Excited Edna’s flower is Baby’s Breath which means freedom. Baby’s Breath is the beautiful little white flowers that used to be all the rage in the 80s & 90s. It looks like confetti at a wedding or bubbles in champagne.
Excited Edna has two kinds of meanings; the first one is quite general and that’s when you want to give yourself more permission to have enjoyment in your life. What happens is, as we get older, we start to turn off our excitement feeling. Mostly because we're putting everybody else first and not really doing a lot for ourselves. And that means that we don't get excited because nothing we're doing is really for us. So the more you can start to put yourself first, and do things that might you love and give back to you, then the more you'll be able to bring your Excited Edna, which is going to help lighten the mood and help you enjoy that thing more.
So let's say for instance you booked a massage… then give yourself permission in the lead up to that massage to get excited about it, really think about all the details of that massage that you're going to love and how amazing you're going to feel afterwards and get excited about it. Because as adults we say “well that's scheduled in the diary, so I won’t think about it till then.” And when we get there we enjoy it but there's no lead up or excitement before it. And what I've found is… if I can bring more of Excited Edna in to the lead up of an event, I have so much more enjoyment in that event.
So for instance, today I've spent all day thinking about going live here at five o'clock. I've actually really missed sitting in the Change Journey energy for the last week, so it's been really nice today to jump back into it and I've been flicking through the book and I drew some cards and doing things in preparation for tonight’s call to help build my excitement levels.
So, in a general sense, if you to have something that you're going to do for you, then give yourself permission to feel excited about it.
The second meaning of Excited Edna is when she specifically relates to your Change Journey. What we did at the beginning was set some goals, and those goals are sitting there as hings that you want to achieve, but it's hard to get excited about them until you have the details and the why. So Excited Edna is all about understanding why you want to do something.
Asking “why” is an emotional question that elicits your emotional responses. So to increase your excitement levels around your goals, it’s important to understand why you want them. For instance, let's say you wanted to earn a million dollars. On its own, it is a goal you can head towards but it's not exciting until you get into the detail of why you want that million dollars… and maybe it’s things like:
I could pay off my house. And if I paid off my house and that will give me so much more freedom.
I could go traveling.
I could give some to my kids and help them have a better life.
I could give to the charities that I really wanted to support
I could buy a property that I wanted to buy
Whatever it is for you…
Can you see how having the details around why you want that goal is so much more in depth and it's more emotional than just having the goal itself?
So Excited Edna in terms of your Change Journey is all around the tiny little details of why you want your goal.
So I invite you this week to look at your goals and start listing out why you want them. Don't just stop at one or two or three go as deep as you can. Ask why questions on your why.
For example: I want to earn a million dollars so I can pay off my house. Why do I want to pay off my house? Because then I'll have financial freedom. Why do I want financial freedom? Because then I'll be able to do more things that I want to do, I’ll be able to quit my job. Why do I want to quit my job? Because it doesn’t fulfil me. So what do I want to do that will fulfill me?
Go deep keep asking the whys, don't just stop at your first why, the more you can get into the nitty gritty of the details of your goals, the more excited you're going to get and the more excited your get, the more chance you have of that goal coming to fruition because you’re going to be more motivated to achieve it.
In addition, when things get hard, hurdles creep in or something pops up and you think gosh that's just throw me right off my goal and I'm feeling really blocked, then your why’s bring you back on track because you suddenly remember why it's really important for you to head towards that goal.
That's why Excited Edna is so important. It's about looking at your why's and getting really into the details and helping you to get excited about that. So the more you can drill into your goals and the more you can drill down into why something is important to you, then that's going to make your goals a lot more achievable.
If, when you start drilling into your why's, they aren’t making you feel excited, then maybe that's not a goal for you right at this moment, because if something is a goal that you think you “should have” and it's not exciting for you, you're not going to be motivated to head towards that goal. Even worse, as soon as a hurdle comes up you're just going to stop and give up because it's not motivating you enough to push through. So if you don’t feel excited about your goals, reflect on them or change them or swap that goal out for a new goal.