Episode 43: Setting Goals You'll Actually Achieve This Year

Episode Description

If you're feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the lack of progress in your career goals, then you are not alone! You may be constantly working long hours and sacrificing personal time, only to see minimal results and little advancement. You may find yourself stuck in a cycle of unfulfilling tasks and missed opportunities, leaving you feeling stuck and stagnant. However, there are proven strategies and techniques you can implement to break free from this cycle and finally achieve the success and productivity you desire.

Goals have to be something that I am in more control of in life. Instead of saying I want a million followers on Facebook, imagine having a million followers on Facebook. What would be in my control is posting two times a day or doing a Gary Vee and posting 100 times a day. Whatever we do, that's actually something that's achievable by me, measurable by me, because I have control over it.

Mentioned in this Episode

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Unlock your potential with effective goal setting strategies.
• Discover the secrets to achieving success with smarter goals.
• Cultivate daily habits that lead to goal achievement.
• Find motivation and self-love to fuel your goal setting journey.
• Learn to maintain consistency and avoid burnout for sustained success.

Cultivate Daily Habits

Constructing healthy routines and behaviors are the stepping stones towards reaching our objectives. By incorporating valuable habits into our daily life, we enhance our productivity and increase our chances of realizing our long-term goals. Thus, the smart integration of systematic patterns can ultimately manifest into substantial progress and success.

Timestamped summary of this episode:

00:00:00 - You welcome to the Samantha Leith podcast, episode 43 how to actually set goals you'll achieve in 2024.

00:00:15 - Welcome to the Samantha Leith podcast with me, Samantha Leith. I have a passion for exploring anything and everything that can help us to be extraordinary. Each week I'm going to dive into a topic and explore it extensively because if there's something that makes for a better life, I want to learn about it and more importantly, share it. And hey, you may just get the OD song thrown in. There'll be deep conversations, fun and Travolta.

00:00:42 - Helpful tools for you to add to your life straight away. Random musings about anything from coffee to sex and information that may just blow your mind. This is a podcast for dreamers, believers, action takers and achievers. It's personal development, but not as you know it.

00:01:03 - So it's not the first time and it definitely won't be the last time. You will hear me talking about goal setting. I love goal setting. I have used goal setting to achieve so much in my 49 and a half years on the planet, even though I probably only started goal setting, I don't know, probably my 20s. Gosh, I wish I actually knew that.

00:01:26 - That would be a good thing for me to sit and think about. However, I've also used goal setting and the kind of belief that magic happens when you set and achieve goals to hurt myself, like as a form of kind of self-punishment, if you will, to kind of prove how crap I am. When I don't actually achieve a goal now, I don't do that anymore, thank goodness, because I have all gone and grown up and I really, really understand now that it's so much more about what you do and who you become and how you actually have to evolve and in so many areas of your life on the road to actually achieving a goal. And that can sometimes, in fact, a lot of the time, be so much more gratifying and just heart filling and better for you than actually achieving the goal. So how we're going to do goals this year, in 2024, a little bit differently to previous years, to actually make that stuff happen now, I'm not going to go over all the ins and outs of goal setting.

00:02:41 - If you go to the snatch lathe website, you can go to freebies. There's a whole lot of stuff on goal setting. But the bottom line with goal setting, every time we want to talk about it is we do want to make them smart or smarter, something like that. They've got to be fit into all those areas. So we know that we are actually achieving it.

00:03:00 - Because if you just, you know, I want to be really funky. Random thing for me to say, but how do you measure funky and when do you want to be?

00:03:14 - So that was a really bad example. Spoke to Mary. But you know what I mean? We have to have something specific. We have to have that specificity.

00:03:22 - We have to have a timeframe on it. We have to know that we can actually do it. It's got to be that measurable kind of thing. And I believe more and more so now that goals have to be something that I am in more control of in life. So instead of, I think I mentioned this last week in the podcast, instead of saying I want a million followers on Facebook, imagine having a million followers on Facebook.

00:03:53 - That just blows my mind. Anyway, that's totally not in my control at all. What would be in my control is posting two times a day or doing a Gary Vee and posting 100 times a day. Whatever we do, that's actually something that's achievable by me, measurable by me, because I have control over it.

00:04:11 - So I'm really morphing more and more of how I think about my goals into things that I have more control over. Now, that's not to say I'm a control freak, although that does pop up and rear its ugly head every so often, but not all the time. And I'm not changing how I plan my goals. So I still want them to follow that smart pattern, and I still want them in every single area of my life. So when I talk about that, I talk about, if you want to do your life assessment or your wheel of life again, you can grab it on the website.

00:04:50 - I want to talk about our physical health, my mental health, romantic love, financial fitness, family and friends, business, career, physical environment, fun and recreation, spirituality, contribution. I want to look at all of those areas. Now, if I was to set a goal in all of those areas that would be really dumb. Okay, I'm using the d word there, people. It would be really dumb because I would be so busy trying to achieve all these different things and all these different areas of my life that I'm not going to do it.

00:05:23 - And life would get complicated. I'd get tired; I'd get frustrated, like it's not going to work. But I still want you to think about all of those areas. And yet think about something like, as we thought about a couple of weeks ago, about looking at last year, what is something you'd like to accomplish in each of those areas? Maybe something you didn't accomplish last year that you'd like to accomplish this year.

00:05:50 - It's a really good place to start. And when you're thinking about that, if you've come up with a couple of things that, oh, okay. I want to look at fitness, for example. I may have mentioned it before, but I turned 50 this year and I want to feel as fit as I've ever felt in my life on that night with my 50th birthday party. And that is achievable.

00:06:18 - Okay. However, I'm not 100% sure what that fitness looks like as far as the specificity because I haven't been there. So I don't know if there's a certain magic weight number or certain magic body fat percentage or certain number of kilometers I can do on the treadmill or any of that kind of thing. So I've set my goal around that about how often I work out, how much water I drink, how much alcohol I consume, all of those kind of things, and I've kind of turned them into do goals rather than like a full goal. And I talk a lot about do goals in what I call the do it diet.

00:07:04 - And if you go onto my website, I think it's still there and we'll pop the link in the show notes or we'll work out how you can get it. We'll add it to the website or something because I haven't actually done it for a while, but I really believe in that method. So I'm kind of focusing more on do goals rather than bigger goals for this year for myself. So I want to talk to you, encourage you, I guess, to actually look at doing your goals this way this year as well, because it's something that you can then build into your habits more. Because when we're talking about habit setting, they go hand in hand.

00:07:45 - Habits and goals are like a marriage. They're just like a perfect partnership. They work so well together. And we can talk about on the negative as well. Like, if you're not sticking to the habits that you want or you have some, let's just say, not so fantastic habits in your life, then chances are you're not going to achieve the goals that you want to achieve, no matter what they are, because those habits creep into your life and then you go, I can't be bothered doing that.

00:08:12 - Oh, I'm too tired to do that. Oh, but that invitation just sounds so much more exciting than going to the gym. You know what I mean? We've all heard those things, so we want whatever it is we're doing this year in order to achieve our goals, to become a habit. And the way they've become a habit is to do this daily kind of step in order to do them.

00:08:36 - So when we're talking about the habit loop, there's a trigger, there's the habit that we do, there's a reward. We go round and round and round and I can't remember what podcast episode it is, but it is in there. If you want to have another listen to it again, we'll link that in the show notes. But when you understand how habits work, you can really understand the importance of setting up habits that are going to support your goals, support your dreams, support where you want to go in life and the changes that you want to make in your life or you have to make in your life. I should say for a lot of us, in order to actually get there, there are some days where you don't want to do the thing you've set yourself a goal of, let's say buying a new house this year.

00:09:26 - And you know, in order to buy the new house this year, all your finances have to be looking at spic and span to get that mortgage. And one of the things you need to do that is make sure all your accounting is up to date. Like your bills are paid on time and you get home from a twelve hour day in the office and the last freaking thing you want to do is organize your bills so you have a few days where you go, oh, do it later or do it later or do it later. And slowly that habit kind of, that habit creeps in and all of a sudden you're two months behind on actually organizing any of that stuff. And you're getting a letter saying, I even paid this bill.

00:10:03 - So you think, oh, I've got to form a better habit in order to support that goal. So you set aside time every Sunday night to sit down and actually go through all your finances and make sure they're all hunky dory. So you know, in three months’ time, four months’ time, and five months’ time, whenever it is that you can actually go for that goal of getting you the new mortgage to go house shopping. How exciting does that sound? House shopping?

00:10:28 - Woo. That'd be so much fun. I've been in this house for ten years now and I used goal setting in a really, really big way to get this house and manifestation. And that's a whole other story. So we won't go into that in this episode because what I want to do is just really help you to set yourself up for success.

00:10:47 - Like we talked about in the first week of January to actually achieve your goals this year. So when you've grabbed a piece of paper or you take a little voice memo, whatever it is, or you grab the download, however you want to do it, once you've got those goals in each area of your life, remember, you can't have one in every single area because you're not going to get it done. Sorry. I want you to think about why you want to achieve the goal. It's not a big enough reason to just go.

00:11:23 - Because I want to. No, that's not going to drive you when it's raining or when you're grumpy, or you get a better offer, or it's too humid and you don't want to do something, you've got to have a reason. Something that just fills your heart or drives you or makes you crazy with frustration. In order to achieve, to get want that goal, it's got to be something really, really emotive. Okay?

00:11:53 - That's when they're powerful, that's when they work. That's when things don't get you down. Because there will be speed bumps along the way. My friends, so sorry to tell you, but it's not all going to be smooth sailing. How many different metaphors can I get into a thing?

00:12:09 - Smooth sailing, speed bumps. Pick a road and stick to it, Samantha. But you know what? Have to. You just got to want it bad enough.

00:12:19 - You're not going to achieve things you don't want bad enough. And that I could almost promise you. Maybe you'll luck on a few of them, but the chances are really, really slim. So once you've done that, I want you to do that for as many of the goals as possible. Take your time with us.

00:12:38 - Grab a tea, a coffee, a wine, whatever you want. And then I want you to do the smart thing. So the specific, measurable, attainable, realistic time, like all of that stuff, I want you to do that. And then you're going to look back on them and you're going to go, oh, now that I've actually written all of that out, bam, bam. That one's not so doable this year.

00:13:01 - Or not so doable in this three months. Or not so doable in the six months. But hang on, it's achievable in five years because I should have actually looked this up before I started recording. There is a quote about people being unrealistic about what they can achieve in a year. So we kind of almost, kind of almost go, oh, my gosh, I can achieve everything in twelve months and we fail, but we don't go, oh, I could achieve all these amazing things in three or five years.

00:13:35 - So we don't plan for that. We kind of want these faster fixes. And I think that's actually getting worse in today's age where everything we can do at the click of a finger, we can jump online, we can change our nose if we don't like it. We can do all these things really, really quickly how and when we want to. So I think that time frame is probably actually getting shorter and shorter, unfortunately.

00:13:59 - So you might look at some of those things on your list and go, yeah, that's just not going to happen this year. So I'm going to make it a three year goal or a five year goal. And then once you've got three or five bigger picture goals that you want to achieve this year, maybe you've got a few more. And this is where the Magic happens. Say you've got two goals.

00:14:18 - One's a financial one and one's a business one, and they may be able to kind of go hand in hand. So think about it. You have a goal to earn x amount of money this year and you have your own business. So, you know, in order to do that, you need to have ten more consulting clients this year to get to that number. So you go, oh, hang on.

00:14:45 - So I want to build my business and I want to have all this money to do that. Based on my conversion rate, I need to speak to ten people a day or five people a day. Pick a number. So instead of the bigger picture goal, what you're going to do is set yourself a do goal of those reaching out to people every single day. See where I'm going with this?

00:15:08 - And then that ties into your bigger picture goal. So every day when you're journaling, you're going to talk about your bigger picture goal, because that's going to be that driving force that's going to keep you going. But you're alongside that, going to set these amazing do goals that work hand in hand with them in order to help you achieve that goal and what you want to do, you can form habits based on it. You can put up a chart on your wall. I've got some canva templates that we'll also put the link in the show Notes for where you can mark off.

00:15:46 - I made that call, I did that reel, I wrote that letter, I went to the gym, I drank eight cups of water. Whatever it is that your daily do goal that will go with that, I want you to mark it because that's going to keep driving you. And then when you're looking at it and you can go uhoh, only had 5 hours sleep last night, it's not great, but you go oh hang on, I've had my 8 hours sleep for 24 nights in a row. I am a legend so I can pick myself up and keep going. And charting that really, really helps.

00:16:26 - Like a pinky, pinky promise you. And what I really encourage you to do, and I encourage all my clients to do is set yourself a reward. We're humans, we like being rewarded for stuff. Actually that's not even true. The Labrador likes getting rewarded for stuff.

00:16:49 - Everybody, everything, every creature likes getting rewarded for stuff. I'm not going to come to up, come over to your place with a little jar of treats that you've got to grab out while you're achieving your daily do goals, but I encourage you to actually set yourself some rewards for things. Maybe it's going in with your facial, buying a book, booking a coaching session, there you go, join in the club. There could be all sorts of things that you want to do and I want you and do it, stick to it. Don't get to the point where you go, I made, I am good, I am good.

00:17:28 - I made my five phone calls every single day for 31 days. Oh no, that's a bit silly to go into Mecca and spend $100. No, I do it. Make sure you have the reward. It will keep you going.

00:17:44 - It will just put that little bit of a fire in your belly and make you feel good about actually doing it. Something for yourself. So this is all about these things that we do every day, consistently over a period of time, change us. They really, really change us. And I've got us have to believe for the better.

00:18:07 - We get closer to achieving what we want. We get closer to that dream, believe, act and achieve thing that I talk about. And it's these habits that go the daily do goals that become habits that are underlying our goals that actually make all that stuff happen. Okay, the last thing I want to talk about on this is that big sticky overwhelm thing. I am a brooch wearing, card carrying expert in overwhelming myself with having too much to do, too many lists, too many charts to check off, too much, too much.

00:18:46 - Because I thought the more I did, the more I could do, the more I could prove to myself that I could do all of these things. The better person I would be, that happier I'd be, the better I'd feel about myself, all of those things. But the problem with setting myself up with so many things to do all the time is I failed. And I didn't realize, I don't think at the time. But now, in hindsight, how much over, in particular the last couple of years when I have fallen off the wagon, so to speak, with doing this for myself, it really has taken a toll on how I feel about myself and then what I actually go on to do the next day or the next hour or the next week or the next month, et cetera.

00:19:28 - So please be kind to yourself and reduce. So instead of saying, there's ten things I want to achieve this year and every day I need to do 100 things in order to achieve those ten things. Baba. No, three to five things. Now, I normally do five goals and five actions.

00:19:53 - So each goal has one action, which I call the daily do goal, and I do that five days a week. So five by five by five. Okay. Even if at its most basic, you want to go back to the fit, the fitness thing, most personal trainers, fitness programs, et cetera, will tell you you need to have a couple of rest days. Like just go for a walk.

00:20:16 - You don't need to do a pump class or go for a ten k run or whatever it is you're thinking about. You need rest days. And I think that's the same for when we're working on our goals. Heck, if you look at the rock, the man is a legend and he has a cheat day built into his life because we can't be that strict on ourselves. Twenty four, seven.

00:20:44 - Seven days a week, 365 days a year, we fall, we fail. It's human nature. Okay, so five by five by five. Like, that's pretty freaking simple. And you know what you're going to do?

00:20:56 - You're going to put it in your diary. You are going to put it in your diary. When you are going to achieve these things, when you're going to do them, how they're going to fit into your life, you're going to mark it off at having it gotten done, and you're going to work out how they fit into each of those goals. And you're going to freaking celebrate along the way. And you're going to be prepared for speed bumps because they will happen, but because you're not in overwhelm about what you're trying to achieve, you'll do it.

00:21:30 - You'll be like, okay, speed bump. That's okay. I can get back on the bus tomorrow. Had a bad day. Something happened.

00:21:38 - I'm just tired. I got a cold. You know how often I thought I was the world's worst parent, terrible person. What a failure I am because I fell off the wagon or stopped marking a few days when I was sick. I think back now I'm just like, oh, Samantha, no, we've got to be kind to ourselves.

00:22:05 - Being kind to ourselves. If we're not going to be kind to ourselves, nobody else is going to be kind to us.

00:22:13 - We have to show ourselves love and show the world how much we love ourselves in order to receive more love. It's most simple terms. So setting up goals in a way that you're on the cycle of punishment and I've got to achieve or I'm hopeless. I've got to achieve or I'm hopeless. Oh, I fell over.

00:22:32 - I'm hopeless is just one of the worst things you can do for yourself, okay? So please try not to do it. Please, pretty please. Get off my soapbox now. Okay.

00:22:46 - That's all I wanted to talk about this week. About how to set yourself up for success within your goals by doing this practice of daily do goals. Okay? So remember, I want you to work out all your goals. Didn't go through that in depth.

00:23:00 - Make sure they're smart, don't have a gazillion of them, but look at your key areas of your life. Then I want you to pick five. Okay, you can pick three. If you want to do this and do it three days a week. Just pick a number that works for you.

00:23:12 - But whatever number that is, have one action that goes alongside that goal that you repeat for those number of days a week. Okay? If it's a running goal and you're learning how to run, then I run three times a week as part of that daily do goal that will then become the habit. I can hear you all saying that back to me as I do it. Okay, until next week, my friends, have an extraordinary week.

00:23:38 - And don't forget, I will believe in you until you believe in yourself. Bye. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Samantha Leith podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the world of personal development and what's possible for you, then I'd love to invite you to join the club. It's my monthly membership designed to guide and support you with the tools and the coaching you need to be extraordinary.

00:24:06 - Head on over to samanthaleith.com forward slash the club. The more information I'd love to see you on the inside, close.