Goal-Setting Gone Wrong: Why You Keep Missing the Mark w/ Heather Barrie

PLEASE text me what you think of the show above or @ +1-813-722-1417.
Join the newsletter http://transformyourfuture.com

Find out why S.M.A.R.T. Goals SUCK! and uncover the hidden barriers that sabotage your goal-setting efforts. Discover practical strategies to set realistic goals and overcome the cycle of disappointment.

Introduction:
Eddie introduces the episode and welcomes special guest Heather Barrie to discuss the pitfalls of goal-setting. They explore why so many people struggle to achieve their goals and provide practical strategies for success.

Part 1: Uncovering Hidden Barriers (00:00 - 14:30)
Eddie and Heather delve into the challenges people face with goal-setting, including resistance and self-sabotage. They discuss the importance of self-awareness in identifying hidden barriers to success. Heather shares insights into the psychological factors that can impact goal achievement.

Part 2: Strategies for Success (14:31 - 29:45)
Eddie and Heather explore practical strategies for setting realistic goals and overcoming setbacks.
They discuss the role of accountability and external support in achieving goals.
Heather emphasizes the power of incremental progress and celebrating small victories along the way.

Part 3: Embracing a New Mindset (29:46 - 45:00)
Eddie and Heather highlight the importance of mindset shifts in goal-setting, including adopting a growth mindset and embracing failure as a learning opportunity. They discuss the transformative effects of taking action and staying committed to the goal-setting process. Heather shares personal anecdotes and insights from her own journey to success.

Conclusion:
Eddie wraps up the episode by summarizing key takeaways and thanking Heather for her valuable insights. He encourages listeners to apply the strategies discussed to their own goal-setting efforts and invites them to tune in for future episodes. Don't miss this enlightening episode of the Transform Your Future with Eddie podcast, packed with practical tips and strategies to help you overcome the pitfalls of goal-setting and achieve your dreams. Tune in now!

Subscribe to Transform Your Future Newsletter for personal development tips and information to Reinvent & Dominate your industry: http://transformyourfuture.com

Transcript

0:00

I know this kind of sounds, it's like, well, you've taken away my little five word acronym, which I could do in about a minute, and you've given me 18 steps here. This is like, come on. This is like, but these goals and stuff we're setting, talking about turning over big chunks of money or earning or making X number of phone calls. This is a big, chunky piece of work. This is a big chunky thing that we are trying to achieve that is driving our business forward. If the goal is I want to turn over 20 grand a week, well, that's the whole essence of your business. So you can't just sit there and rattle it off in two minutes and go, well, that's what I'm going to do without totally acknowledging what you need to do to get there. And this is kind of where I just saw this real just bizarre disconnect of there's nothing to underpin the journey that you're now going to have to take in order to get. Papaya! Welcome to another episode of Transform Your Future with me, your host, Eddie Isin. Today our guest is Heather Barrie. She's a revolutionary goal setting and achievement coach with her trademark master goals process. In an unpredictable and complex world, Heather inspires entrepreneurs to change the way they set and achieve their goals using her innovative approach, bold energy and ideation skills with a background in finance, entrepreneurship and mentoring, green politics, complimentary health, hospitality and community hosting. Heather's experience, passion, humor, and empathy shine through in everything she puts her hand to. Heather, welcome to my podcast. Thank you. Let's talk about why smart goals suck. Let's get straight in there. Let's get straight in there. I think there's a whole range of reasons why they suck. For me, Eddie, it's all about how A, it's just about the setting. It is something that can roll off the sun of the tongue. You can say the acronym in two seconds, and I think people have come to treat it like it's this very quick thing. You write it down, takes a second, and then there's absolutely nothing in the structure of that acronym that you get that is about how are you going to get there. People, they sort of suck a number out their thumb. It generally tends to be a metric of some kind, and they just go, oh, I would love to earn 10 grand a week, or whatever the number is, and they go, is it all specific, realistic, all of that thing. And it ends up not meaning anything. So that for me is the one thing is that it feels a bit flippant and it's just is it a smart goal? Yes, great. But for me, it's the structure and the framework that will get us to where we want to be is where we want to be the right thing in the first place. And then even big, more grand scale than that is what's going on in our worlds. We live in a complex, volatile, uncertain, chaotic world and our lives, even our own lives, we're all very different and it doesn't take any account of that. So I kind of just think, you know what? We need a radically different framework that kind of takes account of now. It was created too long ago. It was created, that's another one of my why they suck. It was created by a guy in an industrial environment in a big organization where it was great. That was perfect for what they wanted it for, but it just hasn't evolved in 40 years, 42, I think. Yeah. So interestingly enough, just to refresh just a little bit, can you tell us what the acronym S-M-A-R-T stands. For? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time bound. There's some slightly nuances to that. Some people have slightly different tweaks to that. So I'm going to specifically do$10,000 a week or whatever, measurable. I'm going to measure it by tracking everything that's my outbound efforts to do the sales or whatever. I'm going to track all that. We're going to measure that and then achievable. What's the R. Again? Well, there's achievable first. Right? Right, right. Yeah. Is that and achievable? And then realistic, which is the R For me, they're similar words. As I say, some people might use a slightly different word, so is it achievable? Only you can know that. And again, sometimes I think because it's not unless people really get into it and break it down, it's just that some kind of an idea. And then T is the time bound, so I want to be achieving this by X time. So in a sales environment, working with salespeople all the time, you start at zero in the beginning of the month and you close on the last day of the month at whatever that number is that you did for the month. And so it's start at zero every month on the first day of the month, and typically you call out whatever it is you're going to do. You actually have to give a number of what you're going to do during that month. And sometimes people that I work with, they'll say they want to do 20,000, they want to do 25,000, whatever. And I'll ask them, so okay, that's cool. What did you do last month? What'd you do the month before? Is that realistic then? Because find somebody who's been doing 6,000 a month and now they want to do 20,000 a month. And I think it's great to have that kind of goal. But my little acronym, not really an acronym, but my little shortcut was pinky goals. So in other words, you need to make me a pinky goal. And the pinky goal is you're going to do that. And if you don't, we're going to cut off your pinky. That's got to be the goal, right? Then if you want to have a personal goal that you want to stretch to do more, let's do that too. But you got to have a pinky goal in there. So that whole thing about is it achievable and is it realistic? I totally get that. So now that we kind of laid out the foundation of what smart goals kind of is and how they work, let's go back now to why that process of doing that really doesn't help people to achieve what they actually want to achieve. So I think that, yeah, as I said, it creates the thing, and for me, a lot of that smart acronym is actually, it's the outcome. So you're going to need to do a whole bunch of work in order to have that 20 K on that piece of paper at the end of the month to show the boss or whatever, and that there are a whole bunch of things that are going to need to happen to enable that to transpire. So actually, so this is the other thing for me that is a major challenge with this is that for a lot of people, that original type of goal they might've set is the desired outcome. And actually you have to actually achieve a whole bunch of goals in order to deliver that outcome. Not just one thing that's going to suddenly go, I'm at naugh, I'm going to hit 20, and then suddenly it's just going to happen. You can't just speak it out to the universe and wish upon it. There has to be some task and activities that back that up. Sure. And again, I'm with you. You preach to the choir here. I'm with you a hundred percent because I work with people all the time. They're like, I want to double my income. I'm like, that's great. So let's look at what you're doing right now and let's look how you're taking the time that you're doing right now to do what activities, and let's just focus on that. Because if you're really only working four hours a day in an eight or 10 hour workday, let's just actually try to work more and actually do the task more so you can reach those goals, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it totally makes sense to me. And the other thing is, and this again for me is that you have to have a framework that is highly adaptable because if you and I set exactly the same goal, whether it was a turnover or I only want to work four hours a day, whatever the outcome is that I want, how I get there and how you get there completely different. We live in different countries, we different gender, we have different family setups, we have different age and stage of life, we have different abilities, and the list is endless as to how we will function differently, how my brain works, how your brain works is completely different. And I think that particularly when you're working with teams, for example, if you've got a team, a small sales team for example, it's like how can you make this work better as a team to produce the outcome? So the outcome is, hello team, we want you to do X, make this number of calls, do this turnover, whatever. How can we get you team to work better together? Which then builds in an element of better communication, better understanding of each other. And if we can bring that to bear, then all of these things for me, the more stuff you have in place, the greater chance of you is actually achieving the goal or the outcome. And actually you can push that, you can stretch it even more because you've got so many things in place and so much understanding in place that for me, that is completely overlooked. And I'm not dismissing the quality of coaches and all sorts of this. There's so many people who bring their methodology or thinking or a process to bear in these situations in just general growth strategy. But if you can focus in on the things that contribute to goal achievement, bring the bits you really need, that's fine. But if you can bring in the bits that are really super important to understanding the strengths of the people in team, how do they differ in their productivity? Does somebody, I'm a little bit neurodiverse, so my A DHD means my productivity is a bit bonkers sometimes, not always. It's great for ideating, I can have a million ideas, but then how do I harness that? And if you've got someone like that in your team, which happens often, particularly in entrepreneurship, how do you work with that so you can work together and there's much more synergy to deliver the outcome. So tell me a little bit about your foundational structure for goal setting. So we call the master goals, which is the acronym. So it's M-A-R-S-T-A. So it's a bit different. And when I very first came up with the idea of just switching this up completely, I said to my lawyer, I said, can I just change the words in the SMART acronym? And he said, no, you can't do that. And I went, I'll go find my own, which I have now done and trademarked and so on. And then I started bringing in all my experience, all the things I've done, what I needed, and if I looked back on work, I'd done with other clients in group settings and so on. But also if I look back at corporate where I used to be an accountant and when I was an accountant in a corporate environment, how could we have been so much better if we had used something different, if we used a different framework? So that was where it started. And then my brain just went into overdrive. I wrote a book in five and a half days, 12 and a half thousand word book in five and a half days just to get all the ideas out of my head into some sort of shape. Gradually develop that shape. And I realized that actually there are then three stages to goal setting and goal achievement. So we have the initiate stage, which is setting the goal. What is it? What's the outcome, what the goals, et cetera, and where are we heading? So that's the first time you go through the acronym. You then go through the acronym again to implement what are the actions required to actually get there, what do I need to do? But also getting a real understanding. So in the first stage, you're looking a little bit more at yourself and how start to look at the roadmap, the milestones, the reviews and all of that. And then finally, it's about what I call integration, which is this has to be part of everyday life because we are never ever only working on one goal. We are always working consistently. We are always getting out of bed and getting to the office at nine o'clock is a goal. We don't think of that like that, but, and for some people it could be if they've been long-term unemployed or they're starting a new job that actually could have quite a bit wrapped up in it. So again, getting to work at nine o'clock for two different people, completely different situation. So those three steps for me became very apparent that they were really important to acknowledge the different things that were required. And I know this kind of sounds, it's like, well, you've taken away my little five word acronym, which I could do in about a minute, and you've given me 18 steps here. This is like, come on, this is like, but these goals and stuff we're setting, talking about turning over big chunks of money or earning or making X number of phone calls. This is a big chunky piece of work. This is a big chunky thing that we are trying to achieve that is driving our business forward. If the goal is I want to turn over 20 grand a week, well that's the whole essence of your business. So you can't just sit there and rattle it off in two minutes and kind of go, well, that's what I'm going to do without totally acknowledging what you need to do to get there. And this is kind of where I just saw this real bizarre disconnect of there's nothing to underpin the journey that you're now going to have to take in order to get there and to keep. It's trying to build a house without a decent set of plans, the planning permission and a damn fine set of foundations in place. I used to work for an architect and one of my uncles was an architect, so I know lots about building houses. So yeah. So master, you said master. Master master goals. Master master goals. Yes. M-A-R-S-T-A. Correct. What's the acronym then? What are the words? So as I say, each type, so when you go through each phase, the words change. So the words are different. For the initiate phase, they're different for the implement phase, and they're different for the in Phase because different things come to the party for each phase. For each phase. And I think this is why, as I say, for some people it's a bit of a, oh, sorry, that's far too much hard work. But it's like once you've gone through the whole process once on one goal, because then you understand what the steps all are, but then you go, okay, well listen, those bits don't change that much for me. They're kind of similar. It doesn't matter what the goal is, those answers are roughly the same. So I know that as soon as I want to set another goal, I need to focus on that and that will be personal to each person. Or if you are working with a coach and they want to use the process, there'll be certain things where for them they kind of go, well, actually these bits are the really important bits that out of that process. I think we all bring in different frameworks where we're working with the clients. We'll work, it's like I like that bit from that bit, from that bit. Sure, bring that in and that's fine. I want people to use, I want people to use master goals. I want that people, this is my revolution. Have you said goal, is it a master goal? Yes, that's the word. That's the word we want to use. So Heather, so you wrote the book and. It's still in ugly draft. It's not quite, when I first wrote it, it was like get everything out my head with kind of an idea of what the framework will look like. Then I've been working with it and doing trademarks and all that sort of thing. And now a year on I'm like, okay, I'm there. Now I need to go back to it, finish it off, make it look pretty and we'll get it out there. So I'll give you, it'll be a few months. My intention is in the autumn. So autumn 2024 will be live with the book. So in the initiate phase, for example, the M-A-R-S-T-A is different than if it's in the actions. Phase in the implement stage. Absolutely. So you're looking more things like your motivations, what does your life look like? So as I say, this is a little bit more in that sort of personal, I'm setting this goal. And again, you'll look at it slightly differently if it's a team situation, but if you're just setting it as an entrepreneur, you're looking much more at your own, your motivations, your strengths, what does your life look like? If I'm saying I want to turn over X, and you said so right at the beginning, well, you only turned over six K last year and now you want to suddenly leap to 20. What's changed that you think you can do that? So those are the types of questions that you'll be looking at, how you work on a day-to-day basis and starting to imagine what life will look like when the dream has come to fruition. So as I say, that initiate phase, and you also in that stage, you actually articulate the goals specifically as well. You actually go, this is the thing that I want to achieve. So that all happens in that initiate phase. To illustrate this, would you like to just take something simple? I don't know, getting back on a diet? Yeah. Okay. So what would we do in the part to start this off? Okay, so I'll run through it here. So to start off with, so we do go through the words of the acronym of the lessons. Of the acronym. So your first thing would be your motivation. So we would kind of come back to again, so why, and then there are a whole load of questions and it'll be relevant to the conversation someone's having. But you could look at these as why do you want to be the weight that you're talking about? My mother's a dietician, so this is a question I've had many times. Why do you want to be the weight? And then there will be all. And sometimes it's very interesting. I also sometimes look at the site actually questioning what the goal is that people have set. It's like, is this the right goal for you? And that maybe for example, something like this, you might end up talking about actually I want to be healthy. So when you start looking at the motivation, so actually the goal is I want to be healthy and I want to have a good relationship with food might actually be something that would be a more positive thing to be working towards and a more positive goal to be working towards that. The outcome is, yeah, I'll lose some weight, that'd be great, but actually because then that becomes then something that's sustainable. So looking at that motivation, and as I say part of that, we kind of go through some questions just to make sure that it's going to deliver the outcome that people really, really want. And as I said, you can go to all sorts of things with diet and yo-yo dieting and so on. And we've all got experience of it either personally or people we know and it's a toughie. So that would be the starting point. Why is this important? Then we'll go into actually the A part is about articulating the goal. So this one step is my equivalent of the hold of the smart goal. So one step of 18 replaces that tiny little thing, and this is when we actually articulate what the goal is going to be. So yes, there'll be a metric involved, is there a bit of stretch? When are you going to do it by? So some similar ideas, but one of the letters in there is one of the A's is about what we call amplifying. It's like who are you going to tell this message to? Because you know what? You've got to have people in your corner. You've got to have the right people in your corner. And again, not taking account of at all in the smart thing because we all need other people involved. None of our life's journey is done alone. So those types of things. So again, just enhancing just even that setting of that goal. Then we get to the reality of your day-to-day life. What does your life look like? So if for example, it is about getting back onto a diet, it's like you have a strange shift pattern. So okay, we need to take account of that because actually that it's very, very difficult to eat well consistently and consistently. Well, if you have shift patterns, there certainly are ways to do it, but it's something to be more mindful of. Whereas for other people that's not an issue, but they might have three kids and a busy job and they work away from home. So that then adds challenges to it. So again, it's looking in the setting process is the challenges that you might have and to not then be scared of it, not go, oh, well look, I work shifts so that I'm never going to do, I can't be bothered. So it's. Right. Either you need to prepare and you have to plan to prepare, whether that means you get up an extra hour or you do it on Sundays for four hours for the week and portion it out. Or you have to maybe join a service where they give you three fresh meals that are healthy meals every day so that you don't have to worry about. It. Absolutely. They do that or you prepare your overnight oats so that there's a good proper breakfast for you to take with you fill the kettle the night before so you can make a nice coffee so you don't end up buying the milky syrupy there. Wherever on the way you have a really good buy, good coffee, have a really nice Americano because it's just as if it's good coffee. It's better than all the milky coffee stuff. I drink black coffee, so I can say that. But yeah, absolutely. And as I say, this is about preparing yourself, not scaring yourself. So that's why that motivation bit right at the beginning is really powerful. A friend of mine has to sleep, and I think what's his name, James Clear talks about it, is that your motivation and your reasons why has to be stronger than the excuses Because it's very easy to get, oh, well, I do shift work, so yeah, we're not going to do it. It's easy to give up in that point at that point. So it's finding, and again, I come back to, yes, this is more complex, but in almost going through this with this exact, as you say, it's a relatively simple thing that people are doing. Every single people are trying to do this one, but because they just kind of go, oh, I'm going on a diet and I'm going to lose a stone or 10 kilos or whatever by then, and they launch into it and they're fantastic in the gym every day and five days on, it's a bit, oh, oh look, it's raining. I can't go. And it slips really quickly, but it's like in doing the groundwork and the prep, it's almost sort of making the commitment to yourself, I'm taking this seriously. This is really important for me, my family and everybody else or whoever. But most importantly, this is about me because I'm a massive, massive advocate for self care. Put your oxygen mask on first, then you can look after everybody else if you need to, but got to look after ourselves. And it's not a selfish thing. Not a selfish thing. So that you understand. So again, understanding yourself a little bit more is, look, we use the Clifton strengths finder tool as a way for people. Say that again, it's the Clifton strengths. So the Gallup organizations evaluation and assessment tool, which is incredible. I find it very, very powerful. I'm very lucky to have a few strengths, find coaches in my family, so that's very helpful. So I know quite a lot about it, even though I'm not qualified, I know how it works and the impact that it has, but it's about understanding your innate talents and strengths, not the skills you've learned, but who you are naturally super, super, super important to just, again, it helps you tap into the strength, but it also helps you to understand why things may or may not be working quite so well or why you might be struggling in certain areas. Because actually that's not your strength. So what strength can I pull on to help me with that? My first, for example, my first execution style and implementation style strength is quite low down in my strengths, but I'm an ideator and all that, so there's other things I can draw on and I now work in a certain way, so I use certain productivity tools to keep me focused. So I give myself deadlines literally throughout the day to make sure that I get, because I can get them done. It's high enough that I do get stuff done. I was an accountant, you have to get stuff done, but I have to put in a deadline for myself and then it gets done. So in understanding myself and giving myself a break and not going, you bad person, you really rubbish at getting stuff done. It's like, okay, it's not innately part of you. What can you do to help yourself? As I say, now that I've done that stuff, again, it's one of those steps I don't need to do every time. I know my strengths, you might kind of go, which might be a bit more helpful with this particular goal, but it's a moment that you just have to flick through. And then in a way, almost following on from that, we look at time management. So not just in terms of looking at when do we want all this done by? It's like how do I And as we can't really manage time. We've all got the same amount of it, but how do we manage what we do with the time that we have? So about how to be more effective ourselves. And then a little bit of dreaming is the last bit of this first bit is a bit of what we call actualizing. It's just like what my world look like when I've achieved this, when beautiful outcome is part of my life. And just that kind of a little bit of wy dreaming and kind of go, yeah, I like that. That then helps feed the motivation, it helps feed, helps you kind of get round the roadblocks when, because they will pop up And left field happens daily, something happens. It's like coming on this afternoon, I messed up my toe and then Chrome wanted to reinstall itself, so suddenly we lost a half an hour and we were a bit late. Those sorts of things happen to us all every day and it's how we can get around that. So I want to stop you for a second because my God, you've spoken about a lot of stuff here that's interesting. I want to just go back, you were talking about the Clifton Strengths assessment. Yes. And I've been interested in different assessments and obviously I've taken Myers and Briggs, I've taken the Colby assessment. There's just a couple other assessments out there. I'm interested. The Clifton strengths, is that based on anything specifically or it's actual individual one designs for one specific thing for life? Yeah. I'm not the super expert. I know quite a bit about it, but I'm not, so if I get something slightly wrong, forgive me, Clifton strengths. So it was created by Gallup, the pollsters. So they obviously have spoken to a lot of people over the years, like millions of people over the years. And they together basically with the whole Clifton, I'm assuming Clifton's a person, it's my assumption, but basically they have identified these 34 key strengths that we have as humans. And as I say that these are our innate strengths and talents and then they're divided up into domains of influencing the word that I used just now, which I can't remember, and basically getting stuff done, implementation, these types. And then some people are more strategic, so you then sort go which, and they call those the domains. I think they're five separate domains. So basically you kind of end up, often people are more one where there'll be more strategic or more influencing. And once you've answered the questions and the questions are super cleverly done as you can imagine, and they ask them in slightly different ways and they are time bound. So it's, think about it, what's that innate immediate answer to the question. And whilst you generally as you go through life, they will generally stay the same. I think some things will be a little bit elastic, but I think generally because we evolve as people, and particularly if you have some sort of rapid evolution caused by trauma distress change, I think that some things can actually come to the fore that might previously have been sort of hidden because of the circumstances in which you were living. Whereas now studies like, oh, that can kind of come out it. And so what they've then done is that you can look at your top five, I'm happy to share mine. So my top five are positivity, futuristic activator, ideator winning others over. So very much that sort of, they're quite influencing. So you can imagine winning others over. I do have a very positive disposition. It doesn't mean that I don't see the ghastly in the world, but I'd be someone who would be looking for positive ways for us to move forward. So I've been involved in politics, but I was involved in a party that is looking for how can we make positive change? How can we bring people into good conversation to make So that's my natural tendency and that's the thing. So I don't like to talk about when you do the old SWOT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, they're not weaknesses, they're just just not where I shine. I've still got 'em, but how can I use something else to support that if I need it? Sure. Build on our assets, not our liabilities. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And as I say, it's very easy to get your top five it$10 or their 10 $20. So it's not huge expense, but it is, and I'm like you, I've done loads, I've done my briggs, I've done high yellow, whatever it's called. The color one, I did another one the other day, which was how people buy, which was based around the four card suits. So spade, diamonds, clubs and hearts. So that was interesting thought. Well that's very insightful. So there are loads of them and I think lots of us have done lots of them, but genuinely hand on heart until I had done strengths, I always find them a bit interesting and a bit like wrong and suddenly I did this and like oh my days. I understand myself, I understand why I struggled in certain things and why in understanding that it's enabled me to get out from underneath myself as it were. And just to really thrive and to go actually that ideation is really important. I need to have that in my world. But as an accountant, you can imagine there's not many days that you get to ideate And because I'm the accountant, you're not considered to be worthy of bringing creative ideas to the table. Whereas now I think, well, I'm not going to go back to being accountant kind of stopped it nearly 20 years ago, but I did it for 20 years. But if I look back, I kind of go, there were so many times when I really want, and again, that always plays a little bit into where I'm now with goals. I look at what the organization was trying to achieve, if they brought all of us into the conversation that just because of the roles that we had in the company, well, you're just not included in these conversations. I'm like, you got all this brainpower and these ideas and this knowledge and experience from other places, you just missed out on completely. So why can't you bring that? Because if you don't ask me, you have no idea what craziness is going on in this brain. So I agree in some ways. My hypothesis is that if you want to be successful in different areas, if you want to achieve things, if you want to achieve things at a high level, we have to take stock in ourselves. We have to take inventory, we have to see what's in the cupboard. And if it's some stuff that's no good, let's get rid of the stuff that's no good and let's focus on the stuff that's good. Right? Absolutely. So I agree that in some ways, I mean there's some people I've worked with that I've just basically said, you need to just change your personality. So if you really want to do these things and be successful, we need to just stop for a second. Let's go ahead and just work on changing that personality because that is the driver that will drive everything else. And it's made. Yeah, I don't think we can necessarily change somebody's personality completely, but if we bring forward the right things and kind of go, is that bit that's showing up every day, is that actually serving you? How is that serving you? Well, listen, there's this little bit that's really squished over here, bring that to play. And I wish somebody had done that to me 20 years ago and go, there's so much of that. Being an accountant is not serving you in any way, in any way, and you've got all of this stuff here and as soon as the cat, I eventually let the cat out the back. But yeah, it's about getting the right balance and bringing the right things. And I think a lot of people get stuck into roles in an organization or they get stuck into a mindset of mindset, I'm only good at this or I've always been that, so that's all I can do. And they don't. They don't have a way in which to access all these other incredible attributes that they have. As humans. I think that we have a tendency, most of the people that I know, they go on to the bitter ends until they just get sick and tired of being sick and tired and then they get motivated to do something. But so much of it is really about the stories that we tell ourselves. And I work with a lot of people, just let's change those stories. Let's take those old stories and let's get rid of them and let's just make new stories. One other thing that really interested me when you're talking about was some of the ways that you have these processes that you use on a daily basis to stay focused and get things done. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I know focus is a big issue for many, many people and there's lots of interesting techniques. I don't know what technique you use. I've tried doing a lot of different things. I've tried the Pomodoro technique and I absolutely hate it. It's. So annoying. And I absolutely love it. So there we go. So we've got two people who can chat where all also of things, and for me it works. Absolutely. You set finding the right time. So if anybody doesn't know it's work, X amount of time on whatever you're doing. And then a little break, literally I have a timer on my phone, my little pomodoro timer, and my ideal time is 40 minutes on with a five minute break and I can literally work, I can work through and I just break it down. For me it's the deadline, but I also know I've got a break, so little squirrels in my head, don't get too agitated. Play. I'm going to try playing with it a little bit more. I mean I basically have two switches. It's either on or off. I don't really have anything in between. So I got to work on that. I got to work on that because anytime that I recognize the way that I describe things is how I feel about them. And so I listen to what I say and lately I've really been noticing that some of my language is either or language and I am rechanging that story and retelling that story every day now that there is no such thing as either or you can do all of it. So I'm very interested in. My mother likes to describe that as the both, and. Yes. That's one of her favorite expressions. And I find that quite interesting that for someone who has that slight cut and dry of on or off that the Pomodoro technique doesn't work for you, if you'd explain that to me first and said I like that would've almost be my first idea of something to try if you hadn't tried it yet. So I find that quite interesting. So what do you hate about it? So I'm just flipping the question back on you. Well, I'm not, okay, probably hates a very strong word. I just don't find it very functional. I don't find it very functional for me. I find it more functional for me to take my day and break it out into chunks. And for these two hours I'm going to focus only on these things for these two hours I'm going to focus on these things for these two hours, I'm going to focus on those things and I chunk out my day that way. Mine is actually a combination of the two because I'll chunk as in, so I go X amount of time for strategic. I'm doing a lot of content creation at the moment, so there's quite a bit of that. So I do need a break, just gets me away from the screen. So it's almost like within the chunked hours. But then I. Guess that's the part that I really like about it, Heather, is the breaks. I do like the breaks. That's good. And what I like about bringing the two together is that that sort of context switching idea of going, oh, I've been working on a and suddenly I'm going to go off and work on B. They've got nothing to do with each other. And then your brain takes a while to adjust and you actually never end up getting anything finished. I think Todd Herman does some really good explanations around context switching and that if you combine the Pomodoro with the chunk and you allow enough time that I can get X amount of time, and again, you can literally set yourself a little mini master goal. It's like right, what's going to get in the way? I've actually created an app to help people be accountable, but to be accountable to themselves, yet it's accountability. Great, fine. What are the steps? But to be accountable to ourselves, to take responsibility for what we need to do and for what is non-negotiable. So if you were to kind of go, right, I've got two hours for a strategic work this morning and this is what I want to accomplish, whatever it might be, but actually what are those couple of non-negotiables in your day? It's nothing to do with your to-do list. It's like these are certain things I must, and if you can kind of go three hours, a chunk of time, whatever, three, sticking to my plan, which is three hours of strategic is a non-negotiable. And then of course the next question is what might get in the way and have you got self-care? Big fans of self-care here, effective entrepreneurs. So you got to look after yourself, you got to look after yourself. You got to take care of. Yourself. And part of looking after yourself is understanding how you work at, as you say, we all do things differently. I have a paper diary and I get looked at by my colleagues who think, yeah, I've got it on my iPad, otherwise people can't book meetings with me. But I have a paper diary because the very thing of at the beginning of the week, writing everything into my paper diary and planning my week and the very notion of writing it down, like the accountability, writing it down at the beginning of the morning kind of puts it into my brain and my brain. It's quite a clever thing and it knows. It knows what's important and it's put those things in and it just helps you. It's just another little thing to help get done what needs to be done. Yeah, I would say that overall, some of the things that I'm going through some changes recently and one of those things is I've made a commitment to say no. And this has probably been the biggest change for me recently, is just saying to everything and only doing the things that I need to do that are important for me to move my goals and strategies forward. Yeah. Do you like watching sport? Not really. Okay. I mean I have occasionally, but okay. So. I get the idea. We could use that as an analogy. If you like. Right? I have a very specific analogy, and for those of you in the US, you'll understand a sporting thing relates to the Olympics. And some years ago we Great Britain won the rowing eight. That's like the rowing's equivalent of the men's a hundred meter sprint. It's like it's the race, it's the eight. Anyway, we won the eight by about an inch and it was gold and it was glorious and all the rest of it. So fantastic. So that all finishes, some of the members of the team change and we are now going to the next Olympic cycle. You've got another four years to train, be awesome and oh, try and win again. Of course, now everybody's coming after you because you want it. You are the guys to beat great. Britain's very good at things where you sit down, rowing, cycling, riding on horses. We're very good at things where you sit down sailing, we're great. That's where we win lots of medals anyway, so they're doing this and obviously highly done on performance. And I actually have the saying on my mouthpiece and it, will it make the boat go faster? Because basically for the four years in the Olympic cycle from that gold medal to yes, we did win it again by even less of an inch the next time round, but we won. And every single thing that team did and the people in that team and the people around that team was based on that question, does it make the boat go faster so that if we go out for a night and drink a zillion beers, does that make the boat go faster? So it doesn't mean that there's no funny life at all because sometimes you can actually go, no, it won't make the boat go faster, but actually we need some downtime and that will be in the long run. So it's also a little bit about balance. It's not about let's have no fun ever again in the future of the world, but every decision was predicated on that basic question. And it's exactly what you're saying. And that if you've got the right outcomes in mind, if you know what the goal is, if you know where you're heading, say no is so much easier. If somebody asks me to go and do X, Y, and z. For some people, if they have no desire to be public speakers, if they have no desires, that speaking is part of their business model. It's not something they ever have to do. So if somebody says, will you come and speak on stage with us at our next convention? It doesn't make my boat go first. Well no, I'm probably not the best person for the job, however you could speak to. Whereas if it turned around and said that to me, I'm like, hell yeah, I'm there. Because for me, absolutely, it floats my boat. It makes it go faster. It does everything to my boat. I'm there, I'm a happy bunny. And I think that the greater clarity we have, and again in setting, in initiating that goal, if you understand your strengths, your motivations, so it's whether the goal is the biggest goal in the world or just a little goal. If you know that saying no just becomes so much easier. And then if you do that together with doesn't make the boat go faster, decision making is a lot easier. I've been using that a lot in the last year. I also, however, and this has been a little, my poor brain is struggling with this one slightly. I've also been going just say yes. And it's brought some very, very interesting opportunities. Yes, opportunity, yes to the opportunities, opportunity, opportunity, no to everything else. Absolutely, absolutely. But I have said yes to a couple of things I might not have said yes to in the past, and I'm about 50 50 in terms of how good or bad a decision it is. But I'm taking it as part of the life's big experiment. So Heather, we went through motivation, articulation, reality of our day-to-day, then the. Strengths, then that was the strengths. Okay. And if you use the strengths finder tool or you use a different sort of evaluation and assessment, it doesn't really matter. It's about understanding what you bring to this particular outcome that you're trying to get. What are my innate strengths, talents, abilities, ways of working that will help and indeed hinder me getting to where I want to be. Karen, you about to ask. T? Yeah, so T was the time management. Right? So again, looking at that productivity and a lot of these, you'll see that there are some sort of crossovers in these. I mean they're all quite distinct, but you'll start to see, and this is why again, once you've gone through the full process, gone through all the questions, and they will be, if somebody working, if I'm working with someone really getting really under the skin of how to do this, is that we'll really go in depth as you say, there's so much that you can discover and uncover about yourself when you do this. But a lot of it as just in doing this small number of questions, there's already bits that you kind of go, well, I know what my time management is like I know how I work generally, so, so I don't need to go in depth in that every single time I set a goal, just don't need to do it. When we articulate the goal, that's always a step that you can go to, that's your little quick fire. And it does take account of all the important key bits. So once you understand and you've done all, you've done the big chunky work, there's the little quickie that you can just use it. And then the last A was actualized. So that's just having that bit of visualization, whatever you want to do, whether it's a mood board or just talking to you team and kind of going, when we achieve this by then, this will set us up for whatever in 2025 or this will enable me to, if we were coming back to the weight thing when my health is where I wanted to be, we can plan a holiday with the kids, we can plan an activity holiday with the kids. Or I'll be ready for the wedding or I'll be ready for the summer or whatever. Or I can go do the marathon. Or actually I can foresee a lovely, I'd love to be like that because I want to healthy retirement. I want to spend time with my grandchildren and watch them grow up. That then becomes, as I say, that slight tweak on how it's phrased and what the real outcome is. So I think smart has just made it too easy to set something either that's a bit unrealistic or it doesn't have depth. There's no consequence to achieving it or not. Whereas by going through this sort of almost therapeutically coaching style. Depth. You've actually got a really, really good reason and understanding to kind of get on with it. Do you ever consider. That's setting it? We've only just set the goal now. We haven't done anything yet. Yeah, yeah. We've made a decision. Yep. Do you consider also in there, I know that one of the things that helps me is I also consider what's the cost of not doing. Things actually? So in the little short, in the little bit where we actually set the goal, the R stands for risk. So what is at risk if you do not achieve this goal? And again, it's very easy to look at whether it's a turnover goal, whether it's a health related goal, whether it's a, I need to move house goal. If I don't manage to move up to where my partner lives, well, my partner's going to kind of go, sorry, time out. Time out. So that's a huge, and again, that's a question that is rarely asked. Rarely is it asked as to the consequence. Again, the example you gave of shifting from six to 20 as a turnover or a number of calls made or whatever. Well yeah, what is the risk? What's the risk of staying at six? What's the risk of not achieving 20? And I think sometimes asking just the question back to front as well. I think lot of time. If I do achieve 20, because suddenly you're going to have to work, does that mean I have to be working 14 hour days. Right. To do it? Are you willing to pay the price? Yeah. And it just makes you. Look, every decision we make has positive and negative consequences. Are you willing to accept all of them? So yeah, interestingly enough, I was going to just say that I find the process of actually looking at ourselves, identifying strengths and weaknesses and making decisions and looking at what we're risking. The whole idea is when I work with people all the time, it has to come from them. And I think that too many times people are driven by what somebody else tells them. Their parents told them they need to do X, Y, Z, so they focus on X, Y, Z and doing this thing because that's what their parents said, or their spouse, or there's an immediate need for something. There's some immediate need for the kids getting ready to go to college. So you need to prepare for that and get that ready. But when it comes from us internally, why we want to do something, what that is going to benefit us in our life and what does that mean if we don't achieve that, what are we willing to do to get there? That changes the whole game when it comes from within instead of from without. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you mentioned stories, you mentioned it before, stories, story is another one of the steps, strangely enough, which is part of the implementation. And it is, it's the stories that we bring with us and it's like, actually, what would I like the story to be? And again, as you say, all these things have to come from the client. They have to come from the people we are working with, any coach, what are you bringing to this? How can you rewrite your story if that's what you need or want to do? How can you be doing things differently and how can you be thinking differently about situations? And this is what I love, and I'm sure you have the same, is every person you work with, things are so different. Each time you ask a question, each different person, you ask the question to where they go with it. And they might change one week on they actually, no, I've had insight that has actually changed. Okay, how is this? So that sort of review and evaluation of, well, actually I thought I was going over there, but you know what, over there is actually becoming where I want to be. Or my motivat, the outcome's still the same, but my motivations are changing. So it's to say maybe the health thing come back to is like, yeah, I want to lose weight. And actually as they've been moving through looking at that so differently, their motivations actually, I want to be healthy. That has become my real driver, which for me is like, oh my God, this is so exciting. Because actually now it's kind of coming from a place that is super positive and can really feed the journey in a really kind of positive outcome kind of way. And I love that opportunity to continually, and I like to literally do a weekly check in on this. And again, once you've kind of created things, the goal, the root map and all the rest of it, then it's just like, it's a quick check in, where am I at? And then as you say, and it's just like, did you take the action that was necessary? And this is not about beating oneself up. Why would you do that? It's understanding why things are happening. Have I been too ambitious? What needs to be changed? And it's still getting out of your comfort zone. It's still pushing yourself. You're not just sitting there going, I can't be bothered. Really, that's not what we're here to find out. Sure. And I think that as we're discussing this, that sometimes what you might find out is that there's some resistance. And from actually doing this and practicing and looking why am I resisting here? What is it that I'm being stubborn about? Why won't I take this one thing and just move forward? Instead, I'm creating the obstacle. There isn't really an obstacle here. It's me creating the obstacle. It's interesting. It's interesting. Yeah. Yes. To be more active, you can go to the gym and you go, right, I'm going to go five times a week, and then suddenly it's four and then suddenly it's need to go or you kind of want to go, you know what the outcome is, the implications of not doing it. There's nothing that we don't know in that situation yet. Still you kind of go rather just sell the safer, watch a nice box set, whatever it might be. I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, do it tomorrow. Yeah. Tomorrow's another day, tomorrow day. And then we'd beat ourselves up. We didn't go today, or whatever it is. And it's building in that like you, your confidence in your journey that even on the days when you don't want to do what you need to do, there's enough in there to go, come on Heather, you'll feel great afterwards. Send an. Email to a friend and say, please, Eddie, this is mate. Just check in with me in an hour that I've been to the gym and then I'll go. Sometimes you just need a little bit of external help. And that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. Yeah, we need each other. I mean, we need some kind of human interaction all the time in our lives. That makes sense. People who think that they are in a vacuum or they can compartmentalize things, that doesn't make any sense at all. That's not real life. One thing that I really love about everything that we've talked about, and it has to do with taking action, and I think that's the most important thing. I mean, if you don't even know what you want to do and you don't even know what you're doing and you're not sure how to get where you want to get, if you just start moving and walking and talking and talking to people, you'll figure it all out. But you've got to take the action. Yeah, you'll get somewhere. There's a lovely quote, I dunno the full detail of it from Alison Wonderland. She has a conversation with Cheshire Cat and it's about, dunno where I'm going and how I'll get there. I can't remember the exact thing, but it's also like, but you'll get somewhere. It might not be exactly the place you were heading to, but you'll get somewhere. And then of course, then you hone it cycling and you go, oh my God, with this action, then it almost accelerates it, doesn't it? If you then have all the things in place to kind of go. But yes, if you put one foot in front of the other, whatever that step might look like, all of our steps are different, but if you do something good will come from that and then do something more and then do it again. If it works, do it again. If it didn't work, try something different. It can be as simple as that sometimes. Ultimately what I've experienced in my life is as you set goals and you set these new goals and you start to achieve it, no matter how small it is, no matter if all you're doing is increasing the amount in a day or the amount of people you call on or the amount of networking that you're doing, as long as you achieve those things and you start to get a little bit better, you start to achieve more. It just naturally then changes the whole dynamic and you start wanting to do more and be more and you start embracing it all. I mean, that's just basically my experience in a nutshell with it all. So I love it. I love it. So we've talked about a lot of things. We've explained your process. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to talk about? That slight edge that do one little thing more. If I do the 1%, whatever you want to call it, that if I do 1% more each day, each time, how much more would I achieve by the end of the process? And I think that that's another great thing that speaks to the, will it make the boat go faster? It speaks to that same thing. We've covered so many things and it's been fantastic to chat with you. And I love the synergy in terms of how we work, and it's lovely to share with you the sort of, yes, it feels so complex, but actually it's actually in some ways very simple because it is the stuff that we really do need to be looking at if we really want to get to where we want to be. One of the things, when you sent me some questions beforehand just to kind of learn a little bit more, and I was reflecting on, and something somebody asked me a while ago, she said, did you to set goals when you were younger? And I went, no, not really. I was exceedingly ill when I was born, shouldn't be here and shouldn't have much of a brain either because I went without oxygen for quite some time. And the fact that I'm now here at the age I am and existing and bumping along on the planet quite happily and loving my life, I almost didn't set myself goals. I was scared to do it because literally my goal was I need to make it to the next birthday that either ends with a five or a zero, and I wasn't having health complications, but that was somehow in my brain as well, I'm lucky to be alive, so will I get it to the next, will I get it to the next? And I sort of said yes to everything that came along in that. And then I kind of got to an age I thought, well, actually I'm still here and I'm going to be here for quite some time, so now I need to start setting myself some things. And then I started doing some slightly random things. I felt like I'd missed out because I kept having this block in my own mind that I wasn't going to be here for very much longer. And I got into politics, which I never would've imagined I would do. And I embraced the fact that I love speaking on stage and I've opened up my own world and by setting goals and just being really expansive with them. But as I say now to not later in life, I don't think I'm later in life yet. I don't believe I'm in the middle. Some things is that to really use all the stuff and the knowledge and the experience and the the decades and to really use that to just enjoy it. I think people sometimes think if you're setting yourself goals, you're being restrictive and you're stopping yourself no. It's giving a kid some sort of discipline and parameters. It actually enables so much more. And I think that this is the thing is actually they enable you to do so much more if you embrace them and do them in the right way. So that was kind of a little roundabout answer to that. Yeah, and I also believe in my experience that once I started this process of setting goals and reaching for something and stretching that even doesn't matter how small the goals are in the beginning that you're trying to do, you talk about just 1% improvement, 1% improvement. Once you start doing that, it changes your mindset. So once you start exercising every day, it naturally changes how you're going to eat and things you're going to do because you start saying, well, but now I'm doing this and I'm being fit and everything, so now I don't want to throw it away by eating ice cream and chocolate sauce, soul night. And. Celebrating. It just keeps building. Celebrating. It's one of the things we didn't talk about, and I'm a huge fan of that sort of celebration and gratitude. Celebrate what you've done, even if you didn't do everything you set out to do, it doesn't matter. You did something, you worked towards something, celebrate that have expressed gratitude for everything. Literally in the morning, I literally write three, four lines every morning, every evening, just gratitude. That's my little practice. Yeah, everybody has their own little thing, but it's a little thing that we can all do. And it's regardless of every demographic you can think of, we can all express gratitude. And I think it's a really positive way to kind of work to go through life. Just out of curiosity, do you find that the people you work with, they have certain beliefs? For example, I believe that there's some kind of higher power in the world. There's some kind of, God, I don't mind calling it God, some people don't like that word. That's okay. So call it a higher power or whatever. But I believe that you need to have some kind of belief that there's more than just me, you and this desk and table in the universe. And it also gives me an inner strength that I know that I could tap into the force for good in the universe and get into the flow. Do you find anything, is there kind of differences in that? Yeah, I think everybody, as you say, everybody brings their own version of universal energy. That's my way of calling it. And that's why I will tap into little things like visualizing gratitude and positive things. I, and I think even if people don't believe it entirely, it's actually just about bringing positivity and a sense of future and a sense of journeying forwards. So I think however people express it, I think that there needs to be that mindset of possibility. And I think that that can kind of tap into it quite nicely. I've just come up with that expression. I'm just going to write that down. I've never expressed it. Sometimes I feel like I don't have the energy, but there is something I can tap into that's all energy, all wisdom, all knowledge, all experience force for good in the universe that when I tap into that, that helps me to do that extra mile. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes it might be on sort of an energetic, cellular kind of a level, but also sometimes it's why we have communities, why we have masterminds, because we can tap into that, the intellectual, the ideas or whatever from other people or other people. Why do some people inspire us and others don't? Just by bouncing into the room, they've not said anything, but somehow you just kind of feel a bit uplifted and a bit, I like this person's yummy vibe. What is about the vibe? So I think we tune into it a lot of the time without giving it a name. It's like, yeah, just where do you get that yummy vibe from that can kind of give you that when it doesn't feel okay. And that's why I think even that gratitude and even if it's, I am grateful that I'm breathing and if you need help for breathing, I'm very grateful for the ventilator that enables me to breathe. And if that's the level that it needs to be at, sometimes that's where we're at. And it doesn't have to be some huge thing every single time. It can be those really simple things in life. So if somebody wanted to learn more about your goal setting program and how to change from goals that suck to a much better, more profound program, how would they reach out to you? So the best way is via my website. You can get hold of me, which is effective entrepreneurs.com. My name's Heather Barry, spelled an ie. There's always, whenever you see a picture of me, I'm wearing a hat. That's my little signature thing. But we also, we get together, it's not great for my friends in the States. We meet at nine o'clock in the morning. It's a little bit middle of the night for you, but that does get, it's on a Tuesday if anybody wants to join us. And we just bring different perspectives around goal setting. And I'm just in the process and we will put the details into the show notes because we've chatted about this, is that I'm have a rolling 99 day accelerator. So this is really just learn how to set a master goal and just get on with it. And it's literally, it's weekly mastermind and accountability. And then we do that at a higher level as well with much more complexity and other things thrown in. But that 99 day accelerator is a brilliant way to just get started, learn how to do it, have input from others, and if I'm allowed to swear slightly, get shit done. Yes. Well, Heather, it's been very enjoyable. We could probably talk for another hour or two. I think so. But I think I'm going to let you get back to your day and take care of your toe. I will. Thank you. So I'll be in touch. Excellent, Eddie, it's been joyous. Absolutely fabulous to chat with you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate being on the show with you. Thank you so much. For more information and monthly topics of interest, please go to transform your future.com and join our newsletter.