What are your goals and plans for this year - and beyond? Each year offers fresh opportunities for new pursuits, new goals and often big transitions. The fun part is the goal-setting, envisioning your future and how things can unfold. But how do you begin? How do you start to move forward on your big goals in a way that works, especially when you're pursuing something meaningful that really matters to you? My guest, Michael Bungay Stanier has answers in his new book How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters.

His full bio is below, but you should know that Michael Bungay Stanier has been named named #1 Thought Leader in Coaching. I've learned a ton from following his work over the past 12 years - and you'll come away with useful takeaways from this conversation and his book.

We discuss:

What makes something a Worthy Goal

What gets in the way of people starting to do things that matter

How to craft and thoughtfully sharpen Worthy Goals

What we can get wrong about resistance

Action verbs that resonate with him now

The value of doing hard things

His involvement in Malaria No More

Lessons he's learned about transitioning well

The key benefits of How To Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters

Michael Bungay Stanier joins us from Toronto.

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Bio

Michael Bungay Stanier helps people be a force for change. His latest book is How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters. He’s best known for his book The Coaching Habit which has sold close to a million copies and has thousands of 5-star reviews online, and The Advice Trap focuses on what it takes to tame your Advice Monster.

He founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps organizations move from advice-driven to curiosity-led. They’ve trained hundreds of thousands of managers to be more coach-like and their clients range from Microsoft to Gucci.

He left Australia about 30 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University … where his only significant achievement was falling in love with a Canadian …which is why he now lives in Toronto, having spent time in London and Boston.

Balancing out these moments of success, he was banned from his high school graduation for “the balloon incident” … was sued by one of his Law School professors for defamation … and his first published piece of writing was a Harlequin Romance-esque story involving a misdelivered letter … and called The Male Delivery.

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For More on Michael Bungay Stanier

How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters (Amazon)

Website: mbs.works

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Mentioned in this episode:

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg

Smarter Tomorrow – Elizabeth Ricker

Learning is a Lifetime Sport – Tom Vanderbilt

The Power of Fun – Catherine Price

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Wise Quotes

On Worthy Goals

"This is such a crossroad, isn't it? What David Brooks would call: are you ready to climb the second mountain? Because you've climbed the first mountain of your career and you've had success and you've got status and you're now resourced and experienced, and you've got, as they call it Nordic highlights. You've done great. You got all of that. and you are 50 or 55 or 60 or 65. And you're thinking to yourself, I've got 20 good years left. At least I don't want to play golf the whole time. What am I going to do? And so this book is written because I'm 50 something, 53 or something.