Bloom Your Mind

Ep 108: Three Month Cycles

• Marie McDonald

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Do you ever make New Year's resolutions? This episode isn't about if you should or shouldn't. Instead, it's about a great way to make any idea – big or small – happen.

We'll talk about three month goals,  a framework for achieving your big goals by breaking them down into manageable chunks.  This creates a clear path with actionable steps, enabling our brain to visualize and execute the necessary actions.

If you want to achieve more this 2025, whether it's personal growth, professional success, or simply bringing a long-held ideas to life, this episode is your first step to achieving those goals.

What you'll learn in this episode:

  • How to breaking down your new year goals into smaller steps 
  • The importance of community support in making your ideas real
  • How to articulate your goals to make them achievable
  • Using the 90-day goals framework to make your ideas bloom this year

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Hello, my beautiful friends, and welcome to episode 108 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. I am recording this on New Year’s Eve itself and as soon as I'm done with this recording, I am going to put gold freckle tattoos on my face and go and celebrate the hell out of 2024 with my kids and my husband and all of our friends. Right now, there is a symphony of fireworks that I can hear going off, both professionally and, you know, in little neighborhood celebrations right now, because it just got dark. What an incredible night. 

I love human traditions. We blast popping balls of light off into the air to celebrate and, regardless of environmental impact, it is so fun to watch. I love to look at fireworks so much, and I just got back from celebrating the winter holiday. We had a snowy Christmas, and it was the best Christmas ever. We celebrated with a community we have of people out in the desert I've talked about a few times that are so dear to us and then went skiing and I got to watch my kids. It's kind of like watching their drawings progress over the years, watching their skiing and their physical pursuits just change over the years. Really cool. 

So, my son, who's eight, was doing these like 360 turns and skiing backwards, and my daughter has this beautiful grace on her skis, she's swishing back and forth and both of them can pretty much do most of the mountain now with me, which is really exciting because I love to ski. And so, we're coming back from those things and we're looking at the new year, right, we're looking at going back to work and back to school. The new year, right, we're looking at going back to work and back to school, and we have this moment that we've created as a society where, because of our calendar, we celebrate this turnover of the year and you're probably being inundated by all the podcasts that you're listening to and all the emails and all of the social media. 

If you're on that you follow with how to set goals and how to set new year's resolutions, and there's a lot of, you know, pro resolution and against resolution out there, and I'm not going to add my voice into whether or not I think you should make a new year's resolution, because ultimately, only you know if that tradition serves you. But what I am going to give you tonight is the way that I approach turning any idea into a real thing from a tactical standpoint. Because if you don't have this, the likelihood of you actually turning whatever it is that you have in your mind as your idea or your goal or your resolution or whatever it is the likelihood of you making that thing real is much less if you don't put it into a framework like the one I'm going to give you. 

So first of all, I want to say I do set a New Year's resolution, but the way that I think about it is that I more think of a theme. So, for me this year my theme is clear or courage or whatever, but this year I just want to feel clear, and that is really in relation to my calendar and my goals and my work life, the amount of things in my life that I'm committed to, my finances. I just want clarity, right? I want to really prioritize clarity in my systems, clarity of mind, clarity of heart, clarity of my words, that I speak and my actions. That's really calling to me right now and it's sort of always important to me, but I love the calling right now for simplicity and clarity. 

So that's what I'm making my banner for my year is clarity. And then what I do and what I recommend is, instead of setting a goal for the entire year whether you do that or not you set 90-day goals you set three-month goals. That's what I love to do and that is what I have seen in my work with so many clients be much more effective than setting a goal for the entire year. 

Now, one way that you can think about this if you have a really big goal, if a year from now you want to have written a book, or you want to have moved cities, or you want to have graduated or changed careers or big things like that, then you might break your goal down into 90 day goals four times this year and that works for me. I like to have that yearlong vision, and I like to have a three-year vision, but what's most important to me is that all of those are broken down into goals that I can focus on for a shorter period of time. 

So, what I want to offer you today is this concept of the 90-day goal, the three-month goal. So, for me, I have three of them. Usually Right now. I have three goals for the next three months and at the end of three months I'll see how I did and I'll either choose new goals to be focused on or I'll change these if I haven't achieved them yet and I'll rinse and repeat. I'll change them, I'll reward them. If it took me longer than I thought, I will make it a new goal for the next 90 days. I have one with my husband and my family, I have one for work and I have one personal goal Now. 

I've talked many times on the podcast about why it's so important to have a goal, a focus, an idea that you're trying to make real. Because when we do, then we give our brains something to look for in the world that we want. We have a negativity bias in our brain. We threat scan, we look for all of the things in the world around us that align with our old pain and shame programming from when we were kids. If we're going with our natural tendencies, we're not going to get very far. But when we articulate what it is that we want and when we say it and time bind it, we say it in a way that defines what it is, and we make it time bound. 

I want to do this thing by this time. It gives us something really concrete and actionable to work towards and it allows our brain to see all the ways that we can act that match that goal. It gives our brain something fun and productive and glittery and something possibility-based to focus on, instead of focusing on the natural things that our brain will hone in on, which are negative. And again, I want to say, if you're not a big goal fan, this can be anything. It can be trying new recipes, it can be meeting a new friend, it can be getting to bed earlier. 

It can be getting to bed earlier; it can be mindfulness. It can be any way that you want to enhance your experience of life or even focus in on areas of life that you're already really happy with that you want to enjoy even more or be more present with practice, mindfulness around practice, gratitude for. For me, like I said, I have these three goals. 

One is in partnership with my husband. He and I have the goal for the beginning of this year to slow down and enjoy the home that we live in. We've had a lot of adventures and a lot of projects going on. His business has been really booming and he's put a lot into that and we've had this house project that has been going on for a while and our whole goal for the next 30 days is to be in our life, and so we make that goal together and we've broken down what that's going to look like. 

For myself, my personal goal is I have an injury that I'm healing from, so my 90-day goal for myself is to have this area of my body not have pain in it anymore. So, this health issue that I've been dealing with I've been working on for a while and I'm now into the sort of rehabilitation phase. So, my health goal is to practice every single day the things that will help me become stronger and be out of pain in 90 days from today. 

My third goal is the bloom room, and that is my professional goal. I have a year-long journal that I have created that has all kinds of support systems for the people in the bloom room, and I've created it and they're going to be able to order it. The people in the bloom room can order it within my workshop space online, and I am excited to get that out this year. 

It's already done and it's being sort of edited and groomed and printed and that is going to get out into the hands of my people as well as my workbook. So these two books that I've written, one with tons of material and the other one sort of as a journal and a tracker and a calendar system for my people, and then after that those are just in January because they're just being edited and finished up I have two more goals for the bloom room, which are that my material in there on relationships and on time management is going to be done. 

Those courses will be done. So I have these goals for the content, for work, for my personal life and for my partnership with my husband and my family. Those are my 90-day goals. 

So, what's next? The first thing is to decide whether you have one goal or two or three, like me to articulate those goals as done. So, it is March 31st, and I am no longer in pain in this part of my body. It is March 31st. I have my journal, my workbook and two special courses finished in the bloom room. It is March 31st and my husband, and I have spent, you know, half of the weekends at home enjoying our space. 

We've used our new outdoor kitchen to explore the recipe books that we have, and we've had three of our favorites, you know, couples or friend groups over to be in our space with us. Maybe there'll be some articulation around playing guitar and painting, being in the space, enjoying our home. So, once you've said these goals, you've written them down as having been done by a certain date, by 90 days. 

In the future, you need to think about in order to do something that you've never done before. You need to become someone that you haven't been before. So, who do you need to be that's different than who you've been before in order to achieve that goal is the first question. The second question is how will I need to think differently than I've thought before in order to achieve this goal? How will I need to feel in order to achieve this goal? 

How will I need to feel in order to achieve this goal? And oftentimes that feeling is something like commitment or determination. We tend to think we're going to need to feel excited or motivated, but those feelings can be fleeting, and I've seen that commitment and determination are really a lot stronger choices when we're trying to create a feeling in ourselves that will help us reach a goal. 

And the last thing that's so important is to ask who's going to help me. Did you know that there is a 70% success rate for people achieving their goals when they do it in a community with a support system? 70%. Take a guess in your mind what the percentage is for the success rate of people who keep their goals private and just work towards them themselves. Take a guess when you have it in your mind, you can pause this if you need to. 

It is 35% off as much success for the people that keep their goals private. So, you are actually twice as likely. You will double your likelihood of achieving whatever it is that you want to in your life If you do it with a support system. It blows my mind and so I like that question who will help me? That's what we're all about in the bloom room. The bloom room is a community of people that support one another to work towards whatever their idea is becoming real, and we talk to each other about how it's going. 

Throughout the year. We break these goals down into 90-day goals, 90-day hopes, 90-day ideas for what we want to have created in our personal life, in our work life and in the world. Once we've set those 90-day goals and we've decided how we need to think and feel differently. Who's going to help us? The next step is to break the 90-day goal down into milestones. 

So, if we're starting in January, for instance, and our 90-day goal is set for being accomplished by March 31st, we want to write down where will we be at the end of February and where will we be at the end of January. So now we have a map and we're working backwards from our end goal. Once we have those milestones down, we can break January, February and March down into the steps we need to take, into weekly things. 

We need to reach out to habits; we need to build whatever it is to support the goals that we have. We work backwards from the thing that we are committed to and make milestones that we can reflect really tangibly on. 

The two other things I want to say here is that it's important for both of those milestones to also be specific, time-bound right, they're already time-bound and also specific. So, it's not that I want to feel better by a certain day, but it's articulating it in a way that's really specific and measurable. So, when I talked about my goal of slowing down, I talked about measuring that by having spent half of the weekends at home, and maybe I'll even get more specific than that. 

Maybe half of the Saturday nights and half of the Sundays are spent at home. Maybe I'll get very specific about once a month we have a little dinner party, or we have a gathering at our place for just a couple of couples, a couple of people that we enjoy. Maybe I'll break that down into learning one new song with my husband on the guitar and making one new painting. The more specific the better. 

And the other thing I want to say that's so important here is to really reflect on why we want to accomplish the things that we want to accomplish. The reasons that I want to slow down with my husband and be in our home are so in line with my values of being present, of being in my life, of being with my family. They're so in line with the joy that I like to cultivate in my home environment and being really present with my kids in making art and being with people. 

The goals that I have for the bloom room are totally in line with my values. The goals for my body are totally in line with my values. Sometimes we set a goal, and we realize I only want that because I think I'm supposed to, because I've been trained by the society that I live in to want that thing, but I actually don't want that. 

How can you tell the difference? When you think about the thing that you want, how do you feel? Do you feel excited? Do you feel lit up? Do you feel kind of giddy and anticipatory, or do you feel a little sinking sensation in your stomach? Do you feel pressure? If there's pressure and a sinking sensation there, if there's some kind of negative emotion, it's time to look into it. 

It could be that you're just nervous, that's okay, but it could be that it's not actually what you want. 

Once you're sure that your goals are things that are truly aligned with you, what you want, your highest self, your spirit, the beautiful human being that you are in the world, and what you want to spend the moments of your life doing, what you actually want, then state it as done in 90 days actually want. Then state it as done in 90 days. Break it down into these milestones of what you'll do one month in and two months in, and really write down what you need to think, what you need to feel, how you need to be that's different than how you've been before, and why do you want it? 

Once you have those things, you have a map to get to your goal. And the last thing I want to offer here is, as you work towards your goal, celebrate, look how far you've come, report back on it to whoever is your system of accountability, whoever is your support system, whether it's the bloom room, another group, another person. Reflect back on what's going well. Celebrate the little, tiny wins. It's. 

The most important thing to do is to celebrate every little bit of progress. Most important thing to do is to celebrate every little bit of progress. And lastly, each week, as you move towards your goal, evaluate, celebrate first, look how far you've come, celebrate the way you're failing and what you're learning from it. Every time, you put yourself out there the things that work, the things that don't work and ask yourself these three questions what worked last week? What didn't work? What am I going to do differently next week? It's that simple. 

If you throw out everything else that you know about goal setting and you just do this practice set a goal for 90 days from now, articulate it as done, set up your milestones and then answer why you want it and how you'll need to think and feel and be. That's different than how you have been before. Then work towards it every week with a support system behind you and evaluate along the way you will get there. 

Most importantly, have fun, y'all. I will not do anything. If it is not fun and hanging out in my backyard with my husband, that is a good time. If it is not fun and hanging out in my backyard with my husband, that is a good time. Let me tell you, the bloom room is my favorite thing ever. It makes, fills me up with joy and love, the people and they're amazing. We have so much fun and we oh we just started. Blooming amazing things in people's lives and in the world makes me so happy. 

It is my passion, my work in the world doing those journals, writing those journals, those workbooks, doing these workshops on relationships, on time management, on all this stuff. I geek out for it. I love it. It's fun. And getting out of pain Yo, that's fun too. Maybe you know I am very non-compliant with PT in the past and I have set it as my goal to be compliant with this physical therapy, the daily exercises that I need to do, because it is fun to not be in pain. So those are my three and that is my gift to you today. 

If you do have a goal, use a framework. 

Come into the bloom room if you want support, if you want other people to celebrate their asses off for every little step you take. 

We got you and maybe, if goals aren't your thing, choose a feeling for the year that you want to have an idea for how you want to feel, whether that's clarity, joy, presence, focus, courage. Whatever it is, I am rooting for you, and I can't wait for this year of 2025, for all of the wonderful conversations that you are going to hear in interviews this year and all the great content that's coming your way. 

So grateful to be on this ride with each and every one of you. That's what I've got for you this week and I will see you next week.  

If you like what you’re hearing on the podcast, you've got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts, and we apply them to real life. In a community where we have each other's backs, and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. 

I'll see you in the Bloom Room.