Aligned Goal-Setting for the New Year

This episode is basically PART TWO to last week's episode. Last week, we reflected on how we are feeling in the 7 areas of LIFE BALANCE and this week, we are using that reflection to set goals that are ALIGNED and make a PLAN to ensure we meet our GOALS!

I hope this 4 step plan is helpful for you! If it is, let me know! As always, love you! Thank you for listening and please share with a friend!

Personal Growth | Motivation | Mindset | Personal Development | Self Improvement | Mental Reframe | Empower | Evolve | Rise and Energize

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Transcript

0:40

Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the pod. I'm so happy that you're here to tune in for the final episode of 2025. If you're listening in real time. It has been quite the year. And no matter who you are, I'm sure that you've gone through lots of ups and downs this year, and looking ahead to 2026 is so fun and exciting. If you're not listening in real time, everything I say, you can probably apply to goal setting in the future, whether it's at the new year or just a new. Season of life in general, but I wanted to talk specifically about New Year's goals because I think we all go into the new year. First of all, the last month of the year is always a frenzy of chaos. It seems like. There's gatherings and holiday parties, work parties. I had a book club party. You have multiple family gatherings to go to. If you've got little ones, you are making sure that you're buying and wrapping and getting their gifts together and baking sugar cookies or Christmas cookies or whatever it is. So it's just a busy season of the year, and then we go into the new year, and I think a lot of us have these. Dreams and ideals and aspirations to, you know, the whole new year, new me idea to be better people or work on something in 2026 or the next year. And we go into the new year and we kind of rush it. So I wanna take some time and encourage you to take some time to really thoughtfully, intentionally, mindfully, set your goals and then make a plan. So that's what today is all about. Whether it is the new year or not, I think that you could apply this to any time of the year that you are goal setting, and I am gonna do it for myself as well when it comes to the podcast, when it comes to the things that are important to me going forward. So I have a couple of insights that I wanna share, but then I also have a basic four step process that I think is going to help you set. Aligned goals for yourself. So not just setting a goal that seems good, but something that is aligned with the life that you wanna live, and then how to carry that out or how to set yourself up for the new year to actually carry that out. So that's what I'm gonna get into. Before I do that, I do want to mention that it is always super fun whenever I see that you guys are reviewing the podcast on Apple podcasts. I had someone leave a review this past week and it made me really happy and I really appreciated it. But it said it was a five star review and it said, every time I finish one of these episodes, I feel ready to take on the world. I love that Morgan's episodes are about learning, giving yourself grace, and figuring out life together. She does a really good job of making sure you're not alone and that you feel seen with these episodes, so thank you so much. If you are on Apple Podcasts, you know that reviews have. The craziest username. So this username was like BB and B-K-J-G-H. I don't know what that means, but thank you, BB and B-K-J-G-H. I really appreciate that and am so thankful that you left a review. It does help a ton on Apple Podcast. So if you have a chance to do that, go on Apple Podcast and leave a five star review. If you're on Spotify, you can just leave me the five star rating. Or if you're on YouTube watching this on YouTube, drop a comment, subscribe. Well subscribe anywhere, apple Podcast, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen. And then just let me know that you're enjoying it. I love to hear it. So thank you so much for that. And now let's get into the episode. So I did wanna mention a stat because I feel like this is something that we hear pretty often, but can be a good reminder when we're setting goals. So 30 to 40% of Americans set New Year's resolutions, but only about nine to 10% of those actually see them through. So there's a reason for this, right? I feel like one of the biggest reasons is that we are not setting goals that are aligned. If you listen to last week's episode, the example I gave was you hear someone say. I'm gonna read a book a month and you, or two books a month or whatever, and you think, you know what, that's a good goal. I think I kind of would be interested in getting back into reading 12 books a year. That's what my goal's gonna be. And then you just kind of go about, or you could have a weight loss goal. You're like, you know what? It sounds great to lose 10 pounds this year. I'm gonna set that goal and by the end of the 2026 it'll be met or you set like a savings goal, like, oh, each month I'm gonna save$50, or by the end of the year I'm gonna save$500 or something like that. And you set the goal at the beginning of the year, and then you move on, and then you don't really have a plan. You also, maybe that goal was kind of made on a whim. You don't really have any backing or reason or purpose behind it, and then you don't follow through with it. So there's lots of reasons that that happens, I believe. But 23% of. People who set New Year's resolutions quit within the first week of the year and 64% in a month. So I want to help you not be those percentages. I want you to be the nine to 10% of people that actually followed through with their goals and the resolution. So this is some, this is kind of funny because when I was younger, there was a period of time where I. I don't even know why, but I did not believe in New Year's resolutions. I was like, resolutions are dumb. I'm not setting New Year's resolutions. I couldn't even really tell you why. Maybe you could ask my mom and she would remember what I said at the time, but if you're like me, you said so many stupid things whenever you were a kid that I like kind of disassociate from some of them, and I can't remember exactly where it came from, but I remember being staunchly against New Year's resolutions for a while. If you're watching this on YouTube. I just had to go let in my dog Ed, and he is now on the futon with me. You can only see his butt. He's a little annoyed because he usually sits in the spot I'm sitting in right now, and he just stared at me for a long time trying to ask for it. But anyway, as I was saying before, I was talking about how when I was younger, there was a period of time and I don't remember why, but I was staunchly against New Year's resolutions and thinking about it now. I think some of it was just that I got annoyed by the fact that so many people. Don't follow through with them, probably including myself and somewhere deep down I'm also, it's probably not that deep down actually, but I am also very afraid of failure, so setting goals used to feel scary to me sometimes, because then when I didn't reach them, it really. Tanked my confidence. And so that's why I feel like it's so important to set aligned goals that you actually desire. Tie them to a, the reason that you desire them, a why or a purpose, and then actually have something set up, a structure set up in place so that you can achieve those. Because every time you set a goal, even if it's a tiny goal, like drinking 60 ounces of water a day or something like that. Even if it's a tiny goal, every time that you achieve that goal and you keep the promise to yourself of the thing that you said you were gonna do, you're making a tiny deposit into your confidence. So I think of it as like a bank and you, it's your confidence bank or whatever. And every time that you. Every time that you keep a promise to yourself, you make, you're making a deposit into that confidence bank. Every time that you say you're gonna do something and then you don't, you kind of withdraw from that confidence bank and it starts to decrease. And the way that you keep making your confidence increase enough to where you, to where it, it doesn't shift when you. Make like a tiny mistake or you don't follow through on something. Something is by constantly making promises to yourself and keeping those promises so the thing about confidence is that when you don't have a lot of confidence built up or a big foundation of confidence, it makes it easily shakeable or easily movable or easily drain. And so we want to be making little tiny deposits into our confidence bank all the time. And sometimes we will set goals that we won't hit, but when we set the goal, like I used weight loss. Weight loss is an easy example. But if you set the goal by wanting to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year and you actually start working toward that and you set things up for that. Maybe you don't hit 10 pounds by the end of the year, but you, maybe you hit eight and that's closer to where you wanted to be than if you had never set the goal in the first place. Or the savings example. If you wanna save money, like if you say by the end of the year I wanna have saved$500. Maybe you didn't save enough to get to$500 by the end of the year, but you saved enough to get to$400 by the end of the year. That's great. It's closer to where you wanted to be than when you first started, right? That's$0 versus$400. I know you wanted to be at$500, but you're well on your way toward that, so maybe you just have to extend the deadline a little bit. So. All this to say that I really think that when we go into the new year, we wanna be setting goals and resolutions that align with the life that we wanna live and things that we actually care about, and then set ourselves up for success. So step one is figuring out your why. I know this is like a cheesy way to say this, but i'm gonna say something that might surprise you because I feel like a lot of people say, when you think of your why or your purpose, it has to be something bigger than yourself. And I actually think that this can be a selfish thing. So for example, with the money thing, you may say, oh, I wanna say$500 so that I can. Really build a life of wealth and teach my kids financial literacy and really make sure that my family's cared for and dah, dah, dah. And those are all great things and very aspirational things. But could you tie it to something very specific, like, I wanna say$500 because I wanna show myself that the next time that I want to go on a, like on a road trip or something, that I have the ability to save the money that I can. Use to take on that road trip, or if it's the weight loss thing, maybe you wanna lose weight because you wanna get healthy and maybe you wanna lose weight because you want to have energy with your kids. Yes, that is great. Those are really aspirational goals. Maybe you wanna lose weight because you really miss the really fashionable pair of jeans that you used to wear all the time, and they're your favorite dream jeans and you don't fit in them anymore, and you, and you want them to fit again. That's okay. It's okay to make the goal selfish or vain or whatever it it is actually tying it to something that you actually care about so I would encourage you not to pick goals that you feel like you should do or that should matter to you, or that sound good? Like the reading goal, like, oh, I really should be reading more. I'm gonna go ahead and set a goal for one book a month or something like that. Don't do that. Pick the goals that align with what you are excited about or what you care most about. And one of the ways that you can do that is by going back to last week's episode, I talked about the seven areas of life balance. And when you go through those seven areas and decide as you kind of rate them on a scale of one to 10, you can decide which one you wanna focus on the most. And so if you're, if for example, your biggest one that you wanted to work on was family, your relationships with your family, let's set goals based around that. Like Jared and I just started a new tradition while we're trying to make it a tradition, but where Saturday mornings we host some part of our family for breakfast in the morning, and it's just Saturday morning, 10 o'clock, pretty easy commitment, pretty easy practice to start, and that could be something that you build into your life for a family goal, but I really highly encourage you. Step one is the why and figuring out what is aligned for you in the life that you wanna live. So if you want to be a more present family member, or you want to be more in tune with your body, or you want to be happier mentally and challenging yourself more with your mental growth. If you want to be working on your career, these are all things that I encourage you to go back and assess so that you know, moving forward where you wanna focus on, and then figure out why it matters to you. And that can be a selfish reason. It can also be like a more altruistic reason, but most likely it needs to be something that is really purpose driven for you. Okay? Step two. So you have your goal and it's aligned with. What you care about. Step two is the structure. So establishing a structure in your life. So this is how we're not, this is how we are not gonna be the 23% of people that quit in a week. 64% that quit in a month and other 90% that never accomplish their resolutions. We have to set a, we have to build the infrastructure in our lives to make sure that we actually do this. So the first A, the first. Recommendation I make is put it on your calendar. So no matter what it is, if you're trying to start a new routine or hobby, you need to put 20 to 30 minutes a day on your calendar in order to get into the routine of it. So whether that is reading more books, establishing a workout routine, maybe it's a nutrition nutritional aspect. That could mean meal prep. It could mean washing your produce. It could mean preparing your water bottles for the day it could be if you're wanting to go back to school, it could be 20 to 30 minutes. A day on your calendar specifically for school. If you're establishing something on the side, like for instance the podcast, weeks when we've had really good downloads or really good social media engagement. Things like that are weeks where I have spent 20 to 30 minutes at the end of my workday just doing. Podcast stuff. And so really you need to build it into the infrastructure of your life. And all you need to start with is probably 20 to 30 minutes, but you need to put it on your calendar. You need to have a specific time that you're doing it, because otherwise it'll never become a habit and won't become a routine. And the habits are what build up our lives and help us reach our goals. So. That's where we need to start. Another thing that I would say with the building in the structure is get some skin in the game. You might need to spend some money on this, right? Like if you are working on a health goal, maybe you need to spend a little bit of money to join a gym or join like an accountability group, or hire a personal trainer for a little bit or something like that. Get some skin in the game. And skin in the game can be a few things. I think a lot of the time the biggest one is the financial investment because the whole like put your money where your mouth is kind of thing. Like when we actually pay for something out of our own pocket, then we are more likely to follow through on it. Right? But the other way that you could get some skin in the game is that you can seek accountability, which is really the best recommendation that I have for any kind of goal is you need to have some. Form of accountability. So you could share on like social media or something like that, but more than likely, it's there's somebody else in your life that also wants to be doing the thing that you're doing or something similar. So the best thing that you can do is find a person who is aligned with the life that you're seeking to live, or the goal that you. Dream to accomplish and connect with them and check in daily. Check in throughout the day if you want. Like, I would just encourage you to find some accountability. That's the biggest way that you can get some skin in the game. But I do also think that purchasing something or getting yourself more invested with the actual financial. Investment and then also the like. People investment would be helpful. Step three is take action. So this is something that I actually encourage you to do, like today or Within minutes of setting your goal, I want you to get up and do something that can move you toward that goal. Because like I said, with your confidence bank, the first time that you take action toward the goal that is making a deposit into your confidence bank. You're like, look, I actually acted on this. And then action breeds motivation. So motivation is not something that we can rely on. It's fickle. We wake up with different motivations every day. If you're a woman, I feel like our hormone cycle is really. A testament to this because there are some days that I feel really gung-ho and energetic and like I can conquer the world. And then there are other days that I'm like, I literally don't even know if I can get up and make myself breakfast or something mundane like that. So I would really encourage you to, whenever you are lacking motivation, what is the tiniest step that you can do, right? I, this is such a tiny thing, but. I guess in my personal life, something that I've really been working on is. Maintaining the cleaner household. And I find that when I don't wanna do it, if I just say, okay, I'm just gonna start with five minutes, just five minutes of cleaning. And that usually turns into an hour of cleaning. Like you probably can relate to this. You turn on the vacuum and we have like stairs that I vacuum, I'll turn on the vacuum To vacuum the stairs and we have two sets of stairs and I'll go through the first set of stairs, which everybody sees when they walk into our house. So I feel like I need to. Vacuum those, but it doesn't take long. It takes maybe five to 10 minutes and I usually say, I'm probably not gonna do the bottom set of stairs. But then by the time I get to the bottom of the first set of stairs, I'm like, well, I'm already here. I might as well do this. The second half. And how often do we do that? Like imagine if you had a workout program and the first thing to do is do 10 pushups. Well, what if you said, okay, I'm gonna just start with one pushup. Well, by the time you're down there, you're like, okay, I might as well go on to 2 5, 10, and then you're done with your 10 pushups, right? So it's like take one tiny step toward that goal that you just set, and then I believe it will breed some motivation. That's the first thing that you can do because tiny steps build up little by little. Little becomes a lot. And then the worst thing that you can do is not take any sort of action. So as soon as you set the goal, I encourage you to take one tiny step of action because analysis paralysis, when you're sitting there thinking about What should I do, what should I do? Because a lot of the time these goals, they're. 10 step processes or 50 step processes, like it's not gonna happen today. We can't accomplish the goal today probably. But if we sit there and we go, well, what should I do first? Or what should I start with? That analysis paralysis causes disbelief in ourselves and every time that we don't take action, we are making a withdrawal from that confidence bank, and it causes us to believe that actually, I don't think I can accomplish that goal. Actually. I don't think I'm up for the task. So it's not helping you whenever you do that. So step three is action. Step four. And this is optional, but really it will make it more sustainable because really these goals, that's why we start with why these goals are getting us to be the people that we want to be and li and living the life that we want to live and something that lights us up. They're not goals that we feel like we have to do to be a good person or roles that we have to do. We should not be dreading these goals. They should be exciting to us. So the last step I say is, make it fun. How can you make this more fun? How can you make taking that action more fun? So I saw this on social media. I don't know if you've seen this before. I'll try to find the reel and link it in the show notes. But there was like an Instagram reel or a TikTok or something that I saw, and it was someone who was setting themselves up for 2026. And she has a few goals, like run a half marathon, read 30 books. Certain specific, measurable things like that. And she tied a little piece of paper that said, open this. Whenever you read 30 books around like a bottle of champagne at like a mini bottle, not one of the big bottles. And maybe this won't work for you if one of your goals is to drink less or to cut alcohol or something like that. But I just thought it was such a cute way you could add like a little treat or a A mini bottle of champagne or just something fun to celebrate those small wins. And it doesn't have to be that you can celebrate your small wins anyway, but I highly encourage you to build in some sort of system, some sort of. Celebration that you can do whenever you, whenever you accomplish that goal. So celebrating small wins is one of the ways you can make it more fun. And then the other thing is combine it with whatev with something that you love. So with my cleaning the house example, I love thriller audio books. Now I've taken a pause on'em because I read a really creepy thriller a while ago and it's effed with me. But I really love thriller audio books. I think they're like the best. Kind of audio book to read whenever or to listen to whenever you're doing something mundane. Because I might be like vacuuming the stairs, like I said, and I'm like, oh shoot, she died. Like, what's going on? You know? And so it just gets crazy. You know what I'm talking about. So I would combine, once I started combining the cleaning with the audio with specifically thriller audio books. It really made it exciting for me. Someone else was telling me the same thing with the cleaning rule, except they were only, they were watching, really just listening, to Gilmore Girls and they could only do it while they were cleaning. Gilmore Girls is only for while I'm cleaning, which I love.'cause then you build an association in your brain that when you do the hard thing or when you do the thing that you set your goal toward, then your brain starts to view it as fun and as the time that you get your dopamine rush from Gilmore Girls or whatever the thing is that you. Enjoy. Same thing with like working out. If you're doing workouts that are super boring and not enjoyable to you, like find a new routine, find something fun, or if you're not doing workouts at all. But the reason is because the traditional form of working out that you've had before isn't fun for you. Find something that you like, find activity and movement that you enjoy. You could even just start with. A five minute walk. Again, I feel like sometimes when you start with a five minute walk, you, you go, well, I could go 10 minutes. I could go a mile, I could go 30 minutes, like whatever. And it builds on on itself. So make it fun. That is my last step. Step one is find your why. Find your purpose. Align it with who you want to be and what life you wanna live. Step two is structure. So. Figuring out the structure in your life where you're gonna place it. Step three is action, and step four is make it fun. I hope this is super helpful for you and tangible for you. And I'll also be sharing more about New Year's resolution goals and whatnot on my Instagram page. So please go follow me there at Rising Energized Pod. I love you. Thank you.