Season 1: Ep.22 - On Goals
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Hello, and welcome back to Graceful Rulebreakers. I'm your host Kirsten Lee Hill, and today we're going to talk about goals. It is just about time to welcome a new year and perhaps like me you're vacillating between… Oh my gosh, yay, let me set a million new goals and start fresh for 2021… and paralysis or overwhelm from all the talk of resolutions. Trust me, I've been in both places a few times today. So, for this episode, I'm going to share my Graceful Rulebreaking, trying to be laid back, recovering perfectionist, process to goal setting because to be completely honest, setting goals stresses me out about 90% of the time. It's true. I am going to out myself as a total commitment phobe when it comes to setting my own goals. External goals that other people set, you know like, what it takes to graduate school or get a promotion; love those, great at those. #Perfectionism. But goals that aren't about external validation, goals that reflect my values; my heart rate goes up just thinking about them.
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People are often surprised by this because I'm, quote unquote, 'driven' and have my own business, so obviously I must be goal oriented… and I am goal oriented, just not in the traditional way. I have tried to fit myself, shove myself really, into a lot of goal-setting boxes and systems. I think I've owned at least 12 planners in the past two years, I've done courses, I read books, I listened to podcasts. I do all the things to set better goals and be more productive and happier, and healthier, and successful. I do all of these things and truthfully, none of them have really worked for me. I reflected on this a lot and came down to these three core reasons why traditional goal setting doesn't work for me, why it makes me feel indecisive, flighty, noncommittal, and really stressed out.
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There are three fears that hinder my goal setting process, and these three fears keep me stuck living in a less than stellar life because they prevent me from dreaming big. With these fears I play small, I play scared. It basically stands still instead of moving forward, because I'm so terrified that I'm going to fail or make a wrong choice. And here are the fears;
fear the goal is too big. This is my self-doubt, that the goal I have is even possible, right? Can I even make that much money? Can I even work on that cool of a project? Can I really be published in a major news outlet, right? All these self-doubts I have around, like, really big, dream big goals, make me reluctant to commit to it because I don't want to fail, and also make me feel like… yeah, I'm writing this down, but it's never really going to happen. That's not the type of energy you want to bring to goal setting. You want to think like, yeah… this could be amazing and is totally possible.
fear the goal is too small. This is the opposite problem, right? Sometimes I worry that I'm going to set a goal and I'm creating this, like, ceiling or limiting myself because I actually could have asked for, or accomplished so much more. So, let's say I really want to grow my business in my reach, and I'm like… okay, I want 10,000 more followers on Instagram. So, then I'm instantly thinking, like, is 10,000 like too low? Should I be saying like a hundred thousand, right? Like, am I playing too small? Am I dreaming too small? And then that doubt again, like diminishes the commitment to the goal and just puts us like, this ceiling on what I believe I can accomplish.
fear that I'm going to change my mind and want something else. What if I write down that this is my goal for 2021, and then in February, March, I realize that's not even something I want. I find that I'm really introspective and self-aware and do a lot of just like growing and leveling up, and changing over the course of a year, and some of my goals get outdated, like real quick, like suddenly I get clarity and I'm thinking… oh wow, that's not what I want at all, I really want to pursue this other thing and because I'm a recovering perfectionist, I'm like… Ugh, darn it, but I wrote that down on my list, like, I committed to doing this thing in 2021, and even though it no longer resonates with me, like I said, I was going to do it so I should have to do it, right? So then I'm reluctant to put things on my list, because I'm afraid I might not want them later, and then I'm going to feel obligated to continue on with them.
So thinking like, wow, I've set a goal that's too big… Oh my gosh, the goal is too small, what if I'm limiting myself or wow… what if I changed my mind and then I'm stuck with this goal? All of these things are totally wrapped up in perfectionism and this like belief that goals are static, right?
And all of these fears, these feelings are totally valid, but they also hold us back, and I think having purpose, direction in your life is super important, and I know I've spoken about this before, I think you have to declare what you want in order to attract it. So, not setting goals or feeling really restricted when you're setting goals and just chaining yourself to a system that doesn't feel good, just to say that like you've done it or to feel like you're being a good person or like a good business person, and like doing your goal setting because that's what you should do. No, like those are not options. We need some Graceful Rulebreaking here, because goals can give us direction, they can give us something to work towards, but we want them to feel good, we want them to flow. We want them to feel expansive and limitless, and make us happy.
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So, how can we get around these blocks, these fears of setting goals that seem so unrealistic that we don't pursue them or take them seriously? Or setting goals that feel so small that it's just kind of checklisty, or we're wondering and doubting if we're really just like blocking ourselves and not giving ourselves enough credit, or setting goals and not being willing to pivot if we learn something new about ourselves. How do we get around all of these things so that goal setting is a fun, light, freeing, creative experience? Well, the process that works for me has three key components.
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One, is to focus on allowing. Two, is to find a theme and three is to get practical. So, focus on allowing; this is the dream big component to goal setting for me. I think about, what magic do I want to allow in my life? And I do this in one of two ways, sometimes both ways. The first is creating a vision board and the second is making it a massive list of everything, and I mean everything, that I would love to have in my life, no time limit, no limits at all. Anything that makes me feel like… oh yes, oh my gosh, that would be so amazing if that happened, or if I had that thing or if I accomplish this, or if I felt that way, all of those things go on the list or on the vision board.
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What I love about vision boarding in particular, is if you tend to be really in your head or overthink, this is… this is like me raising my hand over here, vision boarding is a really fun, creative process that allows you to tune into your intuition. You know, you flip through magazines and look for pictures and words that resonate with you, and then you make a collage out of them. I honestly, like, this is one process that I just never overthink. I just pull out like…this calls to me, oh yes, like, I want that word, I love this picture and I collage it all on, I use a clipboard a lot, cause they're really easy to hang and that's fun, but do it a variety of ways, by collage them all on like a clipboard or a big piece of paper, and I just think like, wow… this is the essence of what I want my life to be, and it feels light and fun, and low pressure. And personally with a glass of champagne, it can make for an excellent Friday night. So, highly recommend if the vision board is not your thing, that's fine, go the list version and, you know, get centered, take a deep breath, have your favorite journal or grab your computer, or phone if you prefer typing and just absolutely like brain dump anything without judgment, anything that you want to call in to your life and just be free, and don't judge, don't limit, just see what you come up with.
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Then once you've created this vision of your future, I want you to try to find the theme. So, look at all of these things, whether it's a vision board or a big list, just look at everything and see what stands out to you. What do these words and pictures have in common, right? I start to bucket all of these dreams I have out into big themes, right? And themes will arise. You might be like… wow, I have a lot of things that are about travel or…gosh, I have so much healthy food on my vision board or… Oh wow, I see a lot of things about my business, or a lot of things about, like, communicating and speaking or a lot of things about social life, right? These themes, like if you look at it, you'll start to see themes emerging and you don't have to look for just one, you can look for multiple themes, right? And when I find what themes I have, the next thing I do is, I write out the themes but I write them in terms of how I want to feel. Focusing on feelings is inspired by Danielle LaPorte and her Desire Mapping process, and I absolutely love this process. It isn't a perfect fit for me because honestly it is very time intensive and I'm just more of a bite-sized person and it takes hours and hours, and hours to go through all the exercises and the journaling, and the thinking, and the rethinking, and I find that a little bit overwhelming and also, like, the perfectionist in me comes out and I have to do it exactly right, and spend a lot of time on it and be really thoughtful, and that just causes me to, like, really get too much in my head.
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But the essence of this idea I love, and the essence of the desire mapping process is that you want to drill down to your core desired feelings. So, how do you want to feel? And the reason that you focus on how you want to feel versus what you want to have, or what you want to accomplish is based on this theory that Danielle shares on how in life we go after certain accomplishments or like things, because we think that once we have them, we're going to feel a certain way. So, for instance, I keep…and I go and I get a ton of credentials. I love school. I love degrees. I love certifications, and I get all of these things but the feeling I really want to have is confidence. And in my head, I'm like, if I get all of these credentials and certificates and awards, et cetera, then I'm going to feel confident. The secret is, is that you get all of these things and then you still don't feel confident, because you're chasing the things and the accomplishments rather than centering the feeling and thinking… Okay, what could I do in my life that would make me feel confident and then doing those things, right? Another example is, you really want to, like, be in better shape and so lose weight. This comes up so often at the new year, I know it comes up for me like every year. And it's like, okay, so I want to lose weight and I'm going to feel better when I've lost 20 pounds.
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But to me it's like, that behind the weight loss there is a feeling that you are chasing and it's maybe that you want to feel loved, or maybe you want to feel sexy, or maybe you want to feel strong, and so identifying whatever that feeling is and going after that feeling, that is what's going to help you to feel fulfilled and satisfied, right? Otherwise you could lose the weight and you still don't feel how you want to feel, right? Cause you've just checked off this external thing when really what you ought to be doing is looking inside and tapping into what is the feeling that you want in your life? And so I really love this; setting up your goals in life in terms of how you want to feel. So, looking at your vision board and lists that have lots of, like, things and activities, and maybe it even has some feelings and, like, milestones that you want, but then zooming out and putting them together and being like… okay, I obviously this year, I really want to feel free. I really want to feel creative. I really want to feel nourished. I really want to feel balanced. Whatever these big themes are, those are what I want you to pull out for your goal setting.
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And then the last step is once you have these big, beautiful themes of how you want to feel in your life, is to get practical. How can you bring those feelings into your daily, weekly, monthly, life? If things are not in your calendar, it's not going to happen. I hear so many experts say this again and again, but it's true, right? If you don't intentionally create time for new habits and goals and the way you want to feel, it's probably not going to happen, right? Your time is going to get filled up with the typical day to day, right? So, if you want to feel differently, make some space for that new feeling. If you want to pursue new feelings, new goals, intentionally create the space to pursue them. So for me, I focus on small things that I can do each week because I find picking things to do each day is really overwhelming. It is hard to build rituals and habits that you do every day and it can take years to achieve that, and even then most people, looking at myself here, are not perfect at it. And a big part of accomplishing goals is building momentum towards your goals and like feeling good, not feeling like you're behind or a failure. So I like to look at my week and be like… okay, in this week, I want to do this thing that will make me feel creative, at least one time, or at least two times, or at least three times. And I like to say, like, at least or I'll write like one plus, two plus, three plus, because if there's more time and you know when you focus on making time for something, you create more time for that thing. So if there's more time, great, but the very least I'm going to make this amount of space for it. And so, I really just keep these activities small, bite-sized, manageable and just kind of like lowball myself.
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So, as an example, one of the things for me this year is that I want to feel more creative. One of my goals related to feeling more creative is teaching myself how to play guitar, and I'm super excited about it. This was, I bought myself a guitar for my 33rd birthday a couple of weeks ago and I'm jazzed about this new goal. And so the way I set the goal was like each week I will practice guitar for at least 15 minutes, three times a week. And like, that's the bite-size manageable way I can keep my practice, and like, that's my goal. It makes me feel creative, it makes me feel a lot of other positive things too, but sticking to like the core feeling I want to feel, it makes me feel creative and I put that, I have like a little tracker in my planner or like mark off if I've done it that many days… um, the least three times a week, and that's it. And it's great. You would do this for each feeling that you have, and maybe for some of your feelings you'll have multiple activities and that's okay. But I really encourage you just to keep this bite-sized and manageable, right? Like you want to be hitting these practical actions and like generating these feelings in your life on a consistent basis. So, make it something that you can absolutely, non-negotiably have time and space for.
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So, in summary goals can be fun. They don't have to be stressful and you can do goals your own way, in a way that feels good for you, and you can set goals and reset goals any time of the year, right? It doesn't just have to be at the new year, it doesn't just have to be at the start of the week, it can be any time you want to do it… um, but now in particular, when there are like natural endings and beginnings, maybe you'll want to go set with the moon cycles, it's just a great opportunity to think about what you want to call into your life, right? What do you want more of? How do you want to feel? So, really focus on allowing, think about all the good things you could allow into your life and declare those, so that the universe starts sending them to you, then look for the themes, so you can say… wow, I'm really picking out how I want to feel in life. And then lastly, get super practical. Keep things bite-sized and manageable, and just build that momentum. I love specificity and I like systems, but I really don't like feeling confined or like there are too many rules to follow. And so I want to emphasize that as with any advice I give, take what resonates and leave the rest. And I really just encourage you to tune in to what feels good and try on a goal-setting process or technique that lights you up, that feels good. Happy 2021, my friends, I will talk to you in the new year.
