Strive Satisfied: The Art of Feeling Full While Reaching Higher
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:00:01 Welcome to Heart Glow CEO®, where high achievers evolve into purpose-driven powerhouses. I'm Kc Rossi, your Integrative Leadership Coach. Join us to break free from people pleasing and burnout. Exploring mindset, embodiment, and soul alignment. Discover expert insights, success stories, and actionable tips for wholistic wealth on your terms. This is where transformation meets the modern, mission-driven leader. Let's go!
Are you striving satisfied, pushing forward with hunger and clarity while also feeling quietly full and pleased? That paradox is a place I wish to live. Sometimes I strike a balance. Other times, I'm consciously striving toward it.
Today, I want to take a deep, practical, and heart-centered dive into satisfaction for high-achieving, mission-driven leaders, the people who can do everything and still wake up wondering if it was enough.
Strive satisfied is a phrase I first heard from Brendon Burchard. It's not about complacency. It's not resting on laurels or losing the drive to grow. It's this skillful blending of two truths:
1. You can feel full, grateful, and proud of your work and life right now.
2. You can still pursue bigger goals with discipline, curiosity, and accountability.
Satisfaction becomes a compass, not a stop sign.
Listen to all the things your mind, your heart, and your body wisdom. High performers are experts at raising the bar. I think you know what I mean. That's a superpower… until the bar becomes a moving target, which erodes joy. I've experienced this myself.
I've watched clients hit major milestones and respond with a reflexive yeah, but yeah, but I should have - fill in the blank. Yeah, but now I must maintain this. Yeah, but what if I lose it? That pattern steals energy, clarity, and the savoring that actually fuels sustained growth.
Can you think of a time that you've done that, and maybe you do it on a daily basis? It is really this habitual thing that we're unconscious of, because as strivers, we often can forget about the journey. And I know that we've all heard, oh, you know, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:02:54 And that sounds great. It's a cute little quote card for social media, but how do we embody it? How can we breathe into that truth and make it something that is just a part of having this balance of acknowledging our wins and continuing to move forward?
I wanted to put it into three pillars today, so we can really look at something that's real and useful when we're thinking about striving satisfied.
We're going to look at it in the category of heart, systems, and accountability; real tools that you can use this week. And maybe you're already starting to use some. And if you are, that's amazing. My invitation is to be really curious about how you can find ways to subtly tweak what you already have in place. Play around with a different modality or fresh eyes, and see what happens.
In the first category, it is our heart, cultivating a felt sense of satisfaction. It felt sense. This is how we really live, chin down and start to experience our full somatic reality. The wisdom in our body, the brain cells in our belly, like all the things that are outside of our mind and headspace.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:04:31 The very first one is celebrating micro wins. After every meaningful step, my suggestion is to stop for 60 seconds. Name the win. Breathe and feel the gratitude.
This is so simple, yet it trains your nervous system to register accomplishment as a whole, not as a reminder to chase more transformation happens at the speed of safety. So part of this retraining our nervous system and resetting is for our bodies to just be like, yeah, I'm good, I'm okay. And it anchors in your confidence level. So we're not continuing to think, oh, the yaba piece or that wasn't big enough for me to celebrate it, or I don't really even have time for 60s to do that. That sounds cute. But yeah, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
I invite you to interrupt that kind of thinking, because if we keep doing what we've always done, we're going to keep getting those exact same results. So taking this opportunity to even jot down what these tips are and taking one on and trying it, or taking two on and playing around with it, that's how you're going to really start to see the needle move and shifts and a different sense and sensibility in your body.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:06:06 And wouldn't it be awesome if there could be more ease and flow? More ease and flow with these simple ways? So one is celebrate those micro wins, but not just celebrating it like, yay, I did it! I crossed it off the to-do list.
The invitation is to stop one minute. Name the win. Hey, I did fill in the blank. Take a breath and allow yourself to experience the gratitude, and then you can move on. It's simple, but it will retrain your nervous system.
The second tip here in the heart category is a language shift. Anybody that works with me knows how passionate I am about language. It's something that I learned in my training through NLP, but it's also something that I have always admired. I've admired other people's articulation and their conscious awareness when it comes to the intention of what they say and how it's framed, whether it's positive or negative. Our brain is always, always listening. So this one is simple, but it's effective, and it's a language shift.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:07:23 Replacing “I should” with “I did” as your internal monologue. And this is something that you can even try it on for an hour and notice how your energy changes. So every day I write a little to-do list and I'll look at it and I get so much satisfaction from crossing it off. But sometimes, instead of being like, oh wow, I did this, I did that, I can look at the 2 or 3 things at the end of the day that I didn't do and be like, oh man, I should have sent that email. I should have filled out that paperwork.
That's a common thing that we do. The invitation here is to try on the language shift and replace I should with I did and watch how your energy changes.
The third piece here is to ritualized rest. Satisfaction asks you to be human. Human. Schedule real margins like 30 to 60 or even 90 minutes every day of non-work pleasure. Now, as a human being, not a human doing, sensory pleasure matters.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:08:42 Make this a mini ritual; a walk, a delicious snack, a window seat pause. One of my favorite resources here if you're kind of like, I don't even know what you're talking about because I am just so used to going, going, going, and how can I fit it all in? And now I want a meal plan because I wanted this and that. And how am I going to make all the time for it? These are some of the things that I've gone through.
But one woman that leads the way is Julia Cameron, and I love her Artist Way philosophy. I'll link that book in the show notes. And she has some beautiful rituals that she shares. One is starting the day with really kind of this stream of consciousness in the morning, journaling, and having some creative time. The other is making an artist date with yourself, not with yourself and your phone or yourself and your iPad, but literally with yourself, and doing something that is non-work related.
Anyway, she goes into beautiful detail, and so I'll link that for you if you're interested in ritualized rest and creating these sensory pleasure pockets of time in your week and in your day.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:10:05 Let's just do a quick practice here before we move on to the second category. It's something that you can do for yourself, but also why not do it now together if you can? And you're not driving and you're not on a treadmill?
So I invite you to close your eyes. Take two slow inhales. Exhale a soft ‘thank you’ to yourself. Thank you. Let your shoulders drop. And just see how you're feeling. You are now practicing registering that this moment and what you've built is enough. It can be that simple. Just taking 15 seconds to close your eyes. You can even put hand on chest. Hand on belly if you really want to tune in. If you have that space, it's just a really beautiful, additional extra piece of frosting when you can do, hand on heart. Hand on low belly. And just make that connection as you breathe. And you just give just a moment of intentional gratitude to yourself for showing up, for continuing to strive, for acknowledging who you are and what you've done, and just fully registering that it is enough and you are enough.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:11:55 And you always have been, and you always will be. Beautiful.
All right. The second category is all about systems, practical structures that respect delight.
Think about that for a minute. What if your structure could actually be designed to respect delight? Oh my goodness. If I knew this concept years and years ago. I mean, you have to think about this- I started as an entrepreneur when I was 19 years old. And that was many decades ago. And I never had this way of being or philosophy to think about entrepreneurialism as delightful. Like, could it be possible that I could have strategies, systems, and structures, and also have a good time and be delighted? Whoa. Like, literally mind blown. And now I would say with age comes some wisdom. And with some bumps on the rocky road comes some new awareness. Honestly, I don't want business, if I can't have delight, I would rather go and plop into someone else's structure. Although being a lifetime entrepreneur, I don't know if I ever could do that, but the concept here is-
Heart without systems is wishful thinking, and systems without heart is lifeless.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:13:31 Okay. Combine both. So, a couple of tips. Here is a satisfaction weekly audit. Spend a little time on Friday listing your three wins, big or small. And then there's like a satisfaction rating. Now you can rate it across several areas like work, money, relationships, health, rest. This mimics the life and leadership wheels that I do pre and post coaching with my clients.
I personally feel it's a little bit tedious on a weekly basis to go through a rating scale, and I'm all about what's practical in real life. So for me now, you can play around with this, and I suggest that you do. I always say my tips are kind of guides. They're little suggestions, but you are your best authority… always. And so try it out. Like be this curious detective. See what works for you.
So rate your satisfaction across several areas or one area. For me, I like to prioritize one area a week. I think about it on Monday and at the end of the week, I rate myself like, okay, how did I do? Sometimes I'll use a metric.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:14:52 Sometimes I'll just kind of like tune into my body and be like, am I overtired? Oh, okay. Then I might have overscheduled, or I may not have prioritized rest.
Say, for example, on Monday you rate yourself and your health at the top of the week and then at the week's end as well. And what you made like tune into is. Oh, okay. Like, yeah. I'm not really feeling a shift. And so for example, if you ate like crap and notice that it affected how you showed up at work, that might be the lever to focus on in the following week. You could do something like committing to eating earlier in the evening, or more live or plant-based foods to feel energized. These are just a couple of examples. So think about that as you start your week and end your week. Focusing I find on one area just allows me to be more intentional about that piece and not feel overwhelmed with a ginormous to-do list of like, oh my gosh, I have to move the needle in work and money and relationships and health, and I better get some more sleep too.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:16:06 So part of this, as a high achiever, is making these bite-sized micro shifts, looking at our micro wins, looking at the micro levers that we can kind of tweak. So I want you to think about that so you don't choke. So you don't take this big, big bite and go Oh my gosh, why did I do this? And I can't even digest it. So we're just nibbling away little teeny things every single day, day by day, week by week, month by month.
Then we're going to see this beautiful compounding nature of our personal and professional growth. Okay.
So the next piece is accountability.
Accountability is the muscle that converts intent into results.
Now, this is interesting because when I was thinking about accountability, I found it, interesting to compare the difference between self-accountability and getting a study buddy or a coach. I found a study interesting regarding accountability. They put a tip jar out at a coffee shop, and for a period of time, they just had a clear bowl for the tips.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:17:24 And then at the same time frame, they put a smiley sticker on the jar. That was it. The only change. And guess what? The tips significantly increased. Why? Because that is a classic example of using subtle cues to influence behavior. It's based on what's called the Big Brother effect or the illusion of being watched.
Now, you have heard me say before that the brain doesn't know the difference between reality and imagined, and this is the perfect study that explores that even further, because we are much more prone to behave in a cooperative, honest, or generous way if we have a sensation of being observed, even if we're not being watched by a real person.
So I say, why not take advantage of this effect by instilling accountability in your life and business? And you can do this a couple of different ways.
You can do a 90-day sprint with satisfaction checkpoints. At the start of the sprint, you can set one measurable goal and one satisfaction goal. So like hit X revenue and hit 8 out of 10 in rest, for example.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:18:45 And then you can do mid-sprint or you know just kind of these little check-ins before the full 90 day goes by to just tune in and be like how am I doing with that? Did I even remember I said I was going to do the thing? So for me, I have a whiteboard. So that keeps the things that I want front and center right there for me, though, that's a really interesting thing because that's a part of self-leadership. I don't necessarily need somebody, but I can still have this thing like I'm being watched. It's kind of different, but I feel like my whiteboard, I'm looking at it now. It has certain things that I've committed to. They could be short-term things. They could be my quarterly goals. But I almost feel like they're they're like, hey, friend, remember you said you were going to do this thing? That's an example of using the big brother effect to stay accountable to myself.
Now, the other thing is you can do a public commitment with little small penalties.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:19:46 You can tell one trusted peer your goal and agree on a simple consequence. Like you can donate 100 bucks if you miss a milestone.
Consequences create an urgency without shame.
For example, on the personal side of it, if you have promised to walk three days a week and you've told a friend or you, maybe you even have a walking buddy, and you miss it, or you stand them up for X times, maybe you buy them dinner so it can be little things. You can play around with it.
Then the other thing is an accountability partner or coach. So if it's something where you have milestones in your business that you really perhaps have tried the self-leadership thing, or perhaps you tried posting on social media one of your goals to be held by your community, and you're still not quite catching it. Having that 1 to 1 partner or coach could be the thing that you're like, ooh, so-and-so is waiting for me. Or so-and-so, you know, is holding the space for me to accomplish that.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:20:53 You can choose someone who balances both challenge and compassion, because you really need both; a push for results and a safe container to celebrate them.
Next is reframing that, ‘Yeah, but…’ loop when you're tempted to say, yeah, but regarding your celebration of your win or giving yourself credit, I invite you to pause and ask three questions.
1. What am I afraid will happen if I let myself feel satisfied?
Oh, that's a big one.
2. What would the benefits be if I acknowledged this win?
3. For my strivers who really love their next steps. What's one tiny action that honors both the win and the next step?
Because I know being a visionary is a really, popular quality to a mission-driven, high-achieving leader. So that's a question that kind of is a nod to you. Often, the fear is identity-based. If I slow, I'll no longer be seen as capable. Now we rewire that by making satisfaction a part of your identity.
You're not a person who only moves because you must. You're someone who moves because joy fuels progress.
I had a director that I worked with, and we worked on putting boundaries on her work, email, and texts. She committed to being on and available from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.. And you know what happened? Within six weeks, she reported higher focus, less stress, less resentment, and more gratitude for her family time. And bonus, her rest improved.
Another example is a founder with chronic ‘Yeah…but’ energy who instituted my awesomeness audit recommendation, very similar to what I shared with you here, but we're just keeping it kind of in a written journal because that's how she likes to learn being a kinesthetic learner, and she just captures all the ways that she's caught herself winning throughout the day, throughout the week.
It's a very simple capturing system to note down the times that she caught herself winning.
Now, when she reflects and tunes in when she is in negotiations or price setting, she can rely on the confidence that she programmed into her cells. She knows her worth and can clearly articulate her needs.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:23:43 Like with anything else, when we are conscious, we bring awareness to it. We have pattern change. You will start to see these BIG shifts, these micro wins compound and lead to life-changing transformation both personally and professionally.
Satisfaction is not a finish line, it's the steering wheel you use to pilot toward the next wiser horizon.
When you learn to be full and hungry at once, you stop burning fuel and start driving with precision, pleasure, and purpose.
Here's the truth I want you to really let land. Your best is good enough. Period. Beginning of the story, not the end. The beginning. Because once you accept that everything you build from here comes from satisfaction and not scarcity, things shift in a big way.
Strive satisfied, my friend. It's way more enjoyable to traverse the journey this way, and we can do it together. We can hold each other accountable for this new way, this new philosophy, this new lifestyle of striving satisfied.
It's really another way to be balanced, to be at peace, but also to have a little craving… to hold the duality simultaneously.
Kc Rossi, PCC 00:25:18 Okay, my friend, until next time. I hope that you can play around with this concept of striving satisfied.
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Thank you so much for listeni,ng and I'll talk to you soon.
