1242: A counter-intuitive way to build a life you love

In today's episode, I'm sharing an exercise that's really helpful if you struggle to verbalise what you want and where you want to go!

**The Word of the Year Workshop is TODAY! If you're ready to ring in the New Year with less bullshit and more intention, then head on over for more information, and here to book your spot!** | A transcript of this episode is available here.

About Meg & The Daily Pep! 
I’m Meg and I’m the host of The Daily Pep! and The Couragemakers Podcast and founder of The Rebel Rousers. I’m a coach, writer and all-round rebel-rouser for creative and multi-passionate women to do the things only they can do and build a wholehearted life. When I'm not recording episodes, writing bullshit-free Letters of Rebellion to my wonderful Couragemakers community or hosting workshops/group programmes, I'm usually covered in paint or walking my wonderfully weird cockapoo Merlin.
Website | Instagram | The Couragemakers Podcast | Letters of Rebellion | Rebel Creator

What is The Daily Pep! | Rebel-Rousing, Encouragement, & Inspiration for Creative & Multi-Passionate Women?

Building a life you love takes a boatload of courage. But you don’t have to do it alone.

The Daily Pep! is the rebel-rousing, daily podcast for couragemakers, creative, multi-passionate and unconventional women.

If you’re surrounded by people who don’t get who you are or what you do, if you want reminders you’re on the right path (no matter how scary it feels), or you’re sick of being your very own worst enemy, this is the podcast for you.

Join your host, writer, coach and professional rebel-rouser Meg Kissack every weekday as helps you build a creative and wholehearted life, one day at a time. Through short and snappy insights, reminders and stories, The Daily Pep! is here to remind you you’re not alone, and that everything changes when you believe you matter.

Each episode is short and snappy, designed to fit in with (or help you start) your habits and routines.

The Daily Pep! is a sister podcast of The Couragemakers Podcast.

New episodes air every Monday - Friday 6AM GMT.

For more information, show-notes and to join a community of like-minded Couragemakers, visit: therebelrousers.com/dailypep

Good morning, daily peppers, and a very happy Wednesday, and a very happy hump day to you. A quick reminder before we get going that today is the day of my word of the year workshop. So if you would love an evening of inspiration, connection and clarity and to find your own personal compass for 2025, I would love to see you there. To find out more and book your spot head over to the links in the show notes and you can book your spot by going to the rebelrousers.com/wordoftheyear 2025. Now on to today's show. So around here we are all about building a life that we love. But I don't know about you, sometimes that can feel a bit intimidating. And sometimes it can be really hard to find out exactly what we want.

Our wants are usually buried under a lot of people's expectations, a lot of the things that we think we should want. And if we've been socialized as women, chances are we've pretty much been socialized to put ourselves last. So it's no wonder that asking ourselves what we want can be a loaded and a tricky question. So as we're starting to think about the year ahead and what we want, my recommendation is to start with what you don't want. Enormous power and enormous clarity can be found in reverse engineering because chances are it's easier to identify exactly what we don't want. And that can be a really, really good jumping off point. And if you wanna take this a step further, I've heard about people doing anti vision boards, which I think is really fun. And often in a funny way, it can actually be more helpful to figure out precisely what you don't want because that says so much about you.

And if you flip it, that gives you some really good clues on what is actually important to you and what might be a priority. It might also help you come up with things that you've not even considered. And for me, that's when shit gets exciting. So as you do and you're reflecting about this year and about life in general and building a life you love, while it sounds completely contradictory, start with imagining building a life you don't love and work backwards from there. And a quick permission slip before we wrap up in case you need it. It is okay to not want things and it is okay to not want the things that you think you should want or not want the things that everybody else seems to want. It only has to make sense to you. So have a think.

Have a good one. I will see you back here bright and early to