60: Goals Done Right

This is the time of year when we start thinking about what we want to do next year, our goals and New Year’s Resolutions.  For many people goals can be one of those things that either you don't do, or you don't take seriously because you've never really learned how to do goals properly.

In this episode you will learn:

  • How to set goals so that you actually achieve them.
  • Why you’re not making or having success with your goals.
  • Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
  • The secret to achieving your goals.

If you want to make your goals a reality, this episode is for you.

You can listen to the episode above or read the unedited transcript below.

Transcript

Meaghan Smith  00:20

Hello, beautiful people. And welcome to another episode of the Money Mindful Podcast. I am your host Meaghan Jean Smith. I'm a life coach for women and I help you create the extraordinary life you want to live on purpose. This is the last episode for the year, ah, gosh, this year has gone so quickly. I want to try and keep this episode as brief as possible. Because I know this time of the year is just so crazy for so many people. Goals. This is the time of year when we start thinking about what we want to do next year, right New Year's resolutions. The Christmas weight, we want to lose the new life we want to leave in 2021. It's it's in the air. And for most of us at New Year's Eve, it's this time where we will look at the year that has passed and then you look forward to the new year that is coming. And for many people goals can be one of those things that either you don't do, or you don't take seriously because you've never really learned how to do goals properly. And what I mean by that, because isn't a goal, we just decide to do something and then you do it. Yes, it is. But so many of us we we have this idea of what we want to create, right? Like we we think about the new us in the new year. It's like right, I'm just going to stop drinking. Or I'm finally going to lose those last five kilos or this is it. This is the year I'm definitely going to invest in shares this year. I you one of those people who has had things on your to do list for years, and you still haven't done them. You're not doing your goals, right? I just, I just put it that way. Okay. And I'm going to point out to you what common mistakes that people make, and then also how to actually create a goal, so that you do it. And it's actually as good as done. All right, because I think what a lot of us do is we have these wafty ideas of what we think we might do. And we've write things down. But it's more of a wish list. Right? It's just a Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to actually invest in shares this year? Wouldn't it be nice to one day own an investment property? Or Wouldn't it be nice to finally take my hobby, to full time to a real thing to an actual job that pays me? So where do we go wrong? Well, first of all, we don't take our goals seriously. Right? I was having a chat with somebody that I'm coaching on stopping over drinking, that's not something I usually coach on, by the way. And if that's something that you want coaching on, I can reach out because I can hook you up with other people who who coach on that all the time. But I just happened to be coaching a client on this this topic. That's not something I normally do. But anyway, I said to him, if you don't stop over drinking, like if you don't follow through with what you are planning to do, what your goal is, would you give me 10 grand? Kind of that stopped him in his tracks, right? Because like, How serious are you about your goal? What's your compelling reason to do the goal that you want to do and how committed are you to actually doing it? Because if you're not really committed, take it off your list. Like don't waste your time. Because all you're doing is creating more evidence for yourself that you don't get shit done, and that you don't do what you say you're going to do. And if you're not serious about creating what you want to create, then yeah take it off your to do list.

Meaghan Smith  05:03

So that's that's one main thing that we do we, we have an idea about what we want to do, but we're not really committed to it. Right? It's not something that we really care about that much. And look, some things we do want to do. And there's techniques that you can do, where you can make it more compelling. But you want your goals to be something that is really compelling that you are going to do no matter what and that you will commit to. The other common mistake that people make when it comes to making creating goals is that you put too, you try to create too many goals at once. It's like you want to invest in shares. But you also want to pay down that old debt that you've got that money that you wanted to pay your mum back or whatever that you had from a loan years ago, but you finally just want to get get it out of the way. But you also want to lose that last five kilos. And this is the year that you're finally going to join the gym and go every year. Right? This, this is what we do, come on, I know you do this, because I do it too. All right, we, we have all these things that we want to do. And we kind of dabble in all of them and achieve none of them. So here's what you do, you pick one goal. And you stick to that one goal. And that is it. Now your brain is not going to want to do that your brain is going to tell you that's a bad idea. We should invest in shares. But we should absolutely also join the gym, lose the weight, stop drinking, get a new job and get a new partner. It's like we want to do everything. And we want to do it now. And also there's some kind of urgency about having to do it all.

Meaghan Smith  07:20

But we just set ourselves up for failure when we do that, because there's only so many things that you can manage at a time, we need constraint, it's like trying to drive a car at the same time as painting your nails and eating a sandwich. And having a conversation on the phone to someone at some point in time. Something's got to give. And also, I'm just going to call something out. And I know some of you will probably disagree with me. And I thought this for a long time. But I've changed my thinking on this. Like everybody says women are great at multitasking. That's like a thing that people say, right? But when you multitask, and there's actually studies that have been done on this, you get less done. I if you actually just did the one thing and concentrated on that one thing and kept doing it until that job was complete, and then moved on to the next thing you would get more done. And even as I say that I can feel my brain wanting to argue with that. Because this is a classic thing that I do. I try to do lots of things at once. And it's quite uncomfortable. I was gonna say painful, but it's not painful. That's kind of I'm exaggerating a bit there. But I really don't like constraining to doing one thing. And I'll give you an example. When I was thinking about doing coach training, I was actually thinking about doing that a long time ago. And there was training coming up. And it I've mentioned before, it was a considerable cost. And I wanted to do it but at the same time, I was in the process of buying another property. In the end. It was and I was also launching this podcast. So this was about 18 months ago. It was before I hadn't launched the podcast yet, but I was going through the motions of learning how to do a podcast, what to do and all of that. And I just wanted to do coach training so badly. When I decided not to do it. I felt so disappointed and it was like a kid in a milk bar. And for those of you who are international listeners, I have no idea what he called milk basil. essays but it's like a shop where you can go and buy lollies and milk and bread and things like that. And that feeling of missing out on the lollies. Like that's how I felt when I didn't enrol in coach training, I felt so not miserable. But yeah, I just felt, I felt like I was missing out. And it was actually really hard not to do it. But at the time, I was in the process of getting a loan to buy an investment property. Now, banks, scrutinise your, your accounts and the money that you spend and all of that, but not only that's not the reason why I decided not to do coach training. But the thing was, is I was already getting a podcast off the ground, which was taking a lot of time and effort and energy because I was in in a learning process. And I was also in the process of buying a property, which is, if you've ever bought an investment property before, it's there's a bit of a process involved, like there's a lot of paperwork and liaising with the buyer's agent and the contractors and all the inspectors and doing all that stuff. It's it's quite involved for a few months, it takes a period of time to do. What I did was is even though I didn't want to by constraining to the podcast and the property, and that was eat, that was the only thing that I was focusing on. What happened is, even though I had to feel that disappointment of not doing coach training back, then I then bought that property, created this podcast, got those things off the ground and actually achieved them. And then from that place, I went into coach training, having already done

Meaghan Smith  11:53

those things. It's not wrong, it wouldn't have been wrong of me to do coach training. But the reason why I'm telling you about this example is it's a very natural thing. And so many of us do it, do it, we have these ideas, and we want to pursue them all at once. And we get this urge, like this feeling like it has to happen now. And it all has to happen. Right in this minute, like instant gratification, like a toddler. I like for those of you with kids totally understand what I'm talking about. But we do this as adults. And we do a disservice to ourselves. Because it's much harder to multitask and concentrate on more than one thing at a time. And it's also a lot easier to fail. And not that failing is a bad is a bad thing. If you're giving your all to something and you realise that the way that you did, it didn't work. And then you try it another way. And then you just keep trying until you succeed. But what I mean is when you try to do multiple things at once, like paint your nails, drive the car, eat a sandwich, chat with your girlfriend on the mobile phone, you're setting yourself up for, you're most probably going to have a car accident, and die and hurt yourself and someone else right? Do you get what I mean? It's like, when you try to go after all these goals at once. You don't go after anything, it's like you don't achieve anything. But when I committed to No, I'm buying a house, that's it. That's what I'm doing. That's my focus that I achieved that I did it. And then I got the podcast off the ground, and I achieve that. And then I did that. And then I went into coach training. And I just gave coach training my all and I went into that and became a coach. And then I started my business and just went into that and gave my business my all and got that off the ground. And I actually want to buy another property and have the money and all of that to do that. But one of the reasons why I haven't pursued that this year, actually just a meeting our mortgage broker this week. And I'll probably talk to you about that next year as I take that further. But just do one thing at a time, set yourself up for success. Don't try and do 5000 things at a time and then not achieve any of them. Can you relate? Do you know what I mean? And the thing is, is that when you actually constrain constrain doesn't feel good. Our brains don't want to constrain okay. It's like oh, shiny new thing. Let's do this new course. Oh, let's go and get that sorted out. Let's do this.

Meaghan Smith  14:51

Let's renovate the back of the house. Let's also get a new job. Oh yeah. And we also want to get a new puppy or whatever it is right? And then it's just too much, and then we get overwhelmed, and then we do nothing. So the message of this podcast is set your set yourself up for your goals next year, right, you can write down more than one goal, that's fine. But pick one and one goal only. And commit to that goal. And make sure it's a goal that you are serious about, that you have a compelling reason to achieve that goal, that you could send me an email and say, Meaghan, if I don't achieve this goal, I'm gonna send you $10,000. That's how committed I am to doing this goal, right? Big difference. And that's kind of confronting when you when you think about a goal that way, like, Am I really serious about this. Because if you're really serious about it, and really committed to it, that's when you achieve it. And when you just constrain to one goal, all your attention, and focus goes into creating that one goal. And then when you achieve that goal, guess what happens? You build confidence. Instead of building more evidence for all the stuff that you don't do, like evidence for you don't achieve, what, what you want to do, and you're just at the effect of your life of the world. You create evidence for you create exactly what you want to do. And then you go after the next goal and create more evidence. And then you go after the next goal and create more evidence. And I can tell you what, when you live your life that way, that is how you live a life on purpose. That is how you create the money that you want to make. That is how you create the life of your dreams. Because you set yourself up for success. And you also give yourself evidence that you can actually do it. And it's okay to start small. You don't have to start with some massive big thing. I mean, big goals are good. And I encourage big goals. But if if that if the goals that you really want to do is so big that they just scare you that it's terrifying. And you can't even take a step, take it back a notch, and do a goal that is just a baby step to get you moving forward and just start creating that evidence for yourself. So I would love to know what your goals are. Email me, Meaghan@moneymindful.com.au. And let me know, share it with me create some accountability for yourself. Tell me what your goal is, for 2021. I mean, you might have a few goals that you want to achieve throughout the year. And that's totally fine. It's not like we can't have more than one goal, but just attack one of them at a time. Go for one at a time and achieve it. All right. I think you get the point. Oh my goodness, am I going to be okay, not talking to you for two weeks. All right, I think I am I'm going to be with my family. It's going to be amazing. But I'm taking two weeks off. I will not be releasing an episode next week or the week after and I will be coming back to you in the second week of January. So whatever religion you are, however you celebrate this time of year, I am just sending you all the good vibes and saying have a wonderful time over the holiday season. If you're in Australia, it's school holidays for us here. Enjoy the beautiful summer weather enjoy being with your friends and family. Enjoy this time off, spend some time reflecting

Meaghan Smith  18:55

on all the amazing stuff that you have done this year. And I and that's a great actually that's a great way to start when you do goal setting like start from what you have achieved already this year. I mean what a beautiful energy to go into the goal setting space and then spend time really getting deliberate. How do you want 2021 to be your 2021 could be the best year of your life. I know it's going to be the best year of my life. I am so excited I have my goal setting stuff. Ready to go I'm I've already got an idea of what my big goal is going to be for next year. And I can't wait I can't wait to make next year. The best year I have ever lived. And if you want help doing that, just reach out to me via the consultation booking form on my website. You can book a consultation with me I won't be taking consultations over over the break. But in January you can book in with me and that will be amazing. I would love to chat with you and talk to you about making your goals for next year as good as done. Okay, until I am with you again next year. Happy Holidays Happy Christmas Happy whatever it is that you celebrate have a wonderful new year, and I will see you in in 2021 Okay, bye bye.

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