Getting Unstuck: How to Trade Goals for a Clear, Personal Vision

Every January, the list comes out. Lose the weight. Read more. Finally get in shape. And by February, it's quietly filed away — until next year. If that cycle sounds familiar, Dr. Brad Cooper has a confession: he used to be the guy who had a spreadsheet of goals hanging above his bathroom sink. Goals were his identity, his career, his livelihood. And then he discovered something that changed everything.

A clear personal vision is a far more powerful driver than goals. And here's the part that might surprise you most: when the vision is truly clear, any meaningful goals essentially achieve themselves.

In this episode of Not Done Yet!, Dr. Cooper walks through the four-step process he's used for over 13 years to build and live out a personal vision — from the initial Reflect/Collect/Digest phase to identifying your heart sparks, creating a rough visual, and ultimately living it out daily. He draws on Shakespeare's Hamlet, Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be, and David Brooks to make the case that the real question isn't "what should I do?" — it's "who am I becoming?"

This one is practical, personal, and genuinely different from every goal-setting episode you've heard before.  Here is the article referenced if you'd like to see examples and a more detailed walk-through of the steps involved. 

Topics covered: personal vision vs goals, why goals fail, goal setting for midlife, life's second half, purpose and identity, personal vision board, New Year's resolutions, Paul Tillich courage to be, David Brooks, heart sparks, F5 framework, faith family fitness finances, midlife reinvention, intentional living after 50, not done yet, life planning, finding direction, who am I becoming, personal growth over 60

Reach out anytime with questions or ideas - Results@CatalystCoaching360.com

Tap into the BetterPath Substack series on unlocking life's second half here.

Access industry-leading, nationally board certified health, wellness & high performance coaching for yourself or your team here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm gonna ask you a question and I want you to sit with it for a moment. What's on your list? You know the list. The one you rem mentally rehearse every January, maybe you've written it down, things like lose the weight, read more books, spend less time on the phone, get in shape. You know, goals, resolutions. Call it whatever you want. And then here's the real question. How did this year's list go? Or last year's, or the year before? If you're like most people, including this guy plenty of times over the years, you started strong, lost momentum somewhere around late January, early February, and quietly filed that list away until the next round of fresh resolves showed up the following January. Rinse and repeat. What if the problem isn't your willpower or your follow-through? What if the problem is the list itself? I'm Dr. Brad Cooper, co-founder of Catalyst Coaching 360, the nation's premier provider of personalized, board-certified health, wellness, and performance coaching, founded way back in 2007. And my PhD work looked at this concept of goals. I'm also your fellow traveler on this journey through life's second half. As I move into my 60s, I'm convinced that we represent one of the most valuable untapped resources on earth if we're willing to step into the possibilities. So that's what we're here for. And I'm grateful to have you along for the ride. So let's talk about these goals, specifically why I walked away from them and what I found on the other side that might be beneficial to you. And I'll start by being totally up front, slightly embarrassing as I look back, but goals were my centerpiece. As a teenager, one of my favorite gifts. And I'm not exaggerating this for the podcast. This is real. My dad would get this calendar from one of his client partners every year, and he wasn't going to use it, so he'd give it to me as a gift. And I think at first he did it as kind of a joke, and then he realized it was one of my favorite things. I would take that thing after Christmas and I'd sit in my room and I'd get all organized and I'd put all my goals down in hours, hours. You think that's bad? Early in our marriage, I created a spreadsheet of goals that I put on my mirror so I could check on them every single day above my bathroom sink. Every day. And yes, Susanna might have had a few thoughts and certainly strengthened her eye muscles with all the eye rolling she did. Goals were central to my career as a physical therapist. I traveled nationally to speak on the subject, wrote a 20-year column for the American Physical Therapy Association, often built around that concept, and then we launched Catalyst Coaching in 07, where goals were central to my strategy, my identity, and frankly, in many ways, my livelihood. And then I discovered something that changed everything. A clear personal vision is far more powerful than simple goals. Goals still can play a supporting role, absolutely. But for those looking to make the most of their personal and professional lives, the vision is the real lever. And here's the part that surprised me most. When the vision is clear, when you've got that dialed in, any meaningful goals essentially achieve themselves. Shakespeare's Hamlet famously asked, to be or not to be. It is indeed the question. Who am I? Who am I becoming? Am I fully living? Or am I simply busying myself checking boxes like the ones hanging on my mirror early in our marriage? That deeper question, will I courageously choose to be and not simply do, has to be driven from within. We can't force it on others, and we won't find it by following the list of shoulds imposed by those around us or a long list of goals hanging on that mirror. And yet, especially as the calendar flips, or maybe now as we're approaching mid year, we default almost immediately to a different question to do or not to do. Goals, resolutions, shoulds. What if instead we leaned into the who rather than the what? Author David Brooks put it plainly. For many, the big choices in life aren't really choices. They're quicksand. You just sink into the place you happen to be standing. We all know that feeling. The days blur together, the dreams quietly fade, and eventually we look up wondering how we got so far from where we imagined we'd be at this point. A clear personal vision lifts us out of that muck and creates a participatory, personalized path forward, one aligned with who we actually are and the person we're becoming. Paul Tillik, someone I've mentioned before on the podcast, one of my all-time favorite writers, in his book, The Courage to Be cuts right to the heart of it. He says the self, which has become a matter of calculation and management, has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate. And by participating, you change it. Goals focus on the first. A clear vision creates the second. Now, if you're sitting there going, okay, I'm with you, Brad, but it's a little abstract for me. Well, you've done this before. Think about the last time you went, I don't know, house hunting or apartment shopping or planned a vacation or prepared for a wedding or some other big event. You created a vivid picture in your mind of what it would look like. That same process applied to your broader life rather than a single event is exceedingly more valuable. So let's talk it through it. I'm gonna break it down into four steps, and I'll have a link to an article that walks you through some examples of this. So if you're more of a visual person, you'll have access to that. The first step is reflect, collect, and digest. This phase sets the stage for everything else. There's no right way to go about it. So take the pressure off of yourself, except for one non-negotiable. You have to create the space for it to happen. Suzanne and I have scheduled intentional time away from work, away from electronics, all other distractions for about 12, 13 years for this purpose. But reflection can happen on a hike, a park bench, a paddleboard, anywhere that gives you room to think deeply about who you are and who you're becoming. This is where you begin to notice the heart sparks. Those precious moments when you find yourself thinking, ooh, this, this, this. Collect those sparks. Write them down. Don't rush it. If you need a framework to get started, I use what I call the F five, five key areas of life, all starting with an F, that I'll scan through as kind of a prompt to think: is there an area in that one that I want to grow into? So those five are number one, faith, number two, friends and family, number three, fueling and fitness, number four, field of play, and number five, finances. Now, all of those are pretty self-explanatory except maybe field of play. Field of play encompasses your work and your hobbies. And it's a reminder, not just that it starts with an F, although that's kind of fun too, but it's a reminder that we stepped onto that field and we can choose in most cases, I understand there are exceptions, to step off of it or to modify how we're approaching our time on that field. Different shoes, different outfit, etc. So think through each one of those. Let that come, jot it down, give it time to surface. Step two, identify the patterns and start to create a rough visual. Look back over your notes. Maybe there's words, phrases, song lyrics, things from movies that popped into your mind, verses, images you see. What patterns are there? Which ideas resonate at first, but then after you look back in your journal, you go, uh, nah, I don't think that's it. Maybe a single theme rises to the top. Maybe a handful of concepts begin to support one another. Maybe you land on a phrase. You might sketch something out. Again, no right answer. And you're not being great on this. This is for you. First time I ever did this back in 2012 was a few minutes worth of sketches from our daughter Danielle on a tablet. We were driving the car, she was playing around with the tablet and doing some fun things with it. I said, Hey, could you just do a little thing that says six words? Treasure this moment, optimize the next. She's like, sure. And I still have that. That was my vision for that first year. Super simple, super straightforward, nothing fancy, but it was me. It was mine. It played a meaningful role in helping me grow into that version of who I was becoming. Step three is simmer, tweak, rinse, and repeat. So you're going to print it out, look at it, and when I say print it out, maybe it still exists in your journal, but you're letting the rough edges round off naturally. I've gone from scribbled journals to PowerPoint to Canva, and obviously AI makes this fun now. You can combine those. The one I did this year was a combination of those things. Whatever helps you bring it to life. Again, this is for you. The medium matters far less than the meaning that comes with it. You're going to bind, it's fun to have that visual, but the real value here is the process of working towards that. Step four, live it out. Place it where you'll see it regularly. I'll use this as a wallpaper on my phone for a while. I keep a frame copy on the shelf just above my computer screen. Don't wait for January. Do it now. Bring it to life. But before you even get to the living it out part, pause and appreciate what I just mentioned. It's the process where the significant growth happens. It's that reflection and the development, not just having the end product. So don't rush to the end product and miss out on the real value. Now, while others are comparing resolutions and lists of goals, you can smile, picture your vision, and know that any meaningful goals are organically coming to fruition in its wake. You, my friend, have discovered the courage not simply to do, but to truly be. Thanks for joining me here on the Not Done Yet Podcast. Before I jump into your prompts for this week, I just want to say thank you. Thanks for joining me on the journey. Thanks for spreading the word. I'm so excited about the impact we can have if we shift expectations, if we lean into the possibilities and we live with intention. So here are your three prompts for this episode. Number one, to be versus to do. Think about the goals or resolutions you've set in recent years. How many of them were really just a dressed-up list of shoulds, things you felt you were supposed to want to do? If you set aside the what entirely for a moment and focused only on the who, who you are and who you're becoming, what one word or phrase starts to surface? Number two, heart sparks. In the past year, maybe the past month or week, when did you experience one of those moments where something inside of you said, this, this, this? A moment of unexpected joy, purpose, or aliveness. Did you notice it? Did you write it down? What would it look like to start paying closer attention and gathering those and collecting those moments and treating them as data points for your vision moving forward? And then finally, number three, the first 30 minutes. Creating a personal vision requires space. And most of us simply have not built that into our lives. Where might you carve out 30 uninterrupted minutes this week? A walk, a quiet morning, a drive with no podcast, to simply begin your own process through this. Maybe something surfaces if you give yourself permission to listen. Thanks again for joining me. Until next time, here's to being a catalyst. Upward aiming, forward oriented, and not done yet.