The Vibrant Life Podcast with Life Coach Kelly Tibbitts
72: Goal Setting Reset
Jan 09, 2024
Kelly Tibbitts
Our 2024 "Goal Setting Reset" workshop is a hands-on guide to help us creating tangible steps that move us towards our dreams. Goal setting is an ongoing practice, not a big list you make once in January and hold yourself rigidly to it.
Main points:
Notice the areas of your life and your dream for each one
Pick one to focus on as your priority
Write that priority down, then cut it in half
Keep cutting in half until the action steps feel doable
Match your action steps with your time and energy boundaries
Our 2024 "Goal Setting Reset" workshop is a hands-on guide to help us creating tangible steps that move us towards our dreams. Goal setting is an ongoing practice, not a big list you make once in January and hold yourself rigidly to it.
Main points:
Notice the areas of your life and your dream for each one
Pick one to focus on as your priority
Write that priority down, then cut it in half
Keep cutting in half until the action steps feel doable
Match your action steps with your time and energy boundaries
Welcome to the Live a Vibrant Life podcast. I'm Life Coach Kelly Tibbets and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness so that you can invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:
Hey friends, welcome to the 2024 Goal Setting Workshop. Whether you are watching this as a video and using the workbook or you're listening to me on the podcast, I want you to know how excited I am that you've chosen to set aside a few minutes at the beginning of the year to notice what's important to you, make one to two small decisions that are going to move you forward this year. I can't wait to do this process with you. Our goal setting reset process is intended to be different. I don't know about you, but every year I feel like we are bombarded to just burn everything down and start over. If your meal plan wasn't working before, use this green powder and buy this expensive exercise equipment and join this gym and, at the same time, change everything about your financial life and change everything about all your relationships. The reality is that that's not how life works for most of us. Generally, we have consistent results with consistent small practice steps. One of the things I heard last year that I really do want to apply to my life is the incredible value that happens when we dedicate 90 minutes a day of our very best energy to our most important goal for 90 days. I think of a friend who joined the gym with me a few years ago and 90 minutes a day for 90 days, her body really was transformed. I never made that 90 minute a day commitment and I did see a lot of change, but not the level she did. When I look at my own life, part of that is because I currently don't hold any space in my life for 90 minutes a day of new best energy going in any direction. I'm living a pretty full life. I want to make the small steps that are necessary to move me forward in my own dreams, and it is a goal of mine to give my very best energy every day to my most important dreams. So what is the difference between dreams and goals and action, steps and plans? Well, the quote that I'm using and again the author is unknown, but it says a dream written down becomes a goal, a goal broken down into steps becomes a plan and a plan backed by action becomes a reality. So let's take this apart for a few minutes and, if it's possible, you can use the workbook that came along with this or just grab a piece of paper and let's take a few minutes, set some intentions, make some decisions and decide to move our goals forward this year.
Speaker 2:
So the first step is to notice what your dreams are. One of the tools that I've used when I'm coaching clients is we draw a circle and we divide that circle into a bunch of pie slices, and those slices represent the different areas of your life you, your body, your soul, your mind, your finances, your relationships with that person that you have the one to one connection with, with family, with children, with work, friends, with friends outside of work, for your home, for the places you want to go and visit. There's so many areas of life that are important. The first thing to do is to notice what's your dream for you and your emotional energy. What's your dream for your finances? What's your dream for that relationship with your parent, your child, your spouse, a close friend? Taking the time to just even notice what your dreams are would really serve you. You could pause this podcast or this workshop and just take a moment and say what are my dreams financially, spiritually, relationally, in my home, at my work, with that purpose filled dream and mission that's inside my soul. Take a few moments to even write them down and once you've noticed your dreams, let's pick one. Maybe you want to say the next three months, the 90 minutes a day for 90 days. It's going into my marriage. It's going into my relationship with that person that I really care about. It's going into work so that I can create a new financial result. Choose one and once you've got that dream circled and written down, let's decide what the goal is. Now. One of the best gifts we can give ourselves is to dream really big and create a goal and then back that goal up.
Speaker 2:
One of my favorite coaches says we're overestimating what we can do in the short term and underestimating what we can do in the long term. So if you take that dream and you move the success date out to three years from now, and then you cut that goal in half for 18 months, and then you cut it in half again for nine months and you cut it in half again for five months, four months, three months, and just keep cutting it in half, cutting it in half. So say I wanted to be somebody who's 20 pounds less in my weight and 10% stronger in what I can do. If I chose that goal for three months from now and I didn't have the time or the energy to do it, it would probably be pretty hard to do it.
Speaker 2:
My goal, my dream, is that I'm gonna be strong and flexible and healthy at 75. I love watching Lanbuter talk about this, these blue zones around the world. So I have a dream for when I'm 75. If I just leave it out there, without any action steps, it's not highly likely that I'm going to achieve it. So then I have to keep breaking down the goals and I'll tell you one of my very smallest goals, my little small practice steps, is every single day to go up and down, to sit on the floor and get back up without using my hands. It's something I saw somewhere that said that's one way that you're using the muscles you need to use and the flexibility that you need to have so that when you're getting older, you can stay in the kind of shape that allows you to keep being healthy and moving. So what am I going to do? I'm gonna set a dream I wanna be healthy and strong at 75. Then I'm gonna set a goal for three years from now, for 18 months from now, for nine months from now, for three months from now, for next week. I'm gonna have little, small goals that I want to achieve and I'm going to remember, it's easier to achieve that goal in the long term if I have the small practice steps that will get me from where I am to where I wanna go.
Speaker 2:
So you've written down your dream and you've written down a goal, and now we need a plan. What are you going to do on Mondays and Thursdays and Saturdays and what are you not going to do on Wednesdays? So in my program we have a course where we align our time and our energy. Many people have free time at two o'clock in the morning, but it's not a good fit for their energy. So we try to align our time and our energy. The plan is that our dream is so important we wanna show up. When we say that it's the time to show up, with the same intention as if we said yes to a friend who said, hey, would you go pick up my child at the bus stop, I'm gonna be there, I'm not gonna just let it slide. That's how I need to be with the small practice steps that I've decided to do, and so we're gonna decide the place and the time and the space. If I'm going to be working on my company, it's going to be Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays between one o'clock and five o'clock, the best energy of my day is going to go towards making sure that my coaching program is helping people remember how very important their dream is. That's why I do what I do. I want people to be living out the dream and the purpose and the mission that's in their soul. If I want to make sure that I'm strong and healthy, I'm going to need a time and a place in a space where I kneel prep, where I go and either do some flexibility training or some strength training.
Speaker 2:
Having the intention that my husband and I are gonna walk as many miles a week as we're gonna walk has been really important. It's an easier goal in the spring and summer. In the winter, we need a lot of thought, work and some support of each other to be like, yep, we're getting out there and we're walking in this weather. So you need a dream. You need to take the time and notice what your dream is. Your dream needs a goal. What's the goal for this week, next month, two years from now? And then? What are your small action? Steps, a time, a place and a space. That's what's going to move us forward. So let's talk a little bit about why goal setting feels like it's something that just ends up being a waste of time. Often in January, people are encouraging one another to set goals, and sometimes the goals that we set in January might be a better goal for May. If you're like I'm gonna go ride my bike three miles a day and you live in the Northeast and your road is covered in snow, that might not be an ideal goal for January.
Speaker 2:
One of the myths about goal setting is that goals should always be created in January, and that's not true. We talk a lot about pivoting. Because you set a goal, you create the small practice steps. When you get to the end of the week or the month or whatever that period is that you've made the action steps for, you have to review what worked, what didn't work, what would you do differently? Goals are not just braided every January and tied to the calendar year. We want to be able to be looking out at our dream and noticing the things that we want to do today, three months from now, six months from now, two years from now. Goal setting really should be a continual process and, like all of life, there's an ebb and there's a flow. There are seasons where we're leaning in and our energy is high and we're moving forward, and there are other seasons or weeks or days or hours where we're leaning back and it's more of a rest and a recovery.
Speaker 2:
Another myth about goal setting is that it's just a big list, that the best thing you can do grab whatever scrap piece of paper you have and just get everything out of your brain and go in the order that we wrote it down. That rarely works. I think it's a great thing to do a brain dump and just get everything that's in your brain onto a piece of paper, but then let's focus on one priority at a time. Priority means one, and I know if you're anything like me you've been in organizations where they start the year off with these are the nine priorities we're gonna focus on. That's not even the word, and we can't focus on nine things at once. When you're in my coaching community, I use this metaphor all the time Of on a Saturday morning. If you get up and there's nine different things you have to do, you can't drive to the post office and the gym and the library and the grocery store all at the same time. You'll get nowhere. You have to choose one. So let's focus on one priority. Let's write down all the dreams, all the goals, and then choose one thing with small practice steps.
Speaker 2:
Another myth about goal setting is that we create our goals once and then we're just going to hold on to it rigidly. If I decided three years ago, this is what I'm doing and I don't take any account into the reality of my life. I'm not being very kind and loving to myself and I've noticed along the way of being a mom, of being a leader, that the more kind and loving I am to myself, the more it then flows out into the people around me. So, instead of creating goals once and then holding on to it rigidly, what if we decide that we're living a life full of healthy habits? Instead of deciding our weight has to be a number, could we start with I have a body and I want to have a flexible body. I want to have a strong body, and here's a small healthy habit that's going to be cultivated and growing throughout the year. I think that's a more kind and loving path and I promise you, the more kind and loving you are to yourself, the more likely you are to follow through. Nobody can be mean to themselves and then move themselves forward. It's just not going to work.
Speaker 2:
And then finally I don't know where we've learned this, but I think most of us have heard this somewhere goals are a good yardstick to use as comparison or competition. Like life, is some zero sum game. If I get ahead of you, I'm winning and you're not. Now I love the philosophy of yoga that the light in me sees and honors the light in you. One of the most important qualities in my coaching company is that we are collaborative. We're generous, collaborative and we work expeditiously. Collaborative means I believe there's enough space and resources for everybody to succeed. So let's not use our goals in any way to compare or to have competition, but let's surround ourselves with those five people who are on the same path as us, who will be our encouragement and, at the same time, honor what's personal and unique to us Not looking to the left or right, but just really being our own best cheerleader.
Speaker 2:
So, if you can make a decision after listening to this podcast or following along as a workshop, what is most important today about your approach to goal setting? What's going to be effective for you? Maybe you're deciding this is the year you want to start writing them down, or this is the year you want an accountability buddy, or this is the year that you're going to use some kind of template like Trello or whatever it is that serves you to help notice why you're saying the yeses and noes that you're saying on a daily basis, and is there anything about the way you set goals in the past that you want to stop doing? That might be the most important decision today. I don't want to be unkind to myself. I don't want to be judgmental to myself. I want to judge my body today at 54 based on what it looked like at 19. How ridiculous is that? So what would you like to decide today that is effective for you, and is there anything you'd like to stop doing?
Speaker 2:
And if you would like a community to help spur you on, to cheer you on, to remind you that your purpose matters, I'd love to have you join my community. You can head over to kellytippetscom. You can find me on Facebook. I'm Kelly Tippets Life Coach. You could also email me at coaching at kellytippetscom. I would love to connect. I've created a community that's incredibly affordable. The time required is 30 minutes at a time. I believe that you are worth 30 minutes and if our live group coaching happens at a time of day where it's not best for you. I record everything so you can listen as it serves you, but I believe everybody should be in a community that helps them move forward in whatever goals are important to them. So thank you so much for joining us today. I hope that the goals that you set this year really do serve you and help create the vibrant life that you desire. I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for joining the Live a Vibrant Life Podcast. I hope our time together encourages and equips you to move forward in your vibrant life. To learn more, you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook or visit my website, kellytippetscom. See you soon.