2025 Goal Setting Tips

Do you have plans and hopes for the new year?  Most of us do.  Goals can help us achieve them. Lets talk about what works and what doesn't. Lets talk about ideas to give us the best chance for success.  It's your life and you are free to shape it anyway you wish - goals keep us on track and help ensure we end up with a shape we are proud of.

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I use that word rebuild because we're specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life. If that's you, first, let me just say, I'm so sorry.

I know what it feels like to be in the middle of your life and all your hopes and all your dreams and all your plans for the future have gone up in smoke, and you're in the middle of like a midlife reboot. I don't know. It doesn't feel good.

And I know that. But I'm also here to tell you, it gets better, so much better. There is hope.

You're not alone. You're actually in the right place. So welcome.

I'm so glad you're here. As we get down to today's episode, we're going to talk about big surprise goals. If you'll remember, in the very beginning, I said I focused on five areas when I rebuilt my life.

I focused on my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and growth and goals. So I don't feel like it's a big surprise that here, coming up to January 1st of 2025, that we're going to talk about goals.

And I do know there are people who don't like New Year's resolutions. It's just the flip of a page on the calendar. It really doesn't matter.

I get that. But I like a blank slate. I like a fresh sheet of paper.

I like a clean start. And a New Year feels that way to me. I like goals.

I think goals are good for us. Goals keep us in a forward momentum. And a lot of times, when we've had a lot of negative things happen in life, and we're in the middle of this transition, and it feels like a lot, it's easy to look down.

It's easy to look at our circumstances. It's really easy to let our gaze drift down. And it can very easily become a spiral downward and negative.

And I understand that. I've been there. Goals help keep our eyes lifted up and keep us forward moving, right?

Goals are about the future. And when we think about all that's wrong, a lot of times it has to do with the past. This person hurt me, this is what happened.

I can't believe, whatever. And it is backwards. It's looking back and looking down.

And goals help us look forward, look up, and move forward. Okay, so we want an upward and forward motion, and goals help do that. And in the middle of a dark season where everything kind of is pulling us down, goals help keep us moving forward.

And sometimes it's like a car, and that tire's spinning, and you just need a little traction to get that tire to catch and move the car forward.

Well, sometimes it can feel like our tires are spinning, and emotionally, we're just kind of not going anywhere, going down in a negative space. And sometimes goals give us the traction we need to move forward.

They just give us a little bit of hope, a little bit of forward momentum. Goals are always hopeful. They're forward thinking and very hopeful in nature.

So I think, especially in a difficult and dark season, goals are super, super important, because they do give us that little bit of hope, that little bit of light. Hopefully, give us a little bit of traction to move us forward.

And once we achieve something, we've got positive momentum and positive energy to keep moving forward. So goals are important. A fresh, clean slate, a new year.

We're at the cusp of 2025. We're looking on this great, brand new year. It's exciting.

So let's come up with some things we want to accomplish this year. Okay? Are you with me?

All right, let's do this. Step one is going to seem a little different. I want you to look back at the goals maybe you made last year.

When's the last time you made some goals for yourself? And I want you to look at them. Have you ever even said, if you don't have goals, you can pull out of what you did last year?

Have you ever said to yourself, I'm going to start a diet. I'm going to start exercising. I'm going to lose weight.

I'm going to start saving money. Have you set a goal for yourself? And I want you to think about it.

Did you achieve that goal? If you did, yay. What do you think was a key factor in you achieving that goal?

That's important information to have. If you didn't achieve that goal, if you said, I'm going to start a diet, but you didn't stick with it, why do you think you didn't stick with it? What was the type of diet, the style of diet too hard to follow?

What do you feel like? Did you really miss certain foods that were not on that diet too much? Why do you think you didn't stick with it?

I just think it's really, really important to figure out what works for us and what doesn't. Okay? This year is the first year I've been really consistent with exercise.

Every year, I have some sort of goal about weight loss or exercise just a little bit. But this year, I've stuck with it better than any other year. And I know what worked for me this year that was different from the past.

This year, I had an accountability partner. That made a major difference for me. Huge, huge difference, okay?

So having that piece of information, I can apply that maybe to other goals that I have. Why, what didn't work? Maybe you said, I wanna work out, and I'm gonna hit the gym when I head home from work.

But the reality was, you were exhausted after work, physically and mentally. And so you said, I'm not gonna do it today. And one day, it turned into two, three, six, and then you're just like, why even try anymore?

So that's good information to know. Don't have your goal set for when you're gonna be exhausted. Like maybe find a different thing.

So just look at the goals you've had. Why has savings worked for you, or why has it not worked for you? This information is vital.

So a lot of times, we'll sit down and we say, we want goals for the new year. And a lot of times, we repeat the same goals. Like I said, I often have a goal about diet and exercise.

If we have the same goal, and we try to attempt it the same way, and never achieve it, well, there is a definition of insanity. And it says, repeating the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

So let's not put the same goal on our list and attempt to do it the same way we've done it in the past, because we know that that doesn't work. So taking time to look back at what has worked and what has not worked is vital information.

And it's just an important step as we really come up with good goals for ourselves, so we can set ourselves up for success for this year. So if you've written them out, that's great. Sometimes you write out your goals.

But even if you have it, you know there are times you said, hey, I want to lose weight, I'm going to tackle that. Or hey, I want to start saving money, I'm going to tackle that. I'm going to pay down my debt.

Why did that work for you? Or why didn't it work? And knowing why it did or didn't work, the reasons for success or failure are really important, okay?

Because we want to take that information, that as we look back right now, we're going to apply that as we write our goals, okay? So just be real with yourself, be honest. Why do you think it didn't work?

Why do you think it did work? Like I know without a doubt, the reason exercise worked for me this year was an accountability partner. Like that is, I've had the most consistent exercise routine this year, but I've had an accountability partner.

And without question, I know that. Sometimes you don't achieve your goal, and you're not sure exactly why. You have maybe a good idea, but sometimes when we don't get there, we're not really sure.

I know I'm tired when I get off work. So write down to the best of your ability, why you think it worked and why you think it didn't. And you don't have to sugar coat it.

This is just between you and yourself. You're not going to turn this in. Nobody else is going to see it.

You're just doing, being as honest as you can with yourself to give yourself the best leg forward in this coming year. So what worked, what didn't, what are the reasons behind it?

So that's step one, like just taking a look back at the goals we've had in the past, and what worked, and what didn't, and the reasons why they did or did not work. Okay? Pretty simple.

Step two, I want you to write goals. I want you to look out over the year 2025. I want you to feel like you're on a mountaintop and you're serving the land around you.

What do you want in the distance? What do you see? What is over there?

Where do you want to get? Okay? And this is a hopeful process.

Now, what kinds of goals do you want to write? Well, a good template could be, you could write a goal for each of the five focus areas.

You could write a goal for your spiritual health, your mental health, your physical health, financial health, and then a good just growth goal. Like, I want to learn a new hobby.

I'm going to read one book a month, you know, something like that, to help you grow. Find some goals that you really want for this year, that you would be proud to achieve.

They don't need to be unrealistic, but come up with some good goals for yourself, that as you look over your life, you look back a little bit, and then you look forward. Where do I want to go?

I'm in the middle of a dark season, and I'm shaping my life like a potter shapes clay. What do I want the shape to be? What do I want it to look like?

And without an idea of what you want it to look like, you're not going to get anywhere, right? But let's give ourselves a target and shape a life that we're really going to be proud of, an amazing life. So take time to create some goals.

Let's go over some examples, just to give you some ideas. If you were to create, like if you're going to use the five focus areas, what does a spiritual goal look like? What does spiritual health goal look like?

That's a fair question, right? Maybe you're going to say, I'm going to pray every day. I'm going to incorporate prayer into my life, a daily prayer time into my life.

Okay, that would be a good goal. Maybe your spiritual health goal would be, I'm going to download the Bible app, and I'm going to pick one of those reading plans where you read through the Bible in a year. I'm going to read through the Bible.

That's a good plan. That's a good goal. Maybe you say, anytime I'm in the car, I'm going to listen to Christian music.

I'm going to switch to Christian music for a year. That's my goal. I think that will help my mood, my outlook, whatever.

Good goal. So things like that can be spiritual health goals. There could be a lot of other ones too.

You know you best, but maybe that could be an idea. Under mental health, what are some just ideas? Well, maybe you could say, I'm going to commit to writing down three things every day that I'm grateful for.

And if you do that, and you do that all year long, at the end of the year, you'll have a thousand things that you're grateful for. How amazing is that? That's beautiful.

That's so beautiful. Okay, so maybe that's your mental health goal. Maybe your mental health goal is going to say, I'm going to start doing daily affirmations.

I believe that that could really help re-shift my focus and get me on a positive track. And I'm going to start doing daily affirmations every day. That would be a mental health goal.

I'm going to work on self-care. That would be a mental health goal. All right, things like that.

And then physical health, I feel like, is really self-explanatory. It might be diet, it might be exercise. But you may say, you know what?

I don't have a diet or exercise goal. I want to change my look. I feel like I've gotten in a rut, and I want to update my look.

Over the course of this year, I want to change my hair. I want to change the way I apply my makeup. I want to learn some new techniques and freshen up my look.

I want to change out my style and get some new clothes. And over the course of the year, I really kind of want to have a glow up. I want to look a little bit different so I can feel proud of myself when I look at myself in the mirror.

That could be a physical health kind of goal. Financial, you know, of course, it could be about saving money, paying off debt. There's a lot of financial goals that you could write down.

Growth goals could, like I said, be all kinds of things. You could have, like, a reading goal. A lot of people want to read so much, so many books in a year.

You could have a goal of learning a new hobby, getting a certificate or a degree for your job and career growth. You might say, I want to meet new people, and I actually want to start dating again. That would be a growth goal, okay?

So lots of different things in that arena of growth. It could be a lot of things. And you may have goals that are outside those five areas, and that's okay, too.

The five, those five focus areas are a really good template, and they keep you focused on good things. But you could have a goal outside of that, and that's okay, too. You don't want too many goals.

I think five is probably a good number to have. So if you sub something else out for one that is there, that's okay. But stick with about five or six goals.

Keep it kind of simple, but come up with some goals for 2025, that you can say, I would be really proud of myself if I had this much in savings at the end of the year. I'd be really proud of myself if I lost five or ten pounds.

I'd be really proud of myself if I could lift a certain number of pounds of weight. Whatever it is, but come up with some goals so that you can be proud of yourself, that you realize your value again, and your worth, and all of that.

So let's come up with some good goals that will get you on the path of this amazing life. Step one was to look back at goals we've created in the past, what worked, what didn't. Step two, write the goals.

What goals do you have for 2025? Step three has two parts. The first part of step three, under every goal you've written, I want you to write how.

How are you going to achieve that goal? So if my goal is I'm going to exercise three days a week, how are you going to do that?

Well, we know because we looked back that in the past, I had said I was going to go when I got off work, but I realized that I'm always tired when I get off work. It's easy for me to come up with an excuse not to do it.

So my how for exercising in 2025 is I'm going to try to go first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning, I'm going to get up early and go to the gym and work out at home or do whatever I'm going to do.

Or maybe you could say I'm going to walk on my lunch break at work, whatever it is, but look at what hasn't worked in the past. And when you write your how, use that information. So we know certain roadblocks are there.

We know based on our behavior, our tendencies, just natural human tendencies, that we have certain inclinations. Some of us are morning people, some of us are night people, some of us, we're all different, but we're middle-aged now.

We can look back and we know, and we know what hasn't worked in the past, okay? So take that information and use it to your advantage, and give yourself the best chance for success, and say, you know what? I'm going to do it differently this time.

Maybe you look back and you say, you know what? Like for me, I said, having an accountability partner to work out with made an enormous difference.

Like I know without question, having an accountability partner was the reason working out was successful for me this year, and I've been very consistent with it. Do I need to apply that to a different goal?

So one of the goals I've had that I wasn't successful with was a writing goal. I want to write, I've written a book, I want to write two more books. It's part of a trilogy.

I have the ideas and the story in my head. I need to write it. Why do I struggle making the time to write it and sit down and writing it?

I want to do it. Maybe I need to find a good writing accountability partner, because when I went to the gym, having an accountability partner really, really worked.

Maybe that's something I need to incorporate in a different type of goal, but that was what made it successful over here. Maybe I could try that in a different goal. Does that make sense?

So for every goal, I want you to write how you're gonna achieve it. What are you going to do? And take into account what your known roadblocks are, your natural tendencies.

If you know that you're exhausted at the end of the day, and you're likely to go through the drive-through. So when you say, I'm gonna start a new diet, but at the end of the day, you really don't want to cook all that food.

Maybe what you need to say is, I don't just need to meal plan, I need to meal prep. I need to prep it so that when I come home after a long day, and I don't have any more energy left, I have it super easy. All I have to do is basically heat it up.

All I have to do is put it in a skillet. You know, it's mostly done. I've already put it in the crock pot before I left work, so it's totally done by the time I get home.

Something along those lines, okay? So meal prep might be important for you if you, you know, looking back over your life, realize, hey, this is a natural tendency for me. So for every goal, write down the goal, underneath it, write how, okay?

How you're going to achieve it. Because if we're on level one, and we want to get on level two, floor one, we want to go to floor two, we don't just levitate to the next level. We've got to build ourselves stairs, and the how is those stairs, okay?

How are we going to get from level one to level two? How?

And we know what hasn't worked in the past, and we know what has worked in the past, and so we're going to use that information to our advantage and create our how based on what we know from ourselves from the past. Does that make sense? All right.

The second part I want you to do is you've written your goal. Underneath it, you've written how you're going to achieve it. The second thing I want you to do underneath every goal is right, why you want to achieve it.

The why is really important, okay? And I really want you to take time to think about it. Why do I want to lose weight?

That's a good question. Well, I want to feel confident again. I want to regain self-confidence.

I want to be proud of who I see in the mirror. It matters to me. I used to feel good about myself, and over the last few years, I haven't, and I want to regain that again.

So that's why. Okay, that's a good why. Why do you want to save money?

Well, the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck is too much. I'm ready to get out from under this financial anxiety. I'm ready to figure it out and tackle it, and even more than wanting to live stress free, which is a huge motivator.

I want to figure it out so I can show my children. I don't want to pass down this lifestyle of paycheck to paycheck to my children. I want to show them there is a different way.

I want to tackle it to help them tackle it. I'm doing this for my kids, so that I can pass down something different to them. Write down your why.

This is a thing. We know there are certain roadblocks that are known, right? We know our nature.

When we are done at the end of the day, we're tired, we don't feel motivated to go to the gym or cook a meal. Okay, that's a known roadblock. But what is life excellent at?

It's excellent at throwing up unknown roadblocks. Something happens that you didn't expect. And over the course of a year, all kinds of things are going to come up, roadblocks to you achieving your goal.

That's going to happen. Why you're achieving your goal is one of the things that's going to help keep you motivated, even when you face roadblocks. Get really clear on why you want to do it.

You need that motivation, okay? You need to know why you want to do it.

And when an extra bill comes that you didn't expect, when the kid breaks their arm, and you've got an unexpected doctor bill, why have you been determined to put money in savings? Why is this so important to you?

Yeah, I know why this is important to me. I, not only for myself and my mental health to get rid of this anxiety, but because I want something better for my kids too, okay? So get really clear on your why, because roadblocks will happen.

It will not be smooth sailing between here and achieving your goal. There will be unexpected events. Unexpected things will come up.

Getting clear on why you want this goal is gonna help keep you motivated even when those things come up. Okay, so short recap. Step one, we're looking back at goals we've made in the past and evaluating why they worked or why they didn't work.

What were the reasons we achieved them or the reasons we failed to achieve them? And we're gonna take that information. And then step two, we're gonna write our goals, right?

We're gonna figure out what we want to do for 2025, what we would be proud of ourself for accomplishing in this year. Step three, we're gonna write the how we're gonna achieve each goal and the why we want to achieve each goal.

So we're writing out the goal, and then we're having two steps under each goal, how and why. How are we gonna achieve that goal? What are the things we're gonna do to make that goal achievable?

Why do we want to achieve it? Okay, so pull on those emotional heartstrings for the why. Be really practical for the how.

And those two things together will help you get really tactile with how to achieve it. Because we are emotional creatures, so we need that. Why am I doing this?

That's gonna really kind of help keep you motivated. But the how is super practical nuts and bolts, okay? So look at the past, write your goals, write the how and the why for each goal.

And then the last thing I'm gonna tell you to do is keep them in front of you. So write them down and put them on your bathroom mirror. Look at them every day when you brush your teeth.

Put them in your car somehow. Put them on your desk at work. Keep them in front of you.

Don't get complacent and forget. I had this goal, I was gonna learn to paint. But life got in the way, I got busy, this and that happened, and I totally kind of forgot about it.

Oh yeah, I wanted to do that. Keep them in front of you. Remember, these are the things I want to do.

And if you do get stuck, it's okay. A little bit later on in the year, we're gonna come back and we're gonna re-evaluate. Do we need to shift our goals?

Do we need to shift the how of how to get to our goals? Okay, this isn't working. Let's re-evaluate and shift.

Don't let go of the goal. Let's change how we're approaching getting to the goal. Okay?

So we can be flexible with our how. Our how can change and it can move. What works, what doesn't, we can be flexible with that.

Let's not lose sight of that goal. Okay?

So if we say, I'm going to pick up a new hobby, I'm going to read so many books, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to save, I'm going to lose weight, whatever it is, keep that in front of you.

Remember, every day, remember, remind yourself, this is my goal. There are going to be days that, you know what? I didn't work out, I didn't eat healthy, I didn't read, I didn't do what I said I wanted to do.

That's okay. Pick up again tomorrow.

And those goals written down on your bathroom mirror, on your desk at work, and in your car, are going to help remind you, okay, so you had one day, you had a slip up, pick it up, let's go again, start back over, come on, we got this, don't lose all

of your momentum, let's pick it back up and go again. Okay, and having those goals written where you can see them will help remind you and help keep you focused, forward thinking, okay? Positive direction, forward momentum.

Let me know what goals you have. I would love to hear your goals for this new year. I would love to hear what you're trying to achieve.

I think we should support and encourage each other. And I'm here for that. So if you want to reach out to me and let me know what your goals are for this new year, you can find me online.

You can drop me a line, www.workingonamazing.com. I'm also working on Amazing on all the different, really, social media platforms. I'm on most of them.

But I do hang out on Facebook the most. So drop me a line there. Let me know what your goals are.

Let's support each other and encourage each other as we're building these new lives and we're reaching these great goals. I am so proud of you. And I just believe and have so much hope for the future in this year and what we're going to achieve.

Thank you for joining me today. I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye.