Being Intentional With Your Dreams and Your Daily Practices with Shannon Carlton
Welcome to episode 64 of The Determined Mom Show. Our guest is Shannon Carlton, the owner of Intentional Growth Strategies, and she will be telling or sharing with us today. Being intentional with your dreams and daily practices is super important, and she will show us how to do it.
What we’re going to talk about today is super, super important. I know we’ve talked about it recently, but I recently wrote a book published in my first book, manifest Your Vision with Grace, gratitude, and Growth, and it came about from creating vision boards for the past four years.
Different groups, businesses with moms, with just my tribe, and things like that. Watching those visions come to light and what it takes to get there. I was super excited to chat with you about that, share the vision board idea, and then the intentional practices to get you to that.
Before we get started diving into the topic, could you tell us about how you got started in your business? Like how did it come about? I worked for a local publication. I’m in Florida and worked for a local publication for about ten years. I thought I raised two girls and got a divorce about ten years ago.
And through that whole process, You know, just started doing personal development and looking into how to improve me? How do I show my girls a better way? That kind of thing. And I took a class in 2015 when I turned 40—the proverbial mid-life crisis. But I took a class.
It was a seven-week class called Identity and Destiny. And really, it takes you from your identity in Christ and your destiny as far as what you’re supposed to do with your life. At the end of these intense seven weeks, you go through everything from your personality to your values to your gifts and things like that and devise a vision statement for your life.
And mine was to use the voice and tools God gave me to encourage, inspire, and change the world. So at that point, I closed the book on that. There’s no way I’m changing the world. There’s no way. I am trying to understand what this means. And about three months later, I was listening to a podcast, Allie Brown, and she was interviewing somebody that owned a coworking space.
And I just started researching that industry. And entrepreneurs change the world. They change the community, they disrupt systems, and I wanted to be a part of that. And so the co-working space where people could collaborate and come together was the place to do that. I opened a co-working space, quit my job, and opened a co-working space. In doing all that, I used the vision board idea to get me to each phase of owning a business, helping businesses grow, and helping businesses collaborate and come together.
The fact that you used to like you took a course to help you figure it out. That’s something that people often piece different things together and try to figure out, not in a step-by-step process, but with a mix of different messages from this person and that person and different tools instead of a comprehensive course.
So I love that you took that path of taking a course and figuring it out. And I love where it led you too. I think co-working spaces are amazing, and that’s awesome. And I love the fact that also that you took the courage or you had the courage. Quit your job and start your business. It’s scary, but I love that you did it, and you’re doing well.
It’s a very scary thing, and it very much takes the whole family. I talk about this in the book, but I wrote a letter to my daughters at the time because they were five years ago, so they were younger. They were in their early elementary school. And I just wanted to share with them how scary this process is.
Business ownership is different from all fun and unicorns and rainbows. I wanted them to see the whole process of the blood, the sweat, the tears, the highs, the lows, and just getting to own that for yourself, for them to be able to sort of share that journey with me and go along with me.
That’s a great lesson for us, too, to ensure that we’re involving our families and letting them know why we’re spending so much time doing this or that. And to be able to see you fail and then get back up. And then try something that doesn’t work, and then try something else, and it works.
But consistently making sure that you’re adding those things into your schedule or prioritizing those things in your schedule is what makes the difference. I want this vision, but I need to figure out how to get there, too; I’m working every day to achieve that vision.
I’m a huge podcast junkie. I subscribe to a hundred and some podcasts. It’s funny the cycles they go in and like, you know, depending on your mood, like I’ve listened to this podcast religiously, and then suddenly I drop off and shift to a different kind of podcast. It’s such an interest.
I was in all the book marketing, book mentoring, and all these things. And then I shifted from now, I need that personal development or let’s encourage me again. And the other daily practice that I love, that I swear by, is My morning routine, which is I write down five things I’m thankful for every day. I write down five things I did well the day before and the things I need to improve upon from the day before. And I got this from Mel Robbins, and I just started doing this recently.
I started researching that. I’m like, well, clearly now I have to go to iCare, Greece, So that goes on my new biggest dream. But it’s a consistent way to get you thinking bigger and expressing that in your mindset like you’re just thinking bigger and growing every day.
I thought that was cool. I added it recently, and the other thing is exercise. After I do all of those things, then exercise is imperative too. Your health and wellness to, you know, your life’s work, everything. It helps you think better and move better and all those kinds of things.
You can find out about the book; you can find out about how to have your own vision board party if that’s something you want to do. Because I feel like just getting women together in a room and creating that vision board party, create that energy we were talking about. So they can find out about that as well.