Choose Goals That Are Yours, Not Someone Else's | Episode 496

Choose Goals That Are Yours, Not Someone Else's | Episode 496

Every day you wake up, you are already moving closer to something. The uncomfortable part is naming it: are we getting closer to our dream, or closer to inactivity that feels safe because it is familiar? We sit with that question and keep returning to it from different angles, because clarity is not a lightning bolt, it is a practice.

We talk about how to find your direction when you are not sure what you want yet, including a simple, underrated tool for goal discovery: your local library. We also reflect on why numbers can matter so much in personal growth, from the shock of nearing 500 shows to the power of long-term milestones like 40 years of sobriety. Those markers are not about bragging rights, they are proof that consistency is real.

Then we get honest about validation. Trophies, medals, and applause feel good, but they cannot be the reason we keep going, and they cannot come with us when life ends. We explore how to pursue progress without becoming addicted to recognition, and why our bigger mission is about helping people and building connection across culture, not politics.

We close with practical steps you can try immediately: start before you feel ready, turn off screens for 30 minutes a week, and choose goals that are yours, not someone else’s. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review. What are you getting closer to right now?

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*Voices for Voices is a 501c3 nonprofit charity. All donations are 100% tax deductible.

Chapter Markers

• 0:00 Welcome And How To Support
• 2:07 Defining What Closer Means
• 3:51 Use The Library To Explore
• 7:21 Why Numbers Mark Real Progress
• 9:31 Validation Without Trophies
• 17:47 Purpose Bigger Than Recognition
• 19:56 Choose Goals That Are Yours
• 22:20 Creativity And Healthy Validation
• 26:48 Turn Off Screens To Think
• 31:43 The Final Closer Question

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Transcript

Welcome And How To Support

Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices 0:01

Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining. Whether you're watching, listening, you're here in the United States or abroad. Thank you so much for being with us. If you can do us a big favor, give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, repost. That'd be awesome. Follow us on social media. And if you can reach out to maybe 25 or 50 contacts on your phone and let them know about the Voices for Voices TV Trump podcast, and at that, the Voices for Voices organization. Thank you for being with us. And it's been uh been a few days. Uh we're we're catching up on our uh social media posts. Uh we're uh a fair amount uh behind because we we're just rocking and rolling with our show. Um so we're glad to have you with us. And again, if you can tell a friend, uh we'd love to have you and them um be with us for other episodes. Uh we are pushing 500 total episodes in our uh portfolio, so that by itself is just incredible. And we're just a charity, low budget, frankly, no budget, really. Um, and and so we're we're doing this because we believe uh in helping people, and the big goal is to help and reach at least three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. Uh, and again, Lucy's with us, so uh she might make an appearance here. She's uh currently resting on her shoulders. You can kind of see my head is pushed a little forward. Uh so closer. Closter is uh what I'd like to talk about uh today. Um, there's songs written about uh closter. Uh the there's a song from the chain smokers called Closer, uh Neo Closter. That's the one I'm more familiar with as I was uh younger, uh quite a bit younger uh that that song came out, and and so that's what I automatically thought about when I was searching to see uh songs that were titled Closer. Um we talk about uh we talk about how life is rough, life is tough, no matter what, no matter how good we think we have it, or how bad we think we we have it, we're closer. The key is what are we closer to? Are we closer to achieving our dream or dreams? Or are we closer to uh inactivity where we're spinning our wheels, we not quite sure what we want to do. We know we don't want to be in that mold of that nine to five or eight to five, uh, but that's all all we might know. What I would recommend in those those cases uh is go check out your your local library. Uh the libraries around where I reside, they're open to the public, and you can go in there and search different topics that you like, like like sports, uh medical, uh you know, find the area that really makes you passionate when you hear said industry or products or services, and your ears perk up and your eyes go, oh, that would probably be a good start to just do a little bit of research. If you don't want to read the whole book or the whole magazine, uh you don't have to, but right, we're we're trying to get closer to our dream, closer to what we want to do, what we feel our purpose is on earth. Because we all have one. Um I'm still looking, and uh as of now, um as a believer, uh you know, God hasn't quote unquote appeared to me and say, Justin, voices for voices, that that's what your uh that's what your goal is. That that's that's your purpose here on earth. Uh all I have to do though is look at how many episodes we have. I mean, I I it's hard for me to really even say five hundred. Five hundred of anything is nothing short of miraculous because so many things have to go right to get to this point doesn't mean everything's going right, absolutely not. To get to five hundred, though, some things have had to kind of go in our our direction, and that's why we're so passionate with what we do. That again, five hundred of anything, five hundred days of sobriety, five hundred days of going to the gym, whatever that may be, five hundred of anything is is huge. As I bring this up, is you you you've seen and heard him on uh previous shows. We we've had uh I think two shows, maybe three. Uh Don Mattis Jr., he's got you know the purple outfit, the purple beard, and such, and and he has detailed and relived trauma of his early years. And for him, the number forty means something. So I'm forty-four years old. Don is coming up like just over a week from when we're we're filming this episode. He's celebrating forty years of sobriety. That's forty years. He started his sobriety four years before I was even born. And so numbers mean something, whether it's forty, whether it's four, whether it's one, whether it is fifty percent, a hundred percent, sixty percent. The key is we're trying. Far too often I I I've seen uh people from kind of like my earlier life, earlier days where they maybe they're working towards their goal. I don't I don't know. But I'm uh I'm a progress type of person not just for me, but for others. Like I I have to I have to show progress for me to feel any kind of validation. I wish it wasn't the case, but I've talked about it a lot on prior shows where for me to get validation, I have to have, you know, a piece of paper or an email or uh something that shows that that's what uh that's what I did. And so in a way I'm trying to impress other people, but as I'm talking and processing what I'm talking about, I shouldn't I shouldn't have to. You shouldn't have to. I mean it's nice if somebody's impressed, like, hey great job, whatever whatever your thing is, whatever my thing. Yeah, it's it it's nice to get recognized. But that's not always gonna come. The trophies and all these metals of honor and you have lucky enough to make it to the Olympics, you know, and earn a gold, silver, or bronze medal. Those are all things that are nice and good recognition but for a lot of us there's a lot of days that go by. I know from experience where we're gonna work on this, we're gonna work on that And yet we don't see a result Nobody's there clapping their hands for us, hey great job, Justin Here's your here's your trophy So I don't so while I still seek that validation and and to show like here's what I've done I thought about this long and hard that I'm merely just showing here's what I've done, here's something that I've completed. But I don't need a trophy, I don't need a medal to show me what I've done because it for me it's all God. I'm just like the intermediary where I'm sharing the best uh we can stories and events, experiences so we can help people. So somebody can be sitting at home or sitting on a plane or wherever and say that right there that resonates with me. It resonates with my family. I'm not perfect, nobody's perfect. The things I talk about are things that I'm doing or have worked for me or haven't worked for me, and then the same thing with our guests and so again I don't I feel like I need the validation, but I don't with that validation I don't need uh again, I don't need a trophy, a medal. All those things are I'm gonna switch how I'm sitting so the camera might move around just a bit. Okay, there we go. Much better. And then of course you hear the jingling, that's Lucy. So uh but yeah, I don't I don't I don't need that type of validation. Yeah, that's great. You know, growing up playing sports, I was decent, I guess. And so there were tournaments, there were events that we would our team, my team would enter, and sometimes we would get first, sometimes second, sometimes we wouldn't. We wouldn't get a trophy. And so it's taken me really these 44 years in counting to think about this of do I need that type of validation? Like, it's one thing to you know show, hey, excuse me, this this is something that I did, I completed this, I have this goal, and now part of it or all of it I've completed it. It's really just hard to hard to fathom about the trophies because yeah. Would that be kind of the ultimate validation? It could be but I come back to this as I have many times before. When we leave this earth, we're not gonna be able we're not gonna be able to take those trophies and and medals and certificates of appreciation, of honor, of you name it. We don't get to take those with us. And so I think that's part, if not all, of why I feel about the trophies and medals topic that I do. Because I think that I'd be wasting my time trying to reach out to have me or the organization recognize again, those things are great. If they happen, I didn't say I'm gonna turn them down. Excuse me. I didn't say I'm gonna turn them down. It's just something that that's just not my goal. My goal is to help three billion people, to reach three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond through Voices for Voices, which is quite literally a ministry where we bring humans across the world together based on culture and not politics. Yes, we've had politicians on our show, but if you look at the close to five hundred shows at this point, you're not gonna see a hundred shows, two hundred, three hundred, you're not gonna see this huge number of politicians. A lot of them are for specific work that they have have completed. Like the Take It Down act with Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, which is now a federal law, and the first person under that law is being prosecuted. See, it's more it's more of what the action of that politician versus it being about getting re-elected or some person that's running for office for the first time. So, what are you getting closer to? Bringing it right back to the beginning of the of our episode. What are you getting closer to? Are you getting closer to your dream? Closer to the goals that you want, not the goals that your parents want, not the goals that your roommate, your friend, as hard as it as it can be not the goal of a significant other. And so again, I I ask again, what are you getting closer to? Are you getting closer to activity? Are you getting closer to inactivity? The hardest thing to do, and I I'm guilty of this when I was younger, I the going to the gym working out, and the physique and all that, that was so important to me. I do need to get back into better shape. So I'm admitting that. But the deal is this. The hardest part of working out is getting started. Getting off the couch, getting off the chair, getting off the bench, off the bed. Hardest part is getting started. And the goals are very much the same. You just gotta get started. If you're like me and need that validation work just work on it. Again, nobody's perfect. I went to a mine and my wife's our child, they had art show at their school. And so they had art from different times of the school year. Maybe some got judged. Everybody was welcome at that school. They had had relation with the ch child, you know, parent, guardian, grandparent, not just anybody. And so there was it was so cool because there was no competition of well, this piece of art versus this other piece of art. It was letting everybody express their creativity in the piece of art. It's neat to see some of the things that they do. I don't know, but just having that opportunity not only to do the art and make the art, create the art, but that would be for like if I turn back the clock for me, bringing my parents to an art show at a at a school and showing them my work, that would be validation for me. And so it might might be our child's validation for them. Or they're gonna look back and go, you know what, that was that was so neat that my parents came to see the art that I've been working on. And it really was. It was very neat to see that and to see those and not just mine, but to see all the other children and they're pointing and saying, Look, here's mine, here's mine, and they get a picture next to it or close to it. Or a parent holds them up, but if it's at the top area, so again, just ask yourself, what are you closer to? Closer to validation, closer, closer to even finding out in your mind what you want to do. Doesn't have to be closer to completing the goal, you can be closer to finding out what the goal is, what you want to do, because that's getting started too, right? Y'all put the phone down, you gotta put screens away, and you gotta just think for some of us, it's very hard to do, extremely hard to do, and maybe we can't think of a time where we were able to just sit and think, or stand and think, or without having the ringer or the vibration of the phone or the TV on or whatever it that can be a goal in of itself. I'm gonna put my phone and turn it off, turn off all the screens for 30 minutes one day a week. And I bet you in a couple weeks or so, you'll be you'll be closer to finding out what what your goal is, what you want, what you want to do. I I mean I remember growing up and you know what are my roommates work, what are they doing? I changed my major a couple different times at the university. Yeah, I was trying to be like my roommates or like my sister instead of like Justin. What does Justin want to do? Because as we figure out as life goes on, those some of those people usually siblings are we're we're in general, not all the time. We're we hear more of what what they what they do and where they're at in life. Versus a roommate, I I couldn't tell you what I could tell you what one of them, like what their their major information technology, IT, but we don't talk, haven't talked in years, years, and that's a roommate, that's somebody that we were really close for years, and then we're not so if I would have picked his major because of that, thinking, oh well, we'll be able to chat and talk about these things as life continues, it's not the case, even in the best of hopes, and we don't usually have that opportunity, and and then when you're on the phone or FaceTime, Zoom, it's like I don't want to talk about that. I just want to talk about something that is not work-related, or it's family hobbies. So that's why I'm saying figure out what you want to do, not what somebody else wants to do. You can take opinions, you can take other people's thoughts, but at the end, you gotta make that decision because you're the one that's gonna have to live with it. So I'll ask one more time. What are you closer to? Hope you enjoyed this episode. Let's celebrate all the voices in the world and be a voice for you or somebody in need. We'll see you next time, everybody. Bye bye for now.