1, 2, 3 PIVOT PT. 3

Half way through the week and halfway through the Summer. My oh my this year is just flying by.

By now, you should have reviewed all of your Summer Goals and identified which goals you have not made any moves on yet. Monday, we discussed how to decide whether or not those goals needed a pivot. Today, we are going to wrap up our conversation about pivoting by discussing how to perform a pivot.

Let’s Review

In deciding whether or not a goal needed a pivot we looked at why we hadn’t made any moves on each of those particular goals. If the why was something simple as timing or scheduling conflicts, we updated the goal and moved forward with conquering it. However, for those goals that needed a little more finessing or were no longer sitting well on our hearts, we decided we needed to either change the goal or drop it all together; perform a pivot.

This isn’t something I’m just telling you about. I am going through each of these steps with you. So, here are the goals that I need to make a pivot on:

Freedom

B. Physical Freedom

ii. Cut down to one 24 oz bottle of soda every forty-eight hours

WHY: I didn't cut down to 1 24oz of Soda every forty-eight hours because I love soda more than I feel the need to be fit.

Having Friends, I can hang out with and be Vulnerable With

A. Continue the practice of saying yes to every social invitation

WHY: I have said no to two social invitations because they were night time events in bars. I don't drink alcohol and the bar scene is not my cup of tea.

B. Reach out to three friends who no longer live in California and coordinate trips to visit them where they live now by July 31, 2018.

WHY: I have not reached out to my friends who live outside of California to coordinate trips to visit them because I no longer think this goal is going to help me find good like-minded friends.

Performing a Pivot

So now that we’ve identified which of our goals need a pivot, it’s time to get down to the business of pivoting. I believe the first major question we should ask ourselves when looking at each of our untouched goals is:

Do I still need to pursue this goal in order to reach my purpose?

That is basically what it comes down to. Does this goal help you move closer to reaching your full potential? Will it help you on your walk through your purpose? Is it a necessity rather than just a want? If your answer is no, then you can drop the goal all together. In this day and age, you have to remain focused. Your time should be spent taking care of yourself and your wellness first and foremost, pursuing your purpose second, and taking care of your family third. If a goal you’ve set for yourself no longer aids you in doing any of those three things than you need not spend any more time and energy pursuing it.

I say “no longer” because in many cases, when we set a goal for ourselves, we truly believe that that goal will be beneficial. It’s not until later that things change, and we recognize the goal is not as important as we thought.

If a goal is no longer serving you and your purpose, drop it. Drop the goal. Now, how you drop that goal depends on the goal itself. If it’s something that only affected you, that only you were a part of, then just let it go. Remove it from your goals list and keep stepping. If it is something that involved and affected other people, it’s best to give those people notice in an appropriate and courteous manner.

For example, I recently resigned from my position as a board member for RYTMO. There was a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes that was shady, and I felt like I could no longer serve the students of RYTMO while being apart of the board. So, I stepped down. I sent an email to the President and Vice President and that was that.

When performing a pivot that involves other people it’s best to walk away in a way that maintains the relationship and doesn’t burn a bridge. If need be, follow the 2-week rule of giving notice. Send an email stating that you will be leaving the group or resigning from whatever it is effective in two weeks. Spend those two weeks wrapping up loose ends and move along about your business. I think it’s important to note that you don’t always need to provide an explanation for why you are walking away. However, if you feel the need to do so, remain courteous and get straight to the point. Using “I statements” (I feel, I need, I have to etc.) will help keep the intent of your message clear.

When looking at my friendship goals, it’s difficult because I don’t really have any friends right now. If you’ve been following Phorbe for some time now, you would know that I did have a group of friends back in 2016. That group of friends turned out to be un-supportive and just weren’t the type of crowd I wanted to associate myself with any longer so, I dumped them all. Since then, I’ve been on this journey practically solo with help, here and there, from my mentors.

After my second accident last year, I began craving a friend to just help me navigate the struggles of life. However, this Summer, I have come to realize that 1. I have so many sisters and brothers that I really don’t need anybody else, 2. I am not ready to invest time into a new relationship, 3. I really need to buckle down and focus on my goals. Keeping up Phorbe and growing our community is not going to be an easy task. There’s other things I’m working on that will hopefully expand the Phorbe empire and those will require absolute precision. I don’t have time for many distractions.

With that being said, my goals for friendship are no longer necessary and so I am deciding to make that pivot and completely drop those goals all together. Hanging out with Princess Aaliyah or Queens Makalah and Dajanae give me the opportunity to be around other like-minded humans and just be myself while having fun. That’s enough for me right now.

If your untouched goal is something that is important for you to do in order to continue pursuing your purpose then you need to reframe the goal. These pivots require more work. Why? They aren’t just something that you can drop at a moments notice. Chances are, the goal as it’s written at the moment does not get to the root of the issue it was made for.

For example, after the 21-day challenge, I have not been doing a good job of drinking water. I have gone back to drinking soda. I’ve done a good job at limiting myself from drinking too much Mt. Dew, however, soda is still soda. The goal for my physical freedom was to slowly begin releasing my body from my addiction to sugar and caffeine. I had planned to drop down to 24oz of soda every 48 hours, and drink nothing but water outside of that. At first, I just forgot. I am programmed to just pick up a soda or order a soda with my food when I go to the grocery store or out to eat. Eventually I began to remember but ignored the goal all together. That is when I realized that while this goal is important for my health and well-being, I love soda more.

In this case, dropping the goal of drinking less soda is not an option. Instead, I am going to focus on the issue of me loving soda more than my desire to take care of myself. There is something very wrong with that equation. To combat this issue, I am going to reframe my goal and spend the next half of the Summer coming up with 100 reasons why I need to lose weight and make my physical, mental, and spiritual health a priority; the priority. This list will include 25 things I want to do, 25 things I want to be, 25 things I want to see, and 25 things that are a struggle for me right now solely because I do not prioritize taking care of myself and my well-being. This list is a list I can bring up and recall every time I go to get something to drink. Let’s be honest, if I am sick I won’t be able to reach my goals. Point blank, period. So it’s time for me to stop making excuses and get what I need to get done, done.

So here is the new goal:

Develop 100 reasons why I should drink more water and remove soda from my diet by September 22nd.

Do you see what I did there? I re-framed the goal based on the real issue and created a new goal that would help me tackle both the issue and the original goal. Repeating to myself: “Drinking Mt. Dew is not going to help you win an Oscar one day, but drinking water will”, will hopefully remind me of my goals, my purpose, and why it’s so important to keep myself healthy.

Go through and review each of the goals you need to re-frame and rewrite them. In performing this exercise, you are pivoting on those goals.

Conclusion

I believe it’s important for me to remind you that performing a pivot is completely normal and absolutely okay to do. I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately and one of my favorites is Married Millennials which is hosted by the Love Jays Justin and Joy Riley. I’ve been binge listening to their show and in one-episode Justin said something that I will never forget. He said:

“Winners quit the right things.”

-Justin Riley

Do not punish yourself if you decide to drop a goal. In fact, I believe you should actually reward yourself for staying the course and focusing in on what truly matters.

On the other hand, that is only true if the reason that you are dropping a goal is because it no longer serves your purpose. There are many reasons you should not pivot on a goal. You should not pivot on a goal because you are afraid. You should not pivot on a goal because you are lazy. You should not pivot on a goal because you don’t have time for it. If your goals don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough. Push through the fear. If you find that your goal is overwhelming, break it down into smaller goals that all lead up to completing the original goal. Don’t have time, make time, because at the end of the day, it’s your life. If you keep putting it off you, only you, will have to deal with the consequences of not fulfilling your goal.

I hope this series has enlightened you and given you some good tools to use on your journey towards success. We are halfway through the Summer Queens. We’ve got a lot done over the past few weeks, but we still have a lot more to do. Let’s get to it!

It’s a beautiful day to conquer the world. So go forth and slay!

-Queen Maree

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON AUGUST 9, 2018