In this episode, I talk about the importance of being intentional with your goals.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, where my goal is to give you 10-minute lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the importance of writing down your goals. One of my favorite quotes is that you don’t become an astronaut by accident. So whatever goal you’re trying to complete, you have to follow the process. For me, I’m trying to have a successful business with grow with joe, where I combine financial planning with development coaching. So everything I do is get me closer to that goal right now because once I hit my numbers in business, this will allow me to to do more public speaking, take my family on trips when I have kids, I will have more time to spend with them. I have my future envisioned, now I just have to follow the process to get there.
One good way to help you get started is to go over your SMART goals. Which is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Specific. A really bad goal is something like I want to have a good job. This is way too vague and doesn’t give you any direction on where you should go. I feel like people need to have to be more specific with their goals. When I hear vague goals, I know that they are not going to be successful. You really need to be really specific about what you want out of life but I also know that people like to complain about their situation and not take much action so what every specific goal that you choose, you need to make sure you’re taking action on it. And with your goals, it should be focused on inputs and be outcome-focused because you can’t really control the results but you can do stuff to make sure you’re more likely to reach it.
So you’re looking to lose weight, a bad goal would be I want to lose weight. It’s too vague and doesn’t tell you what to do. A SMART goal would be “I want to workout 5 times a week on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7 am for one hour, where I run on Monday, Thursday and Saturday, and do resistance training on Tuesday and Fridays. I’m also going to follow the slow carb diet six days a week and have my cheat day on Saturday. which is called faturday in some communities. And I’m going to follow this routine for four weeks and measure my results.
This SMART has everything you need. It’s specific, you know how you’re going to work out and eat, it’s measurable because you can see if you’re following the routine for one month, attainable, this is something that you need to figure out. Some of you might only work out two or four times a week because that fits within your schedule. If you’re in school and have finals, this might not be the best time for you to implement this new routine in your life but let’s say we are able to do this routine for one month. The goal is also relevant because this is what you’re going to have to do if you want to lose weight and you should see results if you’re disciplined about the process. And it’s time-specific because you’re going to do it for four weeks. This is a one month experiment to see if you’re on track for your weight loss goals. It’s healthy for 1-2 lbs of fat loss a week so anything more than that can be dangerous but it also depends on where you start in life. Do you have a high BMI already or is it lower?
If you start to see weight loss, it won’t be by accident because you were very intentional with the process. The same thing can happen with your career and your relationships. If you say you want to make more money, figure out the number you want to make, and find jobs that will get you there that you enjoy and then work backward. See who is already in that field and then reach out to what are the three things you can do now to help you get in that field and then you start doing it. For me, I know I have to reach out to 90 people on social media and text 6 friends just to maintain my social networks. It’s a lot of work and I could easily dismiss it but I know how important it is for me and my success. With relationships, do what is need to have a great relationship. If you haven’t found that right person yet, then you just have to keep searching and hang around places where the type of person you want to be with hangs out at.
To become an astronaut it is not going to be easy or whatever ambitious goal that you choose to do. To start my business journey as a financial planner, it took me four years to figure out how to my process is going to be and to be comfortable in my client meetings and it was accomplished because I told myself that my goal is to have 50 meetings a month and call 20 people a day. It was a lot of work but I learned so much how as I was doing it and it gave me the confidence to do my own thing. I know where I want to go for my future and I’m just focusing on the process to get me there. I can’t let distractions hold me back because time is the scarcest resource we have and if I lose a day, a week, I know I won’t get it back.
So to summarize today’s episode, you have to be intentional with your goals and a good way to do that is to write down SMART goals, which stands for Specific Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Specific. And as your reach astronaut status just realize that it takes astronauts a minimum of 8 years to become qualified to become an astronaut with the educational training, the work experience, and the actual NASA training. This is not going to happen by accident and you have to follow the process for making it happen. So write down your smart goals when you have a chance today, hopefully right now and begin your path towards a better life.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode.
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