The Lazy Genius Podcast - #90 - Set the Right Goals Without Fizzling Out

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

Goal setting can be a dangerous game. We can go overboard and try to do all the things, but when we don’t, we feel like complete failures. This week’s episode, I share three steps to help you move from goal-setting that doesn’t work to a mindset that does so that January starts feeling more exciting than terrifying. Links You May Find Helpful: Listen to last year’s New Year’s episode The Lazy Genius Sets Goals and read How to Set Goals Like a Normal Person. Here’s Emily P. Freeman’s The Next Right Thing podcast (p.s. she’s coming out with a book by the same name in April!). If you feel inspired in the new year to try something new, there’s a Lazy Genius way to do that. Sign up for a free PDF of questions to guide your intentions each month. Download a transcript of this episode! 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

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Happy New Year. Welcome 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. Today is episode number 90. Set the right goals without fizzling out. Okay, so I like New Year's. I like Januaries and new calendars and fresh starts. It feels very hopeful and exciting like the whole world is in front of me. Everything is saturated in possibility. But we know the story. We settle. a lot of goals and then we fail at pretty much all of them. Things don't go the way we want. We have bad days. We forget to track the right things. And then we get so behind in our daily gratitude journal that it just fizzles out. And then when we find that mostly empty journal in July,

we are reminded of our failure yet again. Enough Januarys like that will often lead us to finding a new way, trying to figure out how to improve as people without falling into a shame spot. every winter. That might have been you last year. In January of 2018, I released an episode called The Lazy Genius Sets Goals. It was episode 45. I'll link to it in the show notes. You can listen if you haven't already or if you need a little refresher. In those same show notes for that episode, you'll find, and for this one actually, you'll find a link to a pretty long post that I wrote called How to Set Goals Like a Normal Person. Both of these pieces speak into our desire to do more and improve and be better, and how our usual way of getting there, it never seems to work.

In fact, I basically say that the whole, like the goal setting gurus of the world, they might not have it right for all of us, that having what are called smart goals, smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. That doesn't actually work. Now, it might for some people. Oh, my goodness. But for many of us, it just doesn't. So there, there is advice in that, like to choose like two to five goals in each area of your life, relationships, health, career, stuff like that, and because they're all connected. But even if you choose one goal in three categories, it still feels like so much to keep up with and basically is disguised to some of us as just another way to fail. Okay, so let's talk about failure for a minute

because the fear of failure is a big thing. It keeps us from trying new things. It keeps us from sharing our ideas with other people. It keeps us from being. our truest selves when we walk in a room. Because what if people don't like us? Failing for just being a person is basically the worst kind of failure. And we carry that a lot of times having no idea the burden is there, but we're tired from it. All the same.

I hear a lot in books and in blog posts about the tired modern woman trying to balance it all and that we need to say no more and settle our schedules and be better at time management. But I don't really think that's it, like capital I. I don't think that's it. I don't think we're so much tired from our schedules and commitments. We're tired from trying to be a person. We're tired of walking into a room and managing all the junk in our heads

and the perceived junk we assume is in other people's heads. And if that's the case, if we're tired of trying to be a person, maybe we tell ourselves the person we are isn't enough. Maybe we're not being the best we can be. if that is the steady pulse in our minds that who we are isn't enough or else we wouldn't be so tired what do we do then we set goals we try and be better we seek out our best selves and we reverse engineer how to get there i don't think there's anything wrong at all hear me with reverse engineering anything that's kind of my favorite but our idea of the ideal

is often really narrow and maybe not even super kind and it's based on what If you really ask yourself why the ideal version of yourself is the way she is, who decided that? Who decided that your ideal self is rested and clear-skinned and a size six and a great cook and successful at a side hustle and always present with her kids or has kids at all? Your ideal self is supposed to have a style, self-awareness, a meal plan, a best friend, money for vacation, a house that can host game nights every month, and a journal to keep track of all the emotions that can't help spilling out at the end of another grateful day. Okay,

when you think of your best self, of your ideal self, do you think of those things? What kinds of goals flood your mind in order to make her a thing? Probably a lot, probably a lot of those things, many of which you aren't currently doing, or maybe not up to the standard you think. And that's by January is exciting and terrible. There's possibility and then two seconds later paralysis from all there is to do, all there is to fail at. I love how often I get to mention my favorite, Emily P. Freeman and her podcast, The Next Right Thing, which is, it's kind of like the serene, soulful sister of the lazy genius podcast if you were interested in listening, which I really think you should. Emily often uses the term a hopeful vision. What does it mean to cast a

hopeful vision for who we are, for our futures, for the people we long to be. The tension that we feel every, you know, January 17th or however long it takes you to fail, whatever it is you set out to do, it comes when that hopeful vision is in the shape of a checkbox. When your hopeful vision is a destination rather than a path, things get wonky. We spend so much energy trying to become the person and we think we should be rather than loving who we already are while looking hopefully toward the future, not running there desperately. Okay, so now hear me. I'm not saying that you cannot grow as a person, that you cannot experience things that

move you in a direction, that you cannot learn and change and whatever else you might be hoping for. But as we kind of close up this episode, I want to share three steps. to help you move from goal setting that doesn't work to a mindset that does. And the first step is to know the difference between formation and transformation. When we set goals, we usually think about transformation. Smaller pants, bigger muscles, zero debt, vacations where they're previously worn on. We seek to transform ourselves into that ideal version and the space between who we are now

and who will be then only counts if we're moving. That's what we tell ourselves. The minutes and the people and the choices right in front of us are gray and they only serve the end results. They only serve the transformation, which if that's how we see goals, it totally plays into the feeling of failure. Transportation, transformation takes so much longer if we keep failing in the day to day. if we want to transform into somebody that drops three sizes every day i don't exercise or drink enough water

or have a green smoothie or whatever is one day further from the transformation and today the day i failed it feels like a waste but what if we lived formationally what if instead of seeking to transform into this other person at the end of a line of steady choices we saw each day as something that forms us into a deeper version of who we already are. I know this might feel like a little tenuous, but let's just think together for a second about this. If you're tired of trying so hard to be a person, seeking after transformation will make you even more tired. But if in that tiredness, you release your expectation to transform into an ideal version

and instead see every day is a gentle forming, a shaping of who you already are. The road of that hopeful vision is so much more gracious. You'll start to see that it's not just that who you are is enough, but that you can become an even truer version of that person by recognizing the small ways your choices can form that person more deeply. this isn't like some reverse psychology angle where if you like just let it go it'll come to you anyway I don't think that's true this isn't like a mind game I'm trying to play with you knowing the difference between formation and transformation is the lens I think that puts goals into perspective for people

like us who those regular smart goals just don't seem to work for rather than creating checkboxes around how much water you drank how many times you said thank you to a stranger how often you clean out the refrigerator. Instead, you, you pay attention to the person you already are and the small daily ways that person continues to form. So instead of setting transformational goals this year, maybe you could ask yourself formational questions. Questions like, what filled me up this month? What can I celebrate? How can I give myself margin? How can I love my people well? You're not following those questions with huge action plans and checkboxes on how many days in a row you rubbed your son's back because he likes to be touched. Simply ask formational questions that help you see what goals

can cloud over and then just live your life. No checkboxes, no trackers, just life. Who you are matters and I encourage you to stop thinking about transforming into an ideal version of yourself, but instead forming into a truer version of who you already are day by very ordinary day. 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. Okay, so step one is to know the difference in formation and transformation. Step two, there are three of these. Step two, see failures as arrows. Failure is hard to swallow. And often when we fail in one area of life, we let it bleed into the others. If we fail at our attempts to become a better cook, really, we're just failures at being human. I mean, if I can't cook a piece of chicken, what good am I to anyone for anyone?

If you are, if you're here, forming into what it means to be a lazy genius, you might just struggle with that all or nothing mentality. That exists a lot in this, in this group of us, in this collective. We're very all or nothing. Failing at something isn't just failing at something. It casts this power over everything and it creates yet another layer of why it's hard to be a person because we clump it all together. We don't see ourselves very kindly, very often, especially when we fail at something.

Now, it's not realistic to say, well, just don't set goals or try anything or seek to grow or do anything that you might fail at so you don't fail. No, I'm not saying to create a life in which you can't fail. I'm just saying to see failure as an arrow. When you don't do something the way you wanted to, when you don't seem to have the initiative to follow through on a goal, let the fail. help point you toward what you're a lazy genius about. What actually matters and what doesn't so much. You might continue to fail because deep down the thing you're pursuing or the reason

you're pursuing it just doesn't really matter to you. And that's okay. And if you feel as though it's something you can more or less let go, be lazy about that thing. Stop trying to be a genius about it. Seeing failures as arrows always means that the thing. You can be a little bit of the thing. You Things you learn from failing continue to point you in the direction of what you need to learn. Last summer, I did something called the 100 day project. I didn't come up with it. Someone else did a long time ago. I just took part last year where you choose one creative thing and you do it every day for 100 days straight.

I usually steer clear of projects and challenges like that because they feel like they're trying to like, I feel like they're trying to hype up an ideal version of me. and I don't know, it just makes me feel a little bit squirly. But for whatever reason, this particular structure at this particular time, it felt right. So for 100 days, I painted a watercolor painting of some kind of baked good. You know, you guys know I love to bake. But I couldn't bake something every day because I don't have the budget for that. But I could paint something every day.

I miss maybe like four or five days. But I have like just shy of 100. actual watercolor paintings of donuts and birthday cakes and croissants and everything now there were some days some paintings that i did not like at all you might say that i failed at what i intended to do that day but those failures they acted as arrows they showed me what to try the next time i paint it to get better and as a painter but like even to get better as being kind to myself when I fail that's actually maybe the most important arrow when we fail it doesn't have to mean the end failure isn't a period or some depressing ending it's simply an arrow that points to the things that matter

and the things that don't to the things we can try next time to grow in whatever area we're seeking to grow in and most importantly failure is an arrow that points to a practice of being kind when we fail at all. So see failures as errors. Okay, so first, know the difference between formation and transformation. Two, see failures as arrows. And three, set intentions, not plans. Now, this might feel like splitting hairs, but you know the difference if you give it a minute to settle in. Plans are actually an intention for something. I mean, they are. Plans are concrete steps to achieve an intention we hope for. But, we don't always see them that way. In our heads, plans are often more concrete and immovable

than intentions are. So it's really all just a matter of like verbiage and the connotations of the words that we choose. But if your shoulders tense up when you think about failed plans versus how your shoulders feel when you think about unreached intentions, you might just see the value in changing your language a little bit. We need plans. We need them. When it comes to traveling with kids and building the house, planning a garden. If you just like roll with it and don't make plans, you won't have flights or a proper foundation for your house or the right soil for the things you want to grow. Plans are great. But we assign rigidity to plans that we might not need to, especially when it comes to like personal growth. Okay, so let's actually steal that garden example

that hammer this out. So you want to plan a garden. So you make a plan. You choose a little plot in your yard. You learn about the kind of soil you have. You ask an expert at the garden store if the plants will grow there. You might buy those wooden stakes so the tomato vines have somewhere to go. You'll get twine and you'll create a little grid in your raised bed so you can see where to plant the little seedlings so they're not crowded together. You're planning your garden and that's a beautiful thing. But you can't plan the growth. You can water and weed and talk to the plane. And talk to the that's your thing, but you can't plan the growth. You intend for plants to grow in your garden, clearly because you made a plan to create an environment where they could, but the growth has more

soul than your plan can offer. So you daily tend and patiently wait and become a better gardener as you watch plants die and learn why they died. You recognize that you're not going to go from like a brown flat rectangle to a magazine worthy flower garden in weeks or even years. It's a process where planning definitely helps, but in so many ways you relinquish control. You're simply existing with the day-by-day action and inaction of this garden, intending that something will grow, but content with who you're becoming even if nothing does. because there is growth. You grow as a gardener.

You learn from the failures that point arrows in the right direction. You're seeing the forming and you're not expecting the transforming. It's such a tiny difference, but also like a really big one. So as you start this new year and you have hopes and dreams and goals, think about these three steps, these three mind frames. Minds, mindsets. Know the difference between four. and transformation.

Are you seeking to transform into something completely different, or are you continuing the process of forming the person you already are? See failures as arrows. You get to learn from a failure, and you don't have to allow failure in a single area to be an overall judgment on who you are as a person. And set intentions, not plans. Or at the very least, make plans and then relinquish control over the results. Be patient and kind.

I know that there are instances where we find like holes and loopholes in these three ideas, but there are areas where, I mean, sure, you might need a concrete plan and checkboxes and all the things. Those things by themselves are not bad. But I just want to encourage you that maybe those loopholes are the exception and not the rule. So maybe, just maybe. Maybe this year you don't set goals. I know, what am I saying? But perhaps you can ask questions. If you would like a little direction on what questions to ask, I have good news for you. If you click the link in the info section on your podcast app for this episode, or you go to the lazy genius collective.com slash goals, you'll see a place to drop in your email address,

and I'll send you a free download of 10 questions to ask yourself at the end of every month. Five questions to look back and five questions to look ahead. you can print out 12 copies and put them in a little binder and you can just have the questions as a guide that you just look at periodically when you want to you know you can put them in a journal that you use or maybe you just like read them and then you mull them over in your brain just for one month there aren't any rules here um i am curious how like how differently you feel though about asking yourself formational questions rather than like creating systems and smart goals so um And here's the thing. If you're a smart goal setter, you probably still aren't listening. But if you are like get after it. That's amazing. I am not saying at all that goals or smart goals are bad. They're not. But they don't work for some of us. And if you're a lazy genius, you're probably at the mercy of goal setting without even realizing how tired it's making you. Remember that maybe you don't need a huge overhaul of your habits and your schedule and your dreams.

Maybe you just need this little reminder that today is good, who you are already is a gift, and that you're being formed today. Maybe 2019 will be your best year ever, but maybe it won't be. And maybe there's not a single goal in sight. But that's okay. It's okay for you to not continue to climb this ladder of potential. We can just live our lives as ourselves and be aware. of what we're bringing to the table, what we're having in our heads, what we're telling

ourselves when we fail, just having these shifts in our, in our mindset could, could make it the best year, but for reasons that it never would have been before. Okay. So let's say goodbye for now. Remember, you can go download that sheet of questions at the lazy genius collective.com slash goals, not slash lazy slash goals, slash actual goals. It's like on its own page. and I would love to talk with you this Thursday on Instagram around 1215 Eastern.

I will be there live. I haven't been for a couple weeks, so I'm so excited. You can follow me at The Lazy Genius and I'll be there Thursday, 1215 Eastern. Also, just a reminder that if you are interested in decluttering like a lazy genius, my e-book, my decluttering e-book called The Swap, the Lazy Genius Guide to Decluttering for Life, is a available, cannot say words, available for the entire month of January this 2019. So you can head to the website. You can check the link in the show notes for this episode.

Or you can go to store. Dot the lazy genius collective.com and buy the swap today. All right. Thanks for being here with me. I hope that this new year leads you deeper into the delightful person you already are. So until next time, be a genius about the thing. that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week. 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.