Ep 30: Setting Goals that Light Us Up and Turn Us On

It's not just about setting goals, it’s about achieving them. We deep-dive into how to break down your ambitions into manageable steps and stay motivated throughout the process. Discover the power of "temptation bundling" to get you through the necessary tasks, and hear about the significance of writing down your goals as a means to solidify your commitment to them. Tune in to learn, grow, and empower yourself with the power of setting and achieving goals.

What you'll learn in this episode:

How to fragment goals into manageable steps and maintain motivation
The art of transforming obstacles into stepping stones for growth
How to transform obstacles into opportunities
What it means to enjoy the journey of achieving your goals

Mentioned in this episode:

How to connect with Marie:

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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello my friends, and welcome to episode number 30 of the Bloom Your Mind Podcast. 30, that’s exciting. I feel like it's so appropriate that episode 30, like the number 30, is such a big round, momentous number. It feels like that anyways. And the subject for today is a keystone to anything and everything else that we do in making our ideas real inherent to that whole concept of having an idea.

The idea then turns somehow either intentionally or not intentionally, into kind of a goal that we work towards. And today we're talking about goals and outcomes and how to think about them in the most effective way that's maybe a little different than how you've thought about them before.

So, and when I talk about this as a keystone, what I mean is I always picture like a bunch of bricks making an archway that's a doorway, that you walk through, and that keystone is the middle brick that holds all the other ones in place, and you can't really have the arch in its integrity, stay intact without that keystone. So, when I say that this concept is keystone, I mean, it's like in order to really take anything from concept to fruition, take an idea from out of your head and into the world.

Goals are really pivotal to all of that. This week, I have had a woman that used to be my colleague and is now in charge of this really progressive, inclusive, conscious denomination of churches in Canada. She's responsible for, 2,500 congregations across the country, the very large country of Canada.

Her name is Carmen Landsdowne and she's been here in San Diego staying with me for the last couple of days. She's a really amazing woman on all the levels, heart, soul, and an absolutely brilliant mind. And actually, an interesting and amazing thing about her is that she is the first indigenous woman to lead a religious denomination in Canada.

She has a PhD and she's the first indigenous woman. So, she brings a lot of clout and a lot of just an incredible new vision to this role and to this huge leadership position. And she asked that my partner and I help her design, create, and lead public workshops across Canada to help people use future thinking and goal setting.

To understand how they can thrive as individuals in the community and in the world. I've talked a lot about some of the futurism ideas in Future Trippin’ the episode Future Trippin’ and Future Trippin’ 2. I made two episodes about it because there's so much rich content that we can find around future thinking and episodic future thinking.

And a lot of the content I shared in there was based on a book called Imaginable by Jane McGonigal. So, go back to those episodes if you're interested in that. And this idea of episodic future thinking of mental rehearsal that athletes use that is just data proven in many different fields.

We also do this work in the Bloom Room in my group program. And we do this in this human thriving workshop. So, over the last couple of days, we designed the workshop, the workbook. We've planned this whole event that my partner, Maggie and Carmen and I will be leading around Canada over the next three years.

And we will also be offering this workshop free to all of you at some point. So that will be coming in the next six months or so. Just as a fun fact, I am wildly obsessed with sparkling water. I love it, but I don't like the waste aspect of all of those cans and also what is in all of the flavors, right?

And so, I have my husband, really is great at saying yes to my wild ideas, and he said yes to me having a tap in our counter with a kegerator, with filtered, carbonated water in it. And you know that we got some good work done over the last couple days designing this workshop because the three of us, my partner and Carmen, my business partner, and Carmen and I went through an entire keg of sparkling water and a half during this think tank of the three of us doing this for two days.

So, with that much sparkling water or what my kids call spicy water, you know that this workshop's going to be good. And I share this example because it's a great intro into today's topic. If I had never set the goal to leave my career, get my certification in cognitive behavioral coaching and neuroplasticity and integrative change work on the subconscious level, those two things, I never would've started this podcast.

I never would've started my social media presence, and Carmen never would've known what I was up to right now. We were coworkers a long time ago and were, you know, friends and social media, but by seeing what I was up to through my work and posting it, she reached out to me. She said, hey, can you help me make this idea real?

Of this human flourishing workshop to lead throughout the country? So, setting those goals and reaching those goals for me on a personal level has created a domino effect of calling in opportunities and people that are a direct match for what I most want to do in the world with my life, which is to help humanity thrive.

It's pretty cool. So, let's talk about goals and why they matter. And if you're like so cringey about goals, give this a listen because I'd like to entice you to think about this. Are you enticed? I want to entice you to think about this in a new and different way. That's kind of fun. So, first of all, your brain is a pattern recognition mushing.

It has to be. We move through the world with unconscious bias, steering our subconscious mental function all day long because that's necessary. The most recent data point that I can find is Emma Young in New Scientist Magazine says that 95% of brain function is unconscious. Really? Let that sink in. We think we're in charge here, y'all, but 95% of what our brain is doing all day long is unconscious.

The decisions we make all day, our main unconsciously, and our brain is steering us all day long, like a navigation system on autopilot. Unconsciously, it's comparing all the things that we encounter throughout our day, throughout our lives, to this catalog in our brain of all the things we've experienced so far.

I like to think about why this is necessary with this example of driving a car. So, for instance, our brains can't function without our subconscious function because. We do too many things. We have to know how to do something like pour a glass of water on autopilot or get into our car automatically, know how to turn on the car, not have to figure it out every time, right?

Automatically know to adjust the rear-view mirrors to, to sort of build off the experiences that we've had in the past in knowing where blind spots are in my driveway. Someone could, I live in an urban setting so someone could walk across a sidewalk behind me. I drive out really slowly. And that's because of this subconscious pattern that I have.

And because I've done this many times and I have all of this ingrained, most of that is happening on a subconscious level. And I can also be thinking about where I'm going or answering a question that one of my kids is asking me or be on a phone call. So, we can do multiple things and our brain has to be able to do multiple things in order to function.

We would get flooded and overloaded if it didn't. So, it has this catalog in our brain. Out of necessity and is navigating us through our lives, through this default programming. But that programming becomes problematic because a lot of that programming is from childhood in that first seven years or maybe 14 years, from seven to 14 years, when we really learned all of our initial sort of like foundations of how we perceive the world, including shame events and traumatic events.

All of that internal catalog and programming is based on how we've been socialized to perceive ourselves and others, and in the United States and many other countries. That cultural socialization is really influenced by patriarchal structures, by the patriarchy, by capitalism, which we've internalized by whiteness and by many other things.

And so, a lot of that 95% unconscious, sort of filtering is us filtering things based on these ways of being socialized that are not very helpful to us, or in my opinion, they're not. Also in the episode, the Good Day Spray. That one's pretty fun. You can go back and listen to it. But I talk a lot about how we also filter information through paradigms that we have inside our heads based on what we've been taught about the roles that we play.

So, what does a good mom look like for me? What does a good leader look like for me? What is a woman supposed to do not supposed to do? And so, our brain is based on those subconscious patterns, filtering reality through those and making decisions for us through those. And that catalog in our minds is constantly comparing what we're currently encountering and experiencing with our past, with what we know to be possible because we've experienced it before.

So, let's say you're moving through life, making decisions, thinking about yourself and others and what's possible with all these filters that come naturally. But what's going to happen if that's how we do? Well, we're going to continue the culture that we've been ingrained with. We're going to keep on keeping on.

We're going to perpetuate the stuff that we've experienced before. I have a colleague that talks about this. Her name's Brooke Castillo, and she talks about this, whereas just imagine that you're a fish and you're swimming in a fishbowl that's submerged in the ocean. You with me? You can't get out of the fishbowl, but you can see through the glass, and you think you're swimming in the whole ocean.

But as you swim around, you're going to keep bumping into those glass walls. You're going to swim around that same small space that you know and that you've experienced so far in your life. So, you might think that you're swimming in the whole ocean, because you can kind of see the big blue out there. But, because you can't really see those fishbowl walls, you're actually keeping yourself inside the confines of what you already know to be possible, have experienced or have seen because of that 95% of your brain that's filtering out anything that doesn't match your existing programming.

So, let's look at that. For me, that existing programming before I start questioning it and looking at it and setting goals to change it, which we're going to get to in a minute, but for me that would be perpetuating people pleasing, being a peacemaker, making sure everybody is happy and nobody's going to get up upset, taking care of all the logistics of home and work and family life.

Because I'm a woman and a capable one, it would be putting everyone else's needs above my own. It would be overworking all the time, not speaking up. When I see, harm being done to myself specifically or others, if I were going to continue all that programming and performing at the highest level I can in every way that I'm expected to and meeting all expectations.

Those are some of the shadows, like the gritty, nasty shadows that I've been programmed with. I don't want that. And let's acknowledge if I follow that internal programming. It also leads me to be a great listener, to love human beings, to believe that I can make change in the world, to be a leader, a scholar, a creative, a change maker, and have a lot of fun and be silly to love adventure.

So, those are some of the amazing things that my programming taught me. You know, there's like the shadow side and the beautiful light side. But if we keep rolling through with this, if I roll through life reacting to the world that happens to me based on what comes naturally, I will repeat all of that 100% of that, and I won't do anything different.

I'll repeat the positive stuff, whether I want to continue to have all of those positive traits or not. Maybe I want to switch some of them up. Maybe I don't want to be a good listener. Like once we question them, we choose. Or we can choose, and I'll also perpetuate the shadow stuff. It's all built in. It's all cooked in.

So, I can do that, and I can stay the same, and I can have my future look a lot like my past and live out my programming, the good parts, the bad parts. Let it all happen on autopilot. Perpetuate the cultures that I've grown up in. But I don't want to do you, I want more. And every person that I coach and comes to my programs and most of the people that I know want more too.

They want the choice about what they're going to perpetuate and what they're not going to. They want to choose what's in their future because the future is our property. It's ours to design. And when we do design what we want to be in that future, when we set goals, and expand our possibilities for what could be in that future.

It changes our internal programming. We start to break through those fishbowl walls. It puts a new address in the navigation system of our brains. When we get curious about what we want for the world, for our lives, for our people, for our communities, we start expanding ourselves by searching out and finding new examples of what might be possible for us that don't exist yet.

In the catalog of what we've seen before or experienced, we start having ideas that are like, is this possible? Let me find someone that can expand my belief in what's possible. Somebody else has done this before. We search them out. And when we do that, when we set goals that are based in the wild dreams for what we want in our life, then we get to keep the best parts of ourselves and ditch the shadow parts that are blocking us.

We get to intentionally decide what we're going to do and how we're going to move through life and here's how it works. When we set these goals and visions for what we want, which I'm going to teach you how to do at the end of this episode, our opportunity bias kicks in. If I set a goal for swimming with whales, and then I hear someone talk about a place where whales are swimming.

It's going to catch my brain's bias function, and I'm going to get intrigued and listen in. Whereas if I haven't set that goal, I'm just going to be like, that's cool, and move on. Our unconscious bias is going to see all of the things that we're experiencing in the world that match the goal that we have in mind.

And the more we think about that goal and the more we delve into it and let it flourish and let it sort of take up space, we imagine the goal and what it would be like. Our unconscious bias sees all of these little details that match the different parts of that goal, and there we go, changing the rudder on the ship of our life and moving in a little bit of a different direction towards the address that we put in the navigation system through the goals that we set and the dreams that we have.

Instead of navigating based on all of our random past experiences, we didn't choose you with me. The other thing that happens aside from opportunity bias and unconscious bias that kick in to support our goals is that we unblock energy that stops us when we have a goal and we're moving towards it.

Moving towards it, and we see ourselves blocked by something. The very process of setting goals allows us to see what we're doing that's blocking ourselves, and then we can work through that. And then we become more and more free and expanded and we shed the ways that we're keeping ourselves blocked and small from what we really want.

And as we do these future simulations, as we do the meditations on what we want our future to be, and as we engage in this work, we actually activate our brain's neuroplasticity. We can reprogram the feelings, the thoughts that our brain automatically associates with our future and with possibility.

We're giving our brains a new navigating system to filter everything by. It's not like we're going to get rid of. All that 95%, right? But we're starting to change and morph everything to be a little bit more of what we want. And over time we can make some very significant changes to that navigation system, to that catalog in our brain.

The setting a goal is the first step to turning any idea into reality.

So, one thing I want to say before I teach you about how to set these goals is that goals, the, that the pull point of setting goals is not to measure your progress. There's another episode I'm going to mention here, which is, look how far you've come, which is based. In a book called The Gap and the Gain, which I recommend to anybody that's interested in this concept.

But this whole point is that goals are never to measure progress. We should always measure how we're doing, measure our progress based on how far we've come, based on where we started. And I'm not going to go into all of the reasons why that are brain science proven that's a better way to measure to actually effectively accomplish our goals is to measure against how far we've come, but you can go back to that episode to learn more about it.

Goals, the reason we have goals is for navigation, to steer our life towards what we want, is to have the life experience we want, and is to be the person that we want. Goals are how we drive our life and how we expand into the most beautiful, free, powerful, turned-on expressed version of ourselves that can do great things in the world or just in our own lives, can feel at home in our own skin.

And when I talk about goals, it doesn't have to be like starting a social movement. It could be changing the world through starting a new social movement, but it also could be learning new recipes to try at home or sleeping more, going to bed at consistent times every night.

All the goals are helpful, all the goals are good. So, let's talk about how it works. First, you set a goal, what do you want? And you want to state your goal as measurable. Present tense and specific. So let me give you two examples. Here are two goals that I have right now. I'm going to say it's, listen to how this is present, tense, measurable, and specific.

It's June of 2024. I have helped over 50 women turn their ideas into real things to make their lives and the world a better place through my group program, the Bloom Room. So that's super specific, measurable. It's got an end date of June 2024, but when I read it, it's present tense so I can feel how I feel in my body. That, I'm so excited and proud and happy and this is what I want to be doing with my days.

I'm helping these women get unblocked and tap in to making their visions for what they want the world to be real. Here's another one, it's December of 2024, and I have gone on a trip to go swimming with humpback whales. Bam. Done. So those are two goals that I have right now. So, the next step after you state your goal as measurable, present tense and specific is that you answer the question why do you want it?

So, for me, with these two examples, I'll say the first one of the Bloom Room serving over 50 women by June of 2024. Within the next year, I want to serve 50 women. I want to say that the reason I want it is because it's my calling. It's in line with my mission for who I am and the world, what my life is about my North Star.

And I want to help as many women as I possibly can to use their time here on Earth in a way that's truly how they want it to be in this life. And that's fueled by. Power that is shedding these old paradigms that come from, you know, the patriarchy and capitalism and it's just full of freedom and electricity.

Like, I want to light women up and help them turn on their ideas and themselves so that we can just, you know, heal all this BS for ourselves and for our kids. That's just what I want. That's what I'm doing. Is it in line with my values? That's the next question. Yes. It's in line with contribution.

Which is one of my top values, and it's in line with love. It's in line with honesty. These are some of my top values, and then the other one, swimming with whales. Why do I want it? Because I've wanted to swim with whales for decades. I'll talk more about that later. And is it in line with my values? Yes.

One of my values is adventure. I like joy, adventure. I like to call it wonder fun, that sense of wonder and aliveness when you're experiencing things in the world in a body in the world. So, that one's super in line with my values too. And then the next thing you do after you state it as measurable, present tense and specific, and then you answer why do you want it and isn't in line with your values?

Then you get committed to the goal. Now, there is tons of data to show that the number one thing that makes the difference in the people that accomplish a goal and the people that don't is commitment number one thing. So, what I like to say to people is, you can change the timeline of your goal, but not the goal itself.

You commit to the goal like a marriage, like you are married to it, you are doing it. Once you really decide on it, you commit. And why? Well, like, let's think about this whale thing. Let's think about me swimming with whales. So, so many things might get in the way of me swimming with whales. So many things will be pressing and need my attention.

It'll be urgent. There'll be board meetings for the school. There'll be people getting sick in my family. There'll bell lots of work and people making requests, and there'll be expenses and there will be other celebrations and lots of things that other people ask me to do all of those things that I love, that I want in my life, but that will get in the way of my goal.

But swimming with whales has literally been my dream for decades, and I am committed to giving that one thing to myself. Y'all, once I was in Hawaii and Maui, where my husband lived for a while, and I went underwater and my husband was underwater, we had snorkels on, and all of a sudden, I heard the sound.

And my whole body, just electricity went through it. I was like, what? Under the water? I heard whales singing and I looked over under the water at my husband and he's like, he sees my body being like, what? And I point up to the surface and we both pop up to the surface and I said, did you hear that? And he says, it was just magical.

I started dreaming from the perspective of a whale. I just knew I had to do this, so I'm doing it. I love humpback whales and I'm going to do something called temptation bundling with it by making it my reward for being done with my website and my workbook for the Bloom Room, which is launching this fall.

So, I'm going to sort of reward myself with that temptation of working. I'm going to use the temptation of working on my trip to go swim with whales as a motivation to get through some of the work that I need to do. It's a little trick. So, then the next thing we do after we work through why, after we really get committed and decide why we're committed, is we write down our goal somewhere and we read it every single day.

If you do go back to the future trip in episodes, there are some mental rehearsals there where I walk you through doing a mental rehearsal. There is a lot of data I've been reading more and more studying more and more about this, how we can work on the conscious level, but because 95% of our brain is operating on the unconscious level, a lot of what we call into our lives comes from the subconscious beliefs that we have and the things that we're thinking on that level underneath our consciousness.

So, doing mental rehearsals, reprogramming ourselves, really doing these deep meditations and deep visualizations of the future that we want, this is all rocket fuel to calling in on what we truly want. So, we can write it somewhere every day.

And then we imagine it in deep detail. You're doing visualizations. So go learn how to do that on Future Trippin’ if you want. Then the next thing, and we're almost done here, is working backwards. So, you've got that goal that is stated in the present tense and it's measurable, and you're going to set milestones.

So, if I have a goal for one year from today to have served 50 women in the Bloom Room, what do I need to have done by like three quarters of that? You know, what do I need to have done by April, let's say, of next year? And then what do I need to have done by December? What are my milestones? What do I need to have done by three months from now?

So, I'm working backwards. If I'm serving 50 women, how many will I serve next year between January and June? And how many will I serve this fall to get me to that number of 50? And what do I need to have prepared so that they have an incredible experience, and we are really successful in turning these ideas into real things.

So, I'm going to break down those milestones and then break down the milestones into smaller steps and write down everything that I need to do to get there. Okay, so that's your next step. So, here's a recap. You set your goal, you decide on your goal or goals, the ones that light you up and turn you on, and you put them in the present tense and make them measurable and specific.

Then you ask yourself, why do I want this? Why do I want these goals? Do I want them because it's coming from my true, authentic self? Is this coming from what my spirit wants to do in the world? From my heart, from my deep longing, from the magic that's like deep inside me, or from some programming? Does this goal feel in line with the essence of who you were as a kid before all the programming and the shame and the acculturation and everything else, the roles that you identified with?

Is it coming from that stuff or is it coming from your deep, authentic, magic, spiritual, or whatever you believe that self, that is just you and the world. Why do you want it? How will you need to think and feel differently than you have in the past in order to get to your goal? Okay, and then the next step is to decide why are you a hundred percent committed to the goal?

Then write the goal down. Read it every day and start doing some visualization for you having accomplished that future. Then you break it down into milestones. And then break the milestones down into all your action steps, and then get them plugged into your calendar. Then you're going to meet me here next week on The Bloom Your Mind episode number 31 for our next step in the Bloom Girl summer.

Here we are blooming our ideas, y'all. And next week we're going to talk about that next step, which is to imagine the sort of shadow future of your goal, of the possibility you're creating, and anticipate the obstacles that might get in the way of your goal. When we do that in advance, then we'll be ready for them.

There's a book that I'll introduce next week called The Obstacle is The Way which is, I've mentioned some of this before, but I've never gone deep into it on the podcast. It's based in Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, and a whole bunch of other great philosophers that really help us to see obstacles as a way forward.

So, that we can fail like we mean it, so that we can iterate and redesign and try again so that we can see the things that are in our way as just things to jump over or things to learn from or a new way forward that we wouldn't have had the opportunity to take before. As we do this, we really get present to be in the part of the process that we're in, to enjoy the ride, to enjoy the actual experience of expansion and unblocking ourselves and not wanting to just get to the end goal but enjoying the process of getting there.

And we'll learn how to turn every obstacle into the way forward. So, that's what I've got for you today, my friends. Enjoy this week as you set a goal and you answer the four or five questions I gave you, and I'll see you here next week.

Thanks for hanging out with me friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.

Bloom Your Mind

Ep 30: Setting Goals that Light Us Up and Turn Us On

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