Your Innovative Lifestyle Design

By Cate Stillman

We’re going to do a short exercise together. So have a pen and paper ready, and take a few deep grounding breaths.
Ready? Let’s get started!
Take a moment to put into words or a tangible vision the next breakthrough you are making in your life. Really pause and think about it. Envision it. Feel the energy as if that change were already made.

Which category does your next personal breakthrough fit into?

Have your schedule match your ideal calendar
Live from deeper self-confidence
Align and empower your body
Deepen your dharma to live your life on purpose with your potential

Now, I am going to guide you through Your Next Innovative Lifestyle Design. Within the meaning of innovation is something new, something improved. Which means change.

To zone in on your change, find the inner answer to this statement:

“Who I’d like to become next is _________.

Take a moment to pause. In your imagination, wipe the slate clean of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. It’s blank and uncarved. To jumpstart this conversation between you and your next purpose, set a timer for twenty minutes. Write or sketch using the sentence stems below. Trust your inner voice. Don’t edit it.

“I can’t wait until ________.”
“Who I’d like to become next is _________.”
“The next purpose hidden at the very root of my self may be ________.”

I believe you have a deeper dream for your life.

I’m very interested in your deeper dream. I consistently help people find and become their potential. I’m devoted to you living your dream.

I have a simple system, based on the 5 elements of Ayurveda to help you dig into the dreams buried within you, and bring your dreams for your life to the light of day. It looks something like this:

So, take a moment.
Write down your answers.
Notice which thoughts and feelings you shape into words. Notice what comes forth from the ethers right now in your life, to these three questions:

1. “I can’t wait until ________.”
“Who I’d like to become next is _________.”
“The next purpose hidden at the very root of my self may be ________.”

Then, read your words. As you read your words, edit them to tune your words like a bike mechanic tunes the spokes of a wheel to remove the wobble, align the spokes, and optimize efficiencies.
You are awakening the creative agent in your life, an identity that you’ll develop through mastering you. In this self-innovation process, you will honor your root and recurring desires to guide your future, to steer your path.

Repetition of a definite purpose and it’s vision is a key to making change happen. So are the circles you are running in.

Social Identity Groups

Now, we need to address social identity groups. In his research for Helping People Change, Richard Boyatzis synthesized piles of research pointing out that if you don’t surround yourself with people who can get behind your dream with you… you have a very unlikely chance of changing, or becoming, your ideal self. At Yogahealer, we equate the term ideal self (Boyatzis) with the term identity evolution.

Obstacles and challenges will naturally arise on your journey to a more dynamic self. This journey is not flawed… it’s the natural course of your growth. The breakdown/ breakthrough cycle is a natural cycle. I drew this image to show how it works.

Notice the Next Level Competencies that are needed for the next breakthrough. A core component of these competencies has everything to do with Social Identity Groups. It’s like this: if you want to experience breakthroughs, you need a social identity group that understands you and believes in you and your dream. The good news is that people who develop evolutionary social identity group skills (… and I train you to at my live events) experience breakthroughs with more joy, ease and support.

In other words, you become who you want to become next, actualizing more of your potential,… and you have a better time along the way!

I want everyone thinking of coming to my live events in New York and Mexico to hear this lesson. Evolutionary Social Identity Groups are that important. I unpack how to activate social identity groups in your life in this episode of the Yogahealer Podcast.

This is your next step in Your Next Innovative Lifestyle Design. This audio lesson on the podcast will change the way you see your buried dreams and your real-time relationships.

Understanding Yourself is Crucial to Realizing Your Dreams

You know what it’s like to arrive at an important happening in your life unprepared. The incongruencies between how you arrived and how you wanted to arrive disrupts the deeper connection.

For this reason at Yogahealer Live Events, I have everyone do prep work. Prep work goes a long way to deep connection and rapid progress. Part of the prep work we do is being able to articulate your native genius.

I wasn’t adept at this from a young age. I too was not trained in how to give someone a clear connection to my dharma within a few moments of conversation. Yet, when you can do that, you get to experience much more powerful, aligned, and meaningful interaction. Once you experience this in a dynamic group – you’ll wish everyone in your life could articulate their native genius, and you’ll wish you had more in-person experiences where structures support the activation of the group’s potential. It’s truly magic.

We become more useful to each other’s dreams when we can leverage each other’s strengths. I’ve found this to be a core component of accessing collaborative group intelligence. In other words, we form a high vibration Social Identity Group fast. And from there, new and improved networks quickly form in people’s lives.

Once you have that experience, you won’t accept less.

So, to understand…

I want everyone thinking of coming to my live events in New York and Mexico to know how to Accurately Articulate your Native Genius. To start, understand this:

You are unique. You have natural advantages to escort your potential into reality. Kristin Wheeler, founder of nativegenius.com, calls these advantages your native genius, “It’s unique intelligence that’s innate to you. It arises naturally—it’s not manufactured or acquired. When cultivated, it has the potential to be exceptional.” Native genius is an asset—a key strength to leverage.

Your natural way of being, when developed deliberately, becomes a dynamic strength, which you can leverage to become who you want to become next. This is key in Your Next Innovative Lifestyle Design. You can determine how your puzzle piece fits into your deeper dream and what intrinsic advantages you have to realize your next chapter of becoming. For instance, if you are meticulous and detail-oriented and have good follow-through, these are assets. Your care and conscientiousness lead you to finish what you start. You likely don’t jump into things, but rather carefully assess where to direct your energy. Your downfall may be trading the big picture and the timeline for the details. Paired with a passionate visionary, creator, or innovator who may move too fast for their own good, you can provide guard rails and generate a solid system for their ideas to come to fruition. The big idea moves forward, and details are assessed based on necessity at that stage.

To find your native strengths, I recommend taking a few personalities and cognitive tests like:

Wealth Dynamics
How to Fascinate
Gallup Strengths Finder
DISC Profile
KOLBE Index

Through these tests, you will see your patterns. You will find the accurate articulation of how you are and how you connect in collaboration. We’re all part of social identity groups. Knowing and being able to communicate your strengths and learn who complements you helps your groups evolve – from your family, to your friends, to your partner, to your work partnerships. To leverage your strengths, repeat this cycle:

Know specifically what your strengths are right now.
Communicate them accurately and easily.
Develop them strategically.
Find counterparts with opposite strengths—you need each other.

Using the example tests above, in Wealth Dynamics, I’m a “creator” and a “star.” This lined up with How to Fascinate, which labeled me as an “avante guarde” (a combination of prestige and Innovative). In the Gallup Strengths Finder, I’m strong in focus and command, and I’m an “activator, futurist, and achiever.” Together, this informs me that my native genius, or clear advantage, is in making innovative things happen and influencing others to take part. From DISC, I know I have a quick-start energy and follow through isn’t my strength. Therefore, it’s imperative that I find and nurture partnerships with counterparts who are good with details, excel at the upkeep of systems, and who naturally set guard rails on the fast-moving train.

Once you take a few personality and cognitive tests, you will see your strengths to leverage. If you have already taken a few in your life journey – go find the results! Then, practice telling your people about your strengths. Ask if you have any native genius strengths that may be helpful to them right now. Notice what happens next. Chances are, you’ll be launched into a dynamic dialogue. Ask them to accurately articulate their native genius or strengths. See if something surprises you… or is useful for you on your journey to your deeper dream and next lifestyle Innovation.

Your Odyssey

When Odysseus returned from his Odyssey after two decades, only his neglected dog recognized him. That is what identity evolution looks like. The heroine’s journey is a trip into the next level of you—into your next identity. The call to adventure, the initiation, the pit of despair, the mentor, the triumph, and the return, are the heroine’s journey. Heeding the call of the journey is making the choice to grow, to change, to make your potential real. The heroine can’t stay the same, can’t get tripped up by the same problems. The heroine’s world expands; her personal integrity deepens.

My members often tell me that I fire up their ambition and guide them into their potential. It’s an interesting dharma that really comes into action in my live events.

I was speaking with Rachel Peters, one of my first members of Yoga Health Coaching, back in 2012. Rachel comes to a Live Event with me every year. Year after year. I asked her why.

She said, “I come to your live events because I always have a breakthrough. My calendar changes after events because I align my life with my priorities. It’s always in unexpected ways. Through choosing to come, I choose to have a breakthrough.

I notice a direct correlation with breaking income glass ceilings, year after year. As a mom with a kindergartner I wouldn’t have predicted this for myself years ago. I’ve retrained myself into ongoing Identity Evolution, and personal and professional breakthroughs. I love my life more and more every year.

I also come because I meet my next mastermind partners at Yogahealer events. I create strong alignments that not only support, but can help mentor my next dreams. It’s like a guarantee on my next dreams coming true.”

What I hear in Rachel’s words is the impact of being in a group with innovative practices to awaken Growth Mindset. Our live events are like Growth Mindset Social Identity Groups on steroids. Or rather, on high potency adaptogens from the Himalayas. (Inside joke)

The challenges you encounter on your growth path flex and shape-shift your identity. This value is a commitment to expanding, to evolving, as you become more capable, more adept at generating the change you want to see in your world.

The seasoned heroine knows she is a verb, not a noun, a “becoming,” not a personality. She knows that her identity is plastic, evolving. On a fierce growth path, she may hardly recognize herself from two years ago. Her thoughts, ideas, relationships, and consciousness are on a higher plane or another dimension altogether.

We can all expect trials, exasperations and pitfalls inherent in a heroine’s journey. Breakdowns are part of the cycle. With the right social identity groups (aka masterminds) they are quickly churned into breakthroughs.

This is why I lead live events. It’s important enough for me to step into the cauldron and guide experience to breakthrough, and give the structures for all to take the lessons home to their people. I hope to meet you in New York or Mexico.