11. How to Set and Achieve Goals
January is here, and I’m sure many of you have set New Year’s resolutions in the lead-up. And if you’ve done this year after year, finding yourself giving up just a few weeks in every time, fear not y’all. The statistics of people who actually accomplish their resolutions aren’t exactly compelling, so I’m here today to teach you a new way to set and achieve your goals.
The truth is there is a whole host of mistakes I see people make before they even get started working on their goals. And so to actually set an effective goal, there’s some prep work involved. Taking the time to assess the three pre-work steps I’m laying out for you here will set you up for success, and you’ll be amazed at the stunning results you’ll be able to create for yourself.
If you often second-guess your goals or stall on them, or simply feel overwhelmed or anxious when you think about what you’d like to achieve, this episode is for you. The tools I’m sharing with you this week are going to help you meet yourself where you are right now and build the habits that will lead to huge changes in your life.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If you want guidance in walking yourself through my deep dive strategy sessions, subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts! Make sure to follow the instructions here to receive an email from me with the PDF document!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The key differentiator between hitting your goal and giving up on it.
2 main things to consider when it comes to achieving goals.
Questions you can ask yourself to figure out your “why” behind the goals you’ve set.
The pre-work you have to do to set an effective goal.
Why being imperfect at your goal is the only option.
One tool that will help you create consistency.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
Leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to receive an email from me with my deep-dive strategy session PDF document so you can walk yourself through it!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week, we’re talking about goals; how to set them and how to achieve them.
You are listening to Love Your Job (Before You Leave It), the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving womxn who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. This week we’re talking about goals and I’m pretty excited. We’ll also touch briefly on resolutions. I realize it’s already January when you hear this, but I think that’s fine because I’m a firm believer that things don’t have to be perfect to be amazing. So even if you decide to start a resolution on today, the 6th, I think that is still really great and it could lead to an amazing outcome in the year, even if you didn’t start on January 1st.
So we’re going to talk about goals today, but before we get into that, I have a few things I want to tell y’all, and thing one is that we have reached more than 50 rates and reviews, which is so exciting. Thank you all so much, anyone who rated the podcast, and especially anyone who left a review. I am so deeply grateful to all of you.
Okay, so I’m going to announce the winners of the giveaway and I also want you to know that for everyone who entered the drawing who didn’t win, you’re going to be getting a special something from me in your inbox as well to help you have your own strategy session.
So I had so many people enter the giveaway and obviously they can’t all win because there’s only three slots, but I wanted everyone to be able to have a version of the experience, especially because I’m just so grateful that y’all left the reviews and took the time to upload them via my form.
And I wanted everyone who did that to get something. So what I did is I created a PDF of the questions I’m going to walk through with the people who won the giveaway on their 90-minute call. So I won’t get to work with everyone one-on-one to go through those, but everyone will have a chance to take those questions and sit down and think their way through.
And also for anyone who’s listening after the giveaway is now complete, you can still get this PDF doc so that you can walk yourself through these questions as well. And the way to do that is to go click on the same link that was for the giveaway, but I’m just going to change the form, so I won’t be doing another drawing.
But if you do a review and input it through there, you can still get a copy of the DIY version. I’ll just email that to you. So just make sure to put your email address when you submit your review through my Google form.
Okay, so here are the winners. The winners are Ruth Lefave, Kimberley Smoyer, and Emma Tack. Also apologies if I mispronounced any of your names. Again, Ruth Lefave, Kimberley Smoyer, and Emma Tack. And so the three of you should go look in your email. You should already have an email from me in there and if you don’t, just go check all the places that email sometimes get lost. You know, spam folders, all the whatnot.
And actually, for anyone else who’s on my email list, if you’re ever not getting emails from me, I send them out every week. Right now on Wednesdays. And so if you’re also not getting one a week, go look in your spam or wherever to make sure.
Because listen, those are packed with a lot of helpful, useful content for you and I want to make sure you actually get them. But I cannot control everyone else’s email inbox, much to my chagrin. So again, I’m so excited. To the winners, congratulations. I’m so grateful to all of you. Thank you so, so, so much for the reviews.
I would still love more reviews, and like I said, for anyone who’s leaving one in the future, I will have form up to submit and get a copy of the DIY questions to walk yourself through. It’ll be up probably for a couple months at least and then we’ll see if we want to do something else. I’m not really sure, so we’ll find out in the future. But for now, that’s what we have.
And then the other thing I wanted to tell y’all is I have just had such a week in my life y’all. So many things that just did not go according to plan, and I wanted to tell you briefly about that because this week we’re going to talk about goals. And we’re going to talk about all kinds of stuff related to them, but I also want to be sure to mention things go off the rails sometimes in ways that we can’t predict and in ways that we can’t control.
And we can still have our goals, our highly specific goals, our action plans, whatever the things are that we have, we can still work on them and do them and be doing a really good job. And sometimes we just have a week and things go off the rails. Sometimes we’re sick, sometimes - like this week our car broke down actually.
Then it was a whole thing with trying to get that sorted out, see if it was fixable. It was not. And then get a new car. So all of that meant that a lot of the stuff I was trying to do got moved around. So I think sometimes when that happens, it can be easy to be like, why even plan? Why even do all this stuff?
But it all can still get done and it can still be amazing, and it’s okay if we have to make some small changes and move things around sometimes. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth setting goals, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth making a plan.
Actually when we have a clear plan, it can be a lot easier to figure out how to do what we’re trying to do. Also, I just wanted to note, I realize that while I said that, y’all might have heard our dog in the background having some thoughts and feelings of his own.
I try to find the quietest time to record podcasts, but during quarantine, with a house full of people and several animals, y’all, it’s just - there’s not a super quiet moment. So it’s like, do I wait for the perfect moment of quiet to record my podcast? No, because that perfect moment’s never coming.
Do you all get a podcast with a little bit of background noise? Yes, you do. And I think that’s okay. I think it’s actually a perfect lesson for my podcast because the whole thing is about it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.
So please enjoy the sounds of Ranger, our dog, having so many feelings. He’s the cutest dog also. You would love him. Just so beautiful. Alright, without further ado, let us get into this week’s topic.
So it’s the first week in January and we are going to talk about goals, and we’re going to include resolutions in this category too because resolutions are a kind of goal and unlike goals in general, there are actually some really good stats about how many people succeed at New Year’s resolutions.
Depending on which study you’re looking at, something like 80% to 92% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions, often by mid-February. So that’s month two out of 12. And that means that only 8% to 20% of people are achieving their New Year’s resolutions.
This is not a compelling statistic if what you want is to have a big goal and work on it and accomplish it. But fear not y’all because of course, there is hope, and I’m here to teach you how to do it. I am a firm believer that people can do amazing things and goals can help you get there.
But how you design your goals and how you go about working on them really matters and that can be the difference between you hitting your goal and you totally giving up on your goal. When it comes to achieving goals, there are two main things to consider. One is how to set a goal and the other is how to do a goal.
The very first thing to ask yourself is why do I want to achieve this goal? What do I want that I think I’m going to get from getting this goal? How do I want to feel? What do I want to be able to believe about myself? Why do I think achieving this goal will help me feel that way? Why do I think achieving this goal will help me believe that thing about myself?
So often, we set goals without even slowing down enough to figure out why we even want them. But paying attention to this piece, really digging in and figuring it out helps us clarify which goals actually matter so we can go after those ones and which ones we actually don’t really want that much.
Once you’ve figured out your why, let’s move on to the goal itself. At this point, we need to create a clear goal. A lot of people try to achieve their goal without being clear on how they set it, and this is a recipe for your goal not getting done.
Because when we’re not clear about what the goal is or how to tell if we’ve achieved it, that makes it hard to work on over the long haul, and it also makes it hard to tell if we have even achieved it or not. People will say things like I want to be better at speaking up in meetings, or I want to work more efficiently next year, or I want to get better at managing my time.
This may give us a rough idea of what we want to accomplish, but in order to achieve our goal, we need the goal to be more specific about what it is we’re actually trying to do. Being more specific helps in many ways. For one, it clearly delineates what we mean by the goal and what we do not mean by the goal.
That helps us figure out which things are in line with the goal and which things are not in line. To put that in office terms, we figure out what is in scope for our goal and what is not in scope. The other reason that this is essential is that then we can also assess whether we’ve achieved the goal or not.
When we don’t have a clear goal, it’s hard to tell if we’ve achieved it or if we’re even making progress towards achieving it. And that uncertainty, that ambiguity can lead us to give up on the goal, it can lead us to feel like we’re failing at the goal, even if we’re making headway. Basically it’s just not helpful.
So make your goal specific, make it measurable. Be very clear what you mean by the goal and what you don’t mean. Ask yourself, what would it look like to achieve this? Like specifically, what would it look like? What would actually need to happen so I could tell I had arrived at the destination I’m aiming for?
Let’s say the goal is to manage your time better. What would that mean? How would you know you were managing your time better? How would you measure how well you’re managing your time? Would it mean being able to do a certain task in a certain amount of time? Would it mean arriving at all your meetings on time or even five minutes early? Would it mean honoring your lunch instead of working through it?
The point here is not to be perfectionistic. It’s not about doing things perfectly. It’s not about picking the perfect goal or perfectly explaining what the goal is. It’s simply about giving yourself clarity so you can understand what the goal is, what it’s not, and how you’ll know when you’ve achieved it.
Now, at this point, if people even get this far into making things specific, they’re off to doing the goal. But there’s actually one more step we want to do before we go work on the goal. I know it might seem like we’re doing a lot before we even get to the doing, but this pre-work is so worth it and will set you up to be so much more successful.
Here’s the final step to setting your goal. Double check with yourself and see how you feel when you read your goal back, when you read the specific version of your goal back to yourself. Are you excited? Are you nervous? Do you still want to do the thing now that you’ve made it more specific? Does the specific version of the goal fit with the reasons you have for choosing the goal?
Remember that? The why that we started with? While this is an extra step to do before we get started, this will help you see if your finalized goal is actually in line with what you really want. If it is, carry on. If it’s not, go back to the why, go back to the vague beginning goal and play around some more to see if you can come up with a specific goal that’s relevant to those reasons and it has the same feeling as the initial goal had.
Okay, once you’ve done all that, I know, that was not a small task, but it’s so worth it. Once you have done all that, congratulations, you have now set an effective goal. Now let’s move on to how to actually do your goal.
Many womxn I know are aiming for perfect all the time in everything that they do, and that can really cause problems when it comes to achieving your goals. In order to achieve your goal, you need to be willing to do it imperfectly. Because the way we go from not being able to do something to being able to do it is by learning. And learning means being willing to be imperfect along the way.
We are not perfect at things we don’t know how to do yet. It doesn’t even make any sense that we would think we could be. But I’ve experienced this myself and I see it over and over again that we want to be perfect at things we don’t know how to do yet.
But then what that does is it keeps us from even trying them. So the simple solution to this is be willing to be imperfect at things. I know, it’s easier said than done, but this really is a magical shift. I know it doesn’t sound as sexy and fun as being perfect but being perfect at things is not an option.
When we want to be perfect, we just don’t do shit. That’s why being imperfect really is the only option. But when you’re willing to be imperfect, you can show up and absolutely crust your goal, imperfections and all. And when we’re willing to be imperfect and work on our goal anyways, then we can actually get somewhere.
When we want to be perfect ahead of time, like I said, we just don’t work on our goal. Things just do not get done. We avoid it, we dread it, all that whole thing. I’m sure you’ve experienced that before. I know I’ve experienced plenty of it.
So why not just be willing to be imperfect and then we can go ahead and go all in with our goal and give it everything we’ve got. And here’s the thing; we’re never going to be perfect anyway. So when we’re willing to accept that, we don’t have to wait. We don’t need to be better; we don’t need to be more put together; we don’t need to earn the right to go after our goal. We just need to set a clear goal, understand why we’re doing it, and get to work doing it now, imperfections and all.
Did you know I still experience anxiety and overwhelm sometimes? It’s true. And I also feel really cranky sometimes. I write and speak about intentionality a lot, and sometimes I think people get the wrong idea and they think it means that I’m some kind of superhuman who is always doing her best and living intentionally.
But here’s the real talk y’all; I’m highly intentional about 50% of the time, and that’s enough to create stunning results like being featured on TV twice, earning my first four-figure speaking fee, creating six-figures of revenue in 2020, and showing up and serving amazing clients who are creating their own stunning results also with the tools I teach them.
So what I’m saying by going through all of that for you is that being perfect is not required to create amazing things. Also spoiler alert, being perfect is not an option whether you go after your goals or not. Because we are doing human life as humans, so we may as well go for the things we want and be willing to do them imperfectly because that’s what life will be anyway, and it’s literally the only way we are going to get to any of that stuff we want. It’s the only way we’re going to create those goals and hit them.
I see so many womxn second guessing themselves and stalling on their goals because they can’t do things perfectly. And they’re trying to be perfect before they even get started. And that is why I’m telling you in no uncertain terms that I have created a successful business with raving clients while being imperfect, while feeling tons of anxiety and tons of overwhelm and feeling cranky and being a human.
It doesn’t mean I’m anxious and overwhelmed and cranky all of the time, but what it means is that I have learned how to navigate and manage my life, even when those negative feelings show up, and you can do that too. My anxiety and overwhelm don’t feel like they used to. Neither does my crankiness, neither do the other negative feelings that come up.
Because I have tools to help me handle them. Those feelings can show up, it doesn’t necessarily interrupt my day or even interrupt my hour. That doesn’t mean the negative feelings feel super amazing. They don’t. But they are certainly more manageable than they used to be.
Being a human means experiencing the full spectrum of emotion, even when you are intentional, even when you set your clear goal, even when you’re showing up to life on purpose. Negative feelings are part of the deal, but that’s good news because that means they don’t have to stop us from going after what we want.
What do you want to create in your life that you’ve been stalling on? Maybe you’ve been trying to become a little bit more perfect before you get started on it, maybe you’re just a little scared to go after it. Whatever that thing is, first ask yourself why you want it, see what your reasons are, see if you like those reasons, then get very clear with that goal.
Get very clear with what it is, get clear with how you will know if you’ve achieved it. And then all you have to do is be willing to not be great at it at first. And that is definitely something you will need to prepare for emotionally, which means being willing to not be great at it but also not be mean to yourself or not tell yourself you suck as you go about working on the goal.
But it also means being willing to start where you are, at your current level of ability, whatever that may be. So one way that many goals fail is that we try to go from zero to 60. We try to go from not using a calendar at all to totally calendaring our entire workweek. That shit does not work, y’all.
Instead, you need to be willing to take tiny steps and work your way up. People vastly overestimate how much they can do in one week and underestimate how much they can do in a year. But when you start small, you can build the base of your habit, whatever it is, and then you can build that habit up from there, increasing your efforts slowly week over week.
Tiny efforts done consistently create huge changes. One tool that can help you do this is a practice that I call too small to fail. Basically, too small to fail means that you start with such a tiny amount of action that it’s easier to do it than it is to avoid it. So when you see it on your calendar, it’s easier to literally do the thing than to avoid it because the thing takes just a few minutes, whereas talking yourself out of it maybe would take longer. So as an example, if you wanted to start a daily 60-minute yoga practice, too small to fail would be doing just five minutes of yoga three times a week.
Or if you wanted to learn a new software by the end of Q1, too small to fail could be spending just 15 minutes twice a week, watching online tutorials and then trying out what you learned. Once you have the tiny habit in place, you can slowly increase how much of it you’re doing. You start with a tiny doable amount of effort, but if you do that consistently and keep adding little increments, you can create huge changes over time.
It’s not glamorous, but that’s why it works. When we’re willing to do these tiny efforts and keep going with them and keep adding, we create monumental changes.
So y’all, that is how you create a goal and hit the goal. It’s simple, but it’s also complex. So first, figure out roughly what the goal is, then ask yourself why you want that thing, get clear on your reasons, make sure you like them. Then get really specific with your goal, get really, really concrete. And that is all the pre-work, the prep work for the goal.
And then when it comes to doing the goal, the number one thing is to not expect yourself to be perfect. Take that thing and work on it and don’t expect yourself to be perfect. And start small, start where you are, and start with tiny increments.
When we have a whole goal that we want to do, it can seem like this huge task to accomplish. But every huge thing is just a bunch of tiny steps done over and over again. Little tiny steps accumulate. They add up to become something big and amazing.
But in order to even get started, in order to take those tiny steps, you have to know what you’re doing, you have to know why, you have to know clearly what it is, and you have to be willing to be imperfect. And one more thing that you may find is important, whatever your goal is, let yourself off the hook for not having started it earlier. I see this so often that once we get started, we’re mad at ourselves for not starting sooner. But you can’t change that. But you can get to work now.
So like I said, pick a goal, figure out your why, get specific, break it into small doable chunks, and get started already. Being willing to be imperfect, being willing to start small, when you do these things, goals go from will I actually do this, to hell yes, I’ll actually do this. All it takes is a little bit of effort over time and the willingness to be kind to myself along the way.
And that makes everything doable, and it’s much more fun to accomplish your goals this way also, which you know, is just a bonus. But also, I’m a firm believer in fun as a business value because I think fun gets things done. When things are fun, we enjoy working on them and then we want to work on them and then we do them, instead of spending a lot of time avoiding them or wanting to do something else.
So without further ado, that is how to set and achieve your goals. Go forth, set amazing goals, crush them, come and report back and let me know on social or wherever you want to find me how it’s going.
Also, if you love what I teach on the podcast and you want to take the work deeper, I have good news for you. I have space for a few new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month. So scoot on over to my website and click on the work with me button and you can schedule a call with me and tell me everything that’s going on with you.
I will give you some coaching right away to help you get going in the right direction, and if it seems like a good fit, I’ll share how we can work together. Also bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. So if that’s you, I got you. Alright y’all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilynn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job (Before You Leave It), the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving womxn who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. This week we’re talking about goals and I’m pretty excited. We’ll also touch briefly on resolutions. I realize it’s already January when you hear this, but I think that’s fine because I’m a firm believer that things don’t have to be perfect to be amazing. So even if you decide to start a resolution on today, the 6th, I think that is still really great and it could lead to an amazing outcome in the year, even if you didn’t start on January 1st.
So we’re going to talk about goals today, but before we get into that, I have a few things I want to tell y’all, and thing one is that we have reached more than 50 rates and reviews, which is so exciting. Thank you all so much, anyone who rated the podcast, and especially anyone who left a review. I am so deeply grateful to all of you.
Okay, so I’m going to announce the winners of the giveaway and I also want you to know that for everyone who entered the drawing who didn’t win, you’re going to be getting a special something from me in your inbox as well to help you have your own strategy session.
So I had so many people enter the giveaway and obviously they can’t all win because there’s only three slots, but I wanted everyone to be able to have a version of the experience, especially because I’m just so grateful that y’all left the reviews and took the time to upload them via my form.
And I wanted everyone who did that to get something. So what I did is I created a PDF of the questions I’m going to walk through with the people who won the giveaway on their 90-minute call. So I won’t get to work with everyone one-on-one to go through those, but everyone will have a chance to take those questions and sit down and think their way through.
And also for anyone who’s listening after the giveaway is now complete, you can still get this PDF doc so that you can walk yourself through these questions as well. And the way to do that is to go click on the same link that was for the giveaway, but I’m just going to change the form, so I won’t be doing another drawing.
But if you do a review and input it through there, you can still get a copy of the DIY version. I’ll just email that to you. So just make sure to put your email address when you submit your review through my Google form.
Okay, so here are the winners. The winners are Ruth Lefave, Kimberley Smoyer, and Emma Tack. Also apologies if I mispronounced any of your names. Again, Ruth Lefave, Kimberley Smoyer, and Emma Tack. And so the three of you should go look in your email. You should already have an email from me in there and if you don’t, just go check all the places that email sometimes get lost. You know, spam folders, all the whatnot.
And actually, for anyone else who’s on my email list, if you’re ever not getting emails from me, I send them out every week. Right now on Wednesdays. And so if you’re also not getting one a week, go look in your spam or wherever to make sure.
Because listen, those are packed with a lot of helpful, useful content for you and I want to make sure you actually get them. But I cannot control everyone else’s email inbox, much to my chagrin. So again, I’m so excited. To the winners, congratulations. I’m so grateful to all of you. Thank you so, so, so much for the reviews.
I would still love more reviews, and like I said, for anyone who’s leaving one in the future, I will have form up to submit and get a copy of the DIY questions to walk yourself through. It’ll be up probably for a couple months at least and then we’ll see if we want to do something else. I’m not really sure, so we’ll find out in the future. But for now, that’s what we have.
And then the other thing I wanted to tell y’all is I have just had such a week in my life y’all. So many things that just did not go according to plan, and I wanted to tell you briefly about that because this week we’re going to talk about goals. And we’re going to talk about all kinds of stuff related to them, but I also want to be sure to mention things go off the rails sometimes in ways that we can’t predict and in ways that we can’t control.
And we can still have our goals, our highly specific goals, our action plans, whatever the things are that we have, we can still work on them and do them and be doing a really good job. And sometimes we just have a week and things go off the rails. Sometimes we’re sick, sometimes - like this week our car broke down actually.
Then it was a whole thing with trying to get that sorted out, see if it was fixable. It was not. And then get a new car. So all of that meant that a lot of the stuff I was trying to do got moved around. So I think sometimes when that happens, it can be easy to be like, why even plan? Why even do all this stuff?
But it all can still get done and it can still be amazing, and it’s okay if we have to make some small changes and move things around sometimes. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth setting goals, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth making a plan.
Actually when we have a clear plan, it can be a lot easier to figure out how to do what we’re trying to do. Also, I just wanted to note, I realize that while I said that, y’all might have heard our dog in the background having some thoughts and feelings of his own.
I try to find the quietest time to record podcasts, but during quarantine, with a house full of people and several animals, y’all, it’s just - there’s not a super quiet moment. So it’s like, do I wait for the perfect moment of quiet to record my podcast? No, because that perfect moment’s never coming.
Do you all get a podcast with a little bit of background noise? Yes, you do. And I think that’s okay. I think it’s actually a perfect lesson for my podcast because the whole thing is about it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.
So please enjoy the sounds of Ranger, our dog, having so many feelings. He’s the cutest dog also. You would love him. Just so beautiful. Alright, without further ado, let us get into this week’s topic.
So it’s the first week in January and we are going to talk about goals, and we’re going to include resolutions in this category too because resolutions are a kind of goal and unlike goals in general, there are actually some really good stats about how many people succeed at New Year’s resolutions.
Depending on which study you’re looking at, something like 80% to 92% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions, often by mid-February. So that’s month two out of 12. And that means that only 8% to 20% of people are achieving their New Year’s resolutions.
This is not a compelling statistic if what you want is to have a big goal and work on it and accomplish it. But fear not y’all because of course, there is hope, and I’m here to teach you how to do it. I am a firm believer that people can do amazing things and goals can help you get there.
But how you design your goals and how you go about working on them really matters and that can be the difference between you hitting your goal and you totally giving up on your goal. When it comes to achieving goals, there are two main things to consider. One is how to set a goal and the other is how to do a goal.
The very first thing to ask yourself is why do I want to achieve this goal? What do I want that I think I’m going to get from getting this goal? How do I want to feel? What do I want to be able to believe about myself? Why do I think achieving this goal will help me feel that way? Why do I think achieving this goal will help me believe that thing about myself?
So often, we set goals without even slowing down enough to figure out why we even want them. But paying attention to this piece, really digging in and figuring it out helps us clarify which goals actually matter so we can go after those ones and which ones we actually don’t really want that much.
Once you’ve figured out your why, let’s move on to the goal itself. At this point, we need to create a clear goal. A lot of people try to achieve their goal without being clear on how they set it, and this is a recipe for your goal not getting done.
Because when we’re not clear about what the goal is or how to tell if we’ve achieved it, that makes it hard to work on over the long haul, and it also makes it hard to tell if we have even achieved it or not. People will say things like I want to be better at speaking up in meetings, or I want to work more efficiently next year, or I want to get better at managing my time.
This may give us a rough idea of what we want to accomplish, but in order to achieve our goal, we need the goal to be more specific about what it is we’re actually trying to do. Being more specific helps in many ways. For one, it clearly delineates what we mean by the goal and what we do not mean by the goal.
That helps us figure out which things are in line with the goal and which things are not in line. To put that in office terms, we figure out what is in scope for our goal and what is not in scope. The other reason that this is essential is that then we can also assess whether we’ve achieved the goal or not.
When we don’t have a clear goal, it’s hard to tell if we’ve achieved it or if we’re even making progress towards achieving it. And that uncertainty, that ambiguity can lead us to give up on the goal, it can lead us to feel like we’re failing at the goal, even if we’re making headway. Basically it’s just not helpful.
So make your goal specific, make it measurable. Be very clear what you mean by the goal and what you don’t mean. Ask yourself, what would it look like to achieve this? Like specifically, what would it look like? What would actually need to happen so I could tell I had arrived at the destination I’m aiming for?
Let’s say the goal is to manage your time better. What would that mean? How would you know you were managing your time better? How would you measure how well you’re managing your time? Would it mean being able to do a certain task in a certain amount of time? Would it mean arriving at all your meetings on time or even five minutes early? Would it mean honoring your lunch instead of working through it?
The point here is not to be perfectionistic. It’s not about doing things perfectly. It’s not about picking the perfect goal or perfectly explaining what the goal is. It’s simply about giving yourself clarity so you can understand what the goal is, what it’s not, and how you’ll know when you’ve achieved it.
Now, at this point, if people even get this far into making things specific, they’re off to doing the goal. But there’s actually one more step we want to do before we go work on the goal. I know it might seem like we’re doing a lot before we even get to the doing, but this pre-work is so worth it and will set you up to be so much more successful.
Here’s the final step to setting your goal. Double check with yourself and see how you feel when you read your goal back, when you read the specific version of your goal back to yourself. Are you excited? Are you nervous? Do you still want to do the thing now that you’ve made it more specific? Does the specific version of the goal fit with the reasons you have for choosing the goal?
Remember that? The why that we started with? While this is an extra step to do before we get started, this will help you see if your finalized goal is actually in line with what you really want. If it is, carry on. If it’s not, go back to the why, go back to the vague beginning goal and play around some more to see if you can come up with a specific goal that’s relevant to those reasons and it has the same feeling as the initial goal had.
Okay, once you’ve done all that, I know, that was not a small task, but it’s so worth it. Once you have done all that, congratulations, you have now set an effective goal. Now let’s move on to how to actually do your goal.
Many womxn I know are aiming for perfect all the time in everything that they do, and that can really cause problems when it comes to achieving your goals. In order to achieve your goal, you need to be willing to do it imperfectly. Because the way we go from not being able to do something to being able to do it is by learning. And learning means being willing to be imperfect along the way.
We are not perfect at things we don’t know how to do yet. It doesn’t even make any sense that we would think we could be. But I’ve experienced this myself and I see it over and over again that we want to be perfect at things we don’t know how to do yet.
But then what that does is it keeps us from even trying them. So the simple solution to this is be willing to be imperfect at things. I know, it’s easier said than done, but this really is a magical shift. I know it doesn’t sound as sexy and fun as being perfect but being perfect at things is not an option.
When we want to be perfect, we just don’t do shit. That’s why being imperfect really is the only option. But when you’re willing to be imperfect, you can show up and absolutely crust your goal, imperfections and all. And when we’re willing to be imperfect and work on our goal anyways, then we can actually get somewhere.
When we want to be perfect ahead of time, like I said, we just don’t work on our goal. Things just do not get done. We avoid it, we dread it, all that whole thing. I’m sure you’ve experienced that before. I know I’ve experienced plenty of it.
So why not just be willing to be imperfect and then we can go ahead and go all in with our goal and give it everything we’ve got. And here’s the thing; we’re never going to be perfect anyway. So when we’re willing to accept that, we don’t have to wait. We don’t need to be better; we don’t need to be more put together; we don’t need to earn the right to go after our goal. We just need to set a clear goal, understand why we’re doing it, and get to work doing it now, imperfections and all.
Did you know I still experience anxiety and overwhelm sometimes? It’s true. And I also feel really cranky sometimes. I write and speak about intentionality a lot, and sometimes I think people get the wrong idea and they think it means that I’m some kind of superhuman who is always doing her best and living intentionally.
But here’s the real talk y’all; I’m highly intentional about 50% of the time, and that’s enough to create stunning results like being featured on TV twice, earning my first four-figure speaking fee, creating six-figures of revenue in 2020, and showing up and serving amazing clients who are creating their own stunning results also with the tools I teach them.
So what I’m saying by going through all of that for you is that being perfect is not required to create amazing things. Also spoiler alert, being perfect is not an option whether you go after your goals or not. Because we are doing human life as humans, so we may as well go for the things we want and be willing to do them imperfectly because that’s what life will be anyway, and it’s literally the only way we are going to get to any of that stuff we want. It’s the only way we’re going to create those goals and hit them.
I see so many womxn second guessing themselves and stalling on their goals because they can’t do things perfectly. And they’re trying to be perfect before they even get started. And that is why I’m telling you in no uncertain terms that I have created a successful business with raving clients while being imperfect, while feeling tons of anxiety and tons of overwhelm and feeling cranky and being a human.
It doesn’t mean I’m anxious and overwhelmed and cranky all of the time, but what it means is that I have learned how to navigate and manage my life, even when those negative feelings show up, and you can do that too. My anxiety and overwhelm don’t feel like they used to. Neither does my crankiness, neither do the other negative feelings that come up.
Because I have tools to help me handle them. Those feelings can show up, it doesn’t necessarily interrupt my day or even interrupt my hour. That doesn’t mean the negative feelings feel super amazing. They don’t. But they are certainly more manageable than they used to be.
Being a human means experiencing the full spectrum of emotion, even when you are intentional, even when you set your clear goal, even when you’re showing up to life on purpose. Negative feelings are part of the deal, but that’s good news because that means they don’t have to stop us from going after what we want.
What do you want to create in your life that you’ve been stalling on? Maybe you’ve been trying to become a little bit more perfect before you get started on it, maybe you’re just a little scared to go after it. Whatever that thing is, first ask yourself why you want it, see what your reasons are, see if you like those reasons, then get very clear with that goal.
Get very clear with what it is, get clear with how you will know if you’ve achieved it. And then all you have to do is be willing to not be great at it at first. And that is definitely something you will need to prepare for emotionally, which means being willing to not be great at it but also not be mean to yourself or not tell yourself you suck as you go about working on the goal.
But it also means being willing to start where you are, at your current level of ability, whatever that may be. So one way that many goals fail is that we try to go from zero to 60. We try to go from not using a calendar at all to totally calendaring our entire workweek. That shit does not work, y’all.
Instead, you need to be willing to take tiny steps and work your way up. People vastly overestimate how much they can do in one week and underestimate how much they can do in a year. But when you start small, you can build the base of your habit, whatever it is, and then you can build that habit up from there, increasing your efforts slowly week over week.
Tiny efforts done consistently create huge changes. One tool that can help you do this is a practice that I call too small to fail. Basically, too small to fail means that you start with such a tiny amount of action that it’s easier to do it than it is to avoid it. So when you see it on your calendar, it’s easier to literally do the thing than to avoid it because the thing takes just a few minutes, whereas talking yourself out of it maybe would take longer. So as an example, if you wanted to start a daily 60-minute yoga practice, too small to fail would be doing just five minutes of yoga three times a week.
Or if you wanted to learn a new software by the end of Q1, too small to fail could be spending just 15 minutes twice a week, watching online tutorials and then trying out what you learned. Once you have the tiny habit in place, you can slowly increase how much of it you’re doing. You start with a tiny doable amount of effort, but if you do that consistently and keep adding little increments, you can create huge changes over time.
It’s not glamorous, but that’s why it works. When we’re willing to do these tiny efforts and keep going with them and keep adding, we create monumental changes.
So y’all, that is how you create a goal and hit the goal. It’s simple, but it’s also complex. So first, figure out roughly what the goal is, then ask yourself why you want that thing, get clear on your reasons, make sure you like them. Then get really specific with your goal, get really, really concrete. And that is all the pre-work, the prep work for the goal.
And then when it comes to doing the goal, the number one thing is to not expect yourself to be perfect. Take that thing and work on it and don’t expect yourself to be perfect. And start small, start where you are, and start with tiny increments.
When we have a whole goal that we want to do, it can seem like this huge task to accomplish. But every huge thing is just a bunch of tiny steps done over and over again. Little tiny steps accumulate. They add up to become something big and amazing.
But in order to even get started, in order to take those tiny steps, you have to know what you’re doing, you have to know why, you have to know clearly what it is, and you have to be willing to be imperfect. And one more thing that you may find is important, whatever your goal is, let yourself off the hook for not having started it earlier. I see this so often that once we get started, we’re mad at ourselves for not starting sooner. But you can’t change that. But you can get to work now.
So like I said, pick a goal, figure out your why, get specific, break it into small doable chunks, and get started already. Being willing to be imperfect, being willing to start small, when you do these things, goals go from will I actually do this, to hell yes, I’ll actually do this. All it takes is a little bit of effort over time and the willingness to be kind to myself along the way.
And that makes everything doable, and it’s much more fun to accomplish your goals this way also, which you know, is just a bonus. But also, I’m a firm believer in fun as a business value because I think fun gets things done. When things are fun, we enjoy working on them and then we want to work on them and then we do them, instead of spending a lot of time avoiding them or wanting to do something else.
So without further ado, that is how to set and achieve your goals. Go forth, set amazing goals, crush them, come and report back and let me know on social or wherever you want to find me how it’s going.
Also, if you love what I teach on the podcast and you want to take the work deeper, I have good news for you. I have space for a few new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month. So scoot on over to my website and click on the work with me button and you can schedule a call with me and tell me everything that’s going on with you.
I will give you some coaching right away to help you get going in the right direction, and if it seems like a good fit, I’ll share how we can work together. Also bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. So if that’s you, I got you. Alright y’all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilynn.com for more guidance and resources.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, listen on Spotify and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.