Teaching Goalsetting
PART 1
Everyone know that goals will make or break you, but not everyone knows how to get there. I like to start BIG and then work my goals down to small little steps—but then return to the big picture: like an hourglass.
Bucket List: the fun part. Just go crazy. Read books about it. Watch the “Bucket List” movie. Google it. Ask your friends what their bucket lists are. Just any big, little, crazy, wonderful thing you’ve really wanted to do. Write em down. Some basic questions to stir the pot: what would you do if this were your last day on earth? How do you want people to remember you when you’re gone? How do people perceive you verses how you want to be perceived. What are your strengths and talents? What do you love to do? What makes you happy? If money and time were no object, what would you do? What do you need to make you feel successful? What do you value most in life?
Goals Podcast: Rachel Hollis does goals well—and made a journal for it—or you can just listen to the podcast. Just listen to the podcast. She talks about writing your goals as it they are already accomplished. She also helps walk you through dreaming big. I listened, added some bucket list stuff in, scratched stuff out, re-wrote them—and was really happy with my result.
Donald Miller’s Roles: I enjoyed Donald Miller’s book “Storyline 2.0,” and mostly took away from it the understanding of how we have many different roles, and need to set goals for each role. Here is a quick video about it:
4. Get your 10 down: As the podcast said: go do it. I made sure list my top 5 roles, and make sure I had specific goals for those. My 5 roles were daughter of God, woman, wife, mom, and missionary. I ended up making my 10 goals around God, personal, wife, mom, social, family, home, ministry, growth, and travel.
5. Get your adjectives down. Once I had my 10 goals, I realized that most them them had three adjectives involved, such as, “I am a healthy, beautiful, professional woman.” While my goal had a lot more complexities added in and around it, I felt it summarized them well. Here are mine:
God: Wonder, love, childlike
Personal: healthy, beautiful, professional
Wife: supportive, sexy, stylish
Mom: Intentional, inspirational, fun
Social: mentor, accountability, discipling
Family: connected, active, artistic
Home: clean, efficient, debt-free
Ministry: International, reproducible, self-sufficient
Growth: blog, vlog, courses
Travel: family, Disney, Jamaica
6. Get your SMARTER down: for each of your adjectives, know and understand what you mean by it, and what all the smaller steps are to get to each of them. Do a SMARTER for each adjective.
7. Review, Renew and Re-evaluate: Mostly, it’s just important to remember your goals. Rachel Hollis says to re-write your goals each morning during your (pre-set and planned) morning routine. You can set your phone alarm, and put your three adjectives in, so when it rings, you just check in with yourself to see if you are living them. Whatever it is: review them.
Remembering (reviewing) your goals helps you achieve them, but renewing them helps you stay excited. Find ways to keep them fresh. I have specific times that I stop in life and re-evaluate my goals (specifically my birthday and New Years). These help me to see if something needs to change, and (most of the time) be excited about how things are moving forward.
PART 2
PART 3
Part 1 was about starting BIG and then working goals down to small little steps—but then return to the big picture: like an hourglass: Bucket list, visualizing, roles, top 10, Adjectives, SMART, review.
Part 2 went deeper into roles, goals, apirations (Being, Growing, Relating, Creating), overview (word for the year), and divide and conquer (quarterly goals with a theme, personal investment, and travel/special events)
Part 3 is about systems, routines, check-ins, and always habits. When we returned to the USA after living in Brazil for basically my whole adult life, I realized I needed to identify what systems I needed to create and grow, and what routines would be helpful to basically create a whole new life. While I love focusing on goals, creating a whole new life was beyond a list, and needed something different.
2. Check-ins. For me, there are specific times in the year that are easier to “check-in” with myself to see how my goals and progress is going. New Years, of course, is one. My birthday is a natural other check-in. I try to write a letter to my future self (5 years in the future) and my past self (5 years in the past) each year, and now I am reading my future letters (it’s been more than 5 years I’ve done this), and that is really cool. A July half year check-in is helpful, as summer is normally such a different time from the regular school year when you have kids. Rachel Hollis does a 90 days check-in for October, for the last 90 days of the year which is fun and helpful as well.
Check-ins are basically to stop and look at what works and what doesn’t work. Both of these are important. What works is like a north star—it shows you more of what you want. But what doesn’t work is like a south star—showing you what you don’t want, which you can redeem or change into learning more of what it is you really do what.
3. Always Habits. Always Habits are habits you want to have for your entire life. Imagine waking up when you are 80-what are the things that will always, no matter what be things that help you and are good for you? I call mine the dailies and the weeklies:
