Episode 161: Ready to Evolve in Your Career and Your Life? TRY THIS
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes that it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” -Maya Angelou
Think back to the past week, month, or year to a big win you achieved. Maybe it was the proposal you wrote that secured a huge client. Maybe it was hitting a PR in the gym (because we see you working on your fitness). Maybe it was noticing something you taught your child in action, without you needing to say anything.
Whatever your win was, did you celebrate just the win or did you celebrate everything you did to achieve the win? For most of us, it’s the former. We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but don’t admit the changes it’s gone through to achieve that beauty.
In this episode, Erin gives you a simple activity to set goals, achieve them, and celebrate everything you put into achieve them throughout your entire process. Not to mention, this episode will change how you think about goal-setting entirely. Press play for the twist!
ICYMI – Your Post-Episode Homework: Click the link below and take the quiz to receive your free Wellness Workbook. Go to page 19 to complete the exercise Erin discusses in today’s episode.
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Connect with Erin Diehl:
Connect with Erin Diehl:
Email Erin: info@learntoimproveit.com
Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 161 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to the Improve It Podcast.
Erin (00:11):
Improve it peeps. Oh my goodness. Today is another awesome hack and another awesome solo episode. It's just me. All right? It's just you and me, wherever you are. If you're on a bike ride, if you're in the car, if you're on a walk, if you're listening to me in the shower, hey, get clean. I just want you to know I'm so thrilled that you're here, and if you love these shows, if you're liken and dig in three episodes a week with smaller bite sized chunks, I want you to let us know. It would be awesome if you could do that by leaving an iTunes five star review. It's an iTunes five star review. Who? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. All you have to do is go to your iTunes, scroll to the bottom of the Improve It Podcast, leave five stars, write a little comment, and that's it. It takes two seconds.
Erin (00:59):
You know what it does? It makes me dance. It makes my team dance. We work so hard to bring you this content. So if you would just do it right now, all I want you to do is just get on that little iTune. I want you to just scroll down, hit five stars. Hmm, boom, comment, you're done. Look at that. You made me dance and my team. So you've changed a life today. Congrats. Thank you. Let me change yours, <laugh>. So friends, this month we are talking about evolution. This is April. I'm just gonna share some fun facts with you. I'm gonna turn 40 this month. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I will have been on this earth 40 years, which is amazing. I'm seeing that in my forehead as well as hair. But you know what? I'm loving it. I'm here for it. I'm grateful for 40 years and through my life, I have evolved a time and time again as you have, and I have an activity here today that is gonna help you evolve in your career and your life. And it is going to blow your mind. It's called the hurried <laugh>.
Erin (02:08):
They're having trouble with words on this podcast recently, the hurried caterpillar. Okay? So we need to take time to celebrate the wins in our life. All right? And when we talk about evolution, I always love the theme of a butterfly. And there's a quote that I love from Maya Angelou that says, we delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes that has gone through to achieve that beauty. Ugh, let me say that again. We delight and the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes that it's gone through to achieve that beauty, first of all, lemme just say this, butterflies are my sign from the universe that I'm being guided. They have always been, always I removed when I was a freshman in high school and I moved from a pretty traumatic middle school experience. I was bullied, had a really mean best friend.
Erin (03:11):
Got into some bad stuff. And then I moved to a high school where I had the opportunity to start over. So thematically a butterfly for me during that time was an evolution. Because I was transforming, I was able to leave that past version of myself behind and transform into a person with a fresh start. That felt actually really good. It was hard, but it was really good. So this is an energy refresher for you. Let me say this right now. If you want this written down and your own version of this, go to the show notes. Go to learn to improve it.com. Let's learn to improve it.com. A popup will come up. It will ask you to take a quiz to find out your wellness avatar. So you'll find out what type of wellness you give to yourself on the daily basis. And then it's gonna give you an email to tell you your avatar with our amazing wellness workbook.
Erin (04:14):
Play your way into wellness the workbook, which gives you improv techniques, daily energy refreshers, as well as mood boosters to help you be your best self, personally and professionally. And when we talk about evolution, we are constantly evolving. And this refresher is called the Hurry, hurry, caterpillar. And it's not a bedtime story, but it is a very powerful visual. So I want us to just think that all of us are busy, right? We are constantly going from thing to thing, and it's likely that we don't necessarily celebrate those big wins. So what this activity allows you to physically do is to see what you're doing and what you're feeling daily to achieve your biggest, boldest goal for this phase of your life. And just spoiler alert, there might be a twist at the end. So again, if you wanna follow along, download the wellness workbook.
Erin (05:18):
This is gonna be on page 19 cuz there's 23 pages, y'all. And it's free. And it's for you to live your best life, literally. So here's what we're gonna do. So step one is you're gonna take out your markers, your crayons, your colored pencils, your paints, your glitter glue, anything that makes you feel crafty. And next two are on this paper, you're gonna make three separate pieces of this paper. Okay? You're going to make one with a caterpillar on one page, okay? One with a cocoon, and then another page with a butterfly. So you're gonna take out three sheets of paper, have one drawn with a caterpillar, one with a cocoon, and one with a butterfly. And you can make them as posh or as simple as you like. But try to draw these things that that symbolize you. So get creative here. Use your favorite colors, draw your hair, use the same I color.
Erin (06:15):
And I want you to display them in a place that you see regularly, perhaps in your bedroom or hallway. And you're gonna have your caterpillar, your cocoon, and your butterfly in a row from left to right. So it goes caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly. Okay? Now step two, you're gonna get out some sticky notes or pieces of paper with tape. And underneath your caterpillar image, I want you to fill in this sentence on your sticky note or paper. My biggest boldest goal in this next life phase is blank. And then you're gonna place your sticky note or your paper with tape underneath the image of the caterpillar. And then add more sticky notes of actions you are doing right now to reach this goal. And then place those beneath your goal sticky note. So let's say your biggest goal right now is to get better at public speaking.
Erin (07:24):
All right, so you would say, my biggest boldest goal in this next phase is to be a great public speaker. And then underneath that you're gonna add sticky notes of things that you're doing to reach this goal. I hired a speaking coach. I am practicing my presentation every single day. I am getting feedback on this presentation. Once a month, I am performing this presentation to an audience blank amount of time. So that goes underneath your goal. Okay? Step three is underneath your cocoon. So that second sheet of paper underneath your cocoon image, fill in this sentence on your sticky note or paper. Achieving this goal is going to take me approximately blank amount of time. It doesn't have to be exact. I want you to just give yourself a good estimate and then add sticky notes with words or phrases that describe how it feels to work through this day in and day out.
Erin (08:30):
And it might be words like, it's exhausting, it's scary, it's lonely. Or it could be phrases like getting comfortable, being uncomfortable, learning how to love myself, sticking to clear boundaries. All right, so give yourself underneath the cocoon image. Just to recap this, achieving this goal is gonna take me approximately blank amount of time and then write words underneath that that talk about how this feels to work through. So again, if this public speaking is your goal, achieving this goal is gonna take me approximately one year, it's feeling better. I'm getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, I am making sure to practice daily. So I'm having a lot of self perseverance, self-discipline, whatever it is that you wanna write, write it under that. Now, step four, we're gonna go to that third image, your butterfly image. Fill in the sentence on your sticky note or paper.
Erin (09:31):
I'm going to feel blank when I achieve this goal and be as specific as possible here. So I'm going to feel impactful, I'm going to feel energized, I'm going to feel proud when I achieve this goal. That's under your butterfly image. Here's the twist. The feeling that you wrote underneath your butterfly is your actual goal. The feeling of being impactful. That's the goal. The amount of time you wrote underneath your cocoon is how long you're willing to wait to get there. The actions you wrote underneath your caterpillar are everything you are doing right now to achieve the actual goal. That feeling beneath your butterfly, impactful the words or phrases that you wrote underneath your cocoon. Describe the internal growth that's happening in order to achieve your actual goal. And as Maya said, admit the changes you're going through and remind yourself of this daily. I have to thank Nicole on my team.
Erin (11:05):
She put together this amazing wellness workbook. So it takes a village over here. Nicole, you are amazing. And she came up with this activity. So let me just give credit where credit is due. Nicole, we love you. So thanks Nicole for this activity and thank yourself for having the moment and the self realization to actually take time to give yourself this opportunity to, number one, see your evolution. So beautiful. This reminds me of a quick story and then I'm gonna let you get to improve in it. My son Jackson got one of those butterfly caterpillar to butterfly kits. So you get the kit, you can buy it on Amazon, it's like a a tent, a big old tent where you have to get the, the kit sent to you and then you send away for caterpillars. So literally we got a little thing of caterpillars in the mail.
Erin (12:02):
It was really cool. And you put the caterpillars into the tent. You give them food. So you give them fruit, some sugar water, things like that. Takes about two weeks. But they start to make cocoons. So you see them in this huge, it's, it's a pretty big tent. You see them make the cocoons and then you start to see them emerge from the cocoons and then you get to release the butterfly. Oh, we did this last summer and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to witness just watching these caterpillars form cocoons. It's almost like a healing cocoon. And emerge into these beautiful monarch butterflies. And I'll never forget when we released them, I captured Jackson on video. And he just started crying because he had just grown to love them so much. But he loved them through every face. He loved them as a caterpillar.
Erin (13:09):
He loved them in the cocoon and he loved watching them fly. And that's what I want you to realize. You are evolving. There's so many phases to you and it's going to be an ever constant evolution. And whatever phase you're in right now, I want you to know that you are loved, you are held, and you are safe. And I want you to take today's activity, put it to good use, realize what you're actually out there trying to achieve. Maybe it's impact. Maybe it's just to make yourself proud. Maybe you are shedding light. Maybe you are here to spread a message. Whatever it is, you have the power to connect, inspire and transform the lives of many. But most importantly, the life that you are here living now, download your wellness workbook. You can get it in the show notes. You can go to our website, learn to improve it.com to get this activity for you.
Erin (14:21):
It is on page 19 and it is for the idealist. So if you identify as an idealist on our wellness quiz, then this will be an activity we give to you. But I'm giving it to everybody here today cause it's so fantastic and it really leans into this concept of evolution. As always, you know this, I am sitting here just cheering you on your professional development fast days saying Go, you go. And I want you to keep failing. Keep improving because this world needs that very special it that only you can bring. I will see you soon. Hey friend, did you enjoy today's show? If so, head on over to iTunes to rate and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Now, did I mention that when you leave a five star review of the Improve It podcast, an actual team of humans does a happy dance? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's right. So leave a review for us on iTunes, screenshot it, and send me an email at info learn to improve it.com. I'll send you a personalized video back as a thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Improve It Peeps. I'll see you next Wednesday.