Goal Setting with Compassion

In today's episode, we delve into the art of goal-setting with compassion as the driving force. Unpacking the true meaning of compassion, we emphasise the importance of going gently on oneself, being accountable without self-criticism, and cultivating a cheerleader mentality rather than succumbing to the inner critic.

We dispel common misconceptions about compassion, clarifying that it's not about letting oneself off the hook or avoiding challenges altogether. Instead, it's about listening and responding to your needs, understanding when to push forward and when to take a step back for self-care.

The episode unfolds with practical tips on setting meaningful goals aligned with personal values, exploring the significance of finding meaning in your aspirations. Prepare to be encouraged to dream big and small, as we emphasise the power of both ambitious, long-term goals and achievable, short-term milestones.

We introduce the concept of SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely—and we guide you  through the process of making their goals SMART. We highlight the significance of reviewing goals regularly, making adjustments, and learning from failures as opportunities for growth.

The episode also addresses perfectionism, offering affirmations to counteract its paralysing effects. By embracing the understanding that humans are fallible and perfection is unattainable, we encourage self-compassion as a tool for breaking free from the shackles of perfectionism.

The Reconnect Sisterhood podcast serves as a supportive space for women seeking to navigate their paths with resilience, compassion, and the belief that they are inherently good enough. Tune in and embark on your journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
 
Until next time, take care and stay connected. Bye-bye!

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Reconnect Sisterhood podcast. My name is Natalie McCandless and I'm the founder of Reconnect Sisterhood. Reconnect Sisterhood exists to empower women to reconnect to their values, identity and confidence in a way that is kind, compassionate and accepting of who they are.  We know that by breaking down what is holding us back and by building connections or a community or a sisterhood, it can help us to give a foundation on which we can grow.

You are good enough and we're here to help you see it.  So let's get into today's episode. 

So today we're going to be talking about setting goals with compassion. Now the compassion element of this is the most important element. So for me, what I believe is that compassion is the thing that helps us to be able to achieve our goals. So let's get straight into what compassion is and what it isn't. 

So compassion for me is. Being able to go gently on yourself and responding to your needs.  It is about being able to hold yourself accountable and being alongside yourself rather than pushing.  It's about being the cheerleader rather than the critic.  Compassion isn't letting yourself off the hook. I hear this all the time from people where they feel like, Oh, if I'm just compassionate to myself, it means that I'm not going to be doing anything.

It's not about that at all. It's about actually listening and responding to your needs. Sometimes you are going to need to be pushed, and it's about motivating yourself and using compassion to motivate yourself. But it's never about just saying, I'm just not going to do it. Because there is a time to rest.

Absolutely. If you're listening to yourself and saying, actually, this is too much at the moment, that's okay. But then planning when you are going to do it.  Compassion also isn't not trying at all. Exactly the same. It isn't about just letting yourself off the hook and just not doing anything and not trying. 

Compassion isn't feeling pity for yourself. This is also something I hear so much from people where they say, Oh, isn't it just poor me, poor me. Not at all. There is obviously a space for compassion. pitying and self pity and that is actually okay. There is time to lick your wounds, to grieve, to process, go through things and actually it can be quite a compassionate thing to do to feel that but it isn't about feeling pity for yourself all the time. 

Compassion isn't being unmotivated. As I said before, it can really be used as a tool to help motivate you in such a kind and gentle way. It isn't about just not bothering at all or not being motivated.  And it also is  not an excuse for you to not do things as well.  So it isn't an excuse where you can just say, I'm just, just not going to bother.

It isn't about doing that. There is a time and a space as with everything to not do things, but it isn't about that.  So, thinking about what goals you want to set, the one thing that I come back to time and time again is turn to your values.  Your values can really give you insight in what you can lean into. 

What is it that you're really wanting to set at the moment? What is it that aligns with your values? Maybe you need to go back and actually check in with what are your values at the moment? What is your identity? What are the things that you're wanting to achieve?  Turning to those can give you some direction. 

Find the meaning. How would achieving this goal bring meaning to your life?  I'm going to say it again. How would achieving this goal bring meaning to your life?  What would it look like if you were able to achieve this goal? How would your life be different? How would it look?  And it's really important to get it in and under the skin of that meaning because if we're setting goals that don't really have any meaning to us  we're not really going to bother.

We might bother for a while and then they might go to the wayside.  So really think about that.  Go big, go small, dream. Okay? So I think with this, it's about go really big on your, on your goals. If you want to  set your goal huge for a huge amount of money that you want to earn or a massive, pivot and change in your life that you're wanting to do.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming, with going big, but there's also a time to go small as well. Having small, achievable goals, things that you are very likely to do, gives you more motivation to carry on and do the next bit, and then the next bit, and actually that's a great way to work towards the big goal as well. 

Also dreaming. There is always space to dream. Pull on some threads. If it's been in the back of your mind, bring it out. Write them down. Have a look at them. Does this make sense at the moment? To me, into what I'm wanting.  Write them all down, see what sticks. I love having, love doing a vision board with this as well and just being able to really see, okay, what does this look like?

What do I want it to look like? How would my life look if I was able to work towards and achieve my goals?  Finally, what did you achieve last year?  Did you achieve all of your goals? And if not, why not? So this is getting into the reflection of it. So really having a look at what your achievements were last year, what you had set last year.

You can do this for quarters, if you're, you know, working in business as well, or just individually, you can also do this  every quarter and have a look, like, what did you achieve? Why didn't you achieve? And just really having some space to reflect and question that.  So next, let's say you've got your goals, you've had a thought, think about your values, you have set them down.

Now, let's make them SMART. SMART goals are one of the best ways to achieve goals because what it does is it makes, it gives you a lovely framework in which to make them, Smart. So they make them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic or resourced and timely.  Making them specific means that you really narrow it down.

It's not just a massive broad goal. You really spend some time making it really succinct of what you actually want.  Making it measurable, making it achievable.  Thinking about how to, how to measure the success of that. Is that achievable? Is that realistic? Do you maybe need to bring those goals down a little bit further? 

Resourced as well. Thinking about, well, do you have other things that are demanding on your time that's actually going to stop you from being able to achieve those goals? So, for instance, I'm a mum of two. I have two businesses and I'm super busy a lot of the time. And  If I said to myself, right, I'm going to earn a million pounds this year.

The likelihood is that I'm not going to be able to do that because  at the moment I'm not resourced to do that. I like to spend a lot of time on my family and I protect that time.  I have an idea of what I, how much I have to earn and then that's what I go towards. So that's the achievable goal. Maybe I'll push it a little bit further and that can help to motivate me as well. 

Making it timely. So setting a time that you're going to come back to this. Now I would come back to my goals as much as possible.  Weekly, monthly, just checking in. Weekly you can check in. You can maybe write some notes as well and then have, at the end of the month, looking at, okay well what have I achieved so far?

What have I learnt in this time? Do I need to then move and shift and adjust things? But making it timely means that you're going to come back to the goal which makes you inevitably come Keep it at the forefront of your mind and then making steps towards that goal.  So those are SMART goals. Don't forget it's specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.

You can download, I've got a SMART goal sheet on my website as well that you can grab as well for free. Which can help you to break all this down.  How to set goals with compassion. Questions to ask yourself. Now this one really does require a notepad, paper and just allowing yourself to write and journal. 

The questions are, am I setting myself up for failure?  Am I asking too much of myself? This is really important because this is a really compassionate one. Like, am I setting myself up for failure? It doesn't mean that you're going to be unmotivated or set small goals that  are more likely to be achievable or setting yourself to smaller goals. 

It's just really asking, like,  is it too much? With all the resources that I have, is it really realistic? So with my lifestyle as it is,  what is actually realistic for me?  So, this is just taking into account your lifestyle, you know, any dependence that you might have, and it's  just about then thinking about what can you do, what are you resourced to do? 

What is also going to challenge you, but not push you into overwhelm.  So once again, this is, it's so subjective, these ones. What's going to challenge you? You know yourself best.  And that's really important to know. You know yourself best. You know how you work, how you function, how you achieve things. If you don't know, maybe it's about spending some time of just reflecting on the things that have gone past, without the critical mind on, but actually really thinking about things in a  Kind of a helicopter view.

So you're just having a look down over the top of it thinking, okay, if I was to look at the things that I've been doing and the goals that I was setting and how I were with those goals and how I tried to achieve those goals and the things that I did. So you're just having a look and the helicopter view, what was going on.

What was stopping me? What was, was I challenged? Was I overwhelmed? Did I just abandon them through fear of failure?  Lots of questions to ask yourself. And this is the most important step because I think people just jump straight into the goal setting, but they've also really got to ask themselves  and go kindly with asking themselves, what is realistic?

What's going to challenge me? What's going to push me into overwhelm?  And also, how do I feel about not meeting my goals or getting it perfect?  If you find yourself going into a loop of self criticism because you're not meeting your goals or because you're not getting it perfect,  maybe what we need to do is really think about that perfectionism first of all, and really start to build up that kind, compassionate voice, making the goal small, thinking about.

Kindness, compassion, all the time, rather than the critical voice.  So let's bring in some compassion.  Having a look at your goals as you have them now, how do you feel about them? What is the dominant feeling that you're having?  Is it excitement? Is it fear? Is it something else? Is it Yeah, it can be a mixture, it can be lots of different things. 

But I think it's important to know how you feel about them. If you're feeling something like fear or anxiety about your goals already, that's really telling you something, that perhaps it's too far. If you're feeling really excited about your goals and what you know is that you kind of go hell for leather, you go in there, you want to smash those goals, you work really really hard but then you burn out,  okay we can learn something about that as well.

We can maybe take 60 percent of that excitement and use that as a motivator, but we've really got to keep something in the tank.  Also, would you like to push more?  How have you responded to goal setting in the past? Does it work for you to go big or go small? So for instance, I really like to go big with my goals because I feel okay with Actually, I really enjoy failure, which sounds very bizarre, but I learned so much from failure that for me, going big really helps.

And because I keep on top of them and I keep them smart and do those kinds of things, it means that I can adjust and flex with them as well.  So, what will you do if it all goes wrong? What are your resources? What are the things that you have in place to really take care of yourself? This is the self care element.

This isn't just about having a bath. When I talk about self care, it's like sometimes I just see people just glaze over and they're like, oh, I've got to go and have a bath, a bubble bath.  Well, that's a very nice thing to do, obviously, but  self care can be so many different things. Self care can be  Taking some space to breathe, to feel your feet on the floor, to make sure that you're going outside, connecting with nature or even just feeling the sun on your face. 

It can be holding your children, cuddling them. It can be phoning your friend and having a glass of wine together and talking rubbish and all of those things and letting it all out. It's about how you resource yourself, how you give energy back to yourself.  And those are the most important elements of self care for me that you can use. 

How do you hold yourself accountable? Now with goal setting, we're all kind of starting off generally at the start of the year, where most people, like, are getting goals and we're talking to each other about how we're doing, and, you know, you might be seeing the same people at the gym each week, and, you know, you're kind of feeling like there are some other people that are accountable, but as that kind of drops off and people start to  People maybe stop their goals or stop those kind of things.

Like how do you hold yourself accountable? What are the things that you do to yourself? One thing that I love using is an idea of moving towards and moving away.  So what is it that I'm doing today that is moving towards my goals and what is it that I'm doing that moves.  from my goals  and that for me really holds me accountable because then it's me, I'm making a decision.

Sometimes I will make decisions to move myself away from those goals and that's totally fine as well.  I just want to really kind of express that, that sometimes that's okay. Sometimes you just want to go and do what you want to do. You want to just sit down and watch Netflix and do nothing.  That's okay. 

But holding yourself accountable and knowing what works for you.  That's the sweet spot.  Next, with goal setting. Predicting your roadblocks and review. What things could prevent you from achieving your goals? Plan for them and plan for how you would overcome them. So write them down. If you know that there's typical roadblocks for you, just write them down and then start to plan for them.

What are the things that happen that makes you kind of fall off of it and stop?  Think about those, write them down, plan for them.  Review.  This one, I can't stress enough. So many people set goals and see them as just a pass or a fail, but they're not. As cliche as it sounds, goal setting is a journey. Stop and review regularly.

See if you can make small tweaks that can help.  And then also learn from failure. Failure is an opportunity to learn something.  I think it's a scary thing that a lot of people are frightened of failure and what that means about them. But actually, it's such an opportunity to learn. If we were doing things right and perfectly all the time, we wouldn't really learn a lot. 

Okay, so the next section is about being a perfectionist. So, what we know is that you're likely to,  okay, so let's say you do all this, but you're actually a perfectionist.  So what we know is that you're likely either  working to exhaustion as a perfectionist to achieve your goals and still feel like that's not enough, or you don't get started at all. 

These are the two camps that most perfectionists end up in. Either you are working. This total bust cycle, this bust way where you're just totally exhausted and still not feeling good enough and even if you do achieve it, you just shift the goalpost even further or you don't get started at all. 

Compassion can help to bring in some kindness. Humans are not built to be perfect. We are all fallible.  You can use things like affirmations and kind words to remind yourself of this.  Here are just a few of them.  It's okay that I can't achieve things  100%.  I'm a fallible human and good enough.  I am good enough. 

I deserve to be kind to myself.  I can learn from failure.  I just want to say those again.  It's okay that I can't achieve things 100%.  I'm a fallible human. Affirmations don't  completely change everything, but they can be a really nice door to open in order to just  be gentle with yourself.  And I think if you start with compassion, it can really help you with things like perfectionism to be able to get out of it and to be able to see it with some perspective. 

Okay, let's wrap this up. So set your goals, write them all down, go big, go small, dream, pull on some threads. What do you really want to do?  How can you make them smart?  Bring in the compassion. How can you best support yourself through trying to meet these goals?  Predict your roadblocks and review.  Okay. So that's everything for today.

I hope that this has been a good goal setting session with compassion for you today.  Let me know if there is anything else that you want me to cover.  At the moment, I'm really open to getting questions from you and responding to them on the podcast. I would absolutely love to do that. I want to make this podcast as meaningful to you as it possibly can. 

So send in any questions via email, via the website, there's a button on there that you can kind of hit and send me a question as well. Or you can drop me a DM on Instagram wherever you're finding me.  But in the meantime, I hope that your goal setting journey is fantastic for you. Let me know how you're getting on and you can also tag me as well in any posts where you're setting any goals.

And I would love to hear what you're up to. Okay, until next time. Take care. Bye bye.