just what you do. Maybe that's what your coworkers do or whatever, and you formed a habit. You kind of just do it mindlessly. This is a behavior and you wanna notice it, and you wanna notice, you know, is this gonna help me pay off my bills, or is this gonna help me save money for that house or whatever?
Is this a habit that I wanna keep? I have a friend that noticed that, you know, she was having a glass of wine every night just to unwind before going to bed, and before you know it, she was having two glasses of wine and it just [00:19:00] became a habit. It just became something that she was just doing automatically just to kind of relax.
But she noticed eventually when she started paying attention. That it was really affecting her sleep. It was giving her anxiety at night. She was waking up kind of groggy in the morning and tired. So this was a mindless habit, a behavior that she had formed, that when she started to pay attention and she was saying, oh, I'm not getting enough sleep.
I'm not having a good morning. It had to do with a habit that she had formed and she hadn't even realized it. So our behaviors, we wanna pay attention to those behaviors, and that's gonna help us figure out also what we want. And in addition to the behaviors I'm going to include here to pay attention to your thoughts, pay attention to your self talk, right?
Are you beating yourself up for everything that goes wrong? Every mistake that you make? Are you comparing yourself to everyone's life on social media to their highlights that people [00:20:00] post? Are you criticizing your appearance? Are you being. Too hard on yourself and being a perfectionist for every little thing that you do, because our thoughts and our self-talk, sometimes we are our own worst critic.
So I want you to really pay attention to the way that you're speaking to yourself in your mind and think, how can you be kinder to yourself if you notice that you're not being too kind? You wanna make sure that you're as kind and as compassionate to yourself as you are with other people. All of these things that I'm describing, all of these questions that I've given you over time, if you do them, take your time with them.
Over time, it's gonna get clear what you want. It's gonna get clear how you wanna show up. You're gonna get clear on the type of person that you want to be. And once we get can clear on that, then we can become more intentional. Then we can figure out, okay, what do I really want? What's gonna fill [00:21:00] me up?
What should I do in order to bring me closer to what I want? The more that you get to know yourself, the more clear you become on what your goals should be. At the very least, you'll know which direction to go in, what's gonna bring you closer to whatever is aligned with what you want or what feels right.
You're just gonna know how to pay attention to what feels right, literally feels right, like in your body. Sometimes we feel we cringe when something just isn't right, like we can feel it. And this really works because the more you. Create a habit of that self-reflection and you really know yourself. Your confidence starts to grow, your self-esteem starts to get better, and you just become more clear on who you are and how you wanna show up and how you wanna behave and what you wanna do.
And then it just gets easier to form goals and to figure out, you know, what you should be working towards. So one example is a client that I was working with and he had recently gotten married. He has an okay job. He was. He was happy [00:22:00] enough with it. He didn't love it, but he was happy enough with it, and him and his wife did have goals, but he wasn't sure if that was a place he wanted to stay in forever or if he wanted to make a change.
And through asking himself all of these questions and working with me, our coaching together, eventually he came to the realization that he did like what he was doing, but. He wanted to make more. He wasn't making enough money and he wanted to maybe work for a different company. So he realized that what he needed to do was get a certain certification and gain the skills that he needed in order to make that change.
And he eventually, he did. And now he has a job that he absolutely loves. He's making more money, and him and his wife are actually in the process of buying a home. So. It worked and it's just about being clear. Getting clear. It's okay if you're not currently clear, but getting clear through asking yourself these [00:23:00] questions to becoming more and more self-aware.
And going back to my story, as I said before, eventually I left my corporate job. I took a pay cut, and I was able to spend more time with. With my daughter and I kept asking those questions, kept reflecting, and eventually by the time I had my second child, I have three. By the time I had my second child, I decided that what was best for me and for my family was to.
Stop working outside of our own family business and dedicate myself to my family and to our own family business where I had more flexibility. I was able to work from home. I was able to control my schedule, and through asking those questions, I was able to take the steps along the way to shift and make changes that.
Help me get clear on what mattered most to me and what I really wanted with my life. So try this for yourself. Try these things for yourself. Answer all of these questions for yourself. And if you don't wanna go through all these [00:24:00] questions or you just don't have the time, at least do this. Pay attention and write down.
Literally write down everything that energized you, every moment where you felt energized or happy or motivated. And write down every moment when you feel felt drained or depleted, or you just dreaded whatever you were doing, just pay attention to it, jot it down so that you can start developing the habit of being more self-aware.
And by the way, I have this. Workbook journal, it's called Create an Awesome Life Journal. It's available on Amazon, and all of these questions are in there. This is a great guide to help you figure out what you want, so pick it up. This is a great resource I offer to my clients as well, and it's available on Amazon.
You could just type in my name, Ette Cornell, and it'll come up. Or type in create an awesome life journal. I'm, I'll actually attach a link to it in the show notes as well. So these are some of the questions and the tools to help you figure out what it is that you want and help you get more clear. If anything that you heard today [00:25:00] resonated with you, please.
Like and subscribe, share, maybe share the podcast episode with someone that you think might find it valuable. And if you have any questions, send me an email life coach@odecornell.com. I look forward to seeing you again next Wednesday and every Wednesday. And until then, remember, your life and your love are yours to design.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Life and Love by Design with me your host, Odette Coronel. If anything that you heard today resonated with you, please take a moment to like and share this episode. Subscribe. Even leave a rating. This helps us grow and reach more amazing people just like you who are ready to evolve and design a life and a love that they want to live.
And don't forget to join the conversation on Instagram at Odette Cornell Coaching. I would love to hear your takeaways. And if you don't have Instagram, you can always email me at life [00:26:00] coach@odettecornell.com. Until next time, remember, your life and your love are yours to design. See you next week.
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