Episode 002 – Goal Setting

We hope this episode on goal setting was helpful for you. If you like the show, please review us on your podcaster of choice! Feedback, ideas for topics and guest appearances are always welcome at podcast@raisingconfidentteens.com.

https://raisingconfidentteens.com

http://facebook.com/bedaring.life

Goal setting guide available here:

https://raisingconfidentteens.com/goalsetting

Link to html player of the episode:

https://player.captivate.fm/d295a817-6d5c-41cf-a3bc-c078737bf802

Apple iTunes and Podcasts subscription link:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/be-daring-life/id1494840535

RSS podcast feed:

https://feeds.captivate.fm/be-daring-life/

Transcript of Episode

Episode Two-Goal Setting

If you are bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals. Lou Holtz

Hey friends!  Hope your day is going well.  Welcome to our second episode.  This has been a learning experience for us.  After listening to the first podcast, I learned that  I say “Um” a lot. So I am going to be working on that.

A monumental event happened at our house over the holidays. After years of begging, our kids got a puppy. His name is Bear, and he is a cute, fluffy little thing. They’ve never had a puppy, I’ve never had a puppy. Pray for me, and send me any advice you have on surviving this.

2020 – the start of a decade. We don’t get many of those. The average person gets seven or eight of these. I’ve enjoyed reflecting back on the last ten years and seeing other people talk about how they have grown and changed in the past decade. So this is a great opportunity to talk about where we want to be in the next year, and even the next decade.

Many people make resolutions at the beginning of the year. But they don’t have an action plan that goes along with those resolutions, so basically those are just wishes. We don’t want you to do that, we want to teach you how to set goals and reach them.

Why is it important to set goals? What if you were a builder, and you were hired to build a beautiful cathedral.  So you buy all the materials and hire all the workers. The workers get there and are looking to you for direction, but you don’t have a blueprint or any kind of plan.  You are just going to wing it and figure it out as you go along. How would that building turn out? Well, you are the builder of your life. If you have no plan how will it turn out?  Do you think it will turn out better if you take some time to plan ahead?

Less than three percent of people have written goals, and less than one percent review and rewrite them. It has been proven that people who regularly write their goals accomplish much more and are more successful than those that don’t. So why don’t more people do it?  I think part of the problem is that no one ever taught them how to write goals. Today we are going to talk through the process and if you want we have some worksheets available at https://raisingconfidentteens.com/goalsetting. They have goal suggestions and the steps written out.

Some of you have heard me talk about John Goddard.  At the age of fifteen, he overheard some adults talking about regrets that they had.  He decided that he didn’t want to get older and regret all that he hadn’t done. So he sat down and wrote 127 goals that he wanted to accomplish in his lifetime. He completed 120 of those original 127 plus many more along the way. He went on to become one of the world’s most famous anthropologists, explorers, and adventurers in his pursuit of reaching his goals.They weren’t easy goals either. He had some crazy goals. He visited almost every country, circumnavigated the globe four times, climbed twelve of the tallest mountains, photographed many of the highest waterfalls, studied primitive cultures in a dozen countries and navigated the entire length of the Nile and the Congo. He also milked a poisonous snake, ran a five minute mile, wrote a book, taught a college course, learned to fly a plane, and learned multiple languages. He survived forty-two life-threatening experiences.

The first thing I want you to do is make a list like Goddard did. Write down 100 things that you want to do in your lifetime. It can be little things or big things. Don’t overthink and try to talk yourself out of something you write. I just want you to try to get the creative juices flowing.

Ask yourself, “What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?  Think about where you would like to see yourself in one year, five years, ten years. Think about the person you want to become and where you want to be. Brian Tracy, the well-known personal development trainer, who has researched this topic for many years says, “You will achieve your goals ten times faster and with greater probability if you’re absolutely crystal clear on what you want and how to get there.”

You need to make sure you make goals in all areas of your life.  You don’t want to be unbalanced, only working on improving one area. The categories we recommend are Spiritual, Financial, Educational, Recreational, Personal.

Now I want you to focus in a little smaller. Pick out three to five goals that you feel you could possibly accomplish this year. You don’t want to make too many because that will overwhelm you.

Do you know that when you set a goal, your mind will go to work to make it happen?  Your brain is an amazing tool, even when you are asleep it will be working on your goals.

So we have an acronym for the best way to write out your goals. It is the word SMART. Each of these letters reminds us of something that every goal should have.

S-Specific, you should write exactly what you want to accomplish

M-Measurable, you can’t track progress if you can’t measure it

A-Achievable, it should stretch you, but it should not be impossible. Don’t make it something that is pretty much a sure thing like, “I want to save $1000”, when you already have $950. on the other hand, $1,000,000 in the next six months would be unachievable and frustrating.

R-Relevant, it needs to be relevant to your life, it shouldn’t be someone else’s goal for you, and should align with your values and the direction you want your life to take

T-Timely, it needs to have a target date in mind

If you go to https://raisingconfidentteens.com/goalsetting  you can download a worksheet that will help you write out your goals. You can use this worksheet for any type of goal-financial, fitness, short-term, long-term. So fill out a sheet for each goal. Make sure you break down the goal into smaller steps and then set aside time every day to work on them.

So a vague goal would be “I will do better in school.” A smart goal would be, “I will have an A in my history class by the end of the semester on December 10th, 2020.

Don’t just write them down one time, you have to keep them constantly before you.  Write them out everyday, that will help you take the action that you need to realize it.  When you are looking at them, ask yourself, “What can I do today to get me closer to the goal?” A goal is no good unless it is accompanied by action.

The other day I found some goals from several years ago that I had written every day for a month or so. Life had gotten really crazy that year because we had a college student, a high schooler, a middle schooler, an elementary, a preschooler, a toddler and a newborn. I was exhausted with the two foster babies, and I went through a period where I was just surviving. But when I read them the other day I realized that I had achieved four of them. So even though I wasn’t working on them as much as I would have liked, I was still able to achieve them.

Has your family ever bought a new car or looked at a certain model of a car and then all of a sudden you keep seeing that same kind of car everywhere? The same thing happens when you keep your goals in front of you. The more you focus on your goals the more you will recognize opportunities that you might have missed otherwise.

We are just coming out of the holiday season. One of the movies we always watch is The Grinch with Jim Carey. In 1990 Jim Carey was a broke struggling comic. He wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 and dated it five years later. He carried it around in his wallet for years and kept it in front of him.  The month that date came around he was cast in a movie picture. That movie was Dumb and Dumber and he was paid $10 million for it. Not only was he looking at his goal all that time, but he continued to take action to make his goal a reality.

Expect obstacles to your goals. If accomplishing things were easy, everyone would do it. Think about all the possible scenarios and what fears will challenge you.  Learn to be a problem solver. If you don’t have many skills yet, but you are willing to solve problems and not give up, you can go far in life.

Keep your goals private. What I mean by that is, Don’t go around telling everyone what your goals are. You can tell people that you know will encourage you and keep you on track. You can send us a message and we will encourage you, but there are lots of negative people who will try to discourage you from your dreams. You tell them that you are saving for a certain car and they will tell you that that car doesn’t get good enough gas mileage or you will never be able to save that much. If you are just starting out that can be hard to handle. Just know that and protect yourself.

I hope that this podcast has been helpful for you and that you find some time today to sit down and write out your goals. There is something about having a goal to look forward to that will just energizes you. Just sharing this with you today has gotten my excited for all you guys are going to accomplish in the future. Looking forward to chatting with you again next week. I am going to leave you with this quote from Les Brown – “If you set goals and go after them with all the determination that you can muster, your gifts will take you places that amaze you.”