Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 245 | Goal Setting Q&A

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

We recently posted an episode sharing how Andrew and I set our goals for the year and the feedback has been amazing! We have received so many wonderful follow up questions about the system we use so we wanted to spend time answering them for you guys! We hope this episode encourages you to sit down, either alone or with a loved one, and dream about the year ahead. Download our free goal setting method below to make it as easy as possible to set yourself up for success :) Love you guys! Shawn and Andrew Download our FREE goal setting method! ▶ https://www.familymade.com/vision-setting Follow our podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/ Subscribe to our newsletter ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everybody, welcome back. Just want to let you know that the first 10 or 15 minutes of this episode, we talk about something that is not in the title, but it's all about Sean's health journey. If you're interested in that, feel free to stay tuned. If not, you could skip forward, but I love the conversation. I think you will too. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things.

With Sean and Andrew. Today, we are answering all of your questions, which there were a lot, which is really exciting also, but answering your questions about our goal setting. this has become a thing we had several episodes on how we set our goals people love it we get a lot of positive emails and dms about people doing this and it being a really good thing for themselves and for their marriage or their relationship whatever it looks like and uh so we're going to go through and hopefully clarify some questions that you might have these are from all of you all will give you shoutouts along the way speaking of shoutouts yeah i do want to start this episode with a

couple comments that we've gotten about the show. Brooke says, thank you both so much for being open and sharing your lives and experiences with us. We love to hear it and learn through your experiences. I do feel like that's the goal of what we're trying to do here is do a bunch of stuff, reflect on that stuff, and then share what we've learned. And I think the fun thing is, because of Sean and how awesome she is, we get to try a bunch of stuff and then we get to share with you what we think and you babe the best things that we've experienced are so anyway uh yeah that's fun you're welcome brooke thank you for listening Vanessa says she loves the wedding crashing idea did you know that since

we mentioned that in the youtube video that we're wanting to crash weddings or that we we give people registry items off their their wedding registry we've gotten several dozen emails keep them coming though We love the invites, we love the DMs, the emails, send them all our way. Here's my thing, though. And I don't say this. This is going to be painful for me to say, and you're going to understand why. I would love to go to one of your weddings. I would love to sit there.

I love weddings. I love celebrating love. I love the parties. I love everything about it. I love how it's a reflection of, like, the couple. However, my. my worst nightmare would be pulling attention of any kind away from a bride and groom who's like it's not the most I don't say the most important because like you're going to have kids or you're going to have whatever so I don't want to like make it up to be the most important day of your life but like it's a huge day and I would literally crawl inside my soul and want to dig a grave if someone was like

Oh, Sean, Andrew. I'd be like, oh my gosh. This is not us. This is all about the bride and grip. Yeah, you're good about that. You're good about that. I would soak it up. That's why I'm so glad that I'm not some international superstar like you are

because I would not have dealt with it as well as you have. Anyway, I love seeing people's wedding invitations and their notes that they include with them. It's really special. But today we're here to talk about goals. And there's a comment from the last episode we did from Amir, which says that it's life-changing, is the title of the comment. It says, you two have motivated me and my husband to create a mission and vision for our family and being more intentional in meeting our goals and giving our purpose in life and more concrete direction. I am so grateful to have found your podcast. I've taken all of your book recommendations, many podcasts or recommendations, and nearly all your goal and life-setting objectives.

We have a nearly two and four-year-old and have felt quickness of time nowadays. Sorry. Your content has motivated us to focus on what's important, most God, marriage and family. Are you good there, babe? What is this? On what's important.

It says your content has motivated us to focus on what's most important. God, marriage and family. Bless you, and I hope you continue to do this type of work for a long time. You're changing one family. family at a time. I did have a pastor this morning who was on Tim Keller staff say that we're in a really unique position to use this podcast and all of our wild videos we post online to save hundreds of thousands of marriages, he said. And he said, we're doing a good job. So it's

kind of a responsibility. I was to say that makes me feel kind of sick to my stomach in the sense of like pressure to be good does that make sense us yeah yeah to not say anything wrong no i don't know i i feel that it is really unique because we started this not with the intention of doing any of this you know we didn't like our intention was to have a fun podcast right we were 26 but our intention was and i remember stating that from the beginning and I still wholeheartedly believe in that that I feel like the world tries to paint a picture of marriage as if it's not perfect it's not right and you shouldn't stay you've always said that correct and I have found in our marriage that the most fruitful parts of our life and of

our relationship have come from really really hard things that are not by any means perfect And the more you kind of fight through that kind of stuff, the deeper and more fruitful your marriage is. And I think we just want to showcase that. Yeah. You've always said that. That's good. I think I just not reading this comment.

But. No, it hits me that like we really did start all this to share our experiences. We did have the intention of sharing what we learned. But then it's totally different when you see the effect of that. Yeah. And hear stories about this. It's like, oh, shoot. So if we have this potential to do this or have this positive impact,

it almost, I don't want it to affect what we do because I love what we do. But it is like, okay, let's at least continue to be aware and intentional and reflect on it. If we can bring in more professionals to keep changing people's lives, I'll say that. I'm down. But Amir, thank you for the comment. Glad you found this useful. I hope you all find the goal setting thing useful. as well. If you haven't set

goals, maybe this will be a starting point for you. We've said before that this is not the only way to do this. It's not the only way to set goals. No, but it is freaking cool. It is pretty cool. And it works. I think it's like it wraps up a couple psychological components. It uses a lot of data

and quantifiable things. It's got like this relational component to it if you're married that I think is really valuable. And we can link the episode of us walking through. Our goals down below if you want to check that out. But go ahead.

Life updates. Yes. Can I give a couple? Let's do it. Okay. I'm going to go on a quick tangent because I'm really proud and really excited. And I actually, we just got back from Park City. And I actually got stopped at TSA.

This was wild. Yeah. I could not believe this. By a lady who wanted to know more about this because I just started talking about it on social media. So let me take you back a second. selfishly I have been on a health journey and health kick for a while and I found a long time ago agey one and I fell in love with it I fell in love with being able to take a multivitamin that was all encompassing for an adult fast forward to having babies I dreamt of having I like

went through this frustration as a parent trying to find a really good supplement for my kids because they eat Cheetos as toddlers and there are so many nutritional gaps and within that frustration I found good probiotics and I found good prebiotics and I found good iron supplements and I found good multivitamins and I found all of these like little puzzle pieces but at the end of the day

trying to give our kids all of their vitamins was really frustrating because they didn't like it there was too many to take or it ended up being kind of like a candy where they wanted to eat so much of it that it became another frustration so I wanted to create an all-encompassing supplement for kids and this has been probably a six-year dream of mine and it has finally come to fruition and it's getting ready to launch and you guys can get on the early access list get 40% off if you get on the early access list which we'll link down below but we created it with beam I absolutely love this product it's not only a really good high standard standard, wonderfully made product, but it tastes good, and our kids love it.

It is delicious. It is delicious. So it's a greens powder that also has prebiotics, multivitamins, a fruit blend, a greens blend. We partnered with a pediatrician, so it's all like within, you know, it's a pediatrician approved. But you mix it into milk or water, and it tastes like chocolate milk. and it's sweetened with monk fruit. It tastes like hot chocolate from your childhood.

It's so good. And the kids love it. They ask for it every night. So we mix it with oat milk for Drew, normal milk for jet. We warm it up. And then we mix in the chocolate and they crush it. We've also learned mixing it with coconut milk tastes so good. I mean, it by itself and water tastes like hot chocolate or cold chocolate milk.

There's no wrong way to take it. We mix it with milks for our kids because they still like having milk. four bed and so this is how we we mix it in for them but it's so good I'm so excited I really hope you guys love it again it was something I did selfishly for my kids and then I was like oh we should do this for everyone to Sean's credit she has been pounding the pavement trying to find the right partner to help bring this to life for three and a half four years I remember having a conversation at Pinewood social downtown yeah about this back before you're pregnant with jet yeah so it's probably four years. It's crazy. And there are a lot of phenomenal partners out here, but at the end of the day,

the person we partnered with is a really, really dear friend. We consider him family. And I trust him with our kids' lives. And I just have such confidence in the standard of this product. And so another update associated with that is we went out west to go see this product being made, the first couple batches of this being made. And it's at the highest quality factory you can. Incredible. And so we did that. We'd taste it some new flavors. Yes.

That we're going to roll out. So stay tuned. Which were so good. But we also took that as an opportunity to take the kids skiing for the first time. Yes. And they, to our surprise, fell in love with it. I didn't think our kids would last 30 minutes at ski school. Six hours.

That they were going to say, it's too cold. I'm done with this. They lost it six hours. Yeah. It lasted six hours. And just wanted to keep going. And we literally picked them up and they're like, no. Can we keep going?

And I was like, you've been on the mountain for a six-hour skiing. Crazy. As a three-and-five-year-old. It was like a dream come true. To be honest, I used to think that skiing, I used to snowboard, I used to think that snowboarding and being in the mountains out west was like the epitome of freedom and the good life. And then I realized that I think I've matured in some ways.

And it's like, it's not about me getting a shred down the slope. It was so much more fulfilling to see my kids, which was crazy. think about, see this new activity to spark a new interest, to have them learn something new, was exponentially greater than me feeling the rush of the slope, you know. Ander and I went skiing and snowboarding every single year from the year we started dating. And we remember talking about how cool will it be to, like, have kids someday and come back here. And to think like we're living that is so wild. I remember passing the same. ski school seeing the little munchkins saying oh my gosh could you can you imagine when our kids and then we have

kids that are doing it now and they're in the ski school the craziest okay we're getting way into the weeds with like life updates but the craziest thing and i were just giggling beside our beside ourselves we were walking the base of this mountain from like lift to lift to lift just desperately searching for our kids and it was like it's it's different than dropping your kids off at like a gymnastics camp or basketball camp or whatever you're dropping them off on a mountain it's a real big boy mountain and you're seeing these little little tykes skiing past everywhere and i was like is that ours goes zimming by and it was just funny it's like where's my kid but coming to find out they were skiing blues on the other side so we got back late last night and it's good to be home uh i'm so appreciative of the fact that we

get to do things like that and i'm so appreciative of the fact that we get to come home and have this wonderful life. I'm curious, though, what sparked this health kick? Walk me through. I don't know. I have spent the past six years of my life. Thinking about being pregnant, getting pregnant, being pregnant, being postpartum, breastfeeding. Really just focusing on, like, using my body for my kids, if that makes sense.

for our kids and within that there were so many boundaries and restraints of i don't want to go down this rabbit hole of like trying new supplements or in the event that we got pregnant again because we were still within that that world and boundary of i don't know i was just still in the mindset of using my body in the most efficient way and perfect way of like getting pregnant does that make sense and there was almost this like time frame too in between pregnancies where I was like oh I don't really want to go balls to the wall and get my body fully back to feeling super strong and again because I know I'm going to get pregnant again and I'm going to have another C-section and I'm kind of like undo all that work almost so I would still work out in between pregnancies

and start to feel strong again but in the back of my mind it was always like a don't commit too hard because we're going to go through it again. And now that I feel like we're done, it's just this feeling, this health kick is this feeling of like, I want to be the best parent I can possibly be. We're watching our kids ice skate and ski and fall in love with like massively physical activities and I want to join them and I want to play and I don't want to feel like I'm too old or too sore or out of shape or whatever. And I just feel like I'm a better parent when I feel really good about myself. There was not a single event that happened that sparked this.

I'm curious. No. Do you think there was an event? No, I'm trying to remember. But I'm proud of you. I feel like it has changed how you approach life and approach today. So it's cool to see the side effects of this. I still would say if I had to choose between having a physically fit wife or

a wife who loved herself fully I think I would definitely choose option B but I would love a world that both existed, you know what I'm saying? And I think it does now. Good. And I don't, to answer your question, I don't think there was one event that happened.

I think this pregnancy in birth and postpartum was the absolute hardest on me. And we've talked about, I really think I experienced like postpartum depression for the first time. And the recovery process was so much harder this time and so much more painful, which was odd.

And it was just the first time I really felt not strong. And people ask what I mean by that. I don't mean like I can do 10 pull-ups or like whatever. Like I felt physically vulnerable. Not being able to like pick up my kids and feel strong and my back would always hurt every day. And like I just didn't feel. It's weird coming from my mind

because my mind at the end of the day is almost like an athlete's mind because it didn't feel safe. I didn't feel like I could just go do something without potentially getting hurt. And I just didn't like that feeling. I felt very lost. And I feel more in control now,

which makes me feel like I should go see a therapist. It's interesting. You're doing blood work. You're doing a bunch of wearables that give you a bunch of information. You got your daily workout. that's for an hour she's in there deadlifting cleaning all the things yeah food you've been really diligent about I've been impressed and I think one of the things over the long run that

catch you interested in this is your energy levels were low you were irritable I think something was sleep too yeah pregnancy and postpartum really made me feel hijacked my body my mind was in a weird place um I no matter what I did or no matter how I slept, I never had energy. And so it just kind of set me out on this journey of like, I've kind of read and dabbled in the pregnancy world of like how much it can change your body. And I don't think I really realized that until after the third one.

But it like really kind of messes up your body. And I've been trying to not fix that. Like I know I'll never be the person that I was before we had our kids and I don't need to be ever. but I wanted to fill in gaps where things were not right. I remember you being pregnant for the first time in realizing how much a blessing that was because it changed the focus or the goal of your body from being like, I don't know, something for vanity's sake to something to grow a baby.

And now it seems like it's the third chapter where it's like for the hell, of the family. Yeah. I, what are we doing here? Well, no, I'm actually just curious

because you've been, I just had like a weird, is this an, are you interviewing me? I'm actually just interested because you spend a lot of time on this. I just, I was like,

did you just hijack this podcast? Are we doing a different episode than I figured, I realized? Okay. Yes. I feel like I, gone through different phases in my life. So like we started before kids. I was very selfish about

how I looked at my body, how I felt about my body, how my body performed. Everything that I thought about before kids was about me, was about other people's opinions, what they thought of me, how I looked comparatively speaking to like societal standards. It was, it was all vain. And my insecurities drove that. As soon as I got pregnant for the first time, we've done, we've talked about this. It was the first time in my life I felt freedom from eating disorders and like mental health issues that came with insecurities around vanity, around food and weight and image. Because in that instant, it had nothing to do with me anymore and it had everything to do with a baby. And it's almost like a switch flipped. And I was like, I need to protect this baby at all

cost. So the machine that's carrying it, my body, I need to protect and make, you know, function as best possible for the baby. Fast forward, that's kind of the phase I was in for the six years that we had all three kids. And now afterwards, it is still about our kids more than anything. Like I, the vanity is still not back, which I love. I don't really care. Like I've had trainers and stuff ask me like, oh, are your clothes fitting better? Are you feeling better? Like, you know, trying to gauge where my goals are. It has nothing to do with a scale and has nothing to do with clothes.

And it has everything to do with like, I want to be the parent that's like knee deep in the mud with my kids. And not being like, oh, I'm just too tired. I can't do it today. And I want to dive head first into the pool or the ocean or go skiing and be chasing our kids down. the blues and black diamonds and like I just want to be able to keep up at such a high pace with our high pace kids and then never be affected by oh my mom and dad didn't want to or they couldn't I'm proud of you thanks good job interview's over I can't I just think I don't know it is related to the episode though because that's been a major goal of yours and it's actually

been fascinating to see how those goals have changed throughout the years? Sorry to interrupt. But we're looking at our goals from 2024. In my health and fitness goals, which we have a category for health and fitness, was strictly like have a safe and healthy pregnancy, have a safe and healthy delivery

and like postpartum goals that had nothing to do with weight. It was like build a support team for postpartum, breastfeed or nurse might attempt to for however long. you know yeah you've done a great job thanks i also think it gives insight into how we approach something like setting goals so let's transition back into the episode all right sean i don't know if you knew this but i'm really into history and i thought it was really interesting to learn that for thousands of years explorers search for a mythical fountain of youth really i'll tell you how the story ends they

never found it but we do have college and supplements in 2025 and while it's not a miracle it is proven to be good at helping you look and feel younger and more healthy. The best collagen, in our opinion, is made by ancient nutrition. I take their collagen supplement every single day. It's amazing for your hair, your skin, your nails, and can also reduce joint pain because we're getting old. Their multi-collegin advanced lean supplement contains 10 types of collagen from 10 real food-based sources, which is really hard to find.

It also promotes healthy weight management and can help build lean muscle. muscle. Honestly, what more could you want in a supplement? Exactly. Plus, it's delicious and it's easy to work into your daily routine by mixing into your morning coffee or smoothie, whatever your style is. It works. And we've seen results since incorporating this powerhouse supplement for sure. Right now, Ancient Nutrition is offering 25% off your first order when you go to ancientnutrition.com forward slash EastFam. That's ancientnutrition.com slash EastFam for 25% off your first order. ancient nutrition.com forward slash east fam as we mentioned we did a whole youtube live episode where we talked

about doing our goal setting method that we do every year we've done it for seven years now it's been a game changer for us I was just tickled this year at how close our visions for our life were this year it used to be that Sean and I had different visions that we were far off from and then we became came close to our vision kind of individually and then what's happened next is we've grown closer in our vision and we've grown closer to actually that being reality so anyway gave you free download uh which will also link down below here it's like a little google doc um and if you missed that episode we'll link the episode as well but we did get a lot of good questions that we wanted to address that we didn't have time for in the episode

So we've listed them out here and we're going to walk through them one by one. So we hope this episode and the initial one inspires you to really reflect and dream about not only the year ahead, but how you're living, where you want to go, why you're here. I mean, it's kind of existential, but it's like, I really believe, I've said this for years. I really believe each and every one of us was put here with a special story, a special experience, and a special message that nobody else can share. So it's like, you don't have to have a podcast for that. You can have your coworkers or your teammates or your family or whoever that is. It's like, but you're here for a purpose. And we were asked the other day, what does empowerment mean to you?

And I think it's like knowing with full confidence that you have a reason to be here and you own that role, you're part of the story, but you're not the hero of the story, right? So it's like this, it's almost, you know, some people define humility as not giving. too much or too little credit to yourself, right? It's like giving credit where credit to do, and you can't overhype yourself and call yourself the hero, but you also can't say, you know, mope around and say, I don't have a reason to be here. It's like, no, own why you're here.

So hopefully this process brings you closer to that. But you answer the first one, I think you get with it. The first question that was said in says, when you say goal, what's the difference between that and a New Year's resolution? I'm curious what you would say to this. A New Year's resolution, I feel like stereotypically is like, what do I need to drastically change this year from last year that I need to start on January 1st and not break for an entire year? And I feel like that's really daunting and not realistic.

I think we mean goal in the sense of we reflect on the year that we had and we aim to like tweak things. but it's not like I'm giving up dairy. I don't want to have dairy for all of 2025 starting January 1st. And if I break that, I'm breaking my New Year's resolution. It's more of like a whole view of your life. Yeah, I agree. I think goal is a bigger picture thing.

And I think within a goal, you have different resolutions that are part of that. So if Sean's on this health journey, maybe the resolution is to eat less of this or do more of that or work out more. It's like a collection of different focused resolutions. I think goal is just more intentional, game planned, mapped out. That's at least how we approach it.

Yeah. Next. Does your goal setting method work for a single person? Would I need to do anything differently when following your method? No, but I do think having a sounding board of people in your life, whether I be your parents or your friends, your roommates, maybe some close teammates. I even put together a list I call the Council of Andrew

It's inspired by the Lord of the Rings The Council of Elrond And they all sit around And it's like Abe Lincoln did this With this team of rivals If you read that book I think it's really nice

It's no you have different perspectives Of people that say You know what That actually That actually doesn't feel like you Or I don't think that is The direction you need to go And maybe you heed their advice

Maybe you don't But regardless Having a third party that is close to you and knows you well and has known you well really does add an important element but yes you can do it while you're single absolutely single

next says Sean you are clearly really driven and learn to set goals for yourself at an early age how is your goal setting now similar and different to your goal settings back then so I kind of want to challenge that I did learn to set goals as a young kid

but I will say a lot of my goals were driven by my coach. So because I was a kid in gymnastics, I showed up to gymnastics to play. My coach behind the scenes was strategizing of like, this is the next goal for the level. And I kind of just followed. So I actually think I'm a better goal setter now than I was then because now I have to do it.

I have to strategize. I actually have to put the game, you know, plan together. and I have to execute it without a coach. I have the best teaming in the world, though. But I think it's very, very different. I think I learned a lot from my coach, but the difference is like now it's on us. You've done a great job.

I've been impressed. It is interesting. As an athlete, you have so many people who set the infrastructure of your life up and the routine and the schedule. And then you leave that, and that's why the transition's so hard, you know, it's like the rug gets pulled out from me.

and then you have to become your own coach or like set your own thing and you've done a phenomenal job at that so thank you baby yeah you too okay what has made you so passionate about this topic it's cool to see um i think what's made is passionate about this is that it's worked um man i i wake up every day and i'm freaking pumped about life you know what i'm saying it's like that doesn't mean there's not hard things that happen there's conversations that I dread having there's stressful moments but you're like holy brick yeah let's go I don't know it's there's something about knowing that you have a role to play here I don't know and and we were not always like that which is why I'm so passionate about it I used to be like this college dude I talk about it like we're a Mexican

poncho had dreadlocks and thought the purpose of life was just like freedom whatever that meant vaguely. And now it's like, dude, you have responsibilities that you get a positively impact and it's making a positive difference. It's like, so the goals play into that because you're like, shoot, okay, it's almost like a type of organization.

You build this awareness and this dashboard of what am I doing with my life? And is it what I want to be doing? You were about to say something. No, I was just going to say, I feel like less and less and less are we finding ourselves sitting somewhere and saying, why are we doing this?

What are we doing with our lives? I feel like seven, eight years ago when we started this, it was kind of like, yeah, we were doing things, and it was cool, and it was fun. But we asked that question a lot. We'd be like, why are we, what are we doing? Where are we going with this? And now it feels like we're actually, like, on a path.

Yeah, and it's come at a cost in some ways where it's like, you know, we've changed our videos and our whole content of what we make, and that's lessened the viewership, if you will, but it makes us more excited to do things. And now we have a plan for our money. We have a plan for our marriage. We have a plan for our kids.

It's like, I just think it's important. And we have mentors that have so drastically helped us in this area that I feel like it would be a disservice if we didn't turn around and share it with other people. But I was just sitting down with a 50-year-old guy the other day and he was like I don't know how my marriage ended up here and I don't know where it's going and you're like freak you should think about this not not in one big chunk sporadically if you think about things more frequently consistently it's going to have a way more

positive outcome it's like do the maintenance so you don't have to do the overhaul you're next how do you stay on track with your goals do you do a mid-year check-in and if so how many do you do and for how long? Okay, so we don't technically do a mid-year check-in on our goals in particular. But I will say we reference our goals a lot, but then we've also talked about like our cadences with routines where we do date nights every week, which give us a chance to kind of talk about how are things going kind of in the sense to the yearly goals it's not like we're sitting down every Thursday night and saying oh how are you doing on this but when you go through

that process so intensely they're kind of like written in your brain yeah it's almost like your operating system so it's it's it's the fruit of how you live your life less sorry more than it is like some foreign thing that you're trying to force happen you know and then on top of every Thursday night we do date nights with each other where it's just Andrew and I where we can kind of talk through things every Sunday night we sit down and we do a scheduling kind of meeting where we schedule out the entire next week that's kind of a chance for us to say oh we wanted to hang out with friends once a week we wanted to make sure we did five dinners with the kids every week so we can kind of implement it there we also do monthly check-ins with each other where we will go to a coffee

shop and that's kind of where we can debrief life and bring up any grievances or anything but also reference back to our goals and kind of our morals and our values that we're kind of wanting to make the compass of everything. But when you write it down, it brings it to an awareness where you're like, hey, Sean, you said you wanted to do X, Y, Z and you haven't done it a single time. Yeah. You know, you're not doing it four times a week like you wanted to. to so you know when something's off because you're thinking about it more yeah next how do you inspire yourself to dream when you're feeling stuck or out of ideas in this phase of life then do the goals 1,000% write down the absolute craziest things that come to life and start just doing

something different every day that's a good question I mean life does come in phases shoot we felt that our marriage comes in phases you know like how how much we're viving i think not every phase of life is a dream phase i think there are certain phases where like you just got to show up and do the daily disciplines which again benefits from the goals because if you have the daily discipline set up then it gets you through those stuck moments and set you up really well for the dream phases um but i think i don't know new new contacts and environments help So go to a coffee shop that you don't go to or go on a hike or whatever. I think nature helps a bunch.

A little conversation or a game can get you out of like this, the monotony or the survivor mode, we used to call it in football. So I think try to dabble in something new and you'll start seeing this constellation of opportunities or ideas or things that you can make happen. And I also think serving, sorry, we talk about this a lot too, like getting the perspective away from you or the focus. away from you towards other people really kind of loosens the grip like that white knuckle effect of why aren't things going my way it's a massive perspective shift when you're like hey let me just let me just change that focus away from myself towards someone else how do you prioritize personal goals versus family goals and find a balance there without feeling guilty um uh trial and error completely trial and error so to give you an idea last year for our 2020

four goals all of my personal goals were kind of around having bear our third kid doing the whole postpartum thing just wanting to kind of make it through that if that makes sense and then we had a bunch of family goals but it almost was a reflection of the goals that I set for myself personally where there probably wasn't enough personal goals for me set because I kind of lost myself that year I had a really hard time and so now in 2025 I tried to make more goals where it's like let's prioritize personal a little bit more not more than family but try to add in some more time so that doesn't happen yeah it's interesting I think of the outcomes here nobody benefits if you're not personally fulfilled and you're thus kind of bringing your community or family down as a result

You're not contributing as much as you could. Nobody benefits if you're only looking out for yourself and not for the community or your family, right? Sorry, you benefit, but I think it's a short-term game. Yes. I think the sweet spot, how we view personal care and all this type of stuff is you are, you're not over-indexing. It's not all about you. It's like putting yourself in the best position to contribute to others and to this. role that you've been called to play right so it's like that's that means energy that means

health playing the long game in that that realm and it's like it is a fine balance of personal care right because you'll need to sacrifice one or the other continuously but you do a good job at it and i'm so do you baby your balance is really impressive and it's only been through failures that we've kind of figured that out let me know if you ever need a change though i will you as well okay do you plan for variables if plans need to change or just handle that on the fly

um yeah we're not we're not super rigid and structured with this it's not like we have a checklist of these things we need to do every day really i guess we kind of do but it's not like we're very flexible like we're rigid in our vision

flexible in our execution um meaning hey i think i didn't work out for the last three days We're traveling. There's a prioritization that happens where it's like we're traveling because we want to take the kids skiing.

That's the kids' experiences in that instance, far superseded, my workout schedule, you know? Yeah. So I think I would answer your question. It's we don't plan for it. We just prioritize. Well, even when in the past, we've written out a wild goal for our business

or a wild goal for us, we'll go back to reflect on it the next year it's like oh yeah we quit that in the first month that was like absolutely not for us we had this goal yeah we started doing it we're like no actually terrible and i think just understanding that you're not writing out a concrete map for yourself for the year you're literally just writing out like what you think your year should look like or could look like and then you kind of adapt as you go i think it's really well said yeah It might not work out because you lose personal interest in it. Yeah.

That's different than you tapping out of the thing that you should be doing. For sure. But it also might not work like if it's a business thing that maybe there's no customers or there's no buyers or whatever. So there's like different reasons that dreams die and that's fine. Or we've written goals before where it's like we want to hang out with, we want to host a hundred people at our house once a week every year. Like we've written something similar to that. And we'll go reflect on it the next. year and you're like you know what once every three weeks was actually the cadence that we found

that we liked so let's switch it this year to once every three weeks instead of once every week yeah because it almost destroyed our marriage if we kept up that first cadence you know yeah whatever yeah yeah i don't know about that did it i skipped what the hosting people yeah no just there's priorities yeah yeah we stopped the game nights because yeah our marriage needed more focus yeah and our kids so that was one thing that changed we skipped this question oh all right listen up we have some fun news most of our listeners are finding our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. And now you can also find us on the app called Cooler FM with comments, reactions, leaderboards, and more. Cooler's unique way for us to engage with you more before and after listening to our episodes. And we're

really excited to be joining with them and bringing an even more personalized approach to podcast. I really love this platform because my favorite way to consume podcast is on a video format like YouTube, not because of the video, but because of the comment section and the feedback and the conversation to get started there. And Cooler is the audio version of that. You can interact and engage with listeners, us as creators, and it's a blast. Download it from cooler.com. It's a website. Type in cooler.fm into your browser and register with our exclusive invite code. A couple things. We'll see you there. Do we just keep the list in our mind or do we print it out physically so you can reference it throughout the year? We keep it on our computer.

like on a word document. So easily accessible, but not like printed out. Whatever you want. But it translates, the goals that you set, translate to the calendar that you set. So we do have a printed calendar. Sean has multiple of these. She has one linear calendar, I think, is what it's called.

Yeah. So it's each day left to right. We have a monthly calendar that she'll update. That's a dry race. It also affects, like, we have a finance app that we use that it sets the budgets for X, Y, and Z. and so it kind of trickles through other physical products from these goals. Next.

Could you do this in a much shorter amount of time if needed with my kid that's hard to have several hours alone? Yeah, chip away at it. Yes and no. You can't do it in a lot shorter time. I wouldn't recommend that. But I do think you can do it in little chunks of time over the course of many days or weeks or whatever. There is something in the creative world, like psychologically, when you're primed into this and you're able to have a block of time where you're like, all right, I know for the first half hour, my creative juices are just going to kind of be acclimating and then I'll be focused for two hours, whatever. But I would say something is better than nothing.

But if you could, you know, put your kids to sleep and sacrifice to a certain extent an hour of your sleep every night for a week or whatever. Yeah. I think having the time alone is important. Or like, yeah, I don't know what the situation is, but whatever money a babysitter would cost, I know you're trying to watch out for the kids,

but think about working on the family and not in the family is super important sometimes and so like creating a vision for your family and how you're raising your kids what you're doing now versus what you want to be doing that's worth several hours

next could we have our older kids involved in this or should we keep it to just us parents doing the goal setting method absolutely involve your kids we started involving our kids this year in such a small way because they're so little

and they don't really understand what goal settings are but I do think there's a lot aspects to the goal setting that your kids aren't involved in like if you're talking about finances for the family you don't maybe you do have your older kids involved that's up to you and your family but i do think teaching your kids this at a young age and having them involved with like what goals do you want for our family what do you want to change what do you want to see incorporated what goals do you have for yourself i think is incredible that's how we technically started this

says your dad sent us a goal-setting sheet that we kind of grew from. He would pay us 20 bucks if we filled out his little sheet. And sent it back. Yeah, it's pretty great. And then he would check in throughout the year, which was really cool. Yeah, he did a great job with that. Yeah, I think including the kids and the traveling, the serving, the home section that we have, what activities they want to do.

our kids are a little on the younger side so we're not fully experiencing this yet but like you know we have several family trips playing this year what do they want to do like starting to get their ideas or just even our kids are at a fun age where we could say hey what goals do you guys want

and yeah the one this year was snow I think they said what they gave them but it's an adorable like format or experience to have with your kids to ask them that next any goals you recommend having as we enter our first year of marriage.

That's hard. Pardon me, we can't set goals for you. But part of me also wants to say, like, goals for your first year of marriage. You could say, start with dates. How many dates do you want to go on in your first year of marriage? Is it 20 in a year, once a month,

once a week? Do you want to go on a trip together? Do you want to pay off debt together? Do you want to merge finances? Do you want to work on having a closer relationship with your in-laws? Do you want to get a pet? Do you guys have jobs that you enjoy? Do you want to keep those jobs?

It could be anything. But understanding that since it is your first year of marriage, every goal you guys set individually affects each other, I think, is something to learn. from first year marriage is really fun and this uh it's also such a learning experience and the fact that you're doing goals in your first year marriage you're already way ahead of us yeah i think it's an opportunity to probably have conversations that might not have been had before marriage maybe on the finance side of things or whatever um but just know that you are starting to build habits together and so that's worth thinking about you know at least bring an awareness

to the habits that you have, I think is good. It's also a great way to learn about each other early on in marriage, which is really cool. Yeah. Can someone who's lower income or on a fixed income do the goal setting method? It's free. I mean, it's a free template. So, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Everyone can make goals. Go for it. How to not feel discouraged if you don't end the year how you wanted. I mean, I think that's something cool about the goal. setting is like there's so many goals you're making so even if you come up not short but if you don't fulfill all of them you're still fulfilling some of them yeah so it's like a what are you focusing on yeah that's a great thing I do like that about this where you're documenting everything there's

again I think we have 150 little data points that I'll gather and we'll walk through and it's like yeah you're not going to hit them all duh but you're going to hit some so like like it simultaneously could be discouraging or be something that builds your confidence because you're like, oh, shoot, I did hit X, Y, and Z. And I know that came at the cost of not hitting X, Y, and Z, but these mean more. Or I know that I can do this next year, you know? I also think you're refining your life. So the first year when we wrote our goals, our goals looked like 180 degrees different

than what our life was at the time. And so fast forward a year when we did our second goal setting, we reached maybe 15% of our goals because we were drastically changing our life. But then the next year, we fulfilled a little bit more and like it's gotten to be,

I don't want to say more successful, but more accurate because the refinement is getting smaller. This show is sponsored by Better. help. Sean and I have been talking about what we want our 2025 story to be, and it's easy to set resolutions that fade by February, but we want to live a life where we stick to our goals and see them through. A great way to stay on track with your goals this year is with therapy. Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters and create the meaningful

story you deserve to live. We're actually writing a book right now and experiencing that. And we go to a lot of this therapy. Going to therapy is a wonderful habit will definitely be bringing into 2025. Therapy has benefited us individually and as a couple of couple for years. I think more so last year than any or ever. If you're wanting to start therapy but aren't sure where to start, BetterHelp is a great option because BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. You can access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credential therapists with a wide range of specialties and switch therapists anytime at no extra costs.

Write your story with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash EastFam today to get 10% off your first month that's better help help.com slash east fam but as soon as you document wanting to do something and then you experiencing actually doing that thing it creates this momentum yeah that just snowballs and you're like oh my gosh i can do stuff yeah i'm not like a victim in life like i can i can i can set out to do something that i want to do yeah so that's how do do do do do do do do do do the questions you ask each other about vision casting at the meeting change year to year or do you keep the same questions every year? I think so far the only way they've changed is they've grown. So I think we started out with fewer categories when we first started because we didn't have kids. We didn't

really have our business. We weren't involved with like philanthropy as much. So with each year it's just kind of grown where we ask more and more questions because there's more categories. involved but you're still asking the same same questions sorry and more nuance so like the the giving section philanthropy start off as let's give X amount of money and then we realize like oh wait there's more we can do here that we like doing so let's serve ourselves X amount of times on top of the giving and then it was hey let's host events and then it like so it kind of grows and there's also it breaks down more into more subcategories but yeah that's it okay those are great questions thank you all i know we took a slight detour at the beginning but it was worthwhile if you asked thank you maybe

hope that was helpful thanks for tuning in let us know if you have any other questions we can address those later and we love hearing from you all we're so appreciative that we get to do this what a wild world i love you i love you i'm grateful for you and hope you have a day.