Trail Talks

From Drift to Direction: Why Goals Matter

• Kelly • Season 1 • Episode 9

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In this episode, Kelly and Terra explore why goals aren’t just a New Year ritual — they’re the compass that keeps us from drifting through our days, our careers, and our lives. 🧭

We break down the neuroscience behind goal setting 🧠, why the brain needs direction, and what actually happens when we don’t choose a path.

You’ll learn how goals create clarity ✨, momentum 🚀, and purpose — and how reflecting on the past year can help you set more aligned, meaningful goals for the future.

Real talk, real science, and a few detours along the way. 🌿
Let’s move from drifting to deciding.

SPEAKER_00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Trail Talks, the podcast where we talk about growth, the messy, the beautiful, and everything in between, and where we take a few detours along the way. I'm your host, Kelly Kruger, founder of Kelly Michelle Coaching, where we focus on mindset, emotional intelligence, and leadership, grounded in real life, real science, and real conversations. And joining me today, and honestly, she makes every episode better, is my co-host, my partner in growth, leadership trainer, and founder of Leading People LLC, Miss Tara Stanett. Hey Tara.

SPEAKER_02

Hey. So happy to be back this week.

SPEAKER_00

You're back every week. I know. Maybe I could need to do a better intro for you. I just never know what to say. I'm just gonna jump right into it. We are nine days away from Christmas. First of all, it is 25 degrees in middle Georgia, which is very, very cold. Unusually cold, I think. So it's like I don't know, it's gonna get a little bit nicer the rest of the week, which nicer is like 33 degrees.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, not thinking.

SPEAKER_00

And I am loving the hustle and bustle of the holiday season shopping. I don't know what it is. I think it's my mom's influence on me. I think the Thanksgiving trip with her just unlocked something with my shopping. So I think every night I've been out and even have gone out to Macon, done some shopping out there. Because we don't have a Ross here. There's a Ross out in Macon. There's a Marshalls out in Macon and then Beals here. I don't know, all TJ Maxx, all sorts of places. So I've been out every evening. Yeah, even tonight, I had to stop at the store and grab Jordan's bike. Yeah, I'm loving it. A lot of traffic, just a lot of people, hustle and bustle. I'm enjoying it. How about you? No, absolutely not. First of all, I hate it.

SPEAKER_03

First of all, I hate shopping on a normal day, let alone during this time because I get anxiety. There's so many people just in the way. And they have no sense of personal space. I'm just trying to get in and get out. So excuse me, so I can just get to what I need and leave. I'm an online shopper. I love to shop online. However, I procrastinated this year and some stuff wasn't able to get in on time. So I had to actually go out in the store. So it's my fault that I brought this anxiety upon myself. And then also the weather that you're experiencing. I'm so sorry. It's nice and sunny, 75 degrees here in Florida. Oh 40 degrees in the morning. Like we wake up, I don't have the heat on. I refuse to turn it on because it gets up to 75 in during the day, but I think it was like 40, which is cold for us. But I have to go to Ohio, and my mom said it's like negative nine. Bitter cold. Oh I'm flying into Cleveland, so the weight effect. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

That's how it is in Buffalo. Yeah. When you're there on vacation, it's different. I think you appreciate it a little bit more when you know it's temporary and you're there to see family, and it adds to the Christmas joy and the snow and all of that. Um here in middle Georgia, going outside 25 degrees. No, thank you.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no snow, no nothing.

SPEAKER_00

And it's dark.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Not my favorite thing, but I think I'm just feeling a little holiday stress. So maybe I'll feel better once I'm done. I think I have one more Christmas gift to get, and then maybe I'll feel better about it.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, God, that's good. No, you are not procrastinating. If you only have one more to get, I've got quite a bit. I took care of the out-of-towners, and now it's the kiddos. I've got a few things, and then I'm gonna take a few trips tomorrow and pick up the rest and then focus on Christmas Eve and what we're gonna do Christmas Eve, which will actually be on the 23rd for us, but gonna get some gingerbread houses and maybe play some games or something. Yeah, that'll be nice. But yeah, you're not procrastinating, it's fine. I we have until Christmas Eve.

SPEAKER_03

If well, I guess if you ask other people on procrastinating, I should have started buying in February.

SPEAKER_00

Um where do you hide it? We say that every year, that this is gonna be the year, and we're gonna talk about this in a minute, right? New Year's resolutions. This is gonna be the year that you know, I'm just gonna start buying early and maybe once a month. Just get on Amazon and start getting some things for it. We don't do that, we wait till November.

SPEAKER_02

And oh, Christmas came quick, and then we start buying everything.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I just I told someone the other day that Christmas never came this fast when I was a kid. Like it's next week. Where did the time go?

SPEAKER_00

I can't believe it. Yeah, we are nine days away from Christmas, and then we jump right into New Year's, and I think right now is the perfect time to talk about New Year's resolutions and goals and why it's important to set goals and what kind of goals we're gonna set for ourselves going into the new year. What do you think? Perfect homie goals.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, goals. We're really good at setting them, right? Do we keep not so much?

SPEAKER_00

Let's peel it back. Let's start with this episode for the listeners. We're gonna talk about the foundation of a goal. What is a goal? Why it's important to have goals. And then I also want to recommend a book, so we'll recommend some tools toward the end, like we usually do. And then what we want to do is ask our listeners to think about after this conversation, think about goals that you would like to set for yourself going into 2026. And if you would like to share those goals, please let us know. DM us on social media, or for our friends and family, if you have you obviously, if you're friends and family, you have our cell phone numbers, then text us a message or an audio message of what your goals are for 2026. And we would like to share those with the listeners. Also, for a couple listeners that do want to share their goals and would like to track those goals throughout the year on the podcast. Please DM us or text us if you have our numbers. And once a month, we'd like to get you on the podcast and coach you and track the progress of your goals, and we will track ours too.

SPEAKER_03

We want to give our listeners a chance to join in and share some snippets next podcast of what our listeners' goals are and yeah, a free coaching session.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna have goals too. We love goals. Yeah. What is a goal? Should we start with that? And we've got research, we'll give call-outs to neuroscientists and we'll talk about some books out there. Lock and lay them, goal setting theory, James Clear, Atomic Habits, great book. The Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow. We've talked about that one. We've got some information from University of Oregon, goals, self-regulation, motivation, Cornell University, all that stuff. Just start researching goals. Mel Robbins had a goal setting 101 a couple of years ago. Huberman Lab, great podcast. They talk about goals. For those of you that like Jordan Peterson, just tons of stuff out there on the internet when it comes to goals. It's very, very important to kill it back a little bit and talk about the why. Why do we need goals? So let's start with what is a goal.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the Miriam Webster's definition of the dictionary.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I yes, because I think the very vague answer from Merriam's dictionary will get us going as to why it's important to understand the why behind what a goal is and why we set them. So it's not the object of a person's ambition or effort to aim at a desired result. That's all it is. That's what a goal is.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I like that. And we're gonna see a theme here because I'm gonna give two more definitions. And I want to emphasize effort, the person's effort. Classic psychology definition, lock and lay them, but a goal is a desired future state that directs attention, effort, and persistence over time. Why this works direction is attention, energy is effort, staying power is persistence. And next week we'll get into the staying power, the persistence of the goal. Then I'm gonna give a neuroscience-informed definition, and this is a goal is a mental representation of a future outcome that organizes behavior and motivates action. So it highlights how goals exist in the brain. Oh, yeah. Motivation, so that's the book about motivate action.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Yeah, that's the important piece of that one.

SPEAKER_00

And the last is behavioral science definition. So here were three. It was classic psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science. A goal is a commitment to move from where you are to where you intend to be.

SPEAKER_01

Nice.

SPEAKER_00

I will bring up a book right now, and we have several to give, but I would love to offer that if the listeners are going to be setting goals for 2026, and you just heard us read four definitions and themes were effort, and then the last one we talked about motivation. The Motivation Manifesto by Brennan Burchard. He also has a podcast. Nine the motivation manifesto, nine declarations to claim your personal power. And this is all about sparking motivation, sustaining motivation, ambition. I mean, this is it's such a great book. And we'll get more into this next week when we talk about like the journey of reaching the goal because it's all about staying motivated. Yeah. All right. So those are the definitions. And the common theme was effort, the person's effort. When thinking about a goal that you would like to set, it has to require your effort.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. That I like to say goal versus process, because the process is more important than the goal, which is the effort, the motivation. That's more important than the actual goal because a lot of times, and we don't want to understand the why peeling it back, or our cultural pressures. So to set the goals. So a lot of times, the goals that we choose to set are even our own. They come from family, they come from your culture, they come from people saying, hey, you got to go to college, you got to get the white picket fence. What are those called societal norms? Yeah. So a lot of times we set goals that aren't even ours.

SPEAKER_00

And I would venture to say that if you're setting goals that aren't yours, then you probably don't feel committed and motivated to reach them, which then you don't meet those goals. If you don't have a connection to those goals and you're doing it because of societal norms or peer pressure, or your friends are doing it, more chances than not you're not going to achieve the goal because at some point you're not going to feel motivated to achieve it. You have to have connection to the goal. So we talked about what is a goal. Let's talk about why having goals is important. Okay. Like, why should we have goals, Tara? Why should I have a goal? I don't want to have goals. You know, I would whenever we reach New Year's, people would be like, Kelly, what's your new resolution? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

I I'm okay. Well, they're important because without goals, your life becomes reactive, you become complacent. Nature is to strive towards something, to move towards something. That's just human nature. And if you don't have that, you just autopilot, really.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we discussed that last week when we talked about the default mode network. That's that complacency. And when you're not moving towards something, we're just sitting idle, we're not accomplishing anything. Where there's no purpose, there's a lack of purpose, which can lead to loneliness and isolation and depression.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I know that when I'm not intentional with my time, which I know we're gonna talk about that here soon, being intentional with your time and leading towards everything you do should lead towards whatever that goal is, the process, of course, right? I definitely feel stagnant and I'm like, okay, Tara, let's not be stagnant and sit here. If you're not going to be intentional with your time, like for instance, building up my business or doing things, the podcast, or doing anything positive, what else can you do? I decided to go get a part-time job. At least I can meet one of my goals. I just don't want to sit and be idle and do nothing. And then when I'm motivated again to get back into that space and I'm not lacking direction, then I will do that. Because a lot of times I think people feel stuck because they lack direction, not necessarily ability.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, as humans, we need to thrive, not survive. And in order to thrive, we must desire to aim towards something to keep us moving.

SPEAKER_03

Drift versus direction is one of our topics. Goals provide orientation and intentionality, gives the brain direction.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, there we go. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

It helps regulate our behavior, gives us a sense of purpose. Without them, we drift, we react, we disengage. The goals give us meaning.

SPEAKER_03

So, should we talk about how can we meet our goals?

SPEAKER_00

That's gonna be next week. I think this one is how do we set a goal? Like, how do I go about setting a goal? And you mentioned that sometimes we set goals based on societal norms and peer pressure. And hey, I see my friends do this, dry January. Dry January is a very good example. It's one simple example that if you see people doing dry January and you say, Oh, well, everybody else is doing it, so I'm gonna do it. And then within one week, you're having a drink. Well, because it doesn't mean anything to you. You're not committed to it, you're just doing it because your friends are doing it. So when we talk about setting goals and and getting ready for 2026 and the next episode, which is the journey of the goal and and why sometimes you may not meet it and to what to expect on that journey today is about how to set goals. And that is what do you value? What makes you happy? Because whatever goals you set, you want to be excited about them. What makes you smile? What do you value? What are things that you like to do? And to identify those, look at your vision board. Look at what you did in the last year that you spent a lot of time doing. Where was your joy in the last year? Between the vision board and did you travel? Where did you spend your time and even going through pictures in your phone in the last year and remembering times that made you happy, where you did have joy and connection and meaning? That's where you start thinking about the kind of goals that you'd like to set. It's got to be something that you're connected to, or you're not gonna meet the goal. And once you establish those goals, what can we expect? You set the goal, what's next? What is cascading?

SPEAKER_03

Explain that one. Okay. I like to use the cascading goal. So it's like a strategic planning process. You set the goal. This is just the one large goal. So in 10 years, what is the big picture? What is the long-term goal, the 10-year goal? And you start there. Okay, big picture could be become a leader in my professional field. Now you go down to your five-year goal, and that is what goal do I need to meet in five years to meet my 10-year goal? And that could be advanced degree or advanced in my management position. Now that will help set me up for my 10-year goal. Then next is your three-year goal. Same thing. What do I need to accomplish in three years to meet my 10-year goal? That could be enroll in a master's degree. And then you break it down to your one-year goal, which is immediate. Same question. What do I need to do in the next year to meet my 10-year goal? And that could be take a public speaking course or research grad programs to get into. So my one-year goal, research grad programs to get into, my three-year goal, enroll in master's degree, five-year goal, advanced degree, I meet that or get a management position, which will then put me at my 10-year goal, which is become a leader in my professional field. These are not my personal goals, those are just examples. Yeah, no, they are now.

SPEAKER_00

They are now I I love that because I love it because we talked about goals going into 2026, but we aren't saying that you have to be pitch and hold to say in 2026, I'm gonna have one goal and this is gonna be it. What we are saying is look at your life and what do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Who do you see five or 10 years from now? And the goals along the way will help you get there. So if you do have a five-year or 10-year goal, Tara just said, those goals, then let's peel it back. What do you need to do in 2026? And those are your goals.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I enjoy the cascading goals because when I do the 10-year goal, it makes me more intentional with what I'm doing right now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

If my goal is to become a leader in my professional field, and my one-year goal is okay, research to apply to grad programs or take a public speaking course. But let's say that public speaking course costs money, $500, let's just say. And okay, well, I'm gonna go spend a lot of money shopping and traveling and doing all are the things that you're doing helping you right now meet your 10-year goal? Well, no, because I'm spending all my money in other places instead of spending it on that public speaking course. So it makes me become more intentional with everything in my life and really asking myself, does this help me get there?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and that destination, you'll eventually reach the destination. What's going to be more powerful and give you so much more pleasure when you know every year you're meeting goals to reach that ultimate destination? Is the pleasure and joy along the way. That's where the magic happens. It's not really the final destination because it could take you five or ten years to get there. But you are working every day, every day of your life, you're creating and doing meaningful things and having purpose in your life, which is gonna bring you so much pleasure and joy. That's the magic of reaching that goal, is what you do along the way. And some of that's gonna include some lessons learned. Exactly. Setbacks.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

And here I am with the neuroscience for once, guys. Yeah, I know. I'm usually not the neuroscience one Kelly is, but I did read that we talk about dopamine spike. We talk about dopamine a lot, right? Yeah in the brain. So the dopamine spike is not when we achieve our goal, we actually get a dopamine spike when we get closer to our goal. It's called a neurochemical push. Yep. So your halfway mark, your to-do list, things that are smaller and measurable, your brain gets excited about that more than when you actually meet the achievement. Because a lot of people equate achievement with the end. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And so your brain's not happy about it.

SPEAKER_03

There's no dopamine there. I like it. Look at you. She's looking at me so proud.

SPEAKER_00

I'm looking up a Jay-Z quote now.

SPEAKER_03

We slip scrolls for what you're looking at.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my gosh. No, you know what? It makes sense though. It really does, because you do get the dopamine spike because you're accomplishing things along the way. And when you reach your final destination, you're like, yeah, okay, great. But you felt so much better along the way because you do you were like making progress. It's the practice makes progress. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

The process is more important than the outcome. That's one of my favorite Inky Johnson quotes. The process is more important than the outcome. So you not only are getting that dopamine spike in your brain is getting excited about it, but you also learning things along the way. If you take the time to stop and think about it, what are what am I learning from this? Like those setbacks. So the process and what you gain from that is way more important than actually meeting the goal.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Yeah. Next episode, we're going to talk a little bit more about the journey and the setbacks and lessons learned. And we'll geek out on John Maxwell next week, too, because he talks a lot about reaching goals and failing forward. That's failing forward. I've heard you that phrase. Yeah. And for the coaching model that Tara and I have used, the Life Coach School, Brooke Castito, it's the circumstance, thought, feeling, action result. And when we coach, this is the live coaching that we're going to do with a couple listeners along the way as they progress in meeting their goals. We want to track their progress and we want to coach them. When you think about your goal, that's the result you want in your life. It's it's the R line. It's C T F A R, circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result. So you want to go ahead and fill in the line of result. That is the goal, whether it's a six-month goal, week-long goal, whatever you want to do, just put the goal in there. This is just practice. And then the action, which Tara was talking about, all that cascading, what you need to do every day, those are all the actions you need to take. So even if it's, I want to make this amount of money and this amount of time, or I want to run a marathon and this is what I need, all your action line is going to be filled with things that you need to do in a timeline to get you to that destination. And it's broken down if you break it down by year, month, week, day, however, we want to do that. And then our next question, we would ask in order to do all those things, what would you need to feel? Well, in order to have purpose and reach those goals, we would need to feel uh confident, strong, empowered, inspired. If you feel sad or frustrated, uh, you're not gonna move forward. And this is all about moving forward. You will have setbacks, but we want to keep you moving forward too. And you have to feel things motivated, which is the motivation manifesto book uh sustaining motivation to get you there. And in order to feel those things, we're gonna talk neuroscience, yeah. You need to think certain things, right? Which is I want this, I can do this, right? I am ready for this. It's those thoughts that you need to repeat in your mind. This goes back to our first and second episodes when we talked about the limiting beliefs that hold us back. It's the I can't or all that worry, or I shouldn't. I mean, when you are uh setting goals and reaching goals to stay motivated and moving forward, your thoughts have to be I can do this, I'm ready for this, I can see myself doing this, I believe in myself. And those thoughts you need to keep repeating and repeating so you believe it and then you feel it.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_03

I love to say because the thought produces the feeling, so you have to have positive thoughts, have positive feelings. Again, it goes back to our very first and second episode. Yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_00

I love positive thoughts, create positive results, negative thoughts create negative results. So the result is the goal that you want to achieve. The actions are everything you need to do to achieve it. How do you need to feel to achieve those or act on those? And what do you need to think? And that's the coaching that we're gonna be doing in the next few months. But are we ready for a detour?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Detour. Detour. Two years of resolutions. Well, we could talk New Year's resolutions. I can't. Can you tell me some of the ones you used to have? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, I'll start then. Okay, go ahead. I'll let you think. Go ahead. Well, I okay. Obviously, I feel like everyone had the New Year's resolution to go to the gym every day and lose weight, of course.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you'll see everybody there on the January.

SPEAKER_03

I'm never just for the listeners, Kelly's the dry one. I'm not, I don't do dry January, don't care to do it.

SPEAKER_00

No, I mean, you know, though, you know, you're not gonna try, you're not gonna give in to peer pressure. Yeah, why even try?

SPEAKER_02

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_03

I need my wine. So dry January, never been excited about that. So one year I try to. This sounds terrible, burn someone out of my life. What? So okay, not to burn someone out of my life. So basically, any negative things, so you write down negative things that happen throughout your year, or that happened to you throughout the year, people that no longer serve purpose in your life, and you write them down and then you throw them in the fire pit because they're not gonna happen again. Like the next year is gonna be more positive things. And did it work? It did, it really did. And then you had to write down positive things afterwards. Like, what are the positive things in your life that you want going forward? Not necessarily goals, like yes, we wrote I wrote down my goals and everything like that, but it was more like what do you want to be show up better as? How do you want to be perceived by others? And you write those things down because I guess they come to fruition if you think it and you write it down and you see it like a vision board, but with words, yeah, and you also like clean on New Year's because you're cleansing your house and your life.

SPEAKER_00

I digress you did digress, but I love it. Yeah, the only New Year's resolution I remember it might have been maybe 2007, 2008, when I was gonna give up meat for a year. Oh man, how'd that go? Good. I think I gave it up for about 10 months, maybe, and then Buffalo happened. What do you mean by that? They lost. No, I was in Buffalo, and you can't be in Buffalo and not have chicken wings, of course. Yeah, Buffalo happened.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, that's understandable. I was gonna say that you can't be in Buffalo without wings, like you can't, you you you just can't.

SPEAKER_00

That ended, but I did feel good when I was a vegetarian for 10 months.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I just looked up the ridiculous resolutions that people said. Oh, please share. Okay, drinking wine from a certain number of countries. What?

SPEAKER_00

Wait, how is that a new year's resolution?

SPEAKER_03

It says that they are going to drink wine from a certain from like the X number of countries. Okay, so they want to travel around drinking wine from different countries. Well, this one's yeah, okay, unplanned life changes. So quitting your job on January 1st with no backup plan. That'll be motivated. It said only to end up in the same role elsewhere, yeah. Bold move, yeah. Oh, deciding to run a marathon without training, fueled by New Year's enthusiasm and juries, yeah. Stop doom scrolling on Twitter or TikTok.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe no, that's a oh no way. I won't do it. Uh yeah, I mean that might be. That's probably a common New Year's resolution, is for that. Yeah, I would go with maybe reducing my screen time. Yeah, and we gotta talk about that. I don't think that would be I'm not very motivated to make that a goal of mine. But yes, I'm sure that is for some people is to reduce their screen time or stay off of social media for a certain amount of time. People are doing that nowadays. Good on them. Good for them. It probably happened for two days.

SPEAKER_03

Well, okay, I'll just be realistic. Go vegan for six months. You said you had that similar.

SPEAKER_00

I did vegetarian. There's different names. There's vegan, there's vegetarian. That's the only two I know. But yeah, people do it.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, well, never go to home goods or stores like Hobby Lobby.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my oh, good on them. Good on them. But I find joy in all of that. Like, I I love scrolling through home goods, just walking, not even getting anything. I just love going through home goods. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

But you know what? I'm noticing with all of these, and we can hop back on the trail with this. I think this is a good timing because you said you find joy in all of those, but there's got to be something behind the reason they don't want to go to home goods because they don't want to spend any money, maybe. Maybe that because that the goal is or the resolution, quote unquote, is too vague.

SPEAKER_00

It could be going to home, yeah. Like, what is it about home goods? Is it because you're spending too much money there? So then maybe your goal should be to save a certain amount of money. And that's and I think that's why that was a good segue. I would like my goal to be to go to home goods more often.

SPEAKER_02

I do love home goods, and you're right, I don't make it there as often, but when I do, well, God helped my wallet.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, or maybe go to home goods if somebody's going there like once a month, then maybe it's once every three months. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

It's it can't be so it has to be clarity over vagueness, is basically what we're getting at. You can't just say, I want to eat healthier. What does that look like? It needs to be more like the how, the acting so like I will cook three meals each day at home instead of I'm gonna eat healthier. Yeah, and that's if you eat out a lot, because I can cook some unhealthy meals at home, but yeah, those all the resolutions tend to be too vague, and I think that's why people usually don't continue on with them past January.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so uh maybe categorize them too. If there is a health goal, like fitness health goal, maybe a mindfulness goal, maybe a travel goal, or money-saving goal, start thinking about that, but also consider um and and when I say money, it doesn't have to be money saving, it could be I want to make this amount of money, like you want to generate things, you want to go on trips, you want to create things, and doing that, you need to really look at what what makes you happy, what are you driven towards? I have a feeling I know what my goals are gonna be, and I've been thinking about it today. I know, right? But like I always wanted to learn an instrument, like the piano or something, but I'm like, I I don't know if I would be so motivated when I think about the Motivation Manifesto book, sustaining motivation. I'm not sure I would be so motivated to do that. Like I would be like maybe a fitness or a health goal or the goal of writing a book. You know, I've been wanting to write a book, and this year it was about getting my master's degree, and I did have motivation along the way because I knew that by the end of the year I wanted to have it completed. And along the way, I knew that in order for me to have it completed, I would have to take, I think, a couple semesters where I would have to take two classes, and I knew it would be brutal, I knew there would be setbacks, but I had the end goal in mind and I loved learning along the way. There was so much goodness, I learned so much. So I enjoyed the learning. There were setbacks, right? Especially when traveling and being on the road and having to do all this work. But here I am, two weeks away from having that degree in hand or in my inbox. And I had said, once I'm done with the degree, then the next year it's maybe it's writing a book.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and I think that's a good point. You achieved it, but that's not the end. It's not the end. Like there's got to be something else. There's a reason you're getting your master's degree, it's probably feeding into more goals that you have later on down the line, whatever they are, whatever that looks like. We tend to just meet the goal, and okay, that's it. Well, that's not how you set goals. You have to they have to be feeding into something, yeah, bigger picture. So there's a myth out there that not everybody has goals. Apparently. There's a myth out there that not every some people don't have goals, but research shows that everyone holds some type of vision. So we're here to say that you don't have to have the type of goals that we have, like, oh, business, oh, we want to be better people, want to be healthier, like whatever that looks like for you, whatever your vision is in life. Maybe you want to be a better mom. Yeah, maybe you want to get your kid to school on time every day. You know what I mean? It doesn't have to be like this huge, elaborate goal.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like we should pass that because for we do, yeah, we do need to emphasize that because we tend to think about lofty goals. And yeah, some go for lofty goals. I'm not sure if we had mentioned it in the beginning that you don't want to have too lofty of a goal that you're not going to meet, and then you don't want to have these small, easy goals, because then what are you really gaining along the way? When we talked about the definitions and the common word, Tara mentioned effort. So it as long as you have the vision and it makes you a better person, because making us better people requires effort each and every day, then that's it. It doesn't have to be a special business goal or going extravagant places or stopping doing something. If it's something that requires effort on your part and you are moving forward and showing up better, that's a goal, that's purpose.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I have a few quotes that I've seen. They were saying that goals are a call to an adventure. And um a goal isn't just a task, it's an invitation into the unknown, which meant why it's uncomfortable. Yeah, and goals always ask something of us.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, love it. So we talked about what a goal is, why we should have goals, why they're important, and give you some ideas on how to set them and what to expect along the way. And we're gonna dive deeper into that next week, the journey and what you're gonna encounter along the way and how to stay motivated. Maybe we'll go a little bit further into a couple books. And for the listeners, again, we just want to remind you to DM us on social media if you want to share your goals for 2026 or beyond. And then, friends and family, if you have our cell phone numbers, go ahead and text us or even send an audio recording of what your goals are going to be. And we would love to bring two people on the podcast once a month and coach you live on the progress of your goals, tracking them and seeing how it's going and coach you along the way. We'd love to do that. Okay, as we wrap up, here's what we want to leave you with. Goals aren't about pressure or perfection, they're about direction. Because when we don't set an intentional path, we don't just stand still, we drift. And drifting might feel easier in the moment, but over time it costs us clarity, confidence, and momentum. So take a moment after this episode, look back before you look forward. Notice where you feel energized, aligned, and alive, and let that inform where you're headed next. One small step, one intentional choice is often all it takes to change direction. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who might need a little clarity right now. And if you haven't already, subscribe, rate, and review Trail Talks. It's how this community continues to grow. Thank you for walking this trail with us today. Until next time, step the direction, trust the process, and don't be afraid of a few detours along the way. We'll see you on the next episode of Trail Talks.