005: Goals - Why they're so important and how to set them

Get ready to set goals like you never have before in this episode!

We'll cover why goals are so important, how chipping away at and achieving your goals will help you stay consistent with your healthy habits, and how to break your goals down into small, achievable tasks.

One of the most surprising things that have come out of the women who have taken this program in either the group or the 1:1 format, is how much reaching your goals improves your overall happiness in life.

Dive into this episode to learn all about how to set your long-term goals, goals for the next year, and goals for the next quarter, and change your life!

You can request your free Best Life Master Plan template by providing your email address on my website here:

Follow Katy on Instagram!

Learn more about The Working Mom Happiness Method course here!

To join The Working Mom Happiness Method Facebook group click here.

• Access the episode transcript here

  Hi, my name is Katy Blommer and my passion is helping women learn how to put themselves first, I learned all the tools for success on my own 12 year journey that has led me to finally figuring out how to live my best life. My journey included overcoming body image issues, and yo yo dieting, climbing the corporate ladder to a multiple six figure career, navigating mom guilt through a 60 hour workweek turning around marriage issues, and much more. Now, I'm truly living my best life. And I've pretty much become obsessed with teaching others my tried and true methods for creating balance, maintaining healthy habits, improving your relationship, career development, and how to stop tying your value and worth, to the way you look and how you serve others. I'm so passionate about helping others learn this, that I created the working mom happiness method to help you get there too. So if you're ready to learn how to live your best life, pull up a chair or put on your walking shoes and get ready to dive in. This is the working mom happiness method podcast.

  Hi, and welcome to Episode Five. I'm so excited because this is where we officially start Module Two of the working mom happiness method. So Module One was all about values in the previous episodes leading up to this and Module two is going to be all about goals. And if you are taking the full program and you want to do it really thoroughly via the podcast here for free, which is awesome, then in module one, you would have already gone and gotten a copy of the best life master plan template from the website, and you would have already filled in your values page. And here in module two, which is goals, you're going to fill in three pages of goals for that document. And you're also going to fill in your affirmations and your visualization page in the document. So if you didn't grab that document, you still can it's totally free. And you just go to women's best life University comm click on the tab that says podcast just across the top. And you can get that in episode three or episode five in the shownotes. There is a place there where you can put in your email address, and we will send you a link to the best life master plan document and it's just a Google Doc. If you don't have a Google account, you can create one for free but I think a lot of people do. So that's why we chose to use it there because you can easily edit it there. So what you need to do though, when you get that link, you're going to get that link is going to give you a copy of my document, which will be great because it can guide you through you can see how I've done things and then you can edit your own, delete mine and edit your own accordingly. But in order to do that, after you click the link and you see my document, you actually have to go up to File and choose Make a copy. And that will get you your own copy of mine that you can edit. And as always, if there's anything in my document that resonates with you, or you like that makes sense for your own life, you can feel free to leave it I use and abuse steal it if you want to, that's totally fine with me. But then obviously, you want to customize it for yourself. Alright, so that's how to go get the document. And now let's jump into this episode, module two all about goals today. So what we're going to cover is the importance of goals. We're going to talk about the goal categories, I recommend, we're going to talk about long term, medium term and short term goals. And then the importance of breaking goals down into the next immediate step. Next immediate small step. Let's say it that way. Okay, so let's go ahead and jump in, let's talk about the importance of goals in our life. And I think the bottom line, and the fastest and easiest way to say it is that goals help give us purpose in life. And sure, there are lots of different things that make us feel like we have a purpose in life. But I don't think that we get put enough emphasis on achieving goals, even the small ones. And that's one of the most interesting things I've seen come out of this program, for the ladies who have taken it in past rounds is that the act of writing down their goals very deliberately, and then reading them every day, which I'm going to tell you a little bit about more in a minute. And achieving even the small ones has just brought this level of happiness into their life that I think that all of us maybe didn't even I don't even think I expected how big of an impact it was going to have. It was one of the more surprising aspects of the program, even though I mean, not a total surprise because we know that one of the keys to happiness remember back from episode one, the introduction is spending your time in ways that are aligned with your values. Okay? So if we can create goals that align with our values, and we can spend our time that way, we're a lot more likely to live our best and happy lives essentially. So goals help us to chip away day to day towards our long term vision and career. Eating an exciting long term vision and revisiting it daily keeps us motivated on a regular basis to spend time working on the things that will get us there. And then when we work on those things, it gives us a feeling of accomplishment that brings positive feelings to life and makes us more likely to live our best lives. But also having a purpose is critical for maintaining healthy habits. So when you start achieving these goals in the smallest ways, and it gives you more purpose in life, you're going to create this sort of new vigor and drive in your life, that's going to make you more likely to want to stick to doing healthy habits. Motivation is fleeting, right? Sometimes we have motivation, and sometimes we don't. And we know we can't base long term consistent healthy habits off of willpower, because sometimes we'll have it sometimes we won't. But if you start working on your goals, and I mean goals, all aspects of life, so not only the Healthy Habits, goals, but any goals that you have small and large. The feeling you get from chipping away of those the purpose that it creates, creates this more underlying drive, that what I have found is a lot better and more reliable than using motivation or willpower, if that makes sense. So that's just one of the many reasons why goals are so important is just the feeling of accomplishment and progress we get from chipping away at those goals on a more regular basis. And what I think is fascinating as well, is that we, most adults, most of us, as adults, we don't sit down and take the time to get serious about our goals. We do it at work, usually because we have to and we just kind of look at them at the mid year and the year end, right. But we don't take them super seriously. Most most of us are most people I know I haven't in the past. Most people I've worked with haven't either. But isn't it interesting that we do it even more at work like at our corporate job than we do in our personal like regular life? Right, I just find that so interesting. And I'm not I'm not seeing it as a judgment, because I didn't either before I learned how beneficial it wasn't how impactful it was. And so that's what we're essentially about to do here, is get really deep and really rigorous into what are your goals, and you're going to write them down, and you're going to start reading them every day. Now the reading them every day part, you don't have to start that yet, that's gonna come in module four, when we start our morning routine, right now the assignment is just going to be to write them down in that best life master plan document. And then you're going to add to it in the next episode with affirmations and visualization. And you're gonna add to it in module three with boundaries as well. But once you have the document completed all the way down through boundaries, that's when module for the morning routine comes in. And I'm going to talk to you all about that. But basically reading your goals every day becomes life changing as it relates to starting to accomplish them because your brain is most absorbent in the morning. And when you read your goals every morning, it makes you more likely to take action towards them throughout the day. I know that might sound a little bit crazy, but it's actually true. And it really works. And it's kind of life changing. So I get really excited about it. Anyway, we'll get more into that, like I said in module four. So let's talk about the gold categories that I recommend. Now, these are your goals. So if there's a new category you need or want to create, obviously feel free. But these are the categories you will see in my version of the best life master plan document. They are help and help I have broken out into three categories. I have physical, emotional, and mindset. And then the next school category is family and relationships. And then we have career finances, spirituality, home pleasure slash hobbies, okay? So those are the categories if you don't, if you're not taking notes, right now, that's totally fine, because you can go to women's best life University. As I mentioned before, click on the podcast tab. And in episodes three and five, you can input your email address, and we will email you a link to the document. And I want to caution you on one thing. So I know obviously I just got done saying these are your goals. Obviously you get to customize, you don't have to stick to these categories. Although I do find these categories are pretty all encompassing for most women, moms, working moms, whatever category you fall into, where I want to caution you is on service. So I don't have service as a category here. And I thought about it. Because service has lots of benefits to our happiness. There have been lots of studies that show that doing service serving others can bring you out of depression. And it does increase your overall happiness in life similar like gratitude, right? So service is powerful, and it's strong. But what I find is that if you are here, you're probably feeling exhausted and overwhelmed in your life. And I think what we need to get a handle on first as busy women is serving ourselves and learning how to put ourselves first. Because the cliche is true when you put yourself first you're going to be there and show up better for the people in your life than if you put them first and I know it's a scary thing and we talked about it in values my requirement that you put yourself at the top of your priority list on values on what you value. You have to value yourself the most and it's scary and it's hard because our society It has taught us as women and girls, to place our value on the way we look and serving all those around us. But we have to change that. So here's what I think about service. If you're passionate about service, amazing. But if you're not serving yourself, first, I would encourage you to maybe put a little bit on the back burner until you get consistent, at least at the five non negotiables that we talked about in episode one. So those are drinking water, sleep, body movement, eating nutritious foods that make you feel good, and stress management and stress management. One of the biggest things you can do there as meditation, but also body movement, and those other things that I just listed in the five non negotiables, I'll help with stress as well. Now, I'm not saying you have to have every single one of those down perfectly in order to work on service. I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying that if you are majorly struggling in any of those areas, it's probably time to service yourself. Give back to yourself and put yourself first and serve it puts servicing others on pause until you can get more consistent at all five of those things. Okay, so I know that was a little bit of a tangent, but that's why it's not there. And then you can feel free to work it back in or put a little bit of it in. Now. If it's something that really does bring you joy and happiness, just make sure to service yourself first. Alright, so those are the categories. Now we're going to jump into the three different types of goals. So you'll have three goal pages in your best life master plan. And they are long term goals and vision goals for the next year and goals for the next quarter. So let's start by talking about long term goals and vision. So when you do your long term goals page, I want you to be thinking in a range of like five years out to 25 years, minor written, you'll see mine more as like 25 year goal. And the reason I like to go out further is because I want you to hear I want you to go big, I want you to get a little crazy, I want your long term goals and visions to even be more a little bit like fantasies, like maybe you think there's no way you'll ever achieve it. But if you did, it would be incredible kind of a thing, right. And so think about it that way, go all out. They don't have to seem realistic, I want them to be what you want, not what your spouse wants, or what your parents want for you or, you know, kind of like values, we want them to be your values, we want this to be your vision. If your spouse doesn't agree, that's fine. This is for you to motivate you. If it's something that you even like secretly want or you think would be amazing, that's fine. You're the only one who needs to see it. But I want you to put it down, I want you to make sure these long term goals and visions are aligned with your values. So you can see a linkage back in some way. Right? So you can read each one of these. And you can think oh, yeah, that aligns with this value or that value, right? And you can even think about that exercise we did back in module one of the 90 year old self where you envision yourself as 90 years old, and you would have this amazing life and what does it look like? Right? So you can even weave some of that into here as you create this long term vision. All right. So the way the reason that because you might be thinking, well, that's kind of silly to make it be a fantasy. But the reason it's not silly is because when we set the bar really, really high on our goals, we're more likely to achieve more or get closer to that fantasy goal than if we set the bar too low. So I want you to err on the side of setting the bar really, really high. So let me give you an example of how this could work. Let's say you want in your fantasy, an amazing million dollar beach home in Hawaii. And maybe let's be honest, if you're getting a home on the beach in Hawaii, you might need 2 million I'm not sure I haven't looked at real estate prices in Hawaii, but I know it's expensive. So let's say it's a couple million dollar beach house on Hawaii, and it's your second home and you go there during the winter or whatever. And that's your kind of fantasy goal. Will even if you never get to a place in your life where you can actually afford that, what you're going to do by reading it every single day during your morning routine. And by the way, small caveat, it doesn't have to be every single day, I don't want you to get scared, we're going to make it doable for you, it's going to be most days but you reading it most mornings when your brain is absorbent, your subconscious mind is going to start to believe that you are a person who has a beach house in Hawaii. So maybe what that looks like in 20 years or five years or however fast you want to try to get it is maybe it's a $200,000 condo across the street from an amazing beach in Hawaii. And maybe that makes you the happiest person ever, right? So you're just more likely to get closer if you really strive for these kinds of fantasy crazy far out their goals, right? So an example that I use that I like to use for my own goals is that I have in my long term vision. I want to write a New York Times best selling book that helps women learn to live their best lives. Okay, so this whole book idea, I am super passionate about it, and I'm going to do it. Does it have to be a New York Times bestseller? No, that's not what's going to fulfill me, right? What's going to fulfill me is completing it and getting it out there in the world. And I don't really I mean care if one 100 or 1 million women read the book. I mean, I would love to have a million women read the book that for me. That's not what it's about. It's just trying to meet as many to reach as many women as I possibly can, to help change the world in ways where women and girls are not being raised to place all their value and their worth on the way they look and how they serve others, right? It's all the things we're learning in this program, how to put yourself first how to finally put you first, because you deserve it. And you deserve it just because you are you just because you were born. That's what I want to teach and get that message out there. But I'm not going to be sad or have felt like my I didn't reach my goal. If it's not a New York Times bestseller, right, it's setting that bar high so I can get closer to it. So that's the example. Okay, let's now talk about goals for the next year. So this is where we want to rein it in just a little bit. We want these to tie to your long term goals and vision, they don't all have to like you might have just a goal you want to knock out this year. But it doesn't necessarily directly go back to one of your long term goals and visions. I don't want you to overanalyze it. But I do want you to be able to kind of see the linkages and see the linkages back to your values, right. Because if our goals linked to our values, and we're working on chipping away at our goals, little piece by little piece, that means you're automatically then spending more of your time in ways that are aligned with your values, which is one of the keys to happiness, okay, so it's really cool how this all works together. And you want these to be a little bit more realistic. But I still want you to go bigger than your instincts tell you I still want you to set the heart is the bar a little bit high. But but more realistic, less fantasy type goals, I want you to get out of your comfort zone. But I also want you to be realistic about what your energy levels might be during the next coming year, because you probably have an idea of what the next year might look like for you pretty, pretty good idea. If you don't, that's okay too. But most of us usually do. And we're going to learn all about managing energy in module four. But for these purposes in setting the school, let me give you an example. If you are a single mom, and you are working full time, and you have a goal to go back to school next year, that would not be good timing to set other big HARD goals in your life for the next year. Because you know, that's going to take basically all of your energy. That is a big lofty goal, right? So what is the most common new year's resolution people set to lose weight. So if you're a single mom, and you are working full time, you're going to go back to school. And that's your big goal for this year, you should not make yourself a goal to also lose 25 pounds, okay, because that's going to be basically impossible. You should have other healthy habit related goals to in order to keep your sanity and take care of yourself during that time. Right. And we always want to be working towards health in general. But you've really got to tailor your goals. And by the way, my example was pretty poor one because I do not want your goals to be related to weight loss. In fact, that's one of the things that's a requirement here. It's I am requiring you to not put a weight loss goal. Now I know that's tricky, because I know you want to lose weight, maybe not everyone, but most people want to lose weight, because society has taught us that our value is rooted in how we look. But I really really want you to shift your goals away from weight loss and over to your habits, consistent healthy habits. And then you may lose weight, and you may not. But remember, when we focus on we said this in the last episode, when we put our focus on the scale, it tends to mess with us. And it doesn't set us up for success in health. And there are so many health benefits you get from healthy habits away from the scale. So

  it was a bad example I use but it was a good example to demonstrate how if you have some big thing you have to do this year, you got to tailor your other goals accordingly. And that is okay. So I want you to think through that. But you're not allowed in the Goals section on yourself and your health to put weight loss as a goal and I know that it's gonna frustrate some people so reach out to me if that frustrates you, we could talk about it. You can always by the way, message me on Instagram. It's at Katy Blommer k t y Bl O M M er on Instagram messaged me there if you're frustrated. Let's chat. I know that's a really hard mindset shift to make. But that's not what I want you reading every morning about weight loss, because then you're going to put too much emphasis on it and it's going to set you up for failure unhealthy habits. Okay. All right. I didn't want to get too much on a tangent there. But that's important. You're going to evaluate progress and make any changes on these goals quarterly. By the way, I didn't mention that when we were talking about long term goals. So every quarter, you are going to look at these goals. And you're going to revisit now your long term ones you're probably going to only revisit once a year when you're looking at them each quarter on the on the year. But what I want you to do, I don't care when you're creating this document, it's fine. It doesn't matter. But whenever you're creating it, I want you to try to eventually get on calendar quarter increments, okay. So quarter one is January, February, March, right quarter, quarter two is April, May, June. So what this is going to do is it's going to put the whole working mom happiness method community on the same schedule. And then if you want to sign up for the email list, you can get reminders on when you should be updating your whole document and revisiting your goals. Okay, so your goals for the next year, you're going to reevaluate each quarter see what have you have you checked any off? Do you want to make any changes because our values and our needs and our goals can change over time this is a living breathing document is going to change over time. So you'll be making adjustments to this every quarter and revisiting it. An example here for a goal that relates back to my big long term vision, kind of go bigger go home on the New York Times best selling book is just I just said for the next year, I want to learn more about what most women are struggling with when it comes to living their best life, and the best ways to help them and collect and save the information for my book. Okay. And I have been doing that as I've run the working mom happiness method, multiple rounds with both one on one in the group. I have been doing that. And so I'm really excited about it. And I've been learning a lot. Let's not talk about goals for the next quarter. And honestly, I think these are the most important, I think long term are important and goals for next year are important, but where the rubber hits the road is in your goals for the next three months, the next quarter. So this is where I want you to look at your long term goals and your goals for this year and say, Okay, what specifically out of those do I want to actually work on this quarter? What do I have the capacity and the energy to think about this quarter. And it could even be a piece of one of those goals, it doesn't have to be the whole goal, right? It could be a part like a first portion of one of those goals. And these goals need to be more more smart goal based. So SMART is an acronym. If you don't know it, you can Google it, I think most people have heard of it, it's an going off memory Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and time time bound that having it like a date. And the date is the next three months right for that's what we're talking about right now. If I got that wrong, I may have said some of those wrong going off memory, you can Google it and see if you've never heard of that smart goals are awesome. But these need to be more close to smart goals. And your what you're going to do. So you're going to you're going to write down your goals for the next quarter, you can use mine as a guide, you'll see what I have there. And then the idea becomes that you're going to every I recommend Sunday, you could do a Sunday or Monday morning, the start of each week, you're going to plan some time to chip away at your goals. And so what you're going to do on these goals for the next quarter, is you're going to look at each one and you're going to think what is the most immediate next step, I can take care, the most immediate next step that will take me about 10 to 15 minutes, that's the key, you've got to find a next step that doesn't feel or seem completely overwhelming. Because when it feels too big, we avoid it. But when it feels small, we can get it done. So the example that I said it my goals for the next quarter to go along with my New York Times bestselling book, as I said, this quarter, I'm on to meet with 10 women and learn more about their challenge areas and what helps them overcome these challenge areas a document what I learned. Now I have been doing that I actually wrote this for the program when I created it a year ago, over a year ago. Now, I have been doing this already in my one on one of my group program. So I've done it a lot. But what then what would the next immediate step could be? So I'm going to meet with 10 women, maybe it's just my 10 minute step is deciding who the first person is, and reaching out to that person to say, Hey, would you mind spending some time with me, I'm just trying to learn. That's the next 10 minutes step just getting a meeting scheduled, right. So that's not as daunting as Oh, I gotta meet with 10 women. And that's going to be hard, right. And I want to give you another great example of this. This is one of the ladies who took my program about a year ago. So she had put on her goals for the next quarter that she wanted to get her ducks and her vents cleaned out in her home. And she actually is a person who has had some anxiety about fire in the past. And so this is a fire safety thing. And she'd been living in her home for multiple years and had always wanted to do this but had never done it. So she decided to put it down on her list. So she scheduled in 10 minutes to work on it one week. And in 10 minutes, she was able to Google the company who would come and clean her ducks and her events. And she was able to call them and schedule the appointment to have it done for that coming Sunday. Okay, how cool is that in 10 minutes she got, she found the company and she scheduled to have them come to it. And then the person came on Sunday, they cleaned the ducks in events, I think it was like $100. And boom, check this goal that she had been had on her mind for years since she moved in her house. It was basically a 10 minute plus having the person come and do it type of goal. And she felt this weight lifted off her shoulders because she was having some fire stress about that, right. So that's a perfect example. And I have so many of those examples from the program. In fact, you can probably go see some of them in the results section on the website. It's just amazing the weight that can come off your shoulders as you start to just chip away in these 10 minute increments. So I want you to start thinking about that. We're we're going to create a schedule formally later on. It's actually the end of the program because I like you to get through all the modules and tweak this document you're creating before you start you using it to create your schedule. But when we get to the scheduling point, now it'll be a while from now, since you're doing this via podcast, if you want to do it faster, you can go to women's best life University COMM And you can take it in a group or one on one, and then it's 10 weeks from beginning to end. But the podcast is going to stretch on a lot longer, it is free, which is awesome, it'll just take a little bit longer. But if you don't want to wait for the formal scheduling portion of the program, you can just start scheduling in after you write these goals, you can start it now and schedule in 10 minutes, maybe three times a week to chip away at your goals in these little increments. But you just have to do the little thing that's next. And you'll be surprised how much you start to get done. And the happiness it starts to bring to your life. It's amazing. Okay, so that's how it's gonna work. All right. I think we covered everything as it relates to goals. And as always, if you are getting value out of this podcast, please please please subscribe to it, follow it, like it depending on where you're watching or listening to it. Leave a good and positive review. Because doing all those things help it be seen. All the platforms will show it to more people if it's getting good reviews, and likes and subscriptions and follows and all that good stuff on either YouTube or the podcast, wherever you're listening to it, that helps it reach more people. And that is my goal is to just reach as many women as possible with this. And also please recommend it to any friends or family who you think might get a benefit. So thank you so much for listening. And in the next episode, I'll see you there where we're going to talk about affirmations and visualization which is a huge part of achieving your goals

  thanks so much for listening to the working mom happiness method. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who might benefit from listening for show notes or to enroll in the working mom happiness method coaching courses, visit www dot women's best life university.com

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