86. An Invitation to Examine Life & Find What Works for You with Tara McMullin

Overview

Today I’m joined by Tara McMullin, a writer, podcaster, and producer, to discuss her new book, “What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting.” Tara has also studied small business owners for over 13 years. She’s been an inspiration to me, and her wisdom has helped tremendously on my own journey of self-employment, getting me to rethink and figure out what works for me.

Her book is for anyone looking for a new approach to goal-setting, one that you might find better aligned to who you are and more satisfying, while still producing results. In this conversation, we discuss what brought Tara to rethink her approach to goal setting, the importance of examining one’s life and making conscious choices, the power of reframing towards practice and commitments, and why she’s found the new approach much more satisfying while helping her create substantive results.

Tara - I absolutely loved being in conversation with you! And I loved the book and appreciate the perspectives and practices you are offering people to help them live life and do work that is more in sync with who they are, what they want, and how they want to live in the world. So good!

More About Our Guest

Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and producer. For over 13 years, she’s studied small business owners—how they live, how they work, what influences them, and what they hope for the future. She’s the author of What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting. The book challenges the lessons we’ve learned about goals and productivity through culture and proposes a radical shift: structuring our lives around practice rather than achievement. She’s the host of What Works, a podcast about navigating the 21st-century economy with your humanity intact. Tara is also co-founder of YellowHouse.Media, a boutique podcast production company. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, The Startup, The Muse, and The Huffington Post.

She lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with her husband, daughter, and two lovable cats that showed up in the backyard one day. Her heart is always in the mountains of Montana.

Topics Covered

  • We start by having Tara share what led her on her quest to rethink how she was approaching goal setting, especially as an achievement-oriented person. What led her to say: “Maybe it's not me, that's the problem. Maybe it's these systems that I have been kind of working with in terms of planning, goal setting, dreaming big, making my visions for the future, right?”

  • Ultimately, she deconstructed her relationship with goals and then reconstructed them into a framework, which is captured in the book. She and others have found the approach to be much more satisfying.

  • I ask: “What do we need to understand about external influences and structures for us to break free from them?” Tara shares how the unexamined life is one that is often driven by should’s and supposed to’s. Her book is an invitation to rethink this.

  • And yet, it can be scary and hard to step into this rethinking and inquiry.

  • Tara explores a question I pose around operating with agency and yet needing to fit into these structures in the world in order to succeed. She offers both perspective on this and an example of how she dances between these two modes. To Tara, what’s most important is the conscious decision-making, that you are choosing it.

    • “The structures that are all around us are completely made up. And it's completely necessary to take them seriously. Because we got to eat, we need shelter, we have these material needs. And so, I'm always balancing.”

  • We then talk about how we can become more comfortable with making trade-offs between our ambitions and making choices. Tara ties this to timing and strategy. I love how she pulls through the idea of cadencing, pacing, and arcs—finding time for different aspects of work and life.

  • I ask Tara to share the reframes she has in the book around from achievement to practice and from goals to commitments and the benefits they offer. She shares both how she thinks about these concepts and also offers her own experiences to illustrate them in real life.

  • In the book, Tara introduces you to new frameworks, like those above, providing this new comprehensive framework to goal setting. And she responds to my questions around if the framework is linear (no, she sees it more as a web) and if there are elements of it that relate to being and doing. I love how Tara champions one of the things we do here at Sustainable Ambition and that is to start with the being before you jump into the doing so you are aligned to who you want to be and how you want to show up in the world.

  • We close with Tara sharing where she’s at on her own growth journey having stepped into this approach to goal-setting herself over the last five or more years.

  • And Tara offers a place to start with the framework: “I think that the best place for anyone to start is just examining those should’s and supposed to’s. And I would even recommend starting a little journal, starting a file on your computer, write them down. Anytime you feel your brain going in that direction of should’s or supposed to’s or are ruminating on that kind of thing, write it down. And then when you have time, come back to it. And consider where did this come from?”

Resources Mentioned

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86. An Invitation to Examine Life & Find What Works for You with Tara McMullin

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2022-2Kathy OnetoRight Success, Right Effort, Right Aspiration