Identifying and Achieving Clear Goals

Hey there, it's Jeff from Reaching the Peak podcast. In this episode, I dive into the importance of identifying clear and specific goals in both our personal and professional lives.

I start by sharing my own journey of losing 40 pounds through a combination of exercise and dietary changes. I emphasize the significance of setting tangible goals rather than vague aspirations. For me, the goal wasn't just to be healthier but to hold my grandbabies and witness their college graduations. This personal example highlights the power of having a clear vision of what we want to achieve.

I discuss how small catalysts, like packing my gym bag the night before a workout, played a crucial role in my weight loss journey. These seemingly minor actions can have a significant impact on our ability to reach our goals.

Throughout the episode, I stress the importance of setting achievable and measurable goals. Whether it's in our personal health journey or professional endeavors, having specific targets allows us to track our progress and stay motivated.

I draw parallels between setting goals in our personal lives and in the business world, emphasizing the need for clarity and definition in all aspects of goal-setting. Without a clear destination in mind, we risk wandering aimlessly and never reaching our desired outcomes.

As I wrap up, I tease upcoming episodes where I'll delve deeper into the process of working towards these goals. Stay tuned for more insights and practical tips on achieving success through intentional goal-setting.

Thanks for tuning in, and remember to define your goals clearly to pave the way for your journey to success. Have a fantastic day, and I'll catch you in the next episode!

Transcript

Okay, so here we go. I think I finally got all the video and audio stuff worked out. Yesterday I recorded a really great video. Probably can't remember half the content. But here's what happens. I get driving down the road and I have these thoughts. And you obviously can't jot stuff down while you're writing. So I want to create kind of like a video log of me with that content. And then build it out from there. Some of it I might just go ahead and share. We'll call it the Real Raw Jeff or something like that, right? Probably not. So you know, I'm starting a business. It's Apex Leadership Development. One of the components in that is a coaching component for individuals. My leadership development coaching, they're happening on both business and personal levels. Everybody, whether you're in a business, you have your own business, you work for somebody, we all have areas that we want to grow. Okay, I don't want to grow my stomach, I actually want to go the other way with that, but you know what I'm saying. We all have things that we want to grow. in our lives, in our profession, in our families. And so through teaching, training, and speaking, I want to help people overcome those obstacles that they have to growth, identifying their opportunities for growth, and then moving forward with a solid action plan. And I believe that we can do that in both a group session and we can do that on a personal level. So, the very first thing, obviously, we've got to identify the area that we want to grow in. And I would also say that you can't just make it, you know, I want to grow professionally. Okay, what does that mean to grow professionally? In your profession, are there certain skills that you want to grow? Is there a certain position within an organization that you want to get? Do you want to do like me and some of my friends have done? I've always been a really good team builder. That's kind of been what I've done throughout most of my career. I mean, look, I was a box chucker like everybody else in a warehouse, right? But the places that I was most successful The places that I have the most successes to talk about are the places where I was involved in the recruitment and training of teams. I really like building people. One of the things that I had to discover was what makes me tick. One of the things that makes me tick is watching people move from point A Point A to point B. So I want to see people move from point A to point B. So what do you want to grow in? And you can't just make it a generic goal. I want to grow professionally. I want to grow personally. What do you want to grow in your personal life? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to gain weight? Yes, I know people that want to gain weight. They make me ill. All I have to do to gain weight is drive by McDonald's. I don't even have to go in. I don't have to eat anything. If I see a taco, I gain five pounds. So gaining weight is not trouble for me. If I could teach that to some of these people that want to gain weight, I think I could become wealthy. I don't know how to teach that. I kind of do, but I'm not going to. It doesn't make me passionate. So you understand what I'm saying. Let's identify some clear and some specific goals. I want to grow X, Y, Z in my life. So I'm going to give you an example in my personal life and then a little bit of how that plays out. So in my personal life, I lost about 40 pounds about a year ago. A little bit over a year ago, I've been able to hold that 40 pounds off of me for about a year. It might have been a little bit more. Honestly, I didn't weigh myself. I just knew that I needed to set some goals to lose weight. I changed my diet. I'm a crunchy food junkie. Talk about Cheez-Its, potato chips, those type of things, love them. Got rid of them, found a healthier substitute for them. No, it was not carrots. It was not celery. I don't really like to eat green things. Cilantro, about the only green thing I eat. But I found a healthier trail mix. So I replaced the crunchy things that I liked with the healthier things. I eliminated certain things all together. I knew that in order for me to lose any weight whatsoever, I didn't even set a goal. My goal was to live healthier. My goal is to hold my grandbabies and watch them graduate from college. And so I knew that if I was going to do that, one of the key things for me actually is like I know that it's exercise and it's diet. The exercise part, I actually love to exercise, love to work out, love going to the gym, not even for the social aspect of it. I put my AirPods in. I get that don't talk to me look and I just start my routine and start working out and don't want anybody to bug me, right? But the other thing though is that, you know, like they say, abs are made in the kitchen. I cook high-fat food. I love tacos. So my abs probably look like a taco if they're made in the kitchen. But the insinuation behind that is that your diet matters more than anything else. So I changed my diet. Part of the way that I changed my diet is that By exercising, doing the thing that I like created the situation that made me want to do something that was going to make change in my life. Here's the thing, okay? If I go to the gym and I put the time in and I work hard and I bust my butt for an hour, hour and a half in the gym, right? and I walk up and I see a piece of cheesecake, I'm probably going to say, okay, no, cheesecake, sorry, that's off limits, especially if it's salted caramel from the cheesecake factory. Y'all getting hungry watching this, aren't you? So, but anyway, but if I see something that I know sabotages my diet, I'm going to think twice about that. Why? I just put the hard work in. I just did the time. For me, putting the hard work in the gym is the catalyst to me eating better because I don't want to ruin the work that I did in the gym with bad food. That was a catalyst for me. Part of that catalyst is that I have to get up early. to go to the gym with just the way my schedule works. I got to go early and if I'm going to go early I have to have my clothes ready. The last thing I want to do is five o'clock in the morning get up and be hunting for my gym shoes or my gym shorts or my gym bag, a towel and all that stuff. So I have to have all of that stuff ready to go the night before. So I want you to think about this and I want you to look at how a small thing can make a difference, okay? Packing my gym bag the night before I want to go to work out helped me lose 40 pounds. Let that sink in for a minute. We're looking for some big aha moment. We're looking for some grand revelation. And in reality, there's typically small things. And the reason I wanted to tell you that, over the course of these next couple of videos that I do, I'm going to talk a lot about the little catalysts that we can have, the things that lead us to change. And I wanted to give you the full story up front for me personally, like one of the areas that I wanted to change. I identified that I wanted to lose weight. I identified that I wanted to be healthier. The goal in there isn't just that I want to be healthier, that's a trash goal. That can mean anything. What does healthy look like to you? Is it the ability to go out and run a 5K every 2-3 years? What is it? What's the specific thing that's going to make you healthy? Is it that, you know, like I've got a certain condition right now and I don't want to take medication for it, but I know if I exercise and maintain my diet, I don't have to take medication. You have to not just make a goal to be healthy. You see what I'm saying? You have to set goals that you know are achievable. I'm not going to go Grant Cardone and 10X you right now and tell you that you know like I'm not looking like that but what I'm looking for is identifiable, definable goals that you can put a name to and say this is what I want to do and then we can look at what we need to do to accomplish it. Again, I gave you a personal goal. I have some professional goals. I have some business goals. I have various things. When I was working in the corporate world, I had goals based off of what was in my company. I wanted to do this by this time and that by that time. I had other people involved in those goals, but I had very clear and definable goals. Unless you have that clear and definable goal, unless you know where you want to go, I hate to tell you this, but you're never going to get there. I'm driving right now. If I were to just open up my GPS and hit start, I don't know where it's going to take me. I know where I'm going right now, so I didn't have to put it in. I'm going up to Main Street, Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach. I didn't have to put that in because I know exactly where I'm going. I knew the route that was going to give me the internet signal. I knew all of those things, but you're understanding what I'm saying. You can't just put in your GPS nothing and expect to get somewhere. You'll end up somewhere, but it might not be where you want to be. If you're going to get to where you want to go, you have to define the goals to clearly identify what that is. and then work towards them and that will be in the next video, working towards those goals. Anyway, this is Jeff with Apex Leadership Development and JeffMiller.me. Just again throwing this out there, I don't know if I'm actually going to post this video or any of its content, but I wanted to record it because a friend of mine told me that I needed to. So I'm listening to my friends and doing what they say. I hope you have a great day and we'll chat with you later.