The Lazy Genius Podcast - #45: The Lazy Genius Sets Goals

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

It's a fresh start unicorn! January 1st AND it's a Monday! Before we jump on the roller coaster of goal-failing I mean goal-setting, let's talk. It's time to reframe our goals so we actually become the people we want to, Lazy Genius style. Stuff mentioned in the episode: How to Set Goals Like a Normal Person How to Bullet Journal: The Absolute Ultimate Guide Download the transcript of this episode! I'll be live on Instagram Thursday, January 4th, to talk about the episode and to show you the planners I've tried and quit. That journal/notebook/planner graveyard is growing by the day, you guys. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, friends. You're listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. It's so good to be back with you after a week away. And I hope that you all have such a lovely, lovely holiday. You guys, we've had a fresh start unicorn. It's January 1st and it's a Monday. Motivation can not get higher than this, right? And yet we all still might be afraid January 2nd and 12th and 30th and how horribly we'll feel. at all the things we want to do before we ever get out of this month. So today we're going to talk about how to set goals like a normal person. How can we move into this new year with intention without feeling like a robot who is destined to fail? I can't wait to show you how. In the playbook today, we're going to talk about goals, what they are, more importantly what they're not, and how they can be part of our lives without running our souls into the ground. You ready? Let 2018 begin. So what's a goal?

The dictionary says it's the object of a person's ambition or effort. Another definition is an aim or desired result. Makes sense. And yet there is so much weight in that simple definition, right? It's the object of our ambition. Do you guys sometimes feel like ambition is an icky word? I do. So goals require ambition and ambition is a strong desire to do something

that requires hard work. I don't know about y'all, but I don't have a strong desire for much of anything except a nap. It takes a lot of mental energy to figure out what I want enough to really work for it. We're usually just so tired with life and hyper-focused on the needs of people around us that our own goals and dreams seem unimportant. Ambition feels foreign and selfish. Thinking of goals as an aim or a desired result makes a little bit of more sense, but what are we aiming for? What result will actually make us feel fulfilled? I think we set ourselves up with too much of an ideal, one that realistically will be hard to accomplish without a lot of ambition and effort we just don't have. I have an aim of being a size

four. Okay, I'm 36 years old. I've had three kids. My knees are bad and prevent me from doing most exercises. I don't super like exercise. And I'm currently dancing between. I'm currently dancing between a size 8 and 10. Y'all, my desired ideal of being a size 4 is dumb. And why is that even important? How would my life be different if I was a size 4 compared to a size 8? I'd wear size 4 pants. That's about it. My friends wouldn't like me more. My husband wouldn't love me more. My value wouldn't go up as my size went down. I don't truly care about being athletic or running a marathon or looking like Guineath-Paldro. I mean, I wouldn't say no to looking like when if it just happened. but I'm not willing to work for it.

And yet I carry around that size four ideal as something I should always be working on. It affects my daily life. Everything I eat, every exercise I don't do, every pair of pants that doesn't have a fore on it reminds me that I'm failing. But y'all failing at what? I set myself up to fail at something

that doesn't even matter. It's crazy. And I think we all do it in tons of areas. If goals trip us up because they're laced with ambition we don't have and ideals don't even make sense, what do we do? Are we just supposed to live each day without reaching for something, without progressing towards something? Of course not. Let's just be intentional about how we go about it. I wrote a pretty detailed post called How to Set Goals like a Normal

Person. I'll link to it in the show notes at the lazy geniuscollective.com slash lazy slash goals. In that, I offer a new definition of a goal. Everyone sees goals as a destination as something to check off. If you don't know when you're done, it's not a goal. Well, that hasn't worked for me yet. So we might as well try a new way, right? What do we have to lose? So my definition of a goal has transformed how I see my life and what I choose to do.

Maybe the same will happen to you. Let's see a goal not as a destination, but as a purposeful direction. We're on a path. Sometimes we run a long distance at once. Sometimes we stand still for a while. No matter how fast you move or how much you even care about it on any given day, you're still on a path that matters, a path that's headed in a purposeful direction.

In that post I mentioned, I go into detail about the entire process of figuring out your path and setting yourself up for success. But I will quickly go over the first part here. How do you figure out your path? How do you decide your purposeful direction? you can do this at any point, but Monday, January 1st seems like such a great day, right? There are three questions to ask yourself.

First, who do you want to be? Second, why does being this person matter to you? And third, how are you more like this person than you were a year ago? Let's look at these specifically. Who do you want to be? So often we create goals around what we want to do, and that's the problem. doing taps into that wonky ambition thing we're uncomfortable with and puts pressure on tasks rather than on intention. So don't ask yourself what you want to do. Ask yourself who you want to be.

Be specific. Do you want to be a runner? An author, a photographer, a cook, a business owner, a mom who connects with her family around the table every night, a reader, a traveler. Who do you want to be? imagine that person and pay attention to what happens in your soul when you do. You might already know the exact word, the exact person you want to be. I want to be a bakery owner, truly. That's been my secret dream for years. And in the last couple of years, I've decided to bring it out of the shadows. If I want to be a bakery owner in five, ten years, what does that mean for my life today?

It's much easier to be motivated to bake bread with dinner when I know. each loaf makes me a better baker and therefore a better bakery owner down the road. Baking bread isn't laden with guilt of I should make more food from scratch or my kids won't feel loved if I don't make their food. All of that is garbage. But being on the path of bakery owner moving in a purposeful direction towards that makes each decision matter more deeply and feel worth doing. So who do you want to be? Something else here now. Something new.

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Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Second question. Why does being this person matter to you? Again, my deal is to be Gwyneth Paltrow

to spend hundreds of dollars on a garlic press and tell people how to make their hair look like it was made by fairies. But why? Why does being that person matter? It takes all of two seconds to know that it doesn't. Being Gwyneth Paltrow has no real significance in my life. Now being a bakery owner, that matters. I like to be a visionary and be my own boss.

baking makes me feel like myself more than just about anything else sharing food with people making them feel welcomed and safe it motivates me beyond words i love this city i was born here and i've never lived anywhere else the thought of contributing to its life with a bakery that meets the needs of my neighbors and friends thrills me it is so easy to know why being a bakery owner matters to me and knowing that significance makes every decision stemming from that worthy of my time and effort, even the hard stuff. So why does being a runner, a reader, a seamstress, a person overflowing with hospitality, why does being that person matter to you? You'll almost certainly recognize if that reason is enough to claim it as your path. Question three. How are you more like this person than you were a year ago? This is a great heat check on the validity of this dream or goal. We tend to move toward what makes us come alive, even if that thing isn't a tangible goal. Like if you want to be a runner, maybe you tried your first 5K last year. If you want to be a reader, maybe you said no to a few items of clothing in order to spend money

on books that you usually don't allow yourself to buy. What changes, no matter how small, have you subconsciously made to move you in the direction of the person you want to be? If there have been no moves, if you're exactly in the same place you wear a year ago, it doesn't necessarily mean you should find another path but it's definitely worth paying attention to you it could be that you're so scared of following your dreams and making them tangible goals that you've just completely ignored them that's real but probably more likely you've been aiming for something in word only if deeds haven't followed even the tiniest tiniest bit you could definitely be dreaming someone else's dream so those three questions who do you want to be why does being this person matter

and how are you more like this person than you were a year ago will help you find your path. They'll help you discover what direction makes you come alive to spend some of your very precious energy on staying there, on moving forward sometimes, on claiming a path, no matter how slowly you move as your own. Obviously the process does not stop there. There's more to setting goals like a normal person and watching them actually become practical and tangible choices in your daily life. check out the show notes to finish reading that entire post the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash goals and at the bottom of that post is a great little freebie to help you get started on tracking something that matters. I'm begging you please don't track something that is

someone else's ideal for you. You deserve more than that my friend. Okay let's finish up with the lazy genius tip of the week which really is the lazy genius tip of the year. You guys say it with me. No more notebooks. No more journals. No we're buying another planner hoping it's the magical one you've been looking for. I have purchased three legit planners in the last two months hoping for magic. And while one is doing, is going to do the job fine. It is, it's going to have to because I have promised that 2018 is the year I don't buy a single bound volume of blank, lined, gritted, dotted, or dated paper. No more. Because guess what? Every time we buy a new one, we start over. We treat it.

the way we treat our goals. Well, this one failed, so let's try another one and have super high expectations. And then the more notebooks and journals and planners we have, the more we forget all the things we wrote in them, I did write a massive post about bullet journaling, which I'll link to in the show notes,

but I'm taking a break from bullet journaling this year. It's like how people wait until they have a lot of money to get a financial planner, but really you need one when you're pretty poor, so that you're using your money the best possible way. That's how it is with my work. in 2018. I have so much climbing down the pike, you guys. I'm so stoked to tell you about it,

but I have a minuscule amount of time to do it. I'm running the ship on about 10 hours a week. So it's not easy. So this year, I need structure done for me. I need someone who's drawn the calendar boxes already, who's asking me pertinent questions to remind me of what I need to do so that I can just do the work rather than structuring of myself in my bullet journal. So tiny hiatus on bullet journaling in 2018, but regardless, no new planning, journaling, noting books of any kind. Let's use what we have. Let's remember that a journal isn't going to magically transform our lives. It doesn't exist. So stop all the false starts that come with every cute planner you buy a target. I am not one for New Year's resolutions, but this one I'm on board with.

Are you guys with me? Okay, you guys, thank you so much for listening. I'm so excited about this year with you. There are such fun things coming, and I can't wait to start telling you about them and do me a favor as we start this year. Can you think about someone you know who might enjoy this podcast and tell them about it? It's such a gift to see more and more people living lazy, genius lives

and dropping the pressure of trying it the wrong things. Let's invite more people into that this year. So take just a minute and maybe text a friend or family member your favorite episode and share the lazy genius love, man. That would be such a gift to me and to lots of others too. Okay, friends, I'll be back next week

to talk more goal-setting specifics And until then, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Bye, guys. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough.

Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to becoming you wherever you get your podcasts.