SHOW NOTES

In this episode of Habits for Humans with Pamela Henrie, we discuss why goals don’t matter. Unless you plan on dying in 12 weeks, going on a 12-week diet won’t do you any good. Instead, focus on habits that will last a lifetime.

Welcome to Habits for Humans, the show that explores how to program your brain to maximize your potential. The goal of this podcast is to teach you how to instill systems and habits to live a healthy, sustainable, deeply satisfying way of life.

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OUR HOST
Pamela Henrie is the owner of The Success Choice, and the creator of the award-winning Success Choice Planner, Choosing Joy in the Journey Journals, and the Success Choice Challenge workshop. She regularly writes for the Daily Herald in her column “Choosing Success.” Pamela is passionate about inspiring herself and others to improve themselves and their worlds and to choose joy in their journey. Her planners, journals and workshops help you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance, order, and joy in the journey.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi, welcome to habits for humans. The podcast that explores what makes people tick. And how to program this brain of ours, because it is programmable. We’re going to explore why we can sometimes, and in some areas of our lives, just knock it out of the park and other times. And in other areas, we just have a hard time even getting off the couch. If we want to be healthy and happy, what is the secret to programming and. To programming our brain and maximizing our potential. I’m your host, Pamela Henry. And today we’re going to continue exploring four principles that are foundational to maximizing your potential. We have several giveaways. So if you like free stuff, please listen until the end. But first a word from our sponsors. This episode of habits for humans is brought to you by card salad. I accompanied that provides. Excuse me. Done for you meal planning. So you never have to reach for the Mac and cheese again. And the success choice, a company that provides tools to help you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance order and joy in the journey. Today I will. Once again, be both the host and the guest. For the first three podcasts, it will just be me being the guest, explaining a few foundational principles before I start interviewing other guests. So I’m going to introduce myself in the third person as if I were the guest today. Pamela Henry is the owner of the success choice and the creator of the award-winning success choice planner, choosing joy in the journey journals and the success choice, challenge, workshop. She regularly writes for the daily Herald in her, in her column. Choosing success. Pamela is passionate about inspiring herself and others to improve themselves and their worlds and to choose joy in their journeys. Her planners, journals and workshops help you filter through the noise of life and establish positive routines to find balance order and joy in the journey. We always start with. A habit. That helps us handle the stresses of daily life. And last time I mentioned exercise, which is important to me, but there’s another habit that is very foundational for me, which is meditation. I like to do even just a 10 minute meditation in the morning, just to help me get grounded have a little bit more focus.

4 PRINCIPLES ON HOW TO SET GOALS

Okay, we are going to jump in here. So in our last episode, we talked in depth about four principles that are foundational for helping you to become your best self. They are first awareness. Second was reflection, third goal-setting and forth establishing habits and routines. And we went into depth into the first two of these. Uh, awareness and reflection. And I encouraged you to really contemplate and think about and reflect on eight different areas of your life. And I called them eight areas of balance to think about where you are in the area, where you want to be in the area. And just any other thoughts or insights you might have. We also talked about universal truths, which are true for everyone and personal truths that are true for you specifically in each of those areas of balance. And how the Ben, how it’s beneficial, if you can align your thoughts and actions with those truths. So an example that I gave, it’s a universal truth that we perform better when we have adequate rest and sleep. But the specifics of that may change from person to person. And I gave the example of, I have a friend who does her best work at four in the morning. So she likes to go to bed early, gets up at four in the morning. He gets a lot of her work done really early. I have another friend who just lights up at midnight and she gets her best work done from midnight to 3:00 AM. So the specifics may be different from person to person. So think about. In each of these areas of balance, uh, what the universal truths are and then how that applies more specifically to you. So just as a review, I’m going to go through some of these areas of balance. And just remind you of what they are. And if you have a notebook, if you want to take that out and take some notes, because we will be referring back to these areas of balance. Again, later, if you listen to the last podcast and you have your reflections from last time, you can pull those out and we will refer back to them. But if you, if you’re just listening to this for the first time, he might want to just jot down the different areas of balance. Um, cause we’ll just refer back to those a little bit. So the first was spirituality and values, which is aligning your thoughts and actions with truth. Next is emotional fitness, which is letting go of things you cannot control. Forgiving yourself and others and having a positive outlook. Then health and physical creating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Next is learn and create, which is studying topics of interest, creating things you value and developing new skills. Then relationships and family. How do you strengthen valued relationships? And financial self-reliance, which is maximizing independence. Next is service help others making a difference. And finally organize unify. Which is improving your surroundings. And I know I went through those pretty quickly. They are probably in the show notes as well. Um, if you can refer back to those, if you want to look at those again. But we began all of this with awareness and reflection in each area of your life, because really we, our goal here is to help you to become your best self and in order to make positive change. It really needs to start from the inside and needs to, we need to work on the, go from the inside out and, and really create awareness there. When you start from the inside, you can really get clear on what you value, where you are and what you want. And then you can get more clear on. What w what goals will be best for you, which leads us into our topic today, which is choosing goals and milestones. So it’s important to have something meaningful to work towards. Something that gets you excited. Something that gets you out of bed in the morning, keeps you going throughout the day. And something, maybe it’s a project that you’re working on or a new skill that you’re learning. And I really think that this is a key to happiness. Last time. I talked about a time in my life when I’d kind of lost that or that joy of life. And I had to, I discovered that I had not been, um, D. I had given up on some personal development that I used to do. And when I intentionally set some goals that were meaningful, meet meaningful for me. That joy really increased. Today we are going to talk about. Uh, some ways to choose the right goal for you because often choosing the right goal is the biggest hurdle. And we will also talk about some reasons that goals often fail. Our goals are an important part of our growth and progress and, um, choosing that right goal that’s in alignment with what you’ve determined you value is really key. So one reason that we fell at setting goals is oftentimes the goals that we set are externally based. So maybe we feel like we need to have something someone else has or look like someone else looks. Or maybe we think that somebody else wants us to do or be a certain way, but it’s not really coming from the inside. And so we’re not really committed to that goal. So that’s why we start with awareness and that’s why we have gone through each of these. Um, areas. So awareness and reflection. Pre-seed setting goals. So go back to the list that you made before with each of your areas of balance, where you really looked at where you are and where you want to be, and think about what actions or what goals or what projects might close that gap between where you are and where you want to be. And this is a time to just brainstorm. Don’t filter yourself. Imagine that you have all the help that you need all the time that you need all the money that you need, all the resources that you need. Just don’t filter yourself and brainstorm potential activities or goals in each of those areas of balance. So you can just do this in a notebook right now. Um, in my planner. I have an areas of power balance, a planner here where it has each of those areas of balance, where you can brainstorm. Some things. So just this last quarter, just to give you some examples, um, in health and physical. Uh, I thought about. What was kind of blacking there and I’ve been really good about doing a cardio. A workout class, Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but I wasn’t doing any strength training at all. And I also. One day to be able to work out with my husband. So I put down in here to start exercising on Tuesdays and Thursdays and going to the gym with my husband. And that is something that we added this last quarter. That’s been really great. I also added here having some healthier meal plans, which I did. And then I also put in here to go to bed earlier to go to bed by 11:00 PM because I found that I was just dragging the next day when I was getting to bed too late. And this getting to bed by 11:00 AM, 11:00 PM really made a big difference. And then up here in financial self-reliance, this is where I put some of my work goals. And starting this podcast was one of those goals that’s on here. And then down here for organized beautify. Sometimes I will write something down and then just transfer it from planner to planner because it’s just not the right time to do it. And one of those things was to refinish my dining room table that I had wanted to do for quite some time that I got done this last quarter. So, this is just a way to brainstorm things that are of value to you so that you’re setting some goals that are moving you for your forward in areas that you want. Uh, I really like to set home improvement goals or projects in my yard and my house, because for me, they are stress-relieving. A few years ago, most both of my parents passed away unexpectedly. And after my mother died just seven short weeks after my father passed away, I was grief stricken and I was just having a hard time dealing with it. And I have been wanting for some time to, uh, replace my kitchen table chairs and re uh, paint my table. And so at this time I went ahead and bought some chairs on a local classified site and I repainted those chairs and reapply fostered them and was painting my table. I remember my husband came downstairs and I was down there painting and he said, don’t you help a eulogy to write, do you have time to be doing this right now? And I said, honey, I have to do this right now. This is a way for me to process my grief and to. Just kind of work through this. Um, and I find a lot of times when my life feels like it’s just spinning out of control. If I just do a little small creative project. It really helps me take my mind off of that problem. And then I come back to that problem with fresh eyes, a more renewed, and I worked through it much better. So for me, that’s one positive, um, of having some projects and goals and especially a creative project or goal that can keep you. Um, That can be a break for you and help you stay focused. My daughter is a freshman in college right now, and she has four different fish tanks and she likes to research research what fish go well together. And she likes to landscape her different fish tanks and, and look at what plants can work well. So it can be a self-sustaining environment. And for her, this is a positive distraction and a great break from school that gives her a little break from university life and helps her handle that stress. So look at ways that, um, goals can also help you handle your stress. So would you like another idea on how to choose the right goal for you? Think about what would create meaning for you, your family or your community. I have a friend who had a friend whose husband was killed. By a distracted driver who is texting. And this friend has made a goal to teach. To educate her friends and her family about the dangers of texting and driving. And for her this, she likes to just in a real positive, gentle way. Um, post on her social media about the story of her friend, or maybe some statistics that might be helpful. Like I remember one statistic, I think it was, if you take your eyes off the road for three minutes or sorry, three seconds, it’s like the equivalent of going the distance of a full football field and what could happen during that time? So just by creating this awareness. For her, this is a real meaningful goal that she hopes will save lives. Another idea is to imagine an ideal day. Think about how you would spend your time. Who would you be spending your time with? What might you change or what might be different? Well, my, to add to your life or take away. You could even look at an ideal what your ideal life might look like a year from now, or even five years from now. If you’re feeling frustrated and unfulfilled in your job, you might imagine in. Ideal job. And then you can think backwards about what skills or education might be necessary in order to get that job. And then you could set some smaller goals or projects that could lead towards that goal. Or maybe you don’t have the energy level that you want, or there’s something about your appearance that frustrates you, or some changes that you want to make. And you could set some goals around that about something that you want to change. I had a client who was frustrated with her health and her appearance and wanted to make some changes. So she joined a group that helped her make some better eating choices and had some accountability. And she also started exercising regularly. And then she came up with this idea to help keep herself motivated. She decided that she would plan a big reveal party. Where she would invite friends and family that she hadn’t seen for a long time and introduce her new look. So whenever she was feeling like going back to her old habits of eating junk food or blowing off her workout, she would think about this. She would just imagine this big reveal and just imagine the happy, surprised looks on people’s faces as she. Um, showed off her new look. So this really kept her going and she did end up losing the weight she wanted and she scheduled that big reveal party. She went and she got her hair done and she bought a new outfit that she loved and had her party as planned. And she said it was everything that she imagined it would be. So this really helped her. Get excited about her goal. So another reason that work or that goals don’t work sometimes times is that we either set too big of a goal for a particular timeframe, or we set too many goals at once and overwhelm ourselves. I have a workshop. That’s my success choice, challenge, workshop, where we had it’s a 12 week workshop, a weekly workshop where we work through. Uh, three month goals. And I really feel like three months is a great timeframe for a goal because it’s long enough that you can really see some significant results. But it short enough that it doesn’t seem too overwhelming. And I personally liked to set one to three personal goals and one to three professional goals to try to be accomplished within that three month time period. So this whole idea was born from. A time when my husband and I purchased a fixer up for. A fixer upper home. So as you know, I like to improve myself and my world. And one way that I like to improve my world is by fixing up homes and improving a neighborhood. So my husband and I have a fixed up five houses. Uh, so far. And this particular house. Uh, had been on the market for over a year, the yard was completely dead. The house had a lot of water damage and mold and other problems. And as we started working on this house, we quickly became overwhelmed. There just was so much to do that. We actually got kind of depressed and almost wanted to give up on the whole thing. So, what I decided to do is I thought, you know what? Let’s just break down everything that needs to be done into three month projects. And then we set a rule for ourselves that we could only look at the current project that we were working on. Or we could look on a password, look at a past project that we had done for motivation, but we didn’t allow ourselves to look at everything that needed to be done. And because we had broken out all of these projects and prioritize them, this really freed us up to be able to focus on just one project at a time. And then we blocked off time on our calendar too. Work on these projects. So one thing that helps, um, is. Besides just sending a three month goal. Is to break it down even further into one month milestones. So for another example, Um, so in our backyard, our yard. Um, terrorist or sloped down. And there was a big area that was just full of Juniper bushes. And it was a south facing, um, area. And so I thought it would be great for a garden and that this was just a lot of wasted space. So one of the project goals was to terrace that area to put in a garden. So to be on target for this three month goal. By the end of month one, we needed to have all of those Juniper bushes dug out and we needed to have decided on and purchased the terracing blocks. And then by the end of the second month, we needed to build this little root cellar building. Where after we had dug out all the Juniper bushes up next to the deck, there was a big drop off now. So we built a little building there. And that needed to be built by the end of the second month to be on target. And then by the end of the third month, we needed to build some stairs between that little building and the terrorist garden area. And then we needed to place those terracing blocks. So that helped break down a bigger three month project into one month milestones to help keep us focused and on track. So it’s important that. You block off time on your schedule so that you can work on these goals or projects that you’re working on. At the time of this particular remodel, my husband was working four, 10 hour days and he had Fridays off. So we would block off time every Friday and every Saturday to work on those improvements. So gradually project by project, we eventually had the home and yard that we wanted. So everyone has the same number of hours in a day. How intentional are you about scheduling those hours and putting in to your schedule? The things that are of value to you? If you look at your schedule, it is actually a reflection of what you do value. What you put spend your time on is obviously what you are valuing. If you say, for example, that you value exercising. But it’s nowhere on your schedule. Probably it’s not going to happen because it’s not scheduled. So if it’s something that you say that you value, it needs to be on your schedule. So. Goals are so important to help keep us moving forward. If what you’re doing, isn’t leading to the life you want, something needs to change. Think about what you need, want to take out of your life or what you want to add to your life. And if you take something from your life, you need to replace it with something. So you don’t leave a void. And if you add something to your life, something else needs to go. For example, if you like to unwind at the end of the day, by watching a TV show. But that one hour ends up turning into four hours every night. Maybe you could go ahead and unwind for that one show, but then discipline yourself and schedule in a block of time to work on a project or goal during those other three hours. And then you move forward to towards those things that you value. Goal’s give us direction and we feel so much happier when we have something meaningful that we’re working on. I love this quote by Margaret Thatcher that says, look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s a day when you’ve had everything to do. And you’ve done it. But we won’t sustain behaviors on what we should do. We have to make sure that we’re setting the right goal for us at the right time. So make sure you go through your review of your reflections and those eight areas of balance and think about. What would take you closer to your ideals? And then the second idea was to think about what creates meaning for you, for your family or for your community. And the third is to think of an ideal day or think of your ideal life a year or five years from now. And think about what goals could help. Bring about one of those ideals. Okay. So we do ripe meaning from the pursuit of meaningful goals, but pursuit is the key word here. We don’t always have control over our outcomes, but we do have control over our process. And so the journey is what is important. So regularly work on things that are, have meaning for you, but don’t get too hung up on the results. But focus on the process. So just to recap a little bit, we have our best chance of success when we are working on something that’s meaningful to us, as it relates to our values. And what’s important to us. If we don’t set too many goals at once, preferably one to three. Goals at a time. And block off time in your planner to schedule that time to work on those goals, make room for it. You may have to give up something for a short time. But make room for that goal on your schedule. Change is a process, not an event. And for me three month goals are ideal. Just that great amount of time to really see results, but not feel too overwhelming. John Norcross in his book chain, geology says 75 per cent of people maintain a goal for a week. Then gradually slip back to old behavior. So three month goals are ideal. I think that’s just kind of a good amount of time where you can really see results, but not feel too overwhelming. John Norcross in his book chain, geology says 75% of people maintain a goal for a week. Then gradually slipped back to old behavior. But research shows that almost all people who maintain new behavior three months make the change permanent. So change is a process, not an event. So it is important that we set up positive routines to help establish those goals. Because a lot of times we don’t accomplish our goals because we haven’t set up some regular routines to support that change. So in our next episode, we will talk about setting up routines. And helping to make them automatic. All right, you made it to the end. So now we will talk about your giveaway. We have two sponsor giveaways today. The first is, you know, how you want to eat, right? But it takes so long to meal plan. Get seven days of meal planning free and cook something healthy tonight. When you sign up for the seven day challenge with card salad. Our second sponsor is the success choice. Do you want to start implementing positive habits right away? The success choice planner and the success choice, challenge workshop are the perfect tools. Say 15% [email protected] and you suck. The coupon code habits for humans. Again, in our next episode, we will talk about how to create habits and routines around watching have determined is, are important to you. The things that are important to you and how to make these activities automatic. Thank you so much for joining us for this habits for humans, the podcast that teaches you how to build an amazing life by developing intentional habits. Remember to check our show notes, to get all of your free gifts. And thank you in advance for a positive review. Have a wonderful day.