Lessons

Lesson Info

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Is your goal specific? I'll just double specific is it clear? Is it a really clear goal? So look at your goals right now and is it so tangible that you have no doubt understanding what you need to do to do it and isn't measurable and we're going to practice with this a little bit isn't really measurable do you have this concept of knowing when you made it like if you have a savings account it's very obvious to know if you've saved up one hundred dollars there's something you're measuring if you're changing a behavior what are you measuring? How will you know if you're there? Is there something? Is there a metric built into this now you started to mention erica one one habit yeah one one item a day that you're going to check off the list so right now I have do one thing I'd like to put off when I get back to the house in the morning so I opened the door get back in the house and that's the first thing I d'oh great okay so you just met smart automatically but let's go through the steps o...

f that and we'll practice with a few girls I love for the online community to send in a goal that we can play with making it smart if they want some help with that but it's is it specific you just made it very tangible is one thing you're going to do? Is it measurable? Well, you can check her check not check that we can put stars on the refrigerator we are all four year olds we like to put the check in the box who here has not put something on their to do list they've already done so they can check it off it's so exciting to check stuff off well let's build that in let's make it measurable something you can check and find a place to do that and we'll talk even a little bit more about that is it action based it's a doing go I want to be thinner that doesn't that's not a goal that's a vision but it's not a specific goal I want to eat five hundred less calories every day that's even still a little nebulous I have to because who knew? You know that could be five hundred less of whatever number you have to make it so specific and measurable and it has to be a doing goal it's got to be the action that's required to get you to the place you want to be and way too many of us make goals that are being goals not doing goals I want to be more peaceful well, yes, I d'oh I truly do but what do I have to do to get me there so I hope that makes sense to peoples they will as you know, this is the success pattern let's set ourselves up for success and it has to be realistic. I love that you said I'm going to do one thing um I'm gonna push back on you simon for just a moment, okay? Every day every day is every day realistic I thought if it's fifteen minutes or you know it's like just some amount let's see, I was a part of you said oh yeah that's that's a lot to say every day but the same time if the amount of time that I'm you know asking of myself isn't very much ok then that's fair that's fair but for people who are dealing with different types of goals most often when I'm coaching I will push back and say let's not do every day because it gives you no wiggle room because then if you yeah I guess the problem thats why I sing about the problem is if there's just one day that I miss it then I mean be like oh, if that's your goal for six months from now what would be a win for this coming week? How many times would you like to write five days? Okay, good when you dialed down from the black and white of every day you give yourself more room to succeed, especially if you're doing something like exercise or something that's gonna require a lot more effort like getting somewhere being dressed, taking time if you do it twice for the first two weeks you've done it four times more than you were doing it and you're starting the pattern now there's um there's um haven't changed thought processes if you just do it every day for the first two weeks you've nailed it and that's true for some behaviors but too often it fails it's worth a try you know this is all research you can try it but I want your goal to be that the wind is the very realistic thing that you could d'oh and then related to that so I mean I had right every day is important to have like a certain amount of time in these kind of lingo I will write for how many minutes every day so I'll write for at least fifteen minutes nice and when when I wake up when I wake up okay it's important to put it on your mental calendar and it's actually really lovely to put it on your actual calendar you know those meeting sheets that we used in the first session great place to do that make it part of your daily accountability I had room in those sheets for habits that you want to change so you can have one, you can have two, you can have three don't go beyond that police to start, but you put it on there and then you have that instant feedback we were playing around during the break with a biofeedback instrument and the beauty of bio feedback is that instant feedback of whether we're making it or not and that's the beauty of the daily habit check you know, are you making it or not? Because we want to and so just checking the box saying we did it feels good like when you're doing by a feedback and you get to the zone you're after it feels good and that's success physically in your brain fuels you for sick more success, so make it really realistic and then make it timely time anchor it is now the right time to be doing it and is it time anchored simon's going right in the morning for fifteen minutes? You're going to come home and do your item when you re enter the house, you've put it in a space you've anchored in a space so you don't have to wonder about it all day. I love to exercise in the morning because if I don't exercise in the morning, I spend the rest of my day wasting stupid amounts of energy on whether I'm gonna bag it tonight or not just dumb amounts of energy and I play with not taking a shower because I haven't exercised because I can't take a shower because I haven't exercised yet I can do this whole stupid thing probably just get up and exercise, you know, and I have to cut myself a break that some days that's not my choice I have, you know, an early morning seminar something that I need to do and it's not the choice, but I know myself well enough that I'm I'm better off doing that first thing and actually it turns out in the literature that early morning exercises um more successful but what's coming in from the well, people actually getting a bit hung up on measurable because they're saying some of the things that they want teo used one example and she says michael job hunting, but I don't see how that fits with measurable because you really only know you've accomplished it when you've got that new job. So I am going to spend thank you for doing this because this this is the kind of exercise I want to get into a little bit because it will really only take you a few times of doing this to get the rhythm of it. How much time would you like to spend job hunting each day? I'll tell you right now you're going to reduce your stress if you put that in a boundary because you really can't feel walk around feeling like you've got to job hunt every moment until you have a job. First of all, you're going to burn out nobody's gonna want to hire you because you're already low on energy and you're already feeling defeated in like a victim and that comes across even on the phone. So give it a time I am going to spend blank hours per day on the job hunt. I'm going to sit at my computer, I'm going to make phone calls, make it really specific that's the measurable part of it, the outcome? Yes, the outcome is black or white jeff job or no job, but I want to back you up into our the action steps to take to get this job. I'm going to spend four hours per day devoted to the job hunt, and during those four hours I am not going to do other things because what we tend to do is get up and feels somewhat defeated by it. So we serve for a little while online and then we're not getting anywhere and we go off when we do something else and we get distracted and we don't really want to go back because we're not feeling real good about it, but we eventually go back and we search some more that's, all very ineffective in the long run. You act like you already have the job and these air the hours that I spend finding the job and when I'm not looking for the job I'm really off I'm truly off and I'm letting my brain renew itself so that the next day when I come back to job hunting I'm bringing all of me to it a very appealing higher I'm bringing to the picture that was a great question other people are saying that some of their goals skate is actually they're going to try and level a language in a smart way they've got other things they want to do alex is saying they tend to ignore calendar notifications successor so they're going to try the dots thing to see if that helps excellent see if that works now out spirit has made healthy eating there go how do you make that a smart girl how would you put healthy eating into this good question? Good question so healthy eating is a huge broad category um defined differently by different people so what what right now I would ask what does that mean for you? What is it you'd like to add into your diet to be healthy sometimes for some people that is I'm not going to eat after nine p m and just making it a hard and fast rule I'm not gonna eat after nine pm but more often it's something you need to actually add to your life I worked with a woman on weight loss in my health coach xin days on dh instead of coming up with all the things she couldn't have because they weren't healthy, we came up with a list of what she was gonna work into her life in general, people who want to eat healthier actually need to eat more um way eat unhealthy and then we feel badly about the calories and we skip and in the long run we're not getting what news what is really really nourishing for us. So there are all kinds of goals you can make around that I encourage you to make a smaller one to say that you know, I'm going to make sure I got five fruits and vegetables in today for the you know, five fruits and vegetables in for five days of this week that's how to make it measurable and I'm going to make a little check chart that I actually check off that I had five fruits or vegetables or I'm gonna put them all in a smoothie and have him now uh I'm going to go to the farmer's market this week and purchase a vegetable I've never had or make sure I buy four colors of vegetables there are all kinds of ways to do that, but I hope you see that bringing it back from this big I want eight healthy to specific action steps you take something that you can say at the end of the day I did that I'm going to eat healthy opens up the door for way too many variables that at the end of the day, you khun judge yourself not so kindly, but it's a great goal as as a lifestyle physician, I would say it's a fabulous goal it supports all the rest of your life. Now, let's, dial it down into really small steps great one so this smart, the specific, measurable action based, realistic and timely takes that big vision into a specific step where you can measure if you've made it or not, that you're doing something, you're not just being something you're doing something, even if that's, I'm going to be calm for five minutes. You're setting aside five minutes in which you do breath, work or whatever it is you need to get calm, it's, realistic, it's something that you don't look at and go the your inner critic immediately has the power to say no way you're not doing that, it's something that doesn't fire up your fear. That's what realistic is really about? You don't want to trigger your fear there's a system called the kaizen steps, which is a japanese system of change where you pick such a tiny step. That it can't evoke fear they used it within a companies such as toyota because to change a culture really brings up a lot of resistance and what we're trying to do here is knock down our resistance so they came up with kaizen steps that he's taking these evey biddy little steps what's your eighty biddy step towards healthy eating I'm gonna have one more fruit today and if you add little steps every few months at the end of the year you really made huge progress and reflect on that and making it timely you're just gonna be so much it's, so much easier to make a time rule about it I'm gonna have an extra forget breakfast it's so much easier than I'm gonna admit I have an extra fruit today because like I was talking about with my exercise, you don't have the ability to debate it all day I'm gonna have an extra vegetable at dinner it's not a debatable item, you just do it and you don't have to worry about it. So I have that's taking these big wants and dialing them down to something that just feels encouraging to dio and play with it I mean this don't write them in stone don't even write them in ink, you play with it and bring your spirit of play with it what what do you want to do? You've been asked to go out and play what you want to play, I think judging from the questions for getting on and also of the comments that is that might be the stumbling block I think people also seeing that once you put a system and you need to stick to it rigidly I think you're saying they're just to play with it is really important because otherwise you're more likely to fail if you simply can't keep up with the structures that you set yourselves yeah, so this week I'm going to see if I can even f two extra vegetable I'm just you know and that that's the beginning and that fuels the success and do what simon did so eloquently think of where you've been successful before and hopefully by the time we go through all these steps you're gonna feel less of that resistance in general but the smart go away is to make it something you really conduce instead of something that's overwhelming you, then you need to be motivated and you need to recognize that you have motivation for not doing this go we all do there's always something to gain by not doing what we say we're going to dio or we would just do everything we said we were going to dio there's some game there's ah a virgin of coaching as well where you you play around with what is what is the gain underneath? What is the story you're telling yourself and we do this very well with erica earlier? What is the story you're telling yourself that you're winning that story at the expense of the story you think you want there's always some gain it has usually has to do with some understory so right now want you to write down on your sheet what what is motivating you to do this? What values and purpose are supported by maintaining this goal by reaching and maintaining this goal so for healthy eating, I'd love to hear you write in and say, why do you want it? What what's your why? What value and purpose are you doing this for? So erica, you've talked a little bit about this but talking talk about how it relates to the values well, I I think but you know, my top three values air helping others um now I just have a blank growth and adventure and really not doing the things that I'm putting off um doing the things that I'm putting on what's what am I trying to say? It supports all of those because I have so much mischief in my head with all of this procrastination that I don't feel adventurous that I'm not able to be completely present with other people or help those others and by not addressing all the mission him I had I'm not growing so by this one little goal, it really supports all three of those because it gives me the clarity mindset that we talked about earlier nice um and then how it's tied to my purpose, it's it's, the helping others? I can't be at my best to help other people when I'm when I have all these worries and anxieties sort of just in the procrastination successful, right? And I think in a lot of different, um, goals that I might choose my motivation maybe wouldn't be a ten, but for this particular goal, my motivation is a ten and in part because of the plates we did when I feel the energy what's taking my energy and every single part of this that there's procrastination there, and so that made it really tangible to understand that most of my stress because because I've been able to craft my life in the last year where I khun cut the other things out that are causing me straws most of my stresses, those procrastination around everything nice, so I really feel that motivation if I can conquer this procrastination, I mean, it has a huge impact when when I when I conquer this I mean, it will I think a lot ah low amount of stress is this going to be incredible, nice, so I'm very, very motivated and it feels really good to be that motivated good, good yeah, it looks good on you two you're really feels good our eyes got brighter just uh it looks good to put teo and have that awareness because I was not aware before of all these exercises, just just how big a part of the procrastination plays in my life. Yeah, and I'll say that when you walked in and I first met you, the energy with which you told me about your procrastination was one of this is me and oh, yeah, good luck changing it yeah, yeah so that's nice to say it feels very manageable and very exciting, so what if and I want to get to yours in just a moment, simon, I want to hear from the online community as well, but what are some of the things you could do if you don't feel that motivated? Can you think of what might ramp it up for you if you if you write down a six and you think you know, I kind of really want to do this, but I'm not quite feeling it first of all, don't do it until you're quite feeling it. I think having the curious mindset to really understand why you don't quite feel like doing it and like you had said before the curious mindset is it really a should is that why my motivations low or is it they're coming back to that for me I think would be that but even, um for example, if I had a goal of the art journaling, which is something I really want to dio my main motivation may not be a ten right now and I think for me personally, it's because I have a higher priority of this procrastination nice then so at first when we had talked about this is like all my goal will be the journal, but then I felt the tug of something more important nice so that's a you're stepping this is an important part two and this is why I talk so much about the meetings with yourself you've given yourself this time to allow those priorities to percolate, so you picked the one that's the higher priority right when we're overwhelmed and we haven't taken time out our lives to think about what would really make our lives work better, it can be harder to sift that out. I'd encourage you to write in the margin europe your art goal so that you're going to come back to it because the success of this goal is gonna feed toto so in love that you said dropping back into your curiosity one of the big things is to look at your motivation for not doing it and to be really darn toe honest with yourself why why am I choosing to not do this over and over again? What do I gain? And and you have to be honest and sometimes it's not as pretty as you'd like um I was one of my inner critics favorite terms from he was lazy uh she's still been known to say that you and I have names for her too, but lazy and that really wasn't that wasn't right even though that's the name I called it it wasn't lazy it's that I didn't feel empowered or motivated I was actually feeling probably more insecure than lazy, but we have a habit of beating ourselves up in another way so we have the tea's under that and if you get down teo, I'm not feeling that's secure about it then there's a place you can go dig and find cem cem something for you that's gonna make you feel more compelled and more engaged with this so it really matters to put down a number and think what it is for you. So simon, tell me about yours. Uh okays the values this would support would be beauty for the writing, beauty and lightning because I'm create creating creativity because you're creating beauty, helping my own and lightning other people's enlightening nice and that's part of your purpose to yeah yeah purpose of lightning through beauty so when you tell me see how this relates to the goal that you do how does that make you feel about the goal just telling me what values it supports uh does that does that engaging more with a goal it it makes the goal feel like that it's totally aligned with what I'm nice going yeah my purpose yeah a lineman is a nice word um we were talking earlier about rhythms of the body and coherence that's very much in the same mode of alignment and when we are living a life that's aligned with our values we feel better when we're eating what's aligned with what our body needs we feel better there's there these natural places that fit and we feel better when we fit and we have more access to flow we have more access to our creativity when we're doing the things for the reasons they matter I would venture a guess that if simon sat down to write because he felt that this was part of his value and he was feeling this mode when he writes is going to be more creative than if he writes because he should that he's gonna have a more open mind more access to his brilliance in his creativity in that state so finding that state becomes important the anti stress state yeah I would say that like just that you know when I'm going into the writing if I imagine that I'm my goal is to create beauty that's a very different mind set on going that I have to write thiss the wise, I'm wasting my life or something, you know, like that. Do you write in a journal or do you write online? I I've been doing the computer, but I thinking about just because here in this class, we've been I've been writing by hand that it might might be actually, you know, nice and just write by hand some yeah, there are this is an aside, but for those of you doing something like this, um, I believe the name is live scribe, but there are pens that get uploaded directly to your computer because for many of us there is something different about pen or pencil to paper that access is different parts of our brains than when we're typing so you can capture it all, so you don't have to then go type it all in or pay somebody to type it all in we're trying to change your handwriting. Oh, you'll have it that's a cool thing so what's coming in I have one of those I do too it's very changed bond isn't a bit scary. Wait, we have questions from loving now love is saying, how do we keep our energy up? Because I get the doubt and then I talk it away that uses up a lot of my energy to actually get it done. So how do I get that engine back when I'm really leave my motivation? So when you picked thank you for asking that, and when you've picked the right goal, there gets to be less doubt this exercise that we're doing right now. I mean, if you saw erica's faces, she said that there was energy coming to her instead of being lost to it. So when you, when you're picking something that pulls you it's much more energizing, I understand that debate and, you know, they're going to be down days, and they're going to be days where I make myself go exercise where the only reason I'm doing it is because it's, like a parent voice inside of me, is going just doing anyway, you know, those are some of the days, but a lot of the days it's, not that's, not true, and the more you build up of that, the better, so just know you're gonna have that doubt thank thinned out and come back to your why ask the doubt to go in a y journey with you?