In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about goal planning.
Find the Full Notes to this episode at RecoveringCorpoholics.com/39.
This episode is all about goal planning. Because if you don’t have a plan, you don’t have a goal, you have a wish.
And if you don’t know where you are going, you will end up someplace else!
You may have a goal in mind but if you don’t have a plan in place to achieve that goal, and I'm talking about all the steps and everything you need to do to achieve that goal, then you may not reach it. Let's take a second to be real with ourselves.
I mean, Just think about 2020. That was an unprecedented year that no one expected. We may have started out with goals but with everything that happened that year, your goals may have taken a hit.
Instead of being strategic about your time, we all turned on our survival modes and had to deal with things we never had to deal with before. I know that was totally unexpected but so is life.
Having a child sick, you getting sick, having more work to do, dealing with daily life... I mean things happen! We get busy. Moral of the story, if we want to achieve our goals, we need to be strategic in our actions and take control of our future. Aka have a plan!
Without goals, we can drift from one thing to another resulting in a feeling that time has been wasted on things that are irrelevant, irresponsible or just unimportant.
Having goals, we get to choose the direction of our lives and create our future. Goal setting gives us something to look forward to. I don’t know about you but I get excited when I have things I want to achieve.
One thing that I especially love about goal setting is that it triggers new behaviors or habits, helping guide our focus and helping us sustain that momentum in life.
I think the most important thing to note here is that the process of working on our goals makes us happy. We are for sure happy when we achieve our goal, but it's the pride in ourselves that we actually did something we committed to that lights us up.
Just take a moment and think back to a time where you wanted to do something and you actually did it. How did you feel? Amazing right?! Well I want you to feel that again because that’s exactly what we're doing this week!
OK so let’s get into it!
Now that you have your goal down and it is SMART and gives you a SPARK, I want to show you the process of planning your goals.
First, take your top goal you identified and set a date for how long it’s going to take you to achieve. Maybe it's to lose 20 pounds so you decide you want it to take 6 months.
Second, I want you to break that down by monthly milestones. For example, if your goal is to lose 20 pounds in 6 months, how much do you need to lose each month to lose 20 pounds? Around 3-4 pounds.
Then for each month, write down what it would take or look like to lose 3-4 pounds. That's a pound a week! What do you need to eat each week, what exercises do you need to do? Take all the guesswork out!
You can even be extra and write down what you will eat each day and when you will work out. That will for sure set you up for success.
And the same goes for a life goal.
Say you want to write a book and you say it will take you one year. OK, well, where do you need to be at 9 months, 6 months, 3 months, etc., in order to complete your goal?
Now it depends on how you want to break it out. Maybe the goal is to write a chapter per month. Then what do you need to do each week in order to complete that chapter?
Maybe it's to have the book completed by 6 months and then have it edited by 9 months so it is finalized by month 12. Whatever the case may be, take your goal and figure out how long it will take and t