Finding Direction in the Midst of Transformation: how to move forward when you don't know where you are going. Pacts, not goals.

Have you ever felt that nagging urge to grow and transform without knowing exactly where you're headed? That uncomfortable space between knowing you need change and not having a clear destination can feel like being lost at sea – eager to move but unsure which direction leads to land. Drawing from my coaching experience and personal journey, this episode unveils a powerful alternative to traditional goal-setting that works brilliantly during times of transition and uncertainty. Rather than forcing yourself to define an end destination you genuinely can't envision, I share how creating "pacts" – short-term, focused commitments to specific actions – can provide structure, learning, and forward momentum. You'll discover how one CEO I'm working with reclaimed control of his days through a simple 5-minute morning practice, and how a senior professional navigating career transition used targeted exploration to uncover her path forward. I outline the 4 essential elements that make pacts effective. This approach transforms vague aspirations like "get better at ..." into concrete actions that generate real insights. Whether you're reimagining your career, pivoting your business, or simply feeling called toward something new without knowing what, this episode offers a practical framework for progress. By embracing experimentation and committing to process over predetermined outcomes, you'll learn how to navigate uncertainty with confidence, curiosity, and purpose. What tiny experiment might unlock your next chapter? Listen and find out how to start moving forward, even when the destination remains unclear. Text Me Your Thoughts and IdeasSupport the showBrought to you by Angela Shurina Behavior-First Change Leadership & Culture Transformation ConsultantEXECUTIVE & OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE COACH

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast, the podcast for leaders, change makers and everyday superheroes navigating transformation in this crazy, fast-moving, AI-fueled world. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, your partner in change, in transformation, your guide and your buddy, who is here to bring to you personal explorations, worldly, science-backed tools and practices from the best companies, leaders, and just people who are out there doing stuff to change their lives, to change their world,

• 0:43Speaker 00

  inspire and motivate, impact in a positive way a world, people and do something, because they have this chance to live this life and make something happen. Today, guys, we are talking about how to navigate this place of transition, where you feel like you want to be growing and moving and, I don't know, innovating, reinventing your life, your business, your leadership, but you don't exactly know where it is you are aiming. What is the goal? Where are you going? You're like, I know I want to move and I have all the energy and motivation to grow,

• 1:25Speaker 00

  to change, but I just don't know where it is I want to grow and change. And the things are shifting so fast and we are trying one thing and then another and then something else changes. Like, how to navigate this pace of not knowing where it is you are going? And even though I'm a huge fan and practitioner of goal-setting, of clarifying your vision, of figuring out what it is exactly you want to commit to, to then prioritize your life and make plans and filter out the distractions, right? I'm a huge proponent of this. That's what I help people to do. But then... I also work with people who come to me and they tell me,

• 2:11Speaker 00

  you know, Angela, I don't really know where it is I'm going and I need you to help me figure this out. And that's what I also help people to do. And how do I do that? So today I'm going to share with you one of the tools that I've used in my life and in my work and personally and with clients and businesses in transition. And also in recently, just now, I realized that I'm also in this space right now, where I don't know exactly where I'm going. I just know I'm moving and I'm going and I'm in the process of reinvention. So today, guys, you're gonna learn how to use one tool that is very powerful.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  And I was reminded about the tool that kind of came to the front of my mind. When I read the book, I just finished the book by Anna-Lor Leconf, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. But to be honest, for me, this book is how to navigate this place of transition, where you know again that you're on the move, you are not where you were, but you also have no idea what is your destination. So how to navigate this pretty often uncomfortable place? Because no matter what you do, it doesn't feel like progress, because progress assumes that you know where it is you're progressing towards.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  So how do you move somewhere where, when you don't really know where it is you're going? So that's what this podcast episode is all about. And I want to start it with a story. So we wrapped up, a couple of days ago, we wrapped up a session with a client. Well, we were in the process of wrapping it up and...

• 4:05Speaker 00

  He shared with me something. These days, I don't feel like I own my days. It feels like they are decided for me. And to give you a little bit of context, it's coming from someone who is quite successful in life, built amazing business that is growing and maybe not as fast, but has grown quite a lot and the client achieved a lot and recently got in the best shape of his life. And so that's what he shared. These days, I don't feel like I own my days. It feels like they're decided for me. Things just happen. And I'd like to steer my ship more, not just respond to one emergency after another,

• 4:47Speaker 00

  one need after another. So yes, he told me, let's focus on getting better at planning. I want to feel like I'm more in control of my day and I'm steering my ship, not the sea or the demands of the world. And he added, you know, I feel like in my fitness, in my health, now I have the system of planning, of being more in control versus having excuses. That's why I don't have time for working out or eating healthy or sleeping better. And so I want to apply the same system and planning into my work life. So I feel more like I'm steering the ship, not the ship is just taking me, whatever.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  And then the client was happy to just end the session with this commitment to get better at planning, that he hasn't really done all that much outside of now, his area of mastery, health and fitness. So he wants to apply, he wanted to apply this to his work life as well, to again, create more momentum towards the vision that he has. And just feel like again, he's more in control of his work and business and life, not that it's just been done to.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  To him and he doesn't really have a say in how it's gonna go and when. So anyhow, Twitter replied, well, that's not specific enough to just want to get better at planning. What will you actually do this week? Because we have sessions every week to get better at planning. And this, this happens a lot. Like we often just wanna get better at, I don't know, business or at relationships or at health or I don't know, let's say, public speaking or a cold outreach and talking to your potential customers or negotiating, whatever that might be. We just want to get better in some area of our life.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  But how do you know you do get better? How do you know that you are better at planning? What does winning look like if there is no scorecard? That's where defining it is, is necessary. Because otherwise, like you're just gonna have your intention. I wanna get better at planning. Well, how will you know that you did get better at planning? And at first, you wanna define like the goal, right? How will I know when I arrive? But what if you don't know where it is exactly you're going and where that finish line is? Because you simply haven't tried anything before and you don't know what good looks like or what to aim for. You just don't know where the destination and where you would like to go. You just know that you wanna get better.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  That's where pacts, not goals, might work better. And a better question might be not how will I know I've arrived or that I'm winning? But how will I know I'm moving somewhere closer to where I wanna go? So in this book Tiny Experiments, How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World that I mentioned on Laura, which by the way, we're gonna have on our podcast quite soon. So Unlaw defines a pact as a short term focused commitment to an action framed as I will an action for duration of time. So we'll do something for some duration of time. It's a way

• 8:20Speaker 00

  to turn curiosity into action and learn from small, repeatable experiments rather than getting bogged down by big goals and trying to define that five year plan when you don't really know what's gonna happen in the next months, right? So pact is commitment to yourself, agreement with yourself to do certain thing for a period of time. Like with my client, we created a mini pact for the next week, we're gonna take five minutes to plan our day. A pact, it's gotta be purposeful. I'm taking some guidelines and checklist from the book Tiny Experiment. So it's gotta be purposeful. A pact should feel meaningful and provide a sense of learning or exploration.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Not rigid task, but it gotta have some meaning for you. Like a client wants to feel like he's more in control of his work life and that's why he wants to get better at planning. And that's why we are doing this mini pact, I mean, you practice for the next week of planning each day in the morning, taking those five minutes, right? A pact has to be actionable. The action should be something you can reliably do with your current resources and time. It's not something that you can do when the life gets better and everything aligns and you have all the resources and time in the world. No, it's something actionable that you can do right now, like taking five minutes to plan your day. Very doable. When I ask the client, I'm sure I you can do that. He said 100%. So that's

• 9:48Speaker 00

  what you wanna hear from yourself. You're 100% sure you can do that. Continuous. It should involve a simple, repeatable action that can be tracked over a specific period of time. Like with my client, we chose one week for now to start to figure out where to move from there. So for one week, he's gonna do five minutes of planning his day in the, at the beginning of the day. Let it get a bit trackable. So it has to be binary. Did you do it or did you not? If I ask my client, did you do your planning or did you not? There is no gray area. He either did it or he did not. And that's what you also want your your pact to be, your agreement with yourself to do certain practice. Did you do it or not?

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  It's like me committing to writing every day. Did you do it or not? There is no gray area. And also notice that there is nothing that I cannot control. Well, yes, if for whichever reason, uh, there is no electricity, I can't use my computer to type. One might say, well, you still have pen and paper, right? Or if I wake up and for some reason my hands don't work, I also don't have control, entire control. But it's pretty close to that. One might say like, why wouldn't you write every every morning? And you can always, always focus at the have some control of your morning routine. Maybe wake up earlier, I don't know, go to bed earlier, have some nap.

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  There is always a way to commit to practice. Doesn't have to be morning, can be afternoon, can be evening, whatever that might be.

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  Essentially, a pact is a playful way to test out ideas, to learn about yourself and build habits through consistent action rather than aiming for specific outcomes. Again, when a client decided that he felt like he wanted to get better at planning in order to decide what he's gonna do with his day before the world tells him what he's gonna do with his day and what he should prioritize. That's also why morning, not once you open your email and you talk to some people and people will tell you their emergencies. But to have more control for the day, the planning, for example, has to be done at the beginning of the day.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  It's in my client's total control. There is always five minutes, even if it's five minutes on the toilet while everyone else is sleeping, then with your phone doing the planning, right? There is always that space where you can have almost total control.

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  And then for the client with the planning, there I also gave him some guidelines. So if you want to have more control over your day, some useful questions are what matters today? What I want to accomplish? Why does it matter? And

• 12:49Speaker 00

  why does it matter? And then plan the day. So that's a really again, good practice to explore how you get better at planning. Like where my client will go from there? We are yet to find out, but very often, again, especially at the beginning, or you've never tried something before. And you really know what's the best way to go about having more control over your days, over your life. You don't really know what it is, the end destination of getting better at planning and having more control over your work, life or where your business go. Maybe you don't know how to get better at doing your business or your practice or working in your relationship.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  But you have an idea, you know, if I do this, I at least might learn a lot. So if my client commits every day to planning, he might not necessarily arrive exactly where he wants to go, but he will learn something that will help him to then navigate his journey moving forward better. And that's what you're kind of looking for when you are designing your pact. You are looking for an idea that you know will help you. If not to get closer to some destination, it will help you to learn what you need to learn or to do

• 14:13Speaker 00

  or what your destination might be moving forward. So that's the ideal practice. There is, you know, life is complex and so there is some figuring out. Like with my client, for example, another client of mine. She's senior in her career and navigating career transition. And she's not really sure where she wants to end up.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  And she also is not sure how to exactly figure that out. But every week we come together and we decide on some experiment to run for the next weeks, two or the whole months, to get better, to get closer to figuring out where it is she might wanna go. Like, for example, for the next couple of weeks, we're gonna explore different job opportunities in the area she's interested in, AI, for example, and ethics and responsible AI. So we're gonna explore what the market needs and what are some core responsibilities of different jobs that pique her interest.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  What are some knowledge or skills that she might want to pursue through maybe some courses or some books or some articles or reaching out to certain people, right? So that's an experiment that we are gonna be doing. And that's the practice. So every day she gonna spend thirty minutes on figuring out, on reading those different job ads, specifically through LinkedIn, and then seeing where she might explore next. So pacts, not goals, might be the way for you to figure out your way forward when you don't really know where it is you're going.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Even though, again, I'm a huge fan of knowing your destination and optimizing your life for it. But sometimes, and I have a feeling, a lot of us are going to be going through a lot of these transitions when we don't really know where we're going ourselves or with our family or with our company. Like, we're going somewhere, but everything is shifting so much. And the moment that we haven't yet figured out how to even aim in this new environment. So pacts and practices, not goals, might be the way forward. And might be the way of life moving forward, don't know. Start a pact, not a goal, that's a...

• 16:47Speaker 00

  An aspiration for you. And here's something to think about. Well, first of all, start a pact, not a goal, how to do that? Choose what you wanna get better at, or what you wanna learn. Choose your practice from maybe ask GPT, ask other people who might be more knowledgeable in the area. Do some Googling, which still works empowered by AI, right? So choose your practice, any practice, like it doesn't have to be for entire year or even a month. Choose something for a week to experiment with. So choose your practice, something again in your control that you can act upon now, not in some ideal future. And then choose the time, place and your tools.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  So like my client, every morning before I start everything, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend five minutes on planning my day. And then show up, and that's the pact, the agreement. So for this duration of time, I'm gonna do acts at that time in this place. Some of the things that people tried, and I've tried 100 days of writing, or which ended up being my daily blog, which leads me to a lot of interesting places, actually. 100 days of morning walks, or 100 days of exercise, or 100 days of gratitude,

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  or 100 days of cold outreach, or talking to one customer of your potential existing business. So or 100 days of talking to people from different professions that you could be exploring. And 100 days, there is no magic, but just big chunk of time where you really get to learn a lot about stuff. But again, doesn't have to be 100 days, it can be 10 days because you're really not sure what it is you're doing there. You're just juggling or throwing balls in the air, not sure which ones you're gonna juggle with. So then shorter duration might work better, just to explore, maybe weekly, again, maybe 10 days, maybe a month,

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  whatever that might be, but choose that duration, choose the action.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Into practice, decide, make a pact and agreement with yourself to show up. And again, decide what is you wanna learn about or get better at, choose your practice, choose your time, your place, your tools and show up. So what could your 100 days of practice look like? And again, this is especially useful when you don't really know where it is you wanna end up, where are you going, where your destination is. It's kinda like buying a ticket on a train and deciding on, you know, I'm gonna figure out the end destination while on the way,

• 19:41Speaker 00

  passing some stations and deciding where it is I'm gonna end my journey or maybe I'm gonna take detours. So pacts, not goals. And if you're curious to explore this idea more, well, first of all, you might stay tuned for our upcoming episode in the next couple of weeks. Not couple of weeks, probably closer to two, four weeks. And besides that, you can pick up Unlor's book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. You can also follow my blog, for example, of my daily writing. The blog is linked in the show notes.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  So pacts, not goals. Again, let's actually recap. But before we recap, guys, don't forget to share this podcast episode with people who might be stuck, not knowing where they're going and it's highly unsettling and even might be stressful and they just wanna figure out and start doing things. Maybe a business owner, maybe a leader. So maybe committing to again pacts and practices and sharing this podcast with this person. So please do that, share, review to help this podcast reach more ears.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  And let's recap some guidelines around pacts. So pact has to be purposeful. So you gotta know what it is you're trying to learn or where you wanna be moving towards. Like not specific end destination, but what is you wanna learn? What is you wanna explore? Like what's the purpose, right? It's gotta be actionable. So it's not actionable in some ideal future, but actionable right now where you are with what you have. Continuous. It should involve a simple, repeatable action, a practice that can be tracked over a specific period. You gotta reflect like, what did I learn? Should I improve this or that? I tried this or that.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  So continuous, allowing you again to explore, to lean into that, not a one event kind of thing. And then trackable, it should be binary. Did you do it or not? It's gotta be that simple. So this is some guidance about pacts. And again, choose what you wanna explore, get better at, choose your practice, choose your time, place your tools, and just show. A bonus point if you reach out to Angela. Well, the email is in the show notes. And share with me your practice. And I'm gonna keep you posted on what it is I'm gonna decide to do next as my pact for the 38th year of my life.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  So thank you so much, guys, for listening, for tuning in, for focusing on growth, on improvement, of moving forward. So thank you so much for your attention and your time. Until next time, keep changing and keep growing, even when you don't know where it is you're going.